- 5/25/2025
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00:30Come on, come on, jump off, that's it, that's it, come on, that's it, that's it, come on,
00:57that's it, come on.
01:131400 men in well-prepared positions were outfought by a magnificent battalion of some 600 parachutists.
01:22In my view this is one of the most brilliant and courageous battalion actions which has been
01:27conducted since the end of world war ii and all of those of us in the armed forces salute to
01:33Lieutenant Colonel Jones, Captain Wood, Captain James, Lieutenant Burry, Corporal Hardman, Corporal Sullivan, Corporal Fryer, Lance Corporal Thorpe, Lance Corporal Smith, Lance Corporal Bingley, Private Holmansmith, Private Fletcher, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James, Lieutenant James,
02:04Private Billingsworth, Private Minton, Private Dixon, Lieutenant Nunn, Corporal Mealier,
02:23War exacts a heavy price from the soldiers who take part in it. Wounds and death are the currency
02:29of battle, and this ground over which I am now walking, Tyne Cot, a First World War cemetery in
02:35Belgium, has probably seen more of this grim currency than any other spot on the face of the
02:39earth. The First World War killed a million soldiers from the British Empire, over one and a
02:46quarter million Frenchmen, and nearly two million Germans. In the second, the Germans lost two
02:51million on the Eastern Front, and the Russians 20 million, military and civilian.
03:00Death on this scale is difficult to grasp, but each one of these graves,
03:04and there are nearly 12,000 in this cemetery alone, represents a dead soldier.
03:09But these graves represent only the dead whose bodies were recovered.
03:24Many of those killed were never found at all. Some were blown to tatters by a direct hit,
03:30or simply lost in the mud and never found. Their names are recorded as those who have no known
03:36grave. 35,000 just in this sector in 15 months. But each man was more than a soldier, with his
03:44name, rank and number and regiment frozen into stone. He was a son, a father, an individual
03:52whose loss spread its own ripples of anguish far beyond this place. This is, and always has been,
04:00the human price of war.
04:19It was hell, really, because I have never seen a group of people dead in one place at any time.
04:29Like I said, the first gentleman I seen, first soldier I seen was without his head,
04:34and it was horrible because his insides was coming out, and he looked like the inside of a mantis.
04:41I remember my corporal, Vespalia, tall boy, he was on my left side, and he touched the wire,
04:50and suddenly there was a big explosion, was a booby trap, and we didn't find him anymore. Just a
04:56few pieces of flesh, you know. I myself, he had protected me by going on my side, and so the
05:06charge didn't hit me, but him. When I first got to Vietnam, I was flown out by helicopter to where
05:14my battalion was, and these guys had been in a firefight the night before,
05:19and they were carrying bodies in these green rubber bags with handles on them,
05:23where they had them literally stacked to this helicopter, and I got off, and one of the guys
05:29said, hey doc, how about helping us carry some of these body bags to the helicopter, and I said okay,
05:35and I picked one up. I looked down at the tag on the body bag, and it was
05:41the guy that I was replacing, the medic that I was replacing in Vietnam, which was
05:49a hell of a greeting, so to speak.
05:54When people were really very badly hurt, and probably they were on the verge of dying,
06:00and though they might be married men, and there might be people aged 30, 40, their shout was
06:06always for their mother, and it didn't matter whether this was a German soldier, or British
06:11soldier, or American soldier. I noticed this on several occasions, that they were shouting for
06:18mum, and even when one knelt beside them, and tried to comfort them,
06:25their last thoughts would be with their mother, rather than with their wives or any of their children.
06:33It's difficult for people to understand the bond of love which we had between one another.
06:39In Australia, when one dies, one dies in a hospital bed, sterile, with white starched
06:45coats around, and very often the next of kin are not even there when death takes place.
06:52In our case, it was different. We were like a family, because we had nowhere else to go,
06:58nowhere else to talk to, so that we became much closer than brothers.
07:03When anybody died, they died in a fantastic atmosphere of love. They died with the head
07:11in the lap of another person. It was something which was so fantastically beautiful.
07:18It was one of the great privileges of my life, to be there helping somebody to die.
07:30You were wondering why it wasn't you.
07:34It's not as if it only happened once, but it was happening all the time.
