I saw a documentary last night about the war in Burma.

British troops found a scene where their wounded and the medical orderlies were massacred by Japanese, being horribly mutilated. After, Japanese were seldom taken alive.

Brigadier John Masters, DSO, etc. moved to the USA after the war and became a famous author. His basic regiment was the 4th Gurkha Rifles.

He wrote in his autobiography that after seeing various Jap atrocities, he had no more regard for them than if he was stepping on roaches.

He cited the case of a young Lt. who reported his casualties to HQ in India. He mentioned some men "Captured, presumed killed."
Told by a superior officer that there was no such category, he replied, "Sir, we are fighting the Japanese."

I didn‘t read the entire old thread in detail. So, sorry if I‘m duplicating some observations:

World War II had moral dimensions that made the whole thing much more complicated than the comforting platitudes about “the good war”.

The two main enemy nations Germany and Japan committed unspeakable crimes, and in both cases the military forces were fully implicated.

The US and Britain courted as their main ally a nation, and leader who was a mass murderer himself and who for two years had been Hitler’s partner-in-crime in the rape of Eastern Europe and had supported the Wehrmacht’s conquests with oil and raw materials.

And many of the conflicts, particularly the German war in the East, the Japanese conquest of other Asian peoples, and the American fight against the Japanese, had ethnic dimensions which made individual treatment of the enemy, including prisoners, diverge quite a bit from the Geneva and Hague conventions.

So right from the start, Germans killed Poles and Russians, Japanese killed Chinese, and Americans killed Japanese, including prisoners, with considerably less concern.

But by the time of major ground combat in Western Europe in 1944/45, the time of “Band of Brothers”, this general attitude seems to have spread even to the fight between armies who did not consider the respective enemy “subhuman”. The war on the Western front never attained the large-scale ugliness of other theaters; mass executions in cold blood of prisoners by the SS like at Malmedy were exceptions. Nothing comparable is actually documented from the Allied side; but as various earlier posts relate, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that in the heat of battle or right after, ethical behavior became optional or at least contingent upon the on-scene officers’ and NCOs’ decisions what to stop or encourage.

War is hell. Combat is murder. That's how I was taught. My great-grandfather accompanied Gen Sherman on his trip to Savannah from Atlanta.

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Mike
S&WCA #3065

Years ago a veteran told me that when the Germans
yelled "kamerad,," the Americans would yell back
"Ja, kamerad! Hande hoch!" And if the Germans
came with hands up they would shoot them.

In 1971, I was supposed to go to the Air Cav. A friend of mine was Co. Clerk. He had gone to a rival high school and even pledged the same fraternity as I did. Our wives knew each other from H.S. He had been hit his first night in "Nam with the Cav (I got sick and never did ship over) and, as he was hit 3 times, was sent back to the states. He used to tell me stories about the Cav as I was recovering and working in the Duty Room on light duty.

One story was that, at Landing Zone X-Ray, the wounded who survived reported the NVA had gone out at night and executed the wounded they could find with a shot to the head (A couple even survived to tell the tale!). Anyway, he said after that, unless ordered otherwise, the CAV took no prisoners. Heard that story from a couple of sources.

Men I know who served during WWII said much the same thing=there was no time during combat to watch prisoners. We were taught to leave no effective combatant behind you!

I met Korean War soldiers who executed prisoners when their unit had to move forward and could not keep the prisoners. I also knew new Marines in the South Pacific who described coming upon groups of Japanese soldiers all shot in the head. After they were in combat and came upon mutilated Americans they knew why.

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I like Ike.

My first job in Denver was with Hobart food machines. The commercial dishwasher salesman was a man named Martin Rust. He survived the BOB. When asked about it all He would say is " I dug the deepest foxhole." Never another word about WWII.

The necessity of war:
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Can you imagine what invading Europe from the west would have been like if Hitler had not had to defend the eastern front? They'd still be spending Reichsmarks in Paris, if not London.
The allies supported many bad guys simply because they were fighting the "badder" guys. Tito, Mao, and Uncle Ho come readily to mind.....

