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Band Of Brothers "The Pacific" teaser


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Thanks Wilhammer. Something to look forward to, eventually, probable 2012 or something here in the UK.

Of course, the BBC should do "The Desert Rats" or sumfink.

Mind you the last military history they did, Dunkirk, was cringe worthy. They don't realise that yes, we understand war is A Bad Thing but yes, it's still OK to see these people as heroes.

Because heroism isn't just inventing a polio vaccine or being nice to all mankind it's also doing your duty when the things you love are threatened and that might, hopefully not but might, involve dying, and it might, hopefully not but might, mean killing.

But it's still heroism - and people want it to be recognised.

That fact seems to be lost on Auntie Beeb.

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Thanks Wilhammer. Something to look forward to, eventually, probable 2012 or something here in the UK.

Torrents.

When Battlestar Galactica resurfaced, it was shown several months ahead on Sky One before it got to the USA- I would get the episodes the next day via EZTV or Mininova.

It is said that this helped 'kill television' at the time.

http://www.mindjack.com/feature/piracy051305.html

-------------------------

Yes, a BoB type show chronically a unit that went to North Africa, Greece, Crete, back to North Africa, Italy would be rather great.

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Hmmm... Seemed kinda Thin Red Line-ish.

I personally liked that movie, though I get why many others didn't.

(Enter snippy comment about all the really neat stuff lost in the forum purges here.)

In any case, I'll be looking forward to this.

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Hmm, that word - heroes.

I have seen, and have interviewed some myself, many veterans speaking about their experience in war. I never found a common denominator except in one regard. Every single one, without exception, insisted that they were not heroes.

For veterans 'hero' is a word used by a bunch of civvies who have no direct experience of war. It implies that war is somehow 'heroic'. They know otherwise.

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Hmm, that word - heroes.

I have seen, and have interviewed some myself, many veterans speaking about their experience in war. I never found a common denominator except in one regard. Every single one, without exception, insisted that they were not heroes.

For veterans 'hero' is a word used by a bunch of civvies who have no direct experience of war. It implies that war is somehow 'heroic'. They know otherwise.

It's not them that define heroism - it's history. Every culture needs its heroes. And they're ours. Whether they like it or not.

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Hear hear.

I can see Other Means' point about modern society needing heroes, but even though some of them were doubtless very brave I think that soldiers are iffy role models. I would not, generally speaking, choose them. Whatever heroics war provides, it is outweighed by the death and destruction. War in my opinion almost always cannot be redeemed, it is with a few rare exceptions always bad and not worth it.

Every time I see a war documentary or news piece about some soldier acting heroically, I want to shout at the screen:

"Yeah, but how many people had to die (and property be damaged, and families smashed, and societies upended) to provide the backdrop for that heroic act?"

or, quite often -

"Yeah, but this hero of yours, he was armed and part of an army. What about the civilians that get bombed and shot and raped in the same damn war, they can't call in artillery and they can't shoot back, their casualty rates are a bazillion times what this soldier's unit suffered, why isn't any one giving the civilians medals?

I don't think honestly heroic acts by soldiers are impossible, of course. But it seems to me like the process of singling out war heroes almost always has more to do with society's leaders trying to convince society good can be found in war, and society's followers must be prepared to sacrifice in wars, than it does with praising exemplary behavior.

Here's Sherman's quote:

"There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell."

This is the basis of the famouse "war is hell" line. But I think it's worth emphasising the all in the actual quote.

Me, I think society would be far better off if it held up AIDS doctors or street cops or teachers in gangster-run high schools or indeed maybe even garbagemen as its heroes. You look at the numbers, and the personal risk of these people face is higher than many if not most soldiers, and the job of these people is directly helping society, which is a bit different from what a soldier does, which is killing people from another society in the name of his own society's good.

Of course, stories about the glory of war are older than Homer, and young men haven't gotten any wiser since the Troy campaign, so I don't think society is in any danger of looking at soldiers and combat honestly any time soon.

Hmm, that word - heroes.

I have seen, and have interviewed some myself, many veterans speaking about their experience in war. I never found a common denominator except in one regard. Every single one, without exception, insisted that they were not heroes.

For veterans 'hero' is a word used by a bunch of civvies who have no direct experience of war. It implies that war is somehow 'heroic'. They know otherwise.

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If in smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro Patria mori.

—Wilfred Owen

------------------------------------------------------------

In a letter to the city council of Atlanta dated September 12, 1864, Sherman wrote:

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.

I can imagine him saying (or thinking) this as he watched Atlanta being burned on his orders.

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I would say the issue is not so much that there are no longer any heroes in war as the fact that war has lost much of its glamour.

Prior to the advent of television, civilians would generally find out about war through oral stories, newspaper, books and paintings, most of which tended to glamorize the heroic aspects of war.

Even in WW2, reporters left out the worst aspects of combat. The documentary "With the marines at Tarawa"

was a noticeable exception, but it required the approval of president Roosevelt to be released.

By the time Vietnam rolled around, news cameras were everywhere, for example these CBS news reports from the 1968 Tet offensive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiW5FXs1n6M

and now of course, on the net, you can find pretty much anything:

http://shock.military.com/Shock/videos.do?displayContent=190518&page=1

Once civilians sitting on their ass safely at home (like me :)) can get of glimpse of the real face of war, it does not look very glamorous at all. It looks more like organized slaughter, hard to find much heroics in that.

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Well I'm hard put to think of anyone who is forced to fight. There is always a choice involved, not everyone had to pull a trigger even if they joined the forces.

And bad news m8, AFAIK soldiers don't give a stuff about you or me. They fight for their buddy who is next to them in the hole, to avoid letting him down. They certainly don't go through hell for 'us'.

Isn't it funny how when the cost of war is being driven home the 'hero' volume is ramped up by Governments. I'm remain convinced that politicians, some businesses, and clueless or war-loving civvies are the main 'hero' worshippers. Soldiers themselves aren't interested.

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And bad news m8, AFAIK soldiers don't give a stuff about you or me. They fight for their buddy who is next to them in the hole, to avoid letting him down. They certainly don't go through hell for 'us'.

Primary- and Sub-Primary-Group loyaties, blah blah blah.

Utterly irrelevant to the discussion, because at the end of the day, yes, they do "go through hell for 'us'." In western democracies it is we, the people, through our elected representatives, who decide when and where to employ military force. We chose to go to WWII, or rather to send our soldiers saliors, and airmen. We sent them to do our bidding.

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Isn't it funny how when the cost of war is being driven home the 'hero' volume is ramped up by Governments.

NZ's army Victoria Crosses in WWII were won over about an 18-month period, encompassing the fal of Greece, the fall of Crete, CRUSADER, and the defence of the Alamein Line. One more came quite late in the North Africa campaign, but apparently there was no "most conspicuous gallantry, or some daring or pre-eminent act of valour, self sacrifice or extreme devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy" by NZ soldiers in Italy :rolleyes:

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