Victor Gregg

**boloa** · 18-02-2015, 02:29 PM

I survived the bombing of Dresden and continue to believe it was a war crime

I wasn't new to murder and bloodletting. I had enlisted two years prior to the outbreak of the second world war and by the time I was 21 I had taken part in one major battle and various smaller ones. I had been in fights where the ground in front of me was littered with the remains of young men who had once been full of the joy of living, laughing and joking with their mates. As each year of the war went by, the fighting got more ferocious, new weapons were introduced and fresh young men became the targets. How I remained a sane person through all this I don't know.

Then came the evening of the 13 February, 1945 – 68 years ago this week. I was a prisoner of war held in Dresden. At about 10.30pm that night, the air raid sirens started their mournful wailing and because this happened every night no notice was taken. The people of Dresden believed that as long as the Luftwaffe kept away from Oxford, Dresden would be spared. The sirens stopped and after a short period of silence the first wave of pathfinders were over the city dropping their target flares.

As the incendiaries fell, the phosphorus clung to the bodies of those below, turning them into human torches. The screaming of those who were being burned alive was added to the cries of those not yet hit. There was no need for flares to lead the second wave of bombers to their target, as the whole city had become a gigantic torch. It must have been visible to the pilots from a hundred miles away. Dresden had no defences, no anti-aircraft guns, no searchlights, nothing.

My account of this tragedy, Dresden: A Survivor's Story, was published on the day of the anniversary this week. I gave a number of interviews around the publication, in which I insisted that the affair was a war crime at the highest level, a stain upon the name Englishman that only an apology made in full public view would suffice to obliterate.

Many – including some writing comments underneath articles on this site – have criticised me for this. Reading through the criticisms I have to admit that some of the things I have written have caused many people some hurt, but to these people I would say that as a person I still suffer at times the memories of those terrible events.

From being regarded as some form of hero on the one hand, to a Nazi supporter on the other, has taught me that there are so many sides to any question. I have learned to try to understand those who disagree with my outlook. Like Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse-Five, I wrote as I witnessed. I have no axe to grind. I just sat down and tried to empty my mind and clear away the residues of the nightmares that I still occasionally suffered from.

My justification for still harbouring these attitudes is the events in European history since the ending of the second world war. The massacres in Bosnia at Srebrenica, the hurling of Tomahawk missiles by British naval cruisers into the centre of an inhabited Benghazi, the manner in which as a nation we still tend to be sympathetic to the use of superior aircraft strength to bomb overcrowded refugee centres. These are the reasons my anger has refused to subside.

Perhaps I should be more realistic and knuckle down to the concept of the brutality of the human race, but I have always been a stubborn individual. I am not a diplomat. I just happen to have witnessed the worst that man has to offer and I like it not one bit. Bearing in mind that I care deeply about the future of all my children and grandchildren, please allow me to express my anger.

A Must watch ....

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v...type=2&theater

We must never forget the horrors of War

**pseudolus** · 18-02-2015, 05:36 PM

It was a war crime.

**nidhogg** · 18-02-2015, 05:58 PM

Originally Posted by pseudolus

It was a war crime.

As ye sow, so shall you reap.

My history is a tad rusty, but I can't quite recall the Poles, Dutch, French, Belgians, Russians, Czechs, Danes, Estonians, Greeks, Hungarians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Yugoslavians or Brits asking the Germans to bomb their cities...

**Necron99** · 18-02-2015, 06:07 PM

Originally Posted by nidhogg

Originally Posted by pseudolus

It was a war crime.

As ye sow, so shall you reap.

My history is a tad rusty, but I can't quite recall the Poles, Dutch, French, Belgians, Russians, Czechs, Danes, Estonians, Greeks, Hungarians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Yugoslavians or Brits asking the Germans to bomb their cities...

Al Qaida can say the same about 9/11

**Humbert** · 18-02-2015, 06:15 PM

Hard to work up any sympathy for the Germans for this. After all they bear the entire responsibility for 60 million dead in WW2. If they hadn't started it, The bombing of Dresden would not have happened.

**Necron99** · 18-02-2015, 06:18 PM

Originally Posted by Humbert

Hard to work up any sympathy for the Germans for this. After all they bear the entire responsibility for 60 million dead in WW2. If they hadn't started it, The bombing of Dresden would not have happened.

WW2 and particularly Hitler's rise to power only happened due to the crippling sanctions imposed after WW1.
Blame the Bosnian that shot the Archduke.

**buriramboy** · 18-02-2015, 06:20 PM

Originally Posted by Humbert

Hard to work up any sympathy for the Germans for this. After all they bear the entire responsibility for 60 million dead in WW2. If they hadn't started it, The bombing of Dresden would not have happened.

