Picture of the day

Bazooka wouldnt do much to a King Tiger. Maybe aim at the road wheels for an M-Kill
When you've got fire-power like that, just fire . . .


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. . . then Skedaddle
 
That's quite the pic - very cool. Never seen anyone rig up dual bazookas before.
How the hell would you aim those?

"Point & shoot!", I would think. And "cool" is the operative word. I had an open top cable laying Jeep during my four year stint in Nord-Rhine Westphalen. When it wasn't snowing, it was raining.
 
Falaise (Normandie)
Juste après la bataille menée par la 1ère armée canadienne, et 75 ans après !

Rue d'Hastings, en venant de Caen :

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L'église Saint-Gervais :

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Rue des Prémontrés, pour la prise de l'école supérieure des filles, sur le haut de la photo à droite :

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Rue des Ursulines, aucune approche par les Prémontrés possible, les soldats canadiens essayent sur la rue parallèle droite :

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L'école supérieure des filles, rue Saint-Jean
Vue de la rue des Ursulines :

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Vue de la rue des Prémontrés :

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Vue de l'intérieur de la cour de l'école des filles :

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Un soldat allemand qui tentait de s'échapper de l'école, angle Aristide Briand (en direction d'Argentan) rue lebailly :

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Those last two are really something. I wonder how many people cross that intersection in a day without knowing a young man died, right there, scarcely 70 years before.

I imagine such ghosts are everywhere in Falaise.
 
De rien, j'en referai d'autres, plus vers le "couloir de la mort" !

The candiennes armed forces met stiff resistance from the German armed forces, elite components experienced in fighting retardants : 12 SS Panzer grenadiere

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http://albumwar2.com/captive-ss-man-and-canadian-soldiers/

Captive SS-man and Canadian soldiers.

Panzergrenadiers of 12. SS-Panzer-Division “Hitlerjugend”, who was captured by Canadians in the battle for Caen. August 1944.
Canadians have mistreated prisoners because:
June 7th to the 25th Panzer Grenadier Regiment under the command of SS Standartenführer SS Kurt Meyer (Kurt Adolf Wilhelm Meyer, “Panzermeyer”) in conjunction with the 12th SS Panzer Regiment managed to repel the Canadians, and destroyed 28 tanks, and infantry regiment “Highlanders Nova Scotia “(born Nova Scotia Highlanders) suffered heavy losses. In this case, the loss of the German divisions were only six people. During the operation, the soldiers Panzer Division in the Abbaye d’Ardenne was shot 20 Canadian prisoners of war.
From the Division “Hitlerjugend” had the lowest percentage of prisoners. Of the original 21,300 people in gosostava survived only 455 officers and men. In Division soldiers fought at the age of 17 – 18 years.
 
Could you imagine having to repeatedly kill 17-18 year old kids over and over?

Yes they are doing the same to you, but any man with a decent set of morals isn't going to enjoy butchering children regardless of who brainwashed them.
 
I've walked through the Airborne Cemetery at Arnhem and I assure you that there any number of similarly aged kids buried there - and they aren't German. Nor were they all "Christian", many of them Jews serving under an assumed name. Only in death could they be recognized with the Star of David.

As far as the Hitler Jugend of the 12th SS - c'est la guerre, Kameraden.
 
I've walked through the Airborne Cemetery at Arnhem and I assure you that there any number of similarly aged kids buried there - and they aren't German. Nor were they all "Christian", many of them Jews serving under an assumed name. Only in death could they be recognized with the Star of David.

As far as the Hitler Jugend of the 12th SS - c'est la guerre, Kameraden.

very brave men -- understanding as they did that if they were captured by the Nazi's it was pretty much lights out!

The age of the Hitler Youth I understand was troubling to some Canadian troops. My father came with the 1st Div from Italy to Holland etc and displayed an emotion I cant quite describe between sorrow and anger when he reflected on members of his unit he had been with since Brest, through Sicily and Italy and then killed at a time when the war's end was a foregone conclusion. Once he mentioned a very young (16year old) German sniper that had been captured after an unit member had been killed - I gather that the treatment of snipers in some circumstances was pretty severe and final. It was obviously one of many unpleasant memories that stayed with him.

Vokes ultimately commuted Meyer's death sentence to life in prison because he agreed with some of his staff that Meyer was guilty of nothing that Allied troops hadnt done themselves. This was a brave decision given the opinions held in Canada. Certainly many if not all of the pre-war permanent force professional soldiers were beginning to see the hypocrisy - they were tired and wanted it over and done with - and I think did not want to live with knowledge that they were also guilty of hypocrisy.
 
Perhaps that's because some were shot out of hand .....

No doubt. Many Canadians are cheering that Omar Khadr is on bail because he was a child soldier and victim of his upbringing. Funny that the same logic isn't applied to an entire Regiment comprised of a generation of youth used as child soldiers. But I guess shooting unarmed and surrendered child soldiers was just different back then.....

Example of fanaticism at its worst. Waste of life, terrible times.

Absolutely.
 
This discussion will auger in quickly as they always do. There are always 2 dimensions to the treatment of POWs, what happens on the battlefield and what happens afterwards. Most often treatment after the battlefield is better, but not necessarily. WW2 history shows that the largest scale abusers of POWs through abuse, neglect and starvation were the Japanese, the Germans and the Russians. The last German POWs in Russian captivity didn't make it home until 1956. The life of an Italian or German POW in camps in the UK, the US and Canada was luxurious in comparison.

Who actually knows what happened in the various African tribal wars since WW2, but in more modern times one of the worst offenders with POWs were the Chinese Communists during the Korean War. US treatment of Iraqi POWs and other captives/internees at Abu Ghraib and at Guantanamo and other places has crumbled their moral high ground on this. Nowadays the ISIS gang are the champs for abuse and execution of military prisoners. The old admonition of the Indian or various frontier wars in the 1800s still applies there-don't surrender or at least save the last bullet for yourself. We like to think that humans are a progressive species which improves with time and education, but the veneer of civilization remains as thin as it always has been.
 
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