Posted on 04/10/2006 12:57:07 PM PDT by 5050 no line
A ruse that helped to win a soldier the Victoria Cross during the Second World War was a "war crime" and New Zealand should apologise to the families of the snipers he killed, it was claimed yesterday.
Alfred Clive Hulme, the father of Denny Hulme, the late world motor racing champion, was awarded the VC for bravery in killing 33 German snipers over eight days during the Battle of Crete in 1941. He returned home a hero to the town of Nelson.
But a new book by two military historians says that, in winning his VC, Sgt Hulme committed "acts of perfidy" under international law.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
How they have dishonoured these men. Combat is not subject to the Marquis of Queensbury rules, fergodzake.
If you find yourself in a fair fight, you screwed up.
Here is one of the "horrid" acts:
"On one occasion Sgt Hulme donned a German paratrooper's smock, climbed up behind a nest of enemy snipers, and pretended to be part of their group. "He shot the leader first, and as the other four snipers looked around to see where the shot had come from, Hulme also turned his head as if searching for the shooter," the book says."
Sounds smart to me.
Subjected him to the firing squad, mind you, as, under the Geneva Convention the Germans would have been permitted to kill him for being in a fake uniform.
But WAR CRIME? No, just risky.
I don't even have the words...
I suppose if he had disguised himself and killed Hitler in 1941, he should apologize for using a "ruse" to stop the Holocaust as well. Jackasses...
IIRC, as long as he was wearing his own national uniform underneath the German paratrooper smock, it's a legitimate ruse of war that was used by both sides during WWII.
False flag ops have a long history.
The Nazis killed 6 MILLION Jews.
Sgt. Hulme shot 33 Nazi snipers.
And Sgt. Hulme is the bad guy? Un-frigging -believable!
To me, it seems just appallingly bad taste to publicly defame somebody like Sgt Hulme, demeaning his acts of valor and assaulting his memory.
I piss on Lt Col Harper and Profs Wills and Hodges. Shame on them!
Many years ago I was at an Army Fordham basketball game. One particular cadet named Houston was killing my Rams. In overtime he was touch fouled by a Fordham player and I yelled, "If you're gonna foul him, put him in the hospital." A couple of Army parents chastised me with "way to play fair Fordham." I responded, "If my tax dollars were teaching their kids to play fair, I want my money back.They're supposed to be teaching them to win."
Someone wrote a book and that makes it true? Branded war criminal because someone wrote a book? What the hell is wrong with people today?
And another five million of everybody else, IIRC- and that doesn't count Allied combat losses, in-the-field massacres and the 'collateral damage' of combat in populated areas.
I guess it wasn't fair us having Ultra or having cracked the Japanese code!
Imagine a Britain where there is no Thatcher type figures, where the al-Guardian and Indypendent enjoy mainstream readership support, and Harold Pinter is a good barometer of where most intellectuals based in this country stands. You get New Zealand.
Our people have read far too much from your Fleet Street publications when they did their OEs in "the Home Country" and take them far too seriously.
That National Socialists killed almost 12 million people, including approximately 6 million Jews.
Sounds like another case of trying to create a 'buzz' on a new book. Shameful, but typical; bash a hero in a book and the MSM can't wait to print the story.
German soldiers, disguised as US Army Military Policemen, redirected troops and were thought to have killed others at The Battle of the Bulge.
They were not thought highly of, at the time.
"Who are these two "military historians"?"
Well, it appears that at least one of them is some kind of pussy Lt-Col, one that I wouldn't want to follow into battle.
When the Krauts looked around he should have said "G-Day Mates".
Denis Dutton on New Zealand "idealism"/appeasement
"Willy Brandt, the social democratic Chancellor of West Germany, was once upbraided by idealistic members of the New Zealand Labour caucus over Nato. As Mike Moore tells the story, Brandt explained his position to the New Zealanders, and added, "Idealism increases in direct proportion to your distance from the problem.""
I haven't seen the "Peace Studies" crowd rear their ugly heads in awhile - this was the bunch that called for international sanctions against Iraq instead of war in 1991 and then turned around and protested the post-war sanctions as soon as those were accused of denying medicine to Iraqi babies (the sanctions didn't, of course, Saddam did, but strangely they didn't seem to want to point that out).
No one is quite as enthusiastic about applying laws and rules to warfare as those who do not have to fight in it. There isn't anything "illegal" about donning the opposition's uniforms - one recalls the Germans doing so just prior to the Battle of the Bulge - but it does line one up to being shot as a spy if caught. This particular hero wasn't out there to arrest the nest of enemy snipers, he was out there to kill them and so he did. And he has my fervent thanks for having done so.
What a chickensh*t allegation after all of these years. The Nazis were cruel monsters who defied every convention of decency. And they deserved much more than Hulme or the rest of the Allies returned to them.
The idea of apologizing to the families of a Nazi sniper is ludicrous. This man outsmarted the enemy and surely saved many lives.
If I was Anita, I'd be getting that thing back before somebody decides I have no right to it.
Just like Canada. And we have no French to make up our excuses of being a weasel: the politicians and intellectuals who openly espouse such leftist ideas (Helen Clark, Margaret Wilson, or Geoffrey Palmer for instance) are purely English stock descendents.
That SOB, can't remember his name ... told everyone he was "Irish" ... heard he married two really rich women ... went into politics in Massachusetts, or something.
