Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Hamburg, about the children: The children

Via comment by Anonymous on July 28 1943: British bomb Hamburg with incendiary..

 

'Of the children these dreadful nights, what can be said? Their fright became horror and then panic when their tiny minds became capable of grasping the fact that their parents could no longer help them in their distress. They lost their reason and an overwhelming terror took over. Their world had become the shrieking centre of an erupting volcano from which there could be no physical escape. Nothing that hell offered could be feared more.

'By the hand of man they became creatures, human in form but not in mind. Strangled noises hissed from them as they staggered pitifully through the streets in which tar and asphalt ran as streams. Some of these tiny creatures ran several hundred feet. Others managed only twenty, maybe ten feet. Their shoes caught fire and then their feet. The lower parts of their legs became flickering sticks of flame. Here were Joans of Arcs... thousands of them.

All who had perished unjustly on the fires of the Middle Ages were as nothing when compared with what was happening that night. 'The sounds of many were unintelligible and undoubtedly many more called for their parents from whom they were parted by death or by accident. They grasped their tortured limbs, their tiny burning legs until they were no longer able to stand or run. And then they would crash to the ground where they would writhe in the bubbling tar until death released them from their physical misery.'

-- Martin Caidin

8 comments:

  1. The conflagration that's coming... it's the children that I weep for the most. Most to young to understand the hard issues that leave their parents worried, angry, and making preparations for life altering events.

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  2. So, next time you will stay out of Poland when you are told to.

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    1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Polish_cities_damaged_in_World_War_II

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  3. Thanks for posting this -- the "Greatest Generation" is responsible for this as the North is responsible for the terror Southern children faced and what Vietnamese civilians endured from Amerivcan soldiers. The acts of terror were directed by Lincoln and LBJ respectively, and FDR is responsible for the Hamburg inferno as well as others. The American soldier, esp. in the Middle East today, should be fully aware of what he is being directed to kill and maim, and for what reason.

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    1. 8. "The commanding general considers that no greater disgrace could befall the army, and through it our whole people, than the perpetration of the barbarous outrages upon the unarmed and defenceless and the wanton destruction of private property, that have marked the course of the enemy in our own country...

      It must be remembered that we make war only upon armed men, and that we cannot take vengeance for the wrongs our people have suffered without lowering ourselves in the eyes of all whose abhorrence has been excited by the atrocities of our enemies, and offending against Him to whom vengeance belongeth, without whose favour and support our efforts must all prove in vain."

      RE Lee

      http://www.namsouth.com/viewtopic.php?t=108&highlight=lee+quotes

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  4. Instead of bombing the factories, slob, drunkard Churchill ordered the bombing
    of working class homes to keep them from working the factories. Did not order
    the bombing of the upscale homes at this time. Hitler did what he had to do to
    defend his people and stolen agriculture lands. 8,000 German were brutally murdered
    by the poles. The victims were mostly women and children. The so-called "land reform" robbed the German minority of two-thirds of its cultivated land. Agitation, terror and official harassment took a toll in the final act.
    Too bad some honorable country isn't over in Africa and the ME defending the
    Christians being slaughtered in similar fashion. Syria and the Kurds are the
    small minority who are helping.


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    1. Syria and the Kurds are the small minority who are helping.

      Yes and appalling.

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