In article ,
(ArtKramr) wrote:

Subject: Is it easier now?
From: "Tarver Engineering"
Date: 2/26/04 12:13 PM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id:


"ArtKramr" wrote in message
...
Did military discipline become looser and more liberal since WWI?.
Is
military life easier now than it was then?

Do you mean compared to when the Oklahoma National Guard (45th Infantry)
liberated Dachau?



"Liberated" ? As I remember it there was no German resistance whatever.
All the
Germans had left and they just walked in without a shot being fired.
Hardly the
equivalent of landing on Omaha beach was it?. (sheesh)


I can't say if there was any armed resistance. IIRC, there was only
minor resistance at any of the camps that still had guards.

But I would state emphatically that any unit that liberated a camp
needed a great deal of discipline, suffered a great deal of stress, and
often displayed great moral courage in meeting a massive challenge for
which they were neither equipped nor trained. No combat unit had the
organic medical units to deal with the treatment -- and disease
prevention -- challenge that the liberating units met.

One very common observation was that after seeing a camp, the war became
easier when it involved killing Germans. I've heard this from American,
British and Russian accounts.

There was often no time for dignity, especially with the medical
knowledge of the time [1]. Even when the troops just bulldozed mass
graves and forced Germans to fill them, it was still something beyond
the nightmares of many. Lots of troops became medics on the spot.


[1] Unless there are specific situations such as contamination of a
water supply, or the presence of an arthropod-borne infectious
diseases, public health experts have come to the realization that
massive piles of dead bodies are more a psychological hazard than
an immediate risk of infection.