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Regards,
Lee Jarrett

If I remember right, and if we are both referring to the same incident, the Japanese removed body parts and consumed them, even with adequate supplies.

Another incident:

"But the most spine-chilling of all Japanese atrocities was cannibalism.
"At the village of Suaid, a Japanese medical officer periodically visited the Indian compound and selected each time the healthiest men. These men were taken away ostensibly for carrying out duties, but they never reappeared," the Melbourne correspondent of The Times, London, cabled the version of Jemadar Latif of 4/9 Jat Regiment of the Indian Army, on November 5, 1946.
Latif's charges were reinforced by Captain R U Pirzai and Subedar Dr Gurcharan Singh. "Of 300 men who went to Wewak with me, only 50 got out. Nineteen were eaten. A Jap doctor —Lieutenant Tumisa, formed a party of three or four men and would send an Indian outside the camp for something. The Japs immediately would kill him and eat the flesh from his body. The liver, muscles from the buttocks, thighs, legs, and arms would be cut off and cooked," Captain Pirzai told Australian daily The Courier-Mail in a report dated August 25, 1945.
Many other testimonials of the PoWs gave details of the cannibalism practised. These were used by the war crimes investigation commissions set up by the Allies, based on which several Japanese officers and men were tried.
The senior-most Japanese officer found guilty of cannibalism and hanged was Lieutenant General Yoshio Tachibana.
Initially, the Japanese did not accept the charges. Then in 1992, a Japanese historian named Toshiyuki Tanaka found incontrovertible evidence of Japanese atrocities, including cannibalism. In 1997, Tanaka came out with his book, Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes In World War II."

Do a google search of Japanese atrocities and you'll find more (with documentation). I had a scoutmaster who survived the Bataan Death March and he would never talk about it!

If I recall correctly, commissioned officers can't wear foreign awards regardless.

When I was at the reception station for basic training, there was a drill sergeant who had served in the Czech army. Hated the Russians (and communists generally) with a seething passion.

..I thought that was hilarious.


I saw WWII vets being interviewed, some of them said that they'd never talked about some of the things they saw, many were crying while they talked. I think they jumped at the chance to finally get it out after they'd held it in for 70 years. For some it was probably the last chance. They mentioned several situations where groups of prisoners had been shot en masse because the movement was only in one direction...Berlin, and they had no means to escort them back or manage them even if they could. There wasn't a man among them who looked happy about any of it.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

One of my childhood friend's father parachuted into Normandy on D-Day with Fox Company, 506th PIR. Fox Company (Fighting Fox Company) fought alongside Easy Company throughout the war, and their final mission of the war was also the capture of Berchtesgaden, Hitler's Eagles Nest.

Herman knew all those guys in Easy, and was intervied by Stephen Ambrose several times, both for background on Band of Brothers and a public television documentary about North Carolina soldiers who went into Europe on D-Day.

My friend said his dad told him that there are some things that aren't talked about. I don't know if the term "illegal killing" was in use during WWII, but that would have been one thing that wasn't talked about post-war by a lot of veterans.

I attended his funeral years ago. His dress uniform was displayed and the jacket was festooned with ribbons and decorations, with the American Flag alongside. If you were a veteran looking at that, you unconsciously assumed the position of attention.

A side note: How is it possible that it's been eighteen years since Band of Brothers first aired?

My Uncle was a Combat Medic with the 71sr Inf Div. He came home with 2 Bronze Stars and and no Purple Heart medals, because he was too busy helping the wounded to fill out the injury report that was sent from the front line medic to the nearest mobile hospital. He was wounded by bullets and shrapnel 3 times during the war and didn't report any and never received a Purple Heart medal! He said after the Bulge (Malmady), he never treated a SS soldier, but did treat Wehrmacht soldiers.

I asked why and he said: "There weren't any SS alive to treat".

He was later captured near the end of the war and spent 2 weeks in Dacau Concentration Camp. The GI's that freed him did a fully complete job on the Krauts that ran the camp.

With all due respect, American soldiers coming back from Europe after WW II were just as prone to tall stories as any other soldiers in history.

