Tom

its interesting the way these things are reported.

If you read a good history of WWII you realise the scale of fighting in the east between the USSR and Germany dwarfed anything on the Western front.
I often get the year of Stalingrad wrong placing it in 43 not 42. Then realise the Russian where rolling back the Germans for over a year and a half before the Western front opened.

I'm not in the Russia won the second world war single handedly either becuase a huge contribution was made by American and British material support. There was recently a ceremony to honour Arctic convoy sailors for instance whose losses where large.

Nick Mason
>Nicholas;
>
>My father was a Marine in WW II and Korea. In reading books and seeing movies you get a very biased view of which branch of the Military and what Countries participated in specific events. There is so much misinformation that it is amazing! By some accounts the U.S. Marines won the war in the South Pacific by themselves. The United States Army is not often mentioned. Australia and so many other nations that we were joined with to fight the Axis powers are not often mentioned.
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>One of my degrees is in History, and I have been doing research for many years. I have been doing a great deal of research on the battle of Okinawa (which my father was in) for the last six months and cannot believe what I have learned. You could never make a factual movie of the battle and if anyone with human qualities had a true awareness of what happened there would never again be a war.
>
>One example: U.S. casualties on Okinawa from April 1, 1945 to July equaled all U.S. casualties from all WW II Pacific battles combined! About 150,000 civilian and 100,000 Japanese Military casualties are recorded. U.S. troops killed 4000 U.S. Marines and Army personal, called “friendly fire”.
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>For what ever reason the misinformation and prejudice that I see in reporting military events extends to what countries are involved. As an example during the Gulf War, very little was mentioned about British participation. This still angers me, as it is a tremendous oversight. The television reporters doing the “in your face” reporting from the battle sites neglected the fact that the British were there also. The major news channels also neglected such facts.
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>How many people in the world are aware that 45% of the United States Battle Casualties during the Gulf War were due to not hostile fire or even friendly fire? What was the cause of such losses I am describing? Drivers of huge military vehicles racing and driving hazardously and running over our troops according to several people I know who were there in action. You will not hear that on the six o’clock news.
>
>Television media during the Vietnam War (I am a veteran of that event) took great pride in reporting how many Cong were killed each week in comparison to our own men. Vietcong 1250 – American losses 5! Wow! We are great! So few losses and so many kills! Go America – kill some more! And we did. We killed 3,000,000 and we lost about 56,000. We only honor our dead and not those we killed.
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>Also given in the report of Vietcong killed were the 5-year-old kids our troops killed. If it moves it must be Charlie! Kill it!
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>Years later we were told how the numbers given on the media were incorrect. It was a bit like a major league sporting event. Just keep weekly score to see how well our policy was working to stop communism from spreading around the world. Kill more commie bastards and save the world for democracy! The more you report killed (with fewer U.S. losses) the greater the support should be from the folks at home (the United States). Some people did not buy that line.
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>A part of mankind has always attempted to justify or rationalize why there should be war. It is unfortunate when people with such thoughts come into power.
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>Tom
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>>I'm sure the relatives of British soldiers and airmen who died will be glad to know they formed part of an insignificant 0.1%
>>
>>>Imo, the US would like as many countries as possible to join in because that way it won't look as bad to the rest of the world ("hey, it's not just us against iraq). They can say 1000 times that desert storm was a lot of countries agains irak, but in reality it was a 99.9% US effort.
>>>
>>>
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>>>>Don't you just hate it when one country tells another what to do?:
>>>>
>>>>http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/02/18/sprj.irq.chirac/index.html