07:42When the shrapnel were bursting up above you, and they were going down like hot cakes,
07:48but you were still there.
07:52You'd look at one another, nobody would say anything,
07:56but everybody thought the same. I wonder how many of us will be left.
08:02You see, it's just the look of the drone.
08:13It went on and on and on. There was the scream of the shells coming over,
08:20and the scream of the moaning of the dying men, and I felt unable to move.
08:26There was a dressing station only a short distance from me, and you see the doctors,
08:34as you can imagine, were very hard-worked, and when they got a case that they thought
08:40was hopeless, they didn't try to help him. They just put him outside. He was left to die.
08:57There are terrible fates other than death that can befall soldiers.
09:03Many of the casualties of war live on, perhaps to recover completely,
09:06but often with permanent reminders of their sufferings,
09:10like these disabled French veterans about to watch the Bastille Day parade in Paris.
09:26At one level, this scene underscores the curious paradox of war,
09:45with maimed veterans watching fit young soldiers march past.
09:51At another level, it illustrates the care that armies now take of their wounded.
09:55Unless a soldier believes that everything possible will be done for him,
09:59if he does become a casualty, his morale will suffer.
10:25In July 1863, at the Battle of Gettysburg, over 7,000 men were killed, but 33,000 were wounded,
10:34and they gave the armies the daunting task of caring for them.
10:38Some were carried into makeshift hospitals in the town's churches.
10:42Boards were laid across the tops of the pews, and the wounded were crammed in like so many sardines.
10:48One nurse described how, entering the aisle, she seemed to stand waist-high in a sea of anguish.
10:54The men in here were luckier than other wounded.
10:57Many lay in the woods and fields where they'd fallen.
10:59Five days after the battle, ambulances were still bringing them in.
11:04In the Civil War, as in all earlier conflicts, disease was the greatest killer.
11:09But all the same, on the Union side,
11:11more than a quarter of a million soldiers received serious wounds caused by firearms.
11:16For centuries, though, wounds came from the cutting and stabbing of edged weapons.
11:21It was the fractures caused by blows from maces and faults on horses,
11:25with which surgeons had to cope.
11:31Medieval military medicine was usually as barbaric as the weapons themselves.
11:36Some remedies, like pouring boiling oil into sword cuts,
11:39were agonizing and all too often caused fatal infections.
11:43Missile weapons inflicted deep, penetrating wounds
11:46that stretched the skills of the surgeons who were usually amateurs.
11:50In 1544, the English surgeon Thomas Clowes
11:53complained that most of his colleagues were cobblers, tinkers, and sougelders.
12:13Gunpowder brought with it another grisly catalogue of injuries,
12:16from wounds inflicted by heavy lead musket balls to limbs mangled by round shot.
12:21Surgeons were more skilled than their ancestors.
12:24Nevertheless, their methods remained primitive,
12:26and even if the patient survived the operation, he was likely to die from infection after it.
12:43Major battles, like Waterloo, simply swamped an army's medical facilities.
12:48Even if a man was carried from the field by bandsmen or his comrades,
12:51he might lie for hours in a crowded field hospital
12:54before an exhausted surgeon could operate on him,
12:56on a table already slippery with the blood of others.
13:13One of the main problems in treating the wounded
13:16was the time it took to get them off the battlefield.
13:18Some would have perished in any case,
13:20but many a wounded man's life seeped away as he lay out for days and nights,
13:25waiting for help which was too long in coming.
13:28Some clear-sided medical officers began to recognise that their most important task
13:32was to ensure that the wounded were carried promptly and properly away from the conflict,
13:37but they lacked the means to do it.
13:39It was a French doctor, Baron Dominique Lary, who came up with a solution.
13:44He designed a light ambulance wagon, sprung to ease the discomfort of the journey.
13:48He also organised field ambulances with two distinct parts,
13:52wagons which brought the wounded in, and a field hospital where they were treated.
13:57Amputation was the stock in trade of surgeons of the era.
14:00It was rapid and radical.
14:02Lary himself amputated 200 limbs during the Battle of Borodino in 1812.
14:11In 1846, an American surgeon, Dr. John Lary,
14:14was given the task of amputating the limbs of the wounded.
