Reading war memoirs a week ago, a story from Konstantin Simonov stuck with me: In 1939, after USSRs Khalkin-Gol conflict with Japan (one of those insignificant 20th century scaps where each side lost several times more men than US did in the entire Iraq war), Simonov was present at a POW exchange. He saw that the Japanese, apart from generally treating their POWs like dirt, were putting really thick paper bags over their heads before loading POWs up into planes. This was quite hard to do with those that could not lift their head (the majority of prisoners Soviets captured were heavily wounded), but eventually accomplished. When he asked the Japanese colonel what the bags were for, he was told This is so POWs would not be ashamed to look in the eyes of their officers when they return. Simonov thought about this for a while and decided that the bags should be put on the heads of officers that sent these guys out on a mechanized operation hundreds of miles into the desert without enough fuel or ammo. Unfortunately, by the time he thought of that, the colonel have left. Still, I think the idea has potential, would be nice to do that every time an officer or politician is found to be incompetent. The entire legislature wearing paper bags on their heads would be a sight, for example.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 19:58:39 +0000
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