PAIN AND THE MOLESTATION GENERATION | 2007-02-16
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"Their sergeant taught them you can't fight City Hall. So a real, tough experienced man shows his manhood by giving up."
Because I am younger, I haven't run into too many of the Sell It All generation. My grandfather didn't go because he had a family and was a preacher. The few I've run into didn't like to talk about their experiences. Generally they said yes they were in combat, no they didn't want to talk about it. If asked if they were decorated, they said yes, but anyone could get a decoration.
I always found it frustrating that the ones I ran into weren't like the stories I saw on TV.
Until a few days ago. Whooee. I had missed nothing all the years. I spoke to a man's grandson who told me some of his stories, but I had already heard them before. On TV. In fact the stories sounded exactly like a TV show, down to the exact words used and the PC script about the poor segregated black folk and the Jews they rescued from the disaster shelters. My historian's sniff meter read: "This man was a cook far back behind the lines."
Why is it the ones with the real stories of bravery are trying to forget?
Comment by Pain
ME:
I will rephrase Pain's last question:
"What is it that the ones with the real stories of bravery are trying to forget?
Once again, let me remind you of the combat veterans I have talked about here repeatedly, officers who let a fellow officer go to PRISON rather than speak out against their abusing colonel.
Someone said that by MENTIONING the boy rapes by Catholic priests, and the even guiltier bishops who abetted them and helped them do it again, I was being evil. Sorry, but if this is evil, then count me in. There is a HUGE lesson here, because it does not just relate to sickness inside the Catholic Church, but inside of every bureaucracy. And it demonstrates that just because a bureaucracy is running around in costumes, uniforms or backward collars, does not mean that its sickness will be exposed.
British boys' schools have been homosexual breeding grounds for centuries and everyone knows it. A military force that is given an absolute cart blanche like the World War II one would NEVER expose even the grossest of sex abuse. I remember one little boy talking abut his being raped by a priest when the other priest came in. The other priest, who did not molest boys, didn't even say a word. He wanted to keep his costume and his job.
When I was in alcohol recovery, a number of the guys there had been molested as boys. They ALL felt guilty abut it, as if it was their fault. They had never before talked about their shame, and THEY had nothing to feel guilty about.
WWII vets may well feel guilty about not exposing what everybody knew was going on. Remember, don't-ask-don'-tell is always thought of as applying to soldiers of the same rank, an entry-level requirement. The Masturbation Generation probably DID.
We are dealing with a group whose men of established physical bravery let their buddy go to prison rather than speak up. In the conditions of WWII a soldier would NEVER have accused a superior officer of abusing another young man, certainly not himself, and that complaint would never have gotten outside his chain of command.
Field Marshall Montgomery was certainly a raging homosexual. Eisenhower despised him for it. Who in the British Army would have denounced him for ANY action in his bedroom?
In other wars, there was a smaller number of soldiers and the lack of total war would have given them a better chance to complain. It was noted at the time that WWII vets never talked about their experiences, whereas Korean War vets talked abut it all the time.
It seems very likely to me that a Catholic Church type situation was in the World War II armed forces. The same generation that kept the Catholic one under wraps kept that one under wraps.
Yes, sir! A Band of Heroes!