The stories of “no SS being taken prisoner” or “Waffen SS being shot on sight” certainly have some anecdotal basis, but the actual facts, as in post-war survival rates, don’t support any general conclusion. Overall, the Waffen SS had somewhat higher casualty rates than the Wehrmacht, but on the Western front, the vast majority of both made it alive into POW camps, and home within just a few years.

Attached picture courtesy of the Museum of the 12th Armored Division: US soldiers with captured Waffen SS.

Quite different from the Eastern front. A great-uncle of mine survived eight years in Siberia, and of the 90,000 troops of the 6th Army that surrendered at Stalingrad, about 5000 came back alive, some as late as 1955.

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I think it's called "War stories and other lies".

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CSM, U S Army(Ret) 1963-1990

This photograph is the last official photograph of Easy Company, 2nd Battalion. This photo contains both original Currahees from the Camp Toccoa training period and replacement troops assigned to Easy Company throughout the war.

Photographed at Zell Am Zee, Austria in June of 1945. Photo is courtesy of 506th PIR 2nd Battalion Archives.

You'll see familiar names...Joseph Liebgott, David Webster, "Bull" Randlelman, "Babe" Heffron, Frank Perconte, and others.

Captain Ronald Speirs is 8th from the left on the third row.

All brave young lions who earned their place in history.

Click the photo to enlarge it.

Whatever he did, he looks fine with it.

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“What you got, ain’t new.”

After reading all of this, Im thankful and amazed that 2 of my uncles, one ended up in a German POW camp after his aircraft was downed, and the other had been captured by the Japanese at Corregidor, both came home alive.
Jim

It's kinda hard to find a good photograph of Ronald Speirs. I came up with these. There's also a few of him as a Lt. Col. when he was Governor of Spandau Prison in 1958...but I couldn't copy them and didn't feel like messing with the screenshot process. I'm sure there are some more photos of him in the 506th archives...just haven't really searched them. Yet.

Interestingly enough, two of his nicknames were "Sparky" and "Killer".

His surname is actually spelled Speirs...not as you see it in the printing on the one photo below. That's something someone just stuck on it to show it online.

He passed away in Saint Marie, Montana on April 11, 2007 at the age of 86.

I've read numerous accounts that Ronald Speirs, who stayed in the Army after WWII and retired in 1966 as a Lieutenant Colonel, was appointed as "Governor" of Spandau Prison in the British Sector of West Berlin.

I was assigned to the Berlin Brigade in 1983 and left in 1991 in one long assignment. I was there when Hess committed suicide in 1987 and it took the Brits about 3 nanoseconds to completely raze the prison. They took the debris and either buried it or dumped it in the North Sea, according to these accounts, all of which was done to discourage the formation of a Nazi shrine.

At any rate, I have looked high and low for evidence that Speirs was named as "Governor" of Spandau Prison. I've never been able to find anything on that at all, except for somebody writing to say that he was.

This was not how Spandau Prison operated. Each of the four Allied Powers (France, Britain, Soviet Union, USA) took turns in guarding that prison. Each month, the guard mount was held and the reins would be passed in a small ceremony in front of the prison. A junior-grade officer would command the guard and a small contingent of soldiers was stationed at the prison during the month of their tour.

As best as I can tell, there was no "Governor" of Spandau Prison, at least during my time and until 1987. Certainly, the infantry battalions within the Berlin Brigade were tasked to come up with soldiers to serve as guards, but they were temporarily commanded by junior grade officers and only during their month of service. That duty was not permanent and the guards would change as soldiers rotated in and out of Berlin and to their availability. It's possible that an experienced NCO would serve as Sergeant of the Guard and supervise the platoon or so of soldiers serving and, as I stated, a junior officer was designated as Officer of the Guard, but no "Governor".

The implication of the term "Governor" is that this officer, Speirs in this case, was cited as being overall in charge for ALL of the Four Allied Powers, and that is certainly not the case -- at least I've not been able to find evidence supporting that theory.

