War as a game?

post subject

Whoops Smeghead, I missed your previous post re. video games. I do apolagise but I wasn't talking to you but Ebar, in any case you're correct in one part of your post, no one around these parts would call me a 'reasonable person', most of the time I have my G.O.S. cap on!
In any case I believe that this thread was a split from 'Black Prince' and was about the difference between real war and games war.
B.B.B.

 

Re: post subject

Mom told me that when 'Saving Private Ryan' was coming out, they showed it to a bunch of vets.....the vets said the only thing lacking was the smell.

My great uncle died a couple of yers ago of lung cancer...one lung was already useless because of the shrapnel in it. (His wife mentioned somethign about tanks once I think)

My great-great-uncle (great grandfathers brother) was a tail (or nose) gunner in a Lancaster shot down over Germany. After the war they got a letter from a German doctor who took care of him before he died.

 

I heard that when showed Saving Private Ryan, all the vets said "I don't remember the war being this violent!"

 

That would be a genuine reaction for most combat vets since comparitively few of them experienced the concentrated violence of an amphibious landing into concentrated interlocking machine gun and artillery fire. A movie or book allows everyone to experience vicariously that which only a very few actually experienced( and fewer still that survived it).

 

Re: post subject

I have heard another recent theory that places the battle at Manshead, just outside Dunstable. The thinking goes along these lines:

Every town the British force passed through along Watling Street was burnt down, and the population beheaded. The first town that was there at the time but not burned down was Dunstable (I can't remember the original Roman name) so it is a reasonable assumption that the Britons never got into Dunstable. Between Dunstable & St Albans there is an area with a V-shaped valley leading out onto a flat plain, and measurments show that the valley is the right size for holding the known Roman forces.

The flat plain is now the playing fields of Manshead School...

 

actually movies are usually much more graphic and dramatic than most actual combat experience...i real life most combat troops rarely see the enemy soldier....they shoot at tree lines ,a cluster of huts in the distance...a muzzle flash at night..they do see freinds maimed and killed ...watch real footage of infantry combat almost anywhere ..its mostly very dull ..games and movies have to be much bigger than life if you hope to sell any tickets....showing actual horrors of war ie merlins freind hoseing arms and feet out a pierced tank hull would also be a big movie no no...

 

It certainly isn't for the people there at the time and most camera crew avoid the hot spots for the fact that it is just to damn dangerous.

 

Has anyone seen the show WWII in Colour? It shows WWII throught colour film that was used during WWII and they also gave some statistics about the percentage of casualties that occcured to camera man. I dont recall the figure but it was pretty high.

 

Gunter:
Yes, I've seen most of it, and found it quite interestng and informative.
There were quite a few combat photographers that died in the Pacific while attached to the marines.
One of the most vivid in my memory is a shot taken by a "C-C" of a bomb exploding on either a carrier-deck or the deck of a capital ship of some sort.
From the angle, the detonation appears to be beneath the photo-taker... who was killed in the explosion. However the camera and film survived to be developed, including his "last-shot."
Quite sobering.

Tim

 

Got a link to it? It sound interesting.

 

I dont know if there is link to it I seen it on TV. Try youtube all the kids claim it has everything on it.