Really good piece over at Jason’s blogabout the difficulty of surrender in war. It morphs into a longer meditation on the atrocity of war. Worth a read.
It’s hard to surrender. Every grunt knows this. When you lay down your arms after battle, anything can happen to you before you are processed and taken to the rear. There are so many factors in the decision to give up. A big one is the reputation of the opposing side. Do they treat their prisoners well? Another is how many people you just killed. Are the other guys going to even consider taking prisoners after you just gunned down their friends? Is someone going to just accept your surrender when you have a smoking machine gun next to you, with a big pile of expended brass beneath it?
These questions summarize very to the point the dilemma of surrendering. I would add one more here: what are one's odds of surviving if one does not surrender?
The man who wrote the book on war, entitled The Art Of War, Sun Tzu,
said, "The captured soldier should be kindly treated and kept".
Aspects of war change and evolve, the twenty-first soldier may very well be a man or a woman. The circumstance immediately before capture might be the same for both sexes, as they relinquish their weapons. That part of Sun Tzu's quote that refers to how a prisoner is treated after the initial surrender, could be vastly different. The woman will very often have to undergo a horrific physical trauma, which a man does not have to endure, often more than once.
These questions summarize very to the point the dilemma of surrendering. I would add one more here: what are one's odds of surviving if one does not surrender?
Probs best to just avoid the whole business.
Cue Ron Perlman "War, ...War never changes"
Really good read. Important, even.
The man who wrote the book on war, entitled The Art Of War, Sun Tzu,
said, "The captured soldier should be kindly treated and kept".
Aspects of war change and evolve, the twenty-first soldier may very well be a man or a woman. The circumstance immediately before capture might be the same for both sexes, as they relinquish their weapons. That part of Sun Tzu's quote that refers to how a prisoner is treated after the initial surrender, could be vastly different. The woman will very often have to undergo a horrific physical trauma, which a man does not have to endure, often more than once.