Alone in the desert without water must have been a nightmare. Remindes me of the pilot of the Kittyhawk plane recently found in the Libyan desert. He eventually left the plane and tried to walk to safety. Regards Tom
I was just going to say the same thing. Read the reports of the destruction of HM Submarine P38 and it illustrates this perfectly.
Fire, was my biggest fear, in military situations. I all ways had the upmost respect for the zipper heads of our armoured units. Knick name comes from stiches in heads, from sharp metal corners, in armoured vehicle interiors. Jim b Toronto.
I lifted the following straight out of the manuscript... Dad would have been 90 this Sunday, so he can have his say from beyond the grave, so to speak... The following was not recorded in my father’s notes but recounted to me directly, on one of the few occasions he discussed such things. He described to me a method of torture employed by the Burmese, against the Japanese… … If they ever caught one (a Japanese soldier), they would “plant” him. That is to say that they would tie him down to the ground on top of a bamboo shoot… Bamboo grows at a rate of twelve to eighteen inches a day in tropical climates; they hated them that much… I can only presume that he witnessed the results first-hand, as I have found no reference to this kind of treatment elsewhere; maybe it was an isolated incident, who knows… It is possible that he saw a dead Japanese soldier and bamboo had just grown up through his body, but he made a reference to being tied down… This was proven on a Mythbusters program... Ron's "Alone" comment is as poignant as it is possible to be ... Sharks and the Pacific... my granddad was on those runs from pre WWI to post WWII ... from what dad said granddad never learnt to swim; not that uncommon in the days before global-communication... made death quick; any suffering passed and after a short moment you were in God's hands ... Quick death over slow and lingering any day... regardless of what people think, the survivors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and the effects of their exposure to radiation, and on their genetics...
Each to his own, IMHO. Taking a dying friend's message to his mother in a WW1 trench. Eviscerated by shrapnel. 60 years of tortured sleep. God Bless you Grandpa.
Joe, I was reminded of your post while reading, We Died with our Boots Clean, an account by Kenneth McAlpine of the Royal Marine Commandos. He describes an action in Normandy where a chance rifle shot ignited the phosphorus grenade held on a Royal Marine's belt while he was entrapped in barbed wire. It ended with his best mate shooting him in answer to his agonised cries to end his misery. For both men, a horrible scenario to contemplate.
