Quote:
Originally Posted by swiss
Look, the last thing I want is to degrade/belittle them.
But: If you asked me about things that happened 20years ago, most of it is blurry - and black and white.
I could'nt tell for sure.
20years.
Or eyewitnesses in a criminal case, they cannot remember all details, they may think they remember, but their mind is just playing a trick on them.
That's how our brain is built, can't change this fact.
I also had a close relative who served in the 8th army as tank driver, I sure enjoyed listening to all that stories - but from a objective point of view....you can't tell if it's all true, somethings could be made up by the brain, unintentionally.
Edit:
We have a guy here in the form who interviews Russian veteran pilots.
I you read the interviews, you find several corrections by the interviewer - some facts were just plain wrong in the memories of the vets.
Do you think they "lied" intentionally"?
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No, I’d say they answered to the best of their recollections. But also I wouldn't be labelling something as "plain wrong" when your judgement is based on documents sometimes written up months, or even years after the event by people who had not participated in the event.
Now I come from a large family and Dad has a hard time calling any of us boys name (This isn't an old age thing- it's been the same since I was a kid) , but he can still remember the name of the man who he met only once for a hour or two at most when their companies were combined and the guy was shot through the throat next to him.
I was present at a function where one of the man’s relatives asked if anyone knew the man as they to wanted find out details of the man’s service history. Dad and a few others that had been present were able to relate in detail the events leading up to the man’s death and provide a form closure to a grieving family some 65 years after the event.
The official fact’s given to the family was just a date and place of death. In just a few minutes the veterans were able to supply details about the lay of the land, the type of vegetation, the dispersal of the troops on both sides, the objectives of what they were trying to achieve and what went wrong. It actually gave a meaning to the man’s death.
I accept that there are going to be inaccuracies, confusions and errors in details. My position is that these errors are also part of the official records of the time and in many cases it’s impossible to make a judgment on the TRUTH of the events.
Cheers!