AN AIRMAN's WAR

[Vic Jefferies]

AN AIRMAN’S WAR

You never saw their faces
And you never knew their names,
But you often saw their places
Disappearing in the flames,

For you never get a chance
The people to see or meet;
When dropping bombs upon them
From thirty thousand feet!

Vic Jefferies

[Neville Briggs]

I suppose it's like that, I've never been an airman.
I read a piece recently where a pilot from WW11 told how he attacked people and places on the ground and actually saw the people being blown to bits and thrown around by his fire and still he regarded it as a sort of game and even thought it looked amusing. Terrible isn't it ?

[Heather]

For the sanity of the airmen I think it was probably just as well they didn't know. Sometimes it pays not to think too much.

[Vic Jefferies]

Thank you Neville and Heather for your comments.
Neville obviously war does very strange things to people and people often behave in a way that they would usually find abhorrent. From my experience it can turn saints into sinners and sinners into saints.
Heather, they do know, they always know. The difference is the distance and or the almost complete detachment between the pilot and their targets.

[Heather]

That's what I meant Vic - not to think about it. There are some jobs that you would have to be detached or switched off to survive mentally.

[Neville Briggs]

It gets worse Vic, Heather. There are people now who sit in a room in the US and guide drone planes that blow up people in Afghanistan.

[Vic Jefferies]

Neville, I wonder if they think they are playing some sort of computer game while they are pressing the buttons?
I think the ultimate example must be Colonel Paul Tibbets who flew the Enola Gay and dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. He claimed to have slept well afterwards and had no problems with the enormity of his actions. Without discussing the pros and cons of whether that bomb should have ever been used I have always been intrigued as to how one man would live with being responsible for such immense death and destruction.

[william williams]

from bill Williams
I wrote a poem in the forum anzac day.
Having moved amongst quite a number of return service men some who were CHANGI survivers
and others who were members of the Belson release teams of the survivers from that camp.
I have seen hunders of Photoes taken by a relationof mine straight after the Hiroshema A Bomb blast.
After having spoken to those people and seen their life now 50 years later.
,I along side many, many others would still push that button or squease that trigger than see fellow members of OUR COMMUNITEE suffer the horrors of war. Please just think about your brothers, sisters mothers and friends what would you wish on them

BILL WILLIAMS

[Maureen K Clifford]

and what about the ones receiving the bomb , aren't they just as much a community subjected to war?

There are no winners in wars just a lot of losers. Ordinary people who have lost family, friends, pets, homes, businesses, self respect, food, clothing, shelter all the everyday things that we take for granted and why????? History proves that nothing is solved long term by war, and the sheer cost in $$$ and lives lost - generations lost in some instances - can never be fully measured or accounted for. Magnificent buildings shelled to rubble, buildings whose history can never be replaced. Infrastructure in our more modern wars on modern cities being blown to buggery bringing cities to their knees and for what - Greed. Greed for land, power, oil, dominance, even god forbid religion.

Put the war mongers in a paddock armed to the teeth and let them fight it out amongst themselves - last man standing is the winner.
A Gladiatorial contest where pain and suffering is directly inflicted on those who call for war, not having them standing on the sidelines directing the traffic as it were.

I would like to believe that our soldiers truly believe that they are fighting for a just and righteous cause, because if they don't it makes it ever a more pointless exercise. Our young men and women are far better educated as to world affairs than their forbears were who were fuelled by patriotism and courage and not much else and I believe they are better led - but at the end of the day - can we really say that the wars we send our young men and women to fight are solving the worlds problems?

[william williams]

Maureen to the best of my and many others knowledge australia has never started a war but we have helped to quell the problem hittler (germany) horrible atrositys. Japan again horrible atrositys would you and your mother agree to be raped your brothers have their throats cut or shot and loose everything that your families had lived for I will forward Photos Of Hirosema straight after the war and what it is like now. nobody likes a war because of death and suffering ,privation but if we wish to have the life that we have there is a price to pay.

Bill Williams the old Battler