14:17He was given the task of amputating the limbs of the wounded,
14:20and he was given the task of amputating the limbs of the wounded.
14:24In 1846, an American doctor carried out the first operation under a general anaesthetic,
14:29and soon chloroform was widely used.
14:32The plight of the men wounded at Gettysburg was, in a marked sense,
14:35easier than that of the Waterloo casualties 30 years earlier.
14:39They were anaesthetised before surgery.
14:46By World War I, weapons had become even more destructive,
14:49and their impact on the human body correspondingly more horrible.
14:53Millions of men were wounded, maimed and mutilated.
14:58But medical science too had improved the treatment of the wounded.
15:01Soldiers were now immunised against most of the diseases
15:04that had once killed them in their thousands.
15:07There was now also a properly organised chain of medical evacuation
15:10that got them off the battlefield to effective treatment with unprecedented speed.
15:17A wounded man could go from his own regimental aid post
15:20to an advanced dressing station, thence to a casualty clearing station and on to hospital.
15:26A wounded British soldier might find himself in Blighty,
15:28slang for England, within a day of being hit.
15:36Back in England, newly pioneered antiseptics and even large-scale blood transfusions
15:40increased enormously the chances of survival.
15:45Leslie Walkington went through a typical experience.
15:48At last the signal came and we started off.
15:52And, well, you say charge, well, it was more of a scramble over very uneven ground.
15:58We fell over and picked ourselves up.
16:03Eventually, we got to the German second line and they put a barrage on that.
16:11One of the first shells of the barrage fell near me
16:15and it hit me on the bottom.
16:17It was just like being kicked by an enormous elephant.
16:20It hit me on the bottom and lifted me right up in the air.
16:25And I collapsed onto the ground and my sergeant jumped down beside me and said,
16:34I'd better stay with you, sir, and I said, you know perfectly well you mustn't stay with me.
16:42If I gave you a talk only yesterday, that if you stop and help your wounded
16:48as you go along, you double the casualties.
16:51So you carry on, take the men on, and all right, sir, good luck, and off he went.
16:57But then I lay there feeling pretty helpless.
17:02I did call into a shell house and this barrage of shells were just blasting right all around me.
17:09There were people shouting, you know, in pain and whatnot all around.
17:14Eventually, I had recovered enough to be able to call and so I called back to our front line.
17:28And I was then carried on straight to right into Ypres and eventually into a
17:33bliss of an ambulance train with real nurses with lovely clean linen pinafores.
17:43It was bliss.
17:47I got what we called a blighty wound, meaning, you know, I was bound to be sent home to England.
17:53In Walkington's case, his blighty wound got him to England but didn't end his war.
17:58He was comfortably looking after cavalry horses when a friend from his own division
18:02happened to meet him.
18:04He said, I heard your voice and I knew it at once.
18:07What the hell are you doing here?
18:09Why don't you come out again?
18:11I was sort of stimulated.
18:12I thought, what if he wants me?
18:14And I said, well, I will come out if you like.
18:18I went to see my commanding officer in England.
18:24What do you want?
18:25I said, please, sir, I want to be sent back to France.
18:32And I then burst into tears.
18:42But I went and I rejoined my old friend and we spent armistice day together.
18:54Of all the new weapons which taxed the skills of doctors, gas,
18:57the devil's breath, was the most feared.
19:00The sight of its victims shook even the sternest resolve.
19:04Oh, it killed thousands.
19:07And when you'd seen the others, you thought, Christ, I hope it don't serve me like them.
19:15You know, to see a thousand, you march by a thousand, that's a mile easy.
19:23And those that could walk, to see the state they were in,
19:26you know, they rather got shot through the heart straight away
19:33than try and get over it, because it was horrible.
19:41When the gas came, as we were running into it,
19:46one suggested tying a wet handkerchief over your nose and mouth.
19:53And then our same officer, Topper Brown, he says, that'd be no good at all.
19:58He says, it's chlorine gas, the yellow stuff, as I thought.
20:04The antidote to chlorine was salamoniac, he says.
20:10We can't get the salamoniac.
20:12The nearest we can get to it is your piss.
20:17And that's what we had to do.
20:18That's what we had to do.
