Originally Posted by the_13th_redneck

Not exactly the same thing mmarsh.
Stalin did that even to people who fought hard. We have a case here of apparent surrender without even an attempt at struggle.
If you're going to dick around in the mountains and throw your hands up at first contact, why is the country even paying for your equipment, let alone your food.

Well I think we are missing certain facts. Perhaps they were vastly out numbered? Perhaps they were outgunned, Perhaps they were surprised? Surrounded? Cut off from retreat? Its very hard to say what the circumstances of their surrender were.

I think there is a line between sacrificing yourself for your country trying to achieve a military objective and needlessly getting yourself killed so that your country can save face, which seems to be the case here. The Turkish military only seems upset about the fact that they survived. If the only result of resisting an enemy is my death, then I would surrender too.

In WWI, French soldiers were sent on a regular basis in suicide runs in the no-man land for the sole purpose of getting the phrase "Mort pour la France" etched on their tombstone. Is it any wonder why some of them mutinied???

Remember, these are conscripts, and most conscripts don't relish the idea of becoming KIA too quickly.

Right, and if you let these guys off the hook, I'm sure the next group that meet the enemy won't be too eager to put up a fight either.
If we surrendered every time we were outnumbered, people in my service would have had to surrender every time they met the enemy.
Also, by being such easy targets for kidnapping, it endangers other Turkish troops as well.

Originally Posted by Wolf

I don't really know how to put this, but I'll throw it out anyway:

Dying for your country shouldn't be your goal; instead, it should be fighting to survive.

or rather fighting for your country.

I believe that if the soldiers have have fought at the best of their capabilities and then get captured, it's ok, but if you surrender without trowing of a shot (even if your surrounded), the MP's should just take them back of the house and do their thing.

Heck even EagleHammer and I are in agreement about this.

And Stalin, by the way, persecuted regular soldiers coming back from Spain during and after the Spanish civil war because they had "seen too much of the outside." I don't think we're seeing the same thing.

The British Marines that were Captured by Iran last year. They didn't fire a shot. The were outmanned and outgunned. But yet I didn't see anyone try them for dereliction of duty when they were released.

I also forgot to mention Guile, trickery has been known to obtain a surrender. In the US Civil War Confederate General Nathan bedford Forrest got the surrender of Union troops in Rome Georgia, by convincing the Commanding Officer that his unit was much larger than it actually was. In actually it was the Union that vastly outnumbered Forrests troops.

I stick to my original statement: I don't think we have all the facts to make a judgment in this case.
Personally, I don't mind having to die to protect my country, but that doesn't mean I value my skin as completely expendable either, especially when then only consequence of my death is for the nation to save face.

I like the Turks, but they are a militaristic society and this smacks of injured pride than anything else.

Wasn't it the Red Army who shot their own troops as they retreated at Stalingrad?

Originally Posted by FULLMETALJACKET

Wasn't it the Red Army who shot their own troops as they retreated at Stalingrad?

Yes, and the French General Staff in WWI did it too. They waited until all the survivors of the lastest ill-planned attack on the enemy wire returned then each man in each company were draw straws.

The losers were tried in the worst drum-head trial imaginable the were almost always convicted and almost always immediately shot.

It was the enlisted men who took the blame for the ill-advised, ill-planned, ill-executed attacks of their leaders. Nor were they cowards. One of the most famous cases was a Poilou who went into Hell to carry a critically wounded officer out of the no mans land on his back, his name came up in the lottery after the attack and he was shot for "cowardice".

If I were enlisted I could think of no better reason to frag an officer than that, be doing the rest of the army a favor. At least Stalin got rid of his incompetent generals (mostly through the NKVD).

The generals, those that gave the orders were given medals.

It wasn't until the 1921's that the French court reversed or pardoned most of the defendants -too late for most but at least the widows were given the pensions as if the Husbands were KIA.

Shocking story MM. Makes you spit, don't it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDecLiA_Qbw

Patton speech - "No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country"....


Lonnie Courtney Clay