Dereliction of Duty

Sisyphus Shrugged has the goods on this strange story of the Green Beret who’s been accused of cowardice:

I’m much too angry to talk about this yet, so

I’m going to let Siegfried Sassoon do it for me.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with him, Sassoon was a poet and a british soldier in World War 1 who was not executed for his anti-war statements (although the army did consider it) because he was a decorated hero with a reputation for being almost suicidally eager to kill the enemy after his brother was killed at Gallipoli.

[…]

So we’re OK with putting soldiers on trial for their lives in the dark because they sought treatment they’re entitled to under military law, but they’re willing to be flexible if anyone should, you know, hear about it.

Way to model your basic military virtues for the soldiers, kids.

Anyway, here’s what Siegfried Sassoon had to say about – erm – a not entirely dissimilar war*

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this War, on which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purpose for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation. I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed. On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the deception which is being practised on them; also I believe that I may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the contrivance of agonies which they do not, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realize”.

and this is what he had to say about Staff Sergeant Georg-Andreas Pogany and his fellow sufferers of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (who include a majority of the homeless men in the United States)

No doubt they’ll soon get well; the shock and strain

Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk.

Of course they’re ‘longing to go out again,’ –

These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk.

They’ll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed

Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died, –

Their dreams that drip with murder; and they’ll be proud

Of glorious war that shatter’d all their pride…

Men who went out to battle, grim and glad;

Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad.

Support our troops. Refuse them medical care and then shoot them.

There’s a metaphor for you.

This is one of the wierdest stories to come out of the war so far. The charge is highly unusual in the first place, but it turns out that the Army doc on the scene said the guy just had a case of PTSD and needed a couple of days rest. Apparently, he had a bad reaction to seeing a body cut in half for the first time.

They’ve dropped the cowardice charges but he’s going to be charged with dereliction of duty.