Comments by "vk2ig" (@vk2ig) on "Afrika Korps War Crimes - The "War Without Hate" Myth" video.

There is also a sense of superiority held by some who come to places like Africa and the Middle East. The example in modern history which sticks in my mind is just after the Americans took Baghdad. They were cutting down the statue of Saddam Hussein. The locals all looked on with interest and some sense of joy. Finally, the statue hits the ground and ... a US serviceperson covers it with an American flag. You could see the locals' opinion immediately switch from considering the Americans as liberators to occupiers. That's what a sense of superiority can do.
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As an example: one of the Italian machine guns used in the desert had quite an interesting operation. It used a rectangular magazine which was "walked" through the firing mechanism. For each firing, the mechanism extracted the round from the magazine, pushed it into the breech, closed the breech and fired the round, then extracted the empty cartridge case from the breech ... and put it back into the magazine! The gunner's mate had to strip hot empty cartridge cases from the magazine and then load fresh rounds into it. Also, the case would expand in the breech upon firing (too much back pressure) which would cause it to jam ... so the designers put in an oiling mechanism to make the cartridges easier to extract. But in the desert, when the oil mixed with the sand it formed something akin to a grinding paste which locked the case in the breech and sometimes would result in the rear of the case being torn off and rendering the weapon useless until an armourer could remove the rest of the case stuck in the breech.
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The History Channel? I'd be very sceptical of anything on that channel in recent years.
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@nickohare7187 I spent a bit of time along the coast of that part of Egypt, and was also warned about the mine fields. I was told that some of them were "fenced", where the fence consisted of a single strand of wire. Western Geophysical. Was that the same company that was conducting geophysical surveys in the Pacific back in the 70s, and had ships named "Western Endeavour", etc? My uncle was on that ship for a few years.
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@nickohare7187 It is a small world, and especially nowadays with social media platforms! There was an edition of the company magazine which my uncle sent back to my grandmother. In it was a picture of my uncle sitting in front of a multi-channel strip chart recorder. Obviously it was hot on that ship, as he wasn't wearing a shirt! Working for Western Geophysical was life changing for him. He joined in his 20's after a very long recovery from a near-fatal motor vehicle accident. He wrote letters from exotic places like Singapore, which was doubly exciting for me as I collected postage stamps as a kid. One night in Fiji the crew went to a dance, where my uncle met his future wife. He settled down back in Australia after that. Sadly he passed away just over two years ago. PS: I forgot to add, this has a vague reference to Mark Felton's video - my uncle was the son of a Western Desert vet who was eventually declared TPI (Totally & Permanently Incapacitated) due to his military service, and the nephew of another soldier who is buried at Tobruk.
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About 25 years ago I heard a Rommel story from the grandfather of a friend of mine. He was in the Royal Artillery, and they were overrun by the Italians. The Italians were lining them all up to shoot them, when a German convoy arrived. None other than Rommel appeared, who took the British prisoners off the Italians. Later that day, Rommel's element split from the convoy, and by the next morning the part of the convoy with the British prisoners had been captured by the British. This guy was a POW for one day, lived into his 80s, and was deaf as a post due to his time in the RA ... but if Rommel hadn't arrived that morning there's a fair chance he'd never had made it out of Africa.
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@metagen77 We get them here claiming to be from the Tax "Organisation". When I respond "Oh, you mean the Tax Office ... " they hang up. Amazing how they cannot get the name right when they're trying to scam us.
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It's like a German guy I knew about 40 years ago. He was about 15 years older than me. He admitted once that his father had served in the SS, but was "only a clerk". Another German guy I knew about the same time didn't have anything to hide. His father was a fighter pilot, and had a picture of his father speaking with Göring. His father was killed one night (when this guy was less than a year old) when his sabotaged aircraft exploded not long after take-off. Then you get people like Kurt Waldheim, who famously gave his name to Waldheimer's Disease: that's a forgetfulness disease which renders the sufferer unable to remember what they did between 1939 and 1945 ...
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My great uncle is still at Tobruk. Unfortunately none of my relatives every told me what he was like. He died aged 20.
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@lepermunna Sadly there are 2316 comments as I type. Hopefully I'll find the other parts of this person's multi-part comment and get to read the whole story. As you said, replying to yourself to keep all the parts together and in order is the best way to do it.
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@daddyshrek2295 Actually there was a bit if dyslexia creeping in. It was actually an unclear program. Did you hear about the dyslexic agnostic insomniac? He lies awake at night wondering if there is a dog ...
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You will have upset many people with this video, Dr. Felton.
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Erin Rommel was Erwin Rommel's sister. Two very different people with different allegiances.
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You might find it's the United Kingdom keeping the documents sealed off. There's a difference.
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@markmitin7397 A Serb, viz. Gavrilo Princip, killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
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There have been a lot of mass executions in that part of the world over the years. You could see it on the TV news in the mid-90s. I remember a line from a novel set in that part of the world, where a brothel madam is retelling her younger years around WW1. "That winter was the coldest winter ever. And the famine - people in the eastern provinces were dying of hunger and cold faster than you could machine-gun them ... and I've seen people machine-gunned!"
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@maquettemusic1623 "British culture is at least partly built around the mythos of being the underdog and of doing the right thing in the wrong times." Even in peacetime this is the case, e.g. Robert Falcon Scott. As kids, we were told how heroic his party was, e.g. Titus Oates: "I'm going outside. I may be some time." But looking at that whole expedition critically, it's hard to see how it could've been planned and executed any worse than it was. Here in Australia, our major underdog moment was the ANZAC landing on the Gallipoli peninsula on 25 April 1915. A complete cock-up, and often blamed on the British (landed on the wrong beaches, incorrectly synchronised watches so coordinated attacks didn't happen, etc, etc). But basically it was a stuff-up of incredible magnitude ... yet we celebrate it. However, we rarely hear of the brilliance of General Monash who was one of the first to use a combined arms attack (aircraft, artillery, tanks and infantry) against the Germans in France during the same war. It seems that the underdogs get remembered the most, especially when they fail for obvious and preventable reasons.
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I've read that book.
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OK, the story is starting to come together, I think.
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Getting there ...
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Triggered much?
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Here's Part 1!
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Another part. I should copy them all and figure out which ones go where to stitch together the whole story!
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Another bit ... gradually finding them all. :)
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Is that the scene where the Germans occupy a rise to the east of the British, and are about to open fire on the British eating breakfast when the young officer suggests that they wait a few minutes until the sun rises a little more so that the British won't be able to see the Germans? The whole scene was quite chilling, from that piece of ruthless efficiency to shooting the blinded survivor who is stumbling around helpless.
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Not sure which part this is ...
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OK, here's one of your multi-part comment. Hopefully I can find the others.
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