20:20We tore our shirts, and as one got dry, you took it off, stopped breathing,
20:27and nobody else would do it for you, because they wanted their own, you see,
20:32if you asked for a mother.
20:38We had to keep drinking anything you could, because you'd got to keep peeing.
20:43But we were very lucky with this here stuff tied on us.
20:48Well, it was uncomfortable.
20:56You couldn't touch your face.
20:59In fact, you couldn't eat.
21:02When I arrived at the hospital, I was placed in this gas ward.
21:09And you knew you were in a gas ward immediately because of the St. Lyne solution,
21:14which was very apparent, and blisters on some of them were terrible.
21:22The worst thing about this, and when you get to pain, was one day a nurse came in,
21:29and she says, about time you shaved.
21:32She gave me a razor, a little cold water, and I shaved.
21:37And I've had a tender face ever since.
21:40Don't remember a bye.
21:46War can damage the mind as well as the body.
21:48During the First World War, thousands of soldiers suffered from what in those days was called
21:52shell shock.
21:53Some men were unhinged by sudden terror.
21:56Some fought until their will crumbled, and some were too frail to stand the stress.
22:10Doctors have abandoned the term shell shock and now talk of battle shock and combat exhaustion.
22:19In the armies of the Second World War, there was often one psychiatric casualty to every
22:23two or three physical ones.
22:25Many had simply seen too much fighting and were utterly worn out.
22:30The treatment of psychiatric casualties has gradually improved.
22:34They are now likely to be rested, rehabilitated, and returned to their units within days.
22:39Not all are so lucky.
22:40For some, the mental scars of battle never heal.
22:53For the soldiers who fight in tanks, fire is the main enemy.
22:58As I came out of the tank, any part of my skin, my hand, which this was burnt, all this
23:03was burnt.
23:04And as I touched it, my skin stood there.
23:07The tank was so hot.
23:08And as I moved, my skin stood there and it just took the skin right off.
23:12My face was burnt from rolling off the tank.
23:15The tank was a red-hot skillet.
23:18And as I rolled off, that's exactly what happened.
23:23I remember they had me greased from head to foot with Vaseline and stuff.
23:28And in here, in this ward, they put a machine and they start peeling skin off me.
23:33Just all over.
23:34Just peeling skin.
23:35And it was torture 24 hours a day.
23:37Because there was no relief for pain.
23:39I mean, they give you shots, but I mean, a burner, you put yourself, your finger in the
23:43fire or touch yourself with a cigarette.
23:45Imagine most of your body being burnt.
23:47It was horrible.
23:48You never had any moment that you didn't feel pain.
23:52Believe me.
23:55They were running up the side of it.
23:57And the leading tank, being there, I managed to run over some telegraphs.
24:06And these mines went off.
24:09One under one track and one under the other track.
24:12Which made a terrific bang, obviously.
24:17And my helmet, steel helmet was blown off.
24:22My beret was blown off.
24:24The headphones were ripped off.
24:27The skin on my face came down and was hanging around my chin like a beard.
24:34And my hair went an off shade of brown as you put your hand in it.
24:41So it fell off all seams.
24:44My hands and arms, they were burnt as well.
24:52By the Second World War, the task of evacuating the wounded from the battlefield was largely
24:57solved.
24:58I had a brain gun.
25:00That's the weapons to carry around on patrol.
25:03I opened up.
25:04Or I didn't, in fact, because the magazine has obviously got muck in it and it just didn't
25:09fire at all.
25:10And one of the Germans shot me with a Schmeisser, which is an automatic pistol weapon.
25:17So a bit like the Stinger.
25:19And shot me through the legs.
25:23And then the two patrols, or what was left of them, started herring back, each to his
25:28own positions.
25:30And I thought I was going to be left there.
25:33But a man, a friend of mine called Gordon Rennie, a corporal, grabbed hold of the officer
25:38who he was herring back and said, come on, pick him up.
25:41And so the two of them got me out.
25:44And I was very, very fortunate indeed.
25:46They got me back to the battalion headquarters where the MO saw me and the order to give
25:51me an injection of morphine.
25:53And then an ambulance came after a while.
25:54They obviously radioed for us.
