That the dirty Argies are attempting to sue the Government over the sinking of the Belgrano?

And I'm sure at the time the labour back bench were up in arms at it. Now they either have to defend Maggie's actions or cough up...Hmmmmmmmm?

-- Anonymous, June 30, 2000

Answers

All is fair in love and war as they say. What the fuck do they expect if they are all sitting in a battleship in the middle of a warzone.

They got what they deserved.

I wouldnt give them a penny.

Agree with you on this one LR although it pains me to say it.

-- Anonymous, June 30, 2000

LR

GOTCHA

Was you on the sub what dunnit? The Government line will be that you and the fellow crew are personally liable. (Dougal, plse chck)

Taken together with the forthcoming litigation by Jonno and the new boy on the block, not to mention your annual passport to the theatre of wet dreams, it looks like your spends are going to be spread rather thinly over the coming months.

-- Anonymous, June 30, 2000

That's nothing LR, the latest revelation is that ULTRA intercepted an Enigma signal outlining the Nazi's plan to deport 8,000 Jews from Rome and did nothing about it. Gasp! Bit of a slap in the face for all the thousands killed taking Scicily, storming Salerno, crossing the straits of Messina under shellfire, killed in the bitter winter fighting up the toe and shin of Italy, shot like fish in a barrell at Anzio and all around Monte Cassino. Lazy b*stards, should have got a move on, weren't trying at all, were they? Obviously they should have all written to their MP and insisted that something should be done about it since clearly giving your life isn't nearly good enough for the outraged liberals of today [teddy bounces off mobile and sends building blocks flying]

-- Anonymous, June 30, 2000

Aye, the Conqueror was one of my old boats but I wasn't on her at the time. However, I did do her first visit back to the Islands after the conflict (strange feeling that I can tell ya) and there were one or two still on board then....I'll dig their names out send them off to the Junta....they can cough for it.

-- Anonymous, June 30, 2000

Feck Softus!! I wouldn't like to delve into the Jews and WWII thingy...I reckon many many more "folk" knew what was going on and turned away:-)

War..what is it good for?.....apart from breating life int Swans, Cammal Lairds or Vickers.

-- Anonymous, June 30, 2000

It was that blinkered pressure-group 'outrage' that got to me about how nothing was done about it....we had just driven 10 divisions into the mud. The 45th Texan division was all but wiped out, the New Zealanders who had put up with all kinds of terrible jobs without a murmur had been forced to say "Enough!", the Polish Brigade and Ghurkas had suffered appalling casualties taking Cassino and this was written off as 'nothing'. Added to that we had sent most of the naval units in the Med around to Blighty ready for the Normandy landings, so we were in no position to launch another seaborne landing near Rome like the failed Anzio one even if we had wanted to.

They seem determined to ignore just how difficult it was to not act on some of the intercepts we had made. However horrible the business in Rome, was it really any harder to avoid giving away that we had the information than when we sat back knowing that the Luftwaffe was going to flatten Coventry? The only thing we did was send in extra red cross ambulances on a 'training exercise' as extra AA guns or fighters would have given the game away and they would have changed their codes. Horrible decision for anyone to have to make, and some of these pressure groups have to understand that World Wars are a little harder to sort out than building a cycle path.

-- Anonymous, June 30, 2000

Cockney

You said, "What the fuck do they expect if they are all sitting in a battleship in the middle of a warzone." I thought the point was that they weren't in any designated exclusion zone. Sinking the Belgrano was just Mad Maggie's way of getting the war started and bolstering her flagging popularity in the polls. It served no military purpose at all.

-- Anonymous, June 30, 2000

Dread

I wonder if LR's friends had similar thoughts as they were patrolling the area?

-- Anonymous, June 30, 2000

When I flew from Buenos Aires (stopping over in Cape Town & Joburg) the other week, I confronted several Argies (Dutch courage!) about Islas Malvinas, they all agreed that their ex - government (THE junta) were a bunch of to$$ers + they accept that, the 'excursion' into the Falklands has cost Argentina billions in foreign investment!

-- Anonymous, June 30, 2000

Dread.."served no military purpose at all"??....That's about as wrong as you could get.

The Argentinian navy NEVER put to sea again during the whole conflict, ironically saving lives...probably.

No military purpose??

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2000

Softie

Touchy area you are entering there - to say the least.

However, just because there were other things going on at the time, it does not mean that an investigation should not now be launched into what was or was not known about specific events. The opportunity/ability to analyse such things is what makes a democracy. It is surely only in a totalitarian regime where individual rights are 'subsumed' towards the 'greater' rights of the nation.

What gets at me is the issue of compensation, esp belated. I just do not understand why POWs in Japan or wherever bring up the compensation now - 55 years later - rather than then. Is it simply because we are more litigious? Similarly, you can't have police officers or soldiers suing the govt for what they 'saw' during their service - i.e. awful scenes. The one exception being if they are subject to something like gulf war syndrome/nuclear testing in the 1950s eetc

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2000

Nothing wrong with analysis Bobby, that was precisely what was wrong with this particular reaction. Saying that the Allies did 'nothing' upon intercepting a transmission to the effect that 8,000 people were to be rounded up in Rome is a gross misrepresentation of the facts. This shamefully ignores the fact that a 4 month campaign to take Rome had come to grief and that however dreadful the actions of the Nazi regime, the Allied forces were not in cahoots with them and nor were they in a position to do anything which would not expose that the German codes were compromised. A sudden airdrop on Rome with no ground troops backing it up (supposing that 2 of the 3 operational Airborne Divisions hadn't already been redeployed to Britain along with all the troop transports in preparation for D Day) or the distribution of a warning to all Jews in Rome that a roundup was being planned would have cost tens of thousands of more lives as the German codes would have been changed. The importance of this cannot be over-emphasised, it saved countless lives until the German lines of communication were so short that they ceased transmitting operational orders by the encryption machines and the Allies consequently got caught out in the Ardennes.

These codes not only told us exactly where all German units were being deployed, their exact lines of march and their operational ability, it also pinpointed the exact grid from which U-Boats sent in periodic status reports allowing our anti-submarine forces to turn the tide in the Battle for the Atlantic. Ignoring the terrible loss of life which would have resulted in giving away the fact that we had the ability to read these signals makes it easy to say that 'nothing' was done. As it is, somebody had to make the horrible decision of comparing the fate of 8,000 Jews in Rome with that of thousands of combatants and civilians in the occupied territories.

Had they said that the existence of this Enigma message showed that the Allies were aware of the Nazi's Final Solution despite the official line down the years that they knew nothing but shadowy rumours until they entered Belsen, then that would have been a completely different kettle of fish. That would have demonstrated analysis rather than the hysterical and ill-conceived bleating I was unfortunate enough to witness on a supposedly reputable programme with no attempt made to balance this view. The harrowing events of a World War deserve a reasoned and careful portrayal and should never be used for political mileage by some pressure group with a not-very- well-hidden agenda.

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2000

For 'Bobby' read 'Beardo' and book me in at the opticians on Wednesday please, Miss Caruthers...

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2000

What would the public have demanded Churchill et al to do if it became public knowledge about the holocaust? Would theyhave a-bombed Berlin? Frightening isn't it?

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2000