And if you use that argument for Americans you'll begin to understand why the rest of the world has little or no sympathy for America.

**Humbert** · 18-02-2015, 06:28 PM

^Idiot

**Humbert** · 18-02-2015, 06:30 PM

Originally Posted by Necron99

WW2 and particularly Hitler's rise to power only happened due to the crippling sanctions imposed after WW1.
Blame the Bosnian that shot the Archduke.

Baloney. They could have existed within their own borders just fine.

**boloa** · 18-02-2015, 06:32 PM

Originally Posted by pseudolus

It was a war crime.

A quote from Today's History Lesson https://todayshistorylesson.wordpres...es-to-dresden/

The debate over Dresden, and quite frankly, the bombing of many of the other German cities in 1945, has consumed enormous amounts of ink. Germany was clearly beaten. Her offensive capabilities had been reduced to burning hulks and rotting corpses in the west and, in greater numbers, to the east. Her defensive capabilities and wartime production had been pulverized from the air. The fact that the Allies were attacking with massed formations in broad daylight is a testament not only to the power the Allies possessed, but also to the lack of resistance from their enemy.

----
It is significant that only a few weeks after the raid on Dresden, on 28 March, 1945, Churchill tried to dissociate himself from the destruction. He issued a memorandum denouncing the bombing of cities as "mere acts of terror and wanton destruction." Notice that he made no distinction between cities bombed early in the war and Dresden, which was attacked in 1945. Either he didn’t understand the distinction and simply dismissed the entire action, or he never comprehended that one was justified and the other not.

After WW11 Arthur "Bomber" Harris wrote in his book " I know that the destruction of so large and splendid a city at this late stage of the war was considered unnecessary even by a good many people who admit that our earlier attacks were as fully justified as any other operation of war. Here I will only say that the attack on Dresden was at the time considered a military necessity by much more important people than myself, and that if their judgment was right the same arguments must apply.."

No pride here in his "heavy hand"..... he was only following orders. If Arthur Harris was innocent so was Adolph Eichmann - since they both offered the same defense.

The war was over......... hypocrisy had reached new heights

**thaimeme** · 18-02-2015, 06:42 PM

Originally Posted by pseudolus

It was a war crime.

Of course it is...

Interesting to note that certain cultural circles only recognize war crimes committed by them or others, yet never emanating from themselves.

Wonder why that is?

**bsnub** · 18-02-2015, 06:45 PM

Originally Posted by buriramboy

Originally Posted by Humbert

Hard to work up any sympathy for the Germans for this. After all they bear the entire responsibility for 60 million dead in WW2. If they hadn't started it, The bombing of Dresden would not have happened.

And if you use that argument for Americans you'll begin to understand why the rest of the world has little or no sympathy for America.

**bsnub** · 18-02-2015, 06:47 PM

^^ Fuck off jeff you tedious fuck. You are a pathetic moron.

**bsnub** · 18-02-2015, 06:51 PM

NO people are more hated universally then the British globally. That is fact. I have found in my global travels that the British are the most lowly regarded scum of the earth. The empire is hard to forget for the coolies.

**boloa** · 18-02-2015, 07:05 PM

Originally Posted by bsnub

NO people are more hated universally then the British globally. That is fact. I have found in my global travels that the British are the most lowly regarded scum of the earth. The empire is hard to forget for the coolies.

No 11

Most Hated Countries - Top Ten List - TheTopTens.com

**bsnub** · 18-02-2015, 07:21 PM

^ Oh so creditable.

**buriramboy** · 18-02-2015, 07:21 PM

Originally Posted by bsnub

NO people are more hated universally then the British globally. That is fact. I have found in my global travels that the British are the most lowly regarded scum of the earth. The empire is hard to forget for the coolies.

That must be why they are all queuing up to leave the commonwealth.

Dufus.

**bsnub** · 18-02-2015, 07:24 PM

^ Where do you live dufus?

Originally Posted by buriramboy

That must be why they are all queuing up to leave the commonwealth.

Let them pour in. Idiots like you deserve to be inundated.

**buriramboy** · 18-02-2015, 07:30 PM

Originally Posted by bsnub

^ Where do you live dufus?

Originally Posted by buriramboy

That must be why they are all queuing up to leave the commonwealth.

Let them pour in. Idiots like you deserve to be inundated.

You're so clueless it's painful.

**Bettyboo** · 18-02-2015, 08:49 PM

Originally Posted by Humbert

Baloney. They could have existed within their own borders just fine.

**cockneyboy187** · 18-02-2015, 10:34 PM