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U.S. Army, Retired

IIRC reading when Sobel died none of Easy Company went to his funeral.
Tom Black

i've kind of wondered the same thing. the german soldiers were tough, intelligent, experienced and had great equipment.

a few years ago, some friends came over and we played a board game called "axis and allies" and it became pretty clear once we got into the game: germany was pretty limited in resources of every kind. i guess this is why the little guy with the moustache was so hot to commit strategic suicide by invading russia. he needed their oil fields and anything else he could get.

While not in the Atlantic theater of the war, my uncle had the distinction of being one of the longest held American POW's of the war. When the Jap's invaded the Philippines, Mc Arthur knew he had to retreat to the Bataan Peninsula but needed covering fire so they had time to escape. He left behind the 200th and 155th Costal Artillery, to delay the enemy as long as possible with orders to fight to the last round of ammo which they did. They delayed the Jap's long enough for the army to escape. He had some interesting stories to tell.

There's a great museum in Toccoa that has quite a bit of the Band of Brothers memorabilia, 10 miles east of my house. I see Currahee Mountain most every day. Been to the top, three miles up, three miles down. I can't imagine running it.

My dad was Wehrmacht, captured in October 1944 near Metz. It was tough to get anything about the front lines out of him but he told me about the P.O.W. camp. The captured Wehrmacht troops often would rat out any SS trying to hide amongst them. One morning three American MPs drug a guy out of the barracks and as soon as they were out of sight two gunshots went off. Americans simply did not tolerate SS.


While looking through some Life magazine archives I found this picture taken by well known Life photographer Ralph Morse of German P.O.W.s being marched off to the rear. My father is in front holding his lapels. Very lucky find.

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LIVE FROM THE DAWGHOUSE

I have done a lot of reading on Ronald Speirs and I have yet to find a single first-person account of him murdering any German soldiers. I have not come across a single account where the person claims to be an eyewitness who saw him shoot.

The massacre at Malmedy would have had ZERO bearing on what Spiers may or may not have done the day after D-Day.

As for Sobel, when he died no one attended his funeral. If I understand what I read the nursing home that he was in didn't even notify his family that he had died.

In the book Band of Brothers EVERY single person they interviewed said that Sobel was a.jerk but they SPECIFICALLY credited his strict training regimen with making them the soldiers that they were.

Also his children all say that Sobel (for his age) was in excellent physical condition. He LEAD the runs up and down Curahee.

He also DID make the combat jump on D-Day, just with HHC not Easy.

After WWII he was recalled to active duty (as was Winters) for Korea and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel.

After the war he went down hill mentally. He ended up in an assisted living facility. He tried to shoot himself and only succeeded in severing his optic nerve and blinding himself.

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Retired Career Security Guard

I kinda figured we’d a settled this in 11 years . . .

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Wisdom comes thru fear . . .

It would seem not

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Retired Career Security Guard

But what a cast of posters! Five banned, two absent comrades, and one currently suspended!

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“What you got, ain’t new.”

I have to admit that "feral" had his good days.

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

I met this old gentleman quite a few years ago in an antique shop in Bisbee, Arizona. The shop was managed by unpaid volunteers, and he was one of them. An unassuming, modest and nice guy.

We got to talking about our service experiences, and what he shared with me was unexpected. He related that he served in the Pacific with the Army. Turned out that he was an actual survivor of the Bataan death march. We talked very briefly, as I did not want to stir any painful memories. I did ask permission to take a photo of him, and he assented.

This is a portrait of a true WWII hero. If the statistics are valid, he is probably gone now. May God bless his soul.

John

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- Cogito, ergo armatus sum -

I had an uncle that served in the 3rd Army. He an another soldier were ordered to take a truck load of prisoners to H.Q. for questioning and to be back in 15 minutes. H.Q. was an hour away.

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I didn't see that coming.

One Marine Division took no prisoners after their first “ encounter “ with the japs in 1943.

I've seen American officers wearing French Croix de Guerre, Belgian Croix de Guerre, Vietnamese Gallantry Cross, etc.

I think that's happened, throughout history, more often than we would like to think...

mods keep this one open

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Retired trap shooter

And for every story like that there's one in which officers like Richard Winters specifically went out of his way to prevent soldiers under his command from murdering prisoners

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Retired Career Security Guard

I watched a live interview with Dick Winters. He verbally confirmed.