25:56And took me back to what they call Casualty Clearance Centre, practically on the beaches,
26:01waiting, I suppose, for the tank landing craft, American tank landing craft, which
26:07would get rid of its tanks.
26:08And then it was fitted out as a hospital ship.
26:10It was very economical.
26:16Air power transformed casualty evacuation.
26:19By 1944, air evacuation was the norm in the British and American armies.
26:23And the wounded could be whisked back from forward airstrips to hospitals in the rear,
26:27saving time and lives.
26:34By the time of Vietnam, the Americans had revolutionized the evacuation of their wounded.
26:41Can you get him back here?
26:44OK, can you get him back here, though?
26:46Remember to stop the bleeding.
26:53I spotted a ghoul.
27:05Oh, man.
27:06Wait one, we'll get this man out first.
27:08Yeah.
27:11Come on, skip.
27:23The dust-off helicopter snatched thousands of wounded soldiers from the very teeth of
27:27a firefight, saving men with appalling injuries.
27:31It sure wasn't a pretty sight.
27:33I realized immediately that I was missing both of my legs.
27:38And I initially didn't realize I had lost my left hand.
27:43But I kept looking down.
27:46And I'll never forget my femur bone.
27:49And my left leg had shattered in half.
27:52And what was left, what was connected to me, was sticking up in the air.
27:57And I remember reaching down and grabbing a hold of that.
28:01When he got to me, I just initially looked at him.
28:04And I said, Gomer, just let me alone.
28:06Let me die.
28:08See what's wrong with me.
28:09I don't want to live.
28:10He leaned down, slapped me across the face, told me that I had family back home.
28:16And I had a lot to live for.
28:18And at that point come the realization that I could make it.
28:23After Gomer got to me, then our medic came to me.
28:27And he was preparing himself to give me a shot of morphine, which he ultimately did.
28:32But it was kind of funny.
28:35He got to my one side, in which my good arm was.
28:41And I can still see this individual, Doc Hayes.
28:44He was trying to give me a shot of morphine.
28:47And he was really nervous.
28:49And I remember looking over at him.
28:50And I looked at the needle.
28:52And he was getting ready, had the shot in his hand, the needle.
28:56And the needle was moving like a sewing machine, running wild.
28:59And I told him, for goodness sakes, don't cut off my other arm.
29:03And I remember reaching over.
29:05And I actually had to hold on to his arm to help calm him down.
29:09So he could give me a shot to help eliminate the pain.
29:16Soldiers on patrol knew that if they were wounded,
29:18a helicopter would bring them to the operating table within an hour of being hit.
29:22Such prompt medical attention meant only one percent of the wounded died
29:26after reaching hospital.
29:29I took a bullet in the thigh.
29:31It felt like someone had stabbed me with a hot poker,
29:35that someone had taken something red hot.
29:37There was an incredible burning sensation.
29:39And I remember my leg, it just knocked my leg right out from under me.
29:45I thought, if I can still stand up, I'm going to stand up.
29:48And I could still stand up.
29:49I had broken all three bones in my leg.
29:51But they were undisplaced fractures.
29:53The second round broke the bone again.
29:56And that time, I would not have been able to stand.
29:58I was a bloody mess.
29:59And I remember feeling that my leg was now going to be cut off.
30:04The pain was incredible.
30:06It hurt like nothing has ever hurt before.
30:09I remember they gave me a lot of morphine and a lot of drugs.
30:12And basically, the pain went away.
30:15I remember waking up in a hospital, and the doctor is talking to me.
30:18I haven't heard everything he said.
30:20I haven't heard anything he said.
30:21But I sort of become conscious at the point that he says,
30:24and that's why I have to send you back to the States.
30:27I heard nothing else.
30:28That's the word.
30:29Those are the words I wanted to hear.
30:35In the Falklands, the frontline soldiers were expected to look after their own
30:39wounded on the battlefield before casualties were transported
30:42to the field hospital at Ajax Bay.
30:45The men accepted that if they fell, they would have to look after themselves
30:50until the objective was taken, it was fought through, secured.
30:55And then their friends would come back for them.
30:57So the initial emphasis was on self-aid.
31:00Every man was equipped with a first field dressing and morphine
31:04and some idea about what to do.
