I had a mixture of emotions reading this. Peters is clearly indoctrinated up to his eyeballs (or is reassuring his brother?), and this has resulted in a certain naivety: ‘Tommy/the Canadians can’t fight’, and while confidence is vital, he doesn’t acknowledge that he and his unit had been moving backwards for two whole months, and that the enemy haven’t yet been thrown back into the sea.
In his final letter, I think he knows he’s in the sh** because he writes to his brother and not his mum, leaving how much to disclose up to Reinhold. It was getting very dicey, and he knew it.
It seems he died in his Panther, so I’m going to bring up Ukraine (of course I am): every time I see a Russian tank decapitated, my initial ‘Yay, another one bites the dust!’ is simultaneously tempered by the knowledge that, whatever the politics and criminality of the regimes they served and serve, every dead soldier is a mother’s son. Their deaths might or might not be instantaneous, but the suffering of those who remain at home lasts a lifetime.
Also, Rob, I think that’s the best contemporary photo of a Panther I’ve yet seen.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. There is a lot of teenage bravado involved as well. Regarding the 'Ukraine comment', I totally with you there. We should not lose our humanity.
I find this so sad. And still it happens: the indoctrination, young lives needlessly wasted. The ideology just has a different name, in a different nation.
I had a mixture of emotions reading this. Peters is clearly indoctrinated up to his eyeballs (or is reassuring his brother?), and this has resulted in a certain naivety: ‘Tommy/the Canadians can’t fight’, and while confidence is vital, he doesn’t acknowledge that he and his unit had been moving backwards for two whole months, and that the enemy haven’t yet been thrown back into the sea.
In his final letter, I think he knows he’s in the sh** because he writes to his brother and not his mum, leaving how much to disclose up to Reinhold. It was getting very dicey, and he knew it.
It seems he died in his Panther, so I’m going to bring up Ukraine (of course I am): every time I see a Russian tank decapitated, my initial ‘Yay, another one bites the dust!’ is simultaneously tempered by the knowledge that, whatever the politics and criminality of the regimes they served and serve, every dead soldier is a mother’s son. Their deaths might or might not be instantaneous, but the suffering of those who remain at home lasts a lifetime.
Also, Rob, I think that’s the best contemporary photo of a Panther I’ve yet seen.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. There is a lot of teenage bravado involved as well. Regarding the 'Ukraine comment', I totally with you there. We should not lose our humanity.
The photograph is a classic PK shot, but AI upscaled and cleaned. Which makes it look a lot better.
Aha! That's why it is so vivid. Also, PK?
Propaganda-Kompanie
D'oh! Of course!
I find this so sad. And still it happens: the indoctrination, young lives needlessly wasted. The ideology just has a different name, in a different nation.
Harrowing stuff.
It's interesting to read these old letters. We get an insight into real life as it was at that moment.