Retrieving the deae.

[Peter Cairns]

I don't know if this will in any way feature in the game or it's scenarios, but it seems to me a peculuarly American thing.

From all the accounts I have read about the British army (particularly the SAS, SBS, Para's and Marines), when you are dead you are dead and the idea that you risk your life to retrieve a corpse, or that one of your best mates would die to retrieve yours, (so that someone back home you probably didn't like could cry crocodile tears over a coffin) just seems madness.

I remember talking to an ex para about "Black Hawk Down" and he was certain that if they had been in the situation, it would have been a viking funeral ( The pilot burns with his ship) and they'd have been out of there.

Anyone who had suggested that they form a defensive perimeter to get the bodies out would have been told, to do it themselves on there own if they wanted and left to it.

When exactly did all this start and become a fixation, as certainly in WW2 people seemed to accept that if you couldn't find a body well that was that.

Peter.

[Dirtweasle]

Originally posted by Peter Cairns:

When exactly did all this start and become a fixation...

September 9, 1965 or October 26, 1967 depending on the source.

[stoat]

I think the French Foreign Legion believed in this a certain amount before WWII. And in the case of Black Hawk Down, anyone left behind is mutilated and dragged through the streets. This could be motivation enough for troops to want to secure every body before leaving.

[Cpl Steiner]

I think the British Army takes things a lot less personally than the US. When we lost 6 MPs to a crowd of angry locals in Bazra, they sent leaflets round the next day saying "Sorry for any offence we may have caused - please tell us how we can get on better in the future", or words to that effect.

This unusual approach resulted in a lot of sympathy towards the British from the locals after that event, as far as I am aware. It seems to have gone a bit sour since then, but that's another matter.