From: pshyvers@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Peter Shyvers)
Subject: Re: Why execute spies?
Organization: Pyramid Technology Corp., Mountain View, CA
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1992 18:16:03 GMT


From pshyvers@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Peter Shyvers)


In article <1992Jul22.170635.20599@lawday.DaytonOH.NCR.COM> ntaib@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Iskandar Taib) writes:
>
>From ntaib@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Iskandar Taib)
>
>What was the name of that WW1 Sergeant who singlehandedly captured
>a whole battalion of Germans? The way the movie had it he and three
>others marched for miles herding the Germans along until someone 
>would take them off their hands.... 
>
Alvin York. I'm not sure if he was a corporal or sargeant. 

>(The movie, as many that were made then appear now, was of full of 
>overacting - the pacifist Kentucky backwoods boy who wanted to be a 

I don't recall the year, but it was likely v. close to WWII, and let's
face it, movies then sought to fan the patriotic fervor, and we've always
liked to think (as a nation) that we don't start wars, but when called, we'll
go do our duty...

>conscientious objector but was forced by circumstances to make a 

The term "conscientious objector" obscures the point that he was supposedly
adhering to the Bible's teachings, another heartstring that movies of the
time liked to pluck. (sort of "I don't want to kill no man, but if I have
to to defend myself and my family...")

A number of studies cited here over time have supported the contention that
in combat a surprising number of soldiers don't use aimed fire, but  rather
suppressive, as our culture really does teach us to loathe killing other
people...

To see how hard the US worked to overcome that, you'd have had to
see Frank Capra's magnificent (propaganda!) film series "Why We Fight". I
understand here in the States the films were immediately archived after the
war, or destroyed; Capra presented a withering view of the Germans, Italians,
and Japanese. (In the Middle Eastern "company town" that I grew up in, the
local history teacher had one or two sets stashed, and he rolled them out
every year to remind students that our view of our international neighbors is
not a constant...I think he's still got them.]

[Further digression: Capra didn't shoot much of the footage. He simply wove
together propaganda films from the three nations and added a voice-over. Very
stunning, and quite motivating.]

>one man attack on a German machinegun nest and use turkey psychology
>to attack the flank of the German battalion and pick them off one at

Not too far fetched. York supposedly picked off the enemy in back-to-front
order once he'd flanked them; that way Germans in front didn't see their
comrades dropping behind them.

>a time...This I don't find far fetched but the part about marching 
>off with several hundred prisoners I do...)

I don't think it was several hundred - more like 120+ - but my recollection 
of the accounts is that the German troops were demoralized from both the
rapid depletion of the unit (by York) and this *was* in the middle of an
American offensive. It probably seemed like a good time to surrender.

Not only
had the war gone on by now for 4 years, but they were facing *fresh* troops
with a bottomless logistics pile, and crazy, effective ideas to boot. The 
Yanks unrolled chicken wire over the carpets of barbed wire that had stopped
both sides cold for the previous 3 years...

[Look for a re-incarnation of this idea in the famous "Funny" Bobbin Churchill
tank of WWII...]



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