31:1477 men died during the land battle from a combination of gunshot,
31:20blast and shrapnel injury.
31:21Most of them died outright or within the first five to 10 minutes.
31:26Everybody who got back to Ajax Bay alive
31:30or to one of the forward surgical complexes survived.
31:35And all the way back to Uganda,
31:37where only three men subsequently died of their injuries.
31:43Death or wounds may be the most immediate danger a soldier faces in battle.
31:48But there's also the risk of capture by the enemy.
31:51For centuries, to be taken prisoner was the greatest hardship a soldier could undergo.
31:55The right of his captor to kill him or rob him
31:58or sell him for ransom was undisputed.
32:00And his survival was largely a matter of chance.
32:04Even by the 19th century, there was little improvement.
32:07And then, sickened by the sight of casualties at the Battle of Solperino in 1859,
32:12the Swiss businessman Henri Dunant swore to change the habits of nations.
32:19What shocked Dunant was that many of the wounded still lay out for days,
32:23as they always had.
32:24And even the fortunate ones were cared for in ramshackle field hospitals,
32:28whose doctors were overwhelmed by the scale of their task.
32:33His campaign brought about the first Geneva Convention
32:36and the subsequent founding of the Red Cross,
32:39an organization of non-combatants who treated the wounded of either side without distinction.
32:49This is the original Geneva Convention of 1864.
32:55Further agreements on the treatment of all prisoners,
32:57whether wounded or not,
32:59led to the Hay Convention of 1907
33:01and finally to the famous Geneva Convention of 1929.
33:08Frequently abused, criticized or ignored,
33:11the Geneva Convention and the International Red Cross together
33:15have nevertheless brought a level of humanity to warfare this century
33:18of which our ancestors could not have dreamed.
33:24Of course with the Geneva Convention we had to treat the enemy
33:30just the same as our own men.
33:32They were injured, they were human
33:34and as far as we were concerned God's creatures
33:37and a life was a life,
33:39whether it be German or whatever nationality.
33:43We had to transfuse them and we had to give them precious drugs
33:48and everything just the same as our own men.
33:51There was no distinction whatsoever as far as we were concerned.
33:56Being trained you did realize that a patient is a patient and always will be
34:04and that I think has got to come first.
34:07If you want to get away from that aspect of the thing
34:12I don't think you would be much good to humanity.
34:16And that attitude was tested when a Skyhawk pilot
34:20who was shot down attacking one of our ships
34:24and broke his knee as he ejected safely was brought in
34:28and we mended his knee
34:29and our greatest anxiety was that Teniente Primero
34:33Ricardo Lechero's wife and child back in Cordoba
34:37should hear as soon as possible that he had survived.
34:40That was our major concern
34:42and that man is now back in the cockpit of a Skyhawk.
34:45I wish him well and I know he was grateful for the way we looked after him.
34:50But the bitterness of some conflicts results in the Geneva Convention being ignored.
34:55One time I treated the enemy
34:57which is kind of a tragic story
34:58because it taught me a lot about the dehumanizing that takes place
35:04in that kind of a setting.
35:07I was there about two weeks
35:09and an enemy soldier had been shot in the jaw basically
35:15after we had been battling with them
35:17and being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed
35:19I went to do a tracheotomy
35:21which would make it easier for him to breathe and probably survive.
35:25My senior medic at that point in time
35:29walked up as I was doing the tracheotomy
35:31and said let me finish it for you.
35:33I looked at him and said well I'm almost done
35:35and he said I'll finish it for you
35:37and he pulled out a large hunting knife
35:39and slipped the guy's throat from ear to ear
35:42and I looked at him I said why did you do that
35:44and he said you'll know why when you're here 13 months
35:47and he walked off.
35:48The sad part about it was I understood it six months later.
35:51I didn't condone it but I understood it.
35:56There are also two sides to the treatment of unwounded prisoners.
36:00Sometimes where captor and prisoners are not widely separated
36:02by race, culture or ideology
36:05they relate as one soldier to another
36:07conscious of having shared a common peril.
36:09There are flashes of comradeship and even of humor.
36:13These first world war Germans are being deprived of their trouser buttons
36:17to stop them escaping.
36:18It's difficult to run away if you're holding up your trousers.
