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A most disturbing CM-moment


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Currently in the fierce "Bloody Aalst" (appropriate as you will see) mission in the Road to Nijmegen campaign. I had a couple of men performing buddy aid near a house when a fallskirmjaeger came crawling around the corner of the house, behind their back. He promptly pulled out a panzerfaust (yes, the were all in the same action square) and blasted them at point range. What an effing coward :mad:

Well, he had it coming later on as he, as the smoke settled from the faust, crawled around the next corner of the house into the wellcoming "arms" (pun intended) of a HMG and a few squads honing in on him. He didn't last long. If there were hit decals on men, he would have looked like swiss cheese.

The cruelty of war I guess.

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I feel the use of panzerfausts, especially, in CQB could do with a bit of looking at... I know "close combat" is kinda abstracted, but I wouldn't have thought it was ever a Landser's first choice of weapon to use on other individual PBI at "same room" ranges; our pTruppen have it a bit easy, with microsecond changes from rifle to Faust.

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Isn't it against the Geneva-convention to shoot at soldiers performing medical aid?

It may well be, but if they're not designated and red-cross-armbanded (and therefore supposed to be unarmed, AIUI) corpsmen, and you can't take the time to see precisely what they're doing (they could just be stripping their buddy of useful gear, or booby-trapping his body), niceties like that are going to get disregarded all over the place.

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Isn't it against the Geneva-convention to shoot at soldiers performing medical aid?

AIUI, there is no special protection for normally uniformed and armed soldiers performing medical aid; this provision would only come into play if the soldier in question actually had something clearly identifying him as non-combat medical (i.e., red cross on helmet and/or armband or similar). IIRC, medical personnel must also be completely unarmed to be covered by such protections.

I have, however, read that soldiers on both sides in the ETO would often refrain from firing on ordinary soldiers of the other side who were clearly engaged in caring for the wounded. I don't think the Geneva Convention or any of the period articles of war specifically required this, though.

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IIRC, medical personnel must also be completely unarmed to be covered by such protections.

In Viet Nam, the medics were armed because they were getting shot at in spite of being clearly marked. They were also getting shot in the Pacific theater during WW II, but I don't think they carried arms there. Instead they had armed escorts when such were needed and could be provided.

Michael

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The convention signed at Geneva on July 27, 1929 and ratified in 32 expounded upon the Hague Conventions, particularly with regard to the treatment of prisoners.

That was called the Geneva Protocol to the Hague Conventions. According to Wiki there wasn't anything called the Geneva Conventions until 1949.

Michael

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hmmm, didn't the Hague Conventions focus on weapons (banning hollow points, munitions meant to inflict pain, rather than pain being a byproduct of the incapacitation, etc.) whereas the Geneva agreements have always dealt more with behavior? E.g., wearing a uniform in conflict accords you rights and protections, treating surrendered soldiers in a certain manner, etc.

I've always thought they were different agreements, not a codicil to an existing one.

But I've been wrong before.

Ken

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