Correct. The last time I checked AR 670-1 (the Army regulation on uniform wear), the only BADGE I specifically know of that officers are not permitted to wear is the German Army Schützenschnur (weapons qualification badge) in either Bronze, Silver, or Gold. That badge may be worn by enlisted only.

This badge is the mounted on a braided cord that runs from the wearer's right shoulder to about mid-chest, with a button that anchors it under the lapel. See photo.

I can't speak for the other services.

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U.S. Army, Retired

My step father was an Navy, aircraft mechanic during WWII, his partner was a Marine. I worked for them before going into the Corps and a bit while home on leave as well as after. Jack was a great man and a great father to his kids. He had made repeated landings in the Pacific and he told me somethings that I will not repeat. But, I will say that taking a 18 year old man subjecting him to the brutality of war and he will make some decisions that might not look so good under some people's eyes.

I for one have no business judging what these men did.

My 7th grade English teacher was a Battle of the Bulge veteran.

The stories he told us were mind blowing for a bunch of 12 year olds.

"Take these prisoners to the rear, but hurry back".

You can guess the rest.

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BTDT, Got The T-Shirt

FIL fought the BOTB in the 3rd Army I think. He told me that the Red Cross attempted to protect captured Germans after they were found to have executed some allied prisoners. He specifically told me they didn't kill prisoners out of hand but the SS were quite often "disposed of". He also said many of the German soldiers were afraid of the SS. He told me of capturing a Tiger tank.. They were getting the crew out and the last out was an SS officer(tank commander?). FIL told him to get down to the ground..the guy spit on him..FIL's partner shot him off the tank...permanently. I don't know whether it is true but FIL said most of the SS officers understood and spoke english. FIL was a hard man before during and after the war. But the Bronze star Silver Star and French Croix de Guerre kind of told of his exploits. He was the head of a Heavy Machine gun squad and told me he lost a lot of people to the tune of 170% including replacements. Only he and his partner survived the war although he was grievously wounded at the end of the BOTB. He and his partner were both from W Va

I miss Feralmerril, he had some great stories...

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NRA Life Member

My uncle at the Bulge, not the 82nd, said "yes".

To the question whether Speirs actually murdered those German prisoners after offering them a cigarette, please take a look at this interview with Dick Winters in the early 2000s. He was specifically asked that question and his response is remarkable.

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U.S. Army, Retired

Read Charles McDonalds , “ A Time for Trumpets” for one of the best accounts of the Battle of the Bulge. A group of us were going on one of his tours of battlefields. Sadly he passed from cancer in 91?

Isn't there a Constitutional Amendment that excludes war stories, hunting stories and fishing stories from perjury laws?

I met soldiers and marines from WWii Korea and Viet Nam who described situations where prisoners were killed . One that sticks in my mind involved a young marine in Korea who had lied about his age so he could enlist. His unit was about move out and the officer in charge told a new replacement who had never been in combat to take a prisoner out behind a hill and shoot him . The young guy told the officer he would do it so the new guy wouldn't have it be his first experience in combat.

All the situations I heard about seemed justifiable to me even a couple that involved fragging of dangerous officers.

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I like Ike.

Sometime the mystic associated with an unsubstantiated rumor can be powerful enough to make men in combat want to follow this officer and obey his commands because you really don't know what he might do if you screw up.

I served with Marine officers who never raised their voice except to be heard above gunfire however by simply looking in their eyes you were convinced that if you followed them, they would lead you hell and back in one piece. Capt. B.C. Steed USMC.

Sounds like Dick Winters answered this in post #94.

Who wants to argue with him?

I'm comfortable with it.

I agree that most offcers I heard about were honorable men but some were truly dangerous. An example was a WWII officer who didn't know how to do coordinates and called in artillery strikes on his own position twice. A young soldier offered to help after the first incident but was refused. After the second incident the soldier killed the officer with his Thompson. He fully expected to be arrested and prosecuted but nobody turned him in.

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I like Ike.