36:23During the second world war
36:25in fighting between the Germans and the western allies
36:27there were occasional lapses
36:29when prisoners were not taken at all
36:31or were mistreated after capture.
36:34Generally though prisoners were treated firmly but failed.
36:40The very act of searching an enemy soldier
36:42turning out his cigarettes, photographs and pay book
36:44somehow confirmed that he was a man like any other.
36:47Who happened to be wearing a different uniform.
36:51The Germans treated their enemy altogether differently
36:54on the eastern front.
36:55Russian prisoners
36:56taken in their hundreds of thousands in 1941 and 42
37:00were herded off to Germany to work as slave labor.
37:04Over half these men perished from overwork
37:07brutality, hunger or simple neglect.
37:10The Germans regarded the Russians
37:11whether soldier or civilian
37:13as untermenschen
37:14a lower form of life
37:16not entitled to ordinary human consideration.
37:20They knew we were on the retreat
37:22and we were moving out of it
37:24and they did quite a few things
37:26which they would not have dared
37:28when we were advancing.
37:31When we were advancing
37:32they knew if they would have killed one German soldier
37:35we would have flattened the whole village.
37:38Quite a few soldiers got killed on the retreat
37:40and we just didn't have the time
37:42to do our atrocities
37:44as we otherwise would have done
37:46and as we would have liked to do
37:49and I say it with shame.
37:52The atrocities committed by Germans in occupied areas
37:55brought their inevitable retribution.
37:57The tables were turned.
38:05Almost half the Germans captured on the eastern front
38:08never returned home.
38:09Some toiled on in prison camps until 1955.
38:14Allied prisoners in Japanese hands fared no better.
38:18Japan's martial code of Bushido
38:20stressed that no soldier should permit himself to be captured
38:23so they despised all prisoners.
38:25On the infamous death railway in Thailand
38:27prisoners worked long hours in a crippling climate
38:30a prey to tropical diseases
38:32and the sadism of some of their guards.
38:37During the Vietnam War
38:39most of the prisoners taken by the North Vietnamese
38:41were American aircrew.
38:42Their ordeal began with the humiliation of a public parade
38:45before a hostile population.
39:00Then came even harsher treatment
39:02as the North Vietnamese sought to impose a different ideology
39:05on their captured enemy.
39:13Once you are captured
39:15their objective is then to break your complete will.
39:21I think that history has taught that people still have a resistance
39:25and we did.
39:25We resisted as a group, as individuals.
39:29We resisted their efforts to, what I say, indoctrinate me
39:34to teach me because they said you must learn the truth
39:36you must learn the truth
39:37you will never return until you have changed your attitude
39:41and learned the truth.
39:43In the earlier conflict of the Korean War in 1950
39:48communist ideology had already confronted western beliefs.
39:52Here too the soldiers of North Korea and communist China
39:55rarely observed the standards of the Geneva Convention
39:58in the treatment of their prisoners of war.
40:02When I was taken into this room by
40:06some political officers of the North Korean army
40:09in the political prison in Pyongyang
40:12it was immediately apparent without anybody saying anything to me
40:15it was a torture chamber.
40:17It was windowless.
40:18It had sort of sinister looking objects lying around
40:22and hanging on hooks on the wall
40:24and I knew in my bones that that's what it was
40:26they'd brought me in there.
40:28The circumstances of my being taken in of course
40:29I suppose enhanced that.
40:32I wouldn't give the information required
40:34and a chap called the young major we called him
40:37he just said all right
40:39he said all right you'll see.
40:42You're bound in a chair
40:44your hands behind your back
40:45the chair's then thrown at his back
40:47you're naked to the waist
40:49they pour water over you
40:50then they put a towel over your face and neck
40:54and then they begin to pour water onto the towel.
40:57Now what happens is
40:58the first water pulls down the towel a bit to your face
41:02then as you go on you get less and less air
41:05and more and more water coming in
41:07and it's an effective slow way of drowning
41:10and you begin to drown.
41:12Now they of course have done this a number of times before
41:14and they knew the moment you went out
41:16that that's the time they've got to get you on your feet again as it were
41:19to drain some water out of you.
