Re: [WW] The German Perspective on Shame

[Sean Michael Whipkey <highway@cstone.net>]

Arne Reuter wrote:
> means have been committed. But the shame is nothing such artificial.
> Its in my eyes the natural consequence of the events (I'd hate it, if

A friend of mine's father was a Ranger in the US Army.  He was one of
the guys who hit Pointe-du-Hoc, and later was wounded in the hedgerows. 
After recuperating, he was transferred into a brand new green unit
during the occupation of Germany.

He described in great detail the Officer's Club that the Germans built
for the Americans.  He said they were so eager to try to make up for
whatever wrongs had been done that any time they needed something they'd
just ask the German workers and you'd get beautiful craftsmanship and
much nicer things than expected - for example, the OC was overlaid with
mahogany, and was the best one he'd ever seen.

I interviewed him for a while for a paper while I was in ROTC.  Given
that yesterday was the 57th anniversary of D-Day it always brings a tear
to my eye to think of the sacrifices his generation made.  Pops had some
great stories of World War II - he tried to keep most of them light, and
entertaining, even the one where he got shot - which can only make you
hope that should the situation come up again that our generation could
hold ourselves to his standards, and if not us, our children's
generation.

Okay enough sappiness.  I guess I'll add in two stories...

When he hit the beach, he was trying to scale the cliffs, and kept
seeing the bodies of his friends fall around him.  The last thing he
remembers is thinking "how the hell are we going to do this?" and the
next thing he remembers is being on top at sunset.

It ends up that he made it on shore with the help of naval shelling and
went pillbox to pillbox with white phosphorus and a tommy gun, taking
them out.  He'd had a grenade in his breast pocket which shattered when
it stopped a German bullet.  When he pulled out his poncho it was swiss
cheese from shell fragments.

Later he was travelling through France.  The French farmers, according
to him, would build intricate interlocking wood piles.  The GIs would
take them apart, pull the wood out of the middle, and put them back
together so that you couldn't see the wood was missing.  While he and
his buddy are out looking for wood, they see a deer.  Deciding that'd be
a great switch from rations, they shoot the deer between the eyes with
his M-1 then realize that they have absolutely no idea what to do next
(they were both city boys).  They dragged the deer over a terraced hill
to their jeep and took it back to camp, where the cook asked them why
they didn't gut it, or at least cut off its head and hooves.

SeanMike