True enough that he took a chance of summary execution if captured, but the Geneva Convention was not strictly followed on either side during the war, especially regarding snipers and particularly on the Nazi side. If the guy was up against SS, the fact that he disguised himself in a German uniform would have made no difference. He could have been a sniper, or a medic and the SS would have killed him regardless. The SS seldom took prisoners.
What these pinheads have to answer in how many lives this man saved by eliminating multiple Nazi snipers.
BTW I should stress that "It's just like Canada" refers to Canada's lefties and not their marvellous conservatives lest I incur the wraths of the Canadian squads once again LOL. There is no doubt they are more numerous than conservatives.
Have you visited the museum at the Waiouru ranges?
It's well worth it. History right back to the Maori Wars. Ooops, perhaps I shudn't mention those Wars....:-)
I served with real Kiwis here and there from '65 in Borneo to '69 on Bersatu Padu n still keep in touch. Mine's a Speights.
Like I said, smart (albeit slightly more risky).
Ditto from me on everything you posted.
Now lets see, running around, not in any uniform, shooting at soldiers and get picked up. Maybe we should get back to the letter of the law and start shooting the terrorists our forces pick up in Iraq?
What these idiots wrote is beyond ignorance, it is criminal defamation of a war hero. It's no longer enough that New Zealand refuses to stand with the rest of the major English-speaking nations in fighting against fascism and tyranny, they now feel the need to defame their own war heroes???
Oh yes they are talked in school curricula. I think it is just one of the few NZ history topics that every school teaches. Not surprisingly it is all oppression by the Pakeha (Euroepan) settlers on Maori yada yada.
If my memory is correct, there was no formal separate New Zealand armed forces until WWII, right? Most soldiers before 1941 would have served as British military. (The Statute of Westminster wasn't ratified until 1947 and before that, NZ was formally speaking, still a dependency of Britain)
How quickly the ones who have never sacrificed for the freedoms they enjoy forget who earned it for them.
"Hulme deserved the VC for his outstanding bravery, but he shouldn't have done what he did in disguising himself."
Hi, I'm a 13 year old girl hot to the touch, who wants to touch me? (Actually, I'm a dirty old government employee with a cruddy job and a boss who smokes crack)
I believe you are correct. And I'm about to get in trouble with the Brits, just as you're in trouble with the Canucks.
The British campaigns of WWII in the Mediterranean, from Greece to Crete to El Alamein, seemed to shed an awful lot of Anzac and Indian blood. The Australian, New Zealand and Indian divisions seemed to bear a wholly disproportionate share of the fighting. Similarly, it was the Canadians who were sacrificed at Dieppe.
I've come to believe that the bloodbaths at Ypres and the Somme in WWI caused Imperial General Staff to be very cautious in its commitment of British troops in WWII.
In retrospect, one can understand the motivation, even as one declaims it.
Has the SOB signe d the SF-180 yet?
And has he turned it in?
More nihilistic deconstructionism from the misanthropic, genocidal left.
...just as you're in trouble with the Canucks.
I'm not afraid of them. When you know what you believe is on the side of the truth, no matter how hysterical the otehr side is will not shake you, just like the likes of Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, Zaqwiri, Der Spiegel, Zapatero, Ming Pao, or Qian Qichen have never really shaken the confidence of George W. Bush.
About the British military, I would say recent evidences indicate they were exhausted and close to collapse just a few months before Hitler started the offensives on the Soviet Union. Had Hitler gambled that he would "solve" Britain first, or decided not to declare war on the United States after Pearl Harbor and the US remained neutral with regards to Germany, I would say the WWII would have won by Hitler due to US isolationism. In light of this, I wouldn't blame Britain too much for its hesitacy on deploying more militaries.
Winston Churchill won WWII for the Brits by keeping them in it, until events forced the U.S. to join them.
Tall skinny freaky-looking horseface guy. What guy you talkin' about? SF-180? My guy, he signs'em all day long, 2-3 at a time. You talkin' the udder guy from Massachusetts, right? Tall Real FAT guy, drinks like a fish, right? Brothers got shot, girl-drowned kinda guy?
Maybe you talkin' the queer guy from Massachusetts? Or dat udder guy from Massachusetts that done the sex thing with the kids? I'm trying to get these Massachusetts SOB guys straight and you sure ain't no help.
I read somewhere that Britain's cabinet ministers and even many members of parliament were prepared for an armstice/surrender with Germany in mid 1941 and it was only Churchill who persuaded them not to do so. They were this close to become a second Vichy. I only knew that their gold reserves had been run out before knowing this news. In retrospect, Land Lease was a some of the few really good things FDR did because he ensured the long term survival of Britain and ultimately the United States. I know isolationists at the time, Buchanite paleoconservatives today, and even many picky postmodern hiistorians now all damn Land Lease because it was clearly in breach of the neutrality stands of the United States at the time, but national survival comes first in such cases.
Next time when some British detractors tell us Britain could win WWII without US involvement, stuck them with this tidbit.
Oh my, it should be "Lend Lease". Spelling error LOL.
,,, we're in the age of pontificating academics. Six billion people on the planet and they get to be the judges. This is just a "no doubt about it" demonstration of how little news is made in NZ. My attitude to what was done in this case would be summed up by paraphrasing DHL out of context... "whatever it takes."
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