41:21So as you'd gone out
41:22then one would find that the chair had been tipped back up again
41:26and you were streaming water out
41:27and they were banging you
41:30and the young major used to stub out his lighted cigarette in my back
41:34for good measure.
41:35Took me a long time to get rid of those scars.
41:38And then most times one was either left like that for some time
41:46and they did it again
41:47or you were once if you look pretty groggy
41:50and then they'd bring you back later on.
41:53But you reach a point where you have to decide for yourself
41:55that you reach that limit
41:57that everyone has his own his own limits
41:58that when you reach that point that if you go beyond
42:01you know you're not only physically hurt maybe
42:03I mean you some fellows never came back from these sessions
42:07but then if they break you
42:09then your resistance your ability to resist in the future
42:13we knew would be broken.
42:14So we would reach a point where we give them as much as little as we could to get by.
42:19They let us go but ready to come back next time
42:22and we knew there would be a next time
42:24and they did come back.
42:26They began almost every time by beating me up.
42:29That used to make me very indignant
42:32even though being beaten up was painful
42:34indignation was certainly as powerful as as fear in my mind
42:39and feeling of pain and shock.
42:42When I was bound in a chair and they gave me the water treatment
42:46then really I became almost numb with fear
42:49and I in order not to give in
42:52I had to play a sort of game with myself.
42:54I thought well I'll do this once more
42:57I can just carry through this once more
42:59then I'm going to give in
42:59and so I promised myself that each time I'd do it once more.
43:04If I hadn't done that I think I would have collapsed.
43:09I always felt boy this can't last first more than a week or two
43:13and my government will come and get me take me out
43:16then we can well maybe a month
43:18and then we came a game with us
43:20we would then say well looks like we'll be home for
43:22if it was Christmas we'll be home for Easter
43:24and if it was Easter well Fourth of July
43:27Fourth of July home by Thanksgiving was a model
43:29and then as we got into September, October
43:32well maybe New Year's and Christmas
43:33Christmas and New Year's
43:34but never more than six months away
43:37you had to maintain that freedom of mind
43:39you had to keep your optimism up
43:40and I know it was going to be eight and a half years
43:44boy I don't know what I would have done.
43:47So you were told you were going to be shot?
43:48I was very relieved of that
43:51because I did dreaded going back into the torture chamber
43:54and I thought it was a good soldierly way to die
43:57I'd be quick
43:59the wry thought crossed my mind
44:01as I went out with this file of riflemen
44:03and the captain who'd been one of my torturers
44:07I thought I hope they will inform my government
44:10so my wife can get my pension
44:14and off we went
44:15and I was quite prepared on this lovely autumn day
44:20blue sky, white rolling clouds
44:22a lot of sun, quite warm for North Korea
44:26I was quite prepared to be tied to a stake
44:28and or have a pistol put behind my ear and be shot
44:32um it had no great horrors for me
44:35as an alternative to going back to the torture room
44:38I think the hardest period was when they called me in at Christmas
44:45the interrogator, the camp commander said
44:48Alvarez, a letter from your mother
44:51and your wife has left you and married another man
44:55now for years I hung on to that
44:57and that was, I read the letter
44:58and it was really crushing
45:02conventions and medicine may sometimes soften the harsher aspects of war
45:09but nothing can ultimately conceal its essential inhumanity
45:12or the brutal effect of modern weapons
45:19these Iranians are experiencing the dreadful symptoms of chemical warfare
45:23even though it was outlawed by another Geneva convention 60 years ago
45:27if these are the results of so-called conventional war
45:30what horrors will follow the impact of a nuclear bomb?
45:43the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima
45:46killed or wounded 320,000 men, women and children
45:5040 years on, people are still dying from its effects
45:54in total war, it is not just soldiers who face the risks of battle
46:00today's armies trained to survive even the unimaginable impact of tomorrow's weapons
46:05they play out a scenario that dares to contemplate the aftermath of a nuclear battlefield
46:11yet even the miracles of modern medicine must falter in the face of so impossible a task
46:16perhaps the prospect of casualties and suffering on a scale that dwarfs
46:19even the destruction of the two world wars
46:22may begin to achieve what none of the Geneva conventions have ever attempted
46:26the outlawing of war itself
46:30you
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