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Post by Dark Cloud on May 23, 2015 13:34:30 GMT -6
www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/18/anatomy-of-error?mbid=social_facebookThis is a review of a book by a British neurosurgeon. In it, he admits to mistakes that killed or hurt people, but he's an excellent doctor apparently. I've read a fair number of military memoirs or autobiographies and virtually none of them recall in detail mistakes that got people killed in this self aware manner. But every once in a while, you do. It's a guilt and responsibility that makes me squirm and choke and I've never had anything comparable in life to give me standing to compare to these tales. Most, I'd imagine, are summations of decisions made in an instant that appear as life or death necessities later revealed to be not so. It's why I cannot condemn what others did or didn't do in combat.
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Post by wild on Aug 18, 2017 6:49:04 GMT -6
As the board is showing less life than you "old friend" I'll amuse us both by replying to some old cold posts of yours. Soldiers are surplus to domestic requirements. They are the currency with which objectives are bought. Your observation is strictly of a civilian mindset. Mistakes are not measured in lives lost. Victories have been bought at a much greater cost than mistakes and mistakes have led onto great victories. Without checking, did not US rangers mistakenly land on the wrong beach on D Day and by chance out flank German defences which were holding up the invading forces? A Russian cavalry officer when informed that hundreds of troopers had been killed replied we can always make more men what about the horses we can't make horses. If there are mistakes then they can be confined to saving lives at the expense of missions/objectives. The biggest mistake of all is doing nothing. Patton said to one of his less dynamic battalion commanders "go and get some of your officers killed it might just rouse the rest of them. RIP
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