10.19.2002

 

read Untold Stories of D-Day @ National Geographic Magazine from e jun 02 ish today over breakfast, and, well, im just at a loss of words. i guess thats a lazy way out, i shd really try to capture the mix of emotions or risk becoming flat n unexpressive, if im not so already.

as with any military operation there will always be secrets and casualties.. im really not surprised at all that there was a full-scale live-ammo exercise prior to D-Day - but there were casualties, and by that i mean many died, not just due to accidents, but also because their LSTs (landing ship-tanks) were sunk by patrolling german u-boats (i think, correct me if im wrong). its especially tragic when u have people going, loosely paraphrased, how there was no way to save the people on the tank deck cos it was just covered in flames - the gasoline was aflame - and they had to close the air vents because then the smoke inhalation would end their misery before they burned to death. and the person who said that was the doctor on board said ship - who obviously is bound by the hippocratic oath, if not by his vocational duty, to save the lives of those under his care. its really really chilling, when medicine in war means triage - leaving those beyond help to die and making sure that only those who have a chance of survival are given priority in evacuation to proper medical attention. i mean really, its logical and works out in the best interests of the wounded, but its the scale of the whole thing that scares me. how can we lie with a straight face and tell people theyre going to be alright when both the victim and us know theyre going to die? im all for medicine to treat the person, not the disease/injury/affliction, but sometimes the line is drawn so far that sometimes treating whatever's wrong becomes more humanitarian, from a purely save-lives-only perspective. i like to think im hard enough to disregard that, i mean really in his shoes theres a 90% chance id do the same thing. but at the same time the remaining 10% says to hell with their chances of survival, save them at all costs. in that way its quite like Saving Private Ryan now isnt it? leading a whole platoon (i think) of men, 90% of whom never survive, to save one single person, not a war hero, mind, but an ordinary private soldier whose family lost 4? 5? sons on a single day's worth of fighting. incidentally theres a very thot-provoking review on the implications of Saving Private Ryan by a professor of philosophy at Santa Clara Uni.

i think im making a big fuss out of nothing - it all started as a muted opinion, a mere thought, at the beginning. thats me trying to be all deep n stuff again. i really shouldnt do that.

timestamp: anonymous 04:59 0 comments