Homework Assignments : Veteran Interviews

There's also this along similar lines from Ron:
http://www.ww2f.com/roll-honor-memories-wwii-obituaries/23291-so-you-want-interview-veteran.html
(Which, rather alarmingly, has worked it's way somehow into the 'obituaries' section... Should I tell him?.. )

~A

 

I don't know how pertinent this thread is to me given that I'm not in the US and not a teenager. I am a student but not at school level rather coming to the end of a PhD, and have already interviewed many veterans and archived the many hours of material and am hoping at some point to do a few more. I am also not on this board trawling for reminiscence, interesting and valuable though they undoubtedly are. But as a student who does engage in this kind of research, I guess I'll share my thoughts anyway - though from the working of the questions my guess is you and I aren't likely to agree on everything.

Well, I am approaching the end of the third year of my PhD. I have aprx. 15 months left to write up but hope to be done within 8, having got around 40-50,000 words on paper. In the UK school system years (or grades) go upto 13, so I guess that puts me in year 20 of my education.

I would guess that I have about 200/300 history books and about 50% on WW2, but most of those are reference works, I'm not sure how many I've read cover to cover.

I pay tax and thus contribute to their wages, though I am far from convinced that spending my taxes on guns and bombs to kill peasants a thousand miles (or so) away is a good use of those funds and have, and will continue, to vote for those who wish to reduce that particular national expense. Unfortunately I seem to be in the minority.

Well, I suppose the current conflicts have contributed to the UKs national deficit and had a negative impact on our economy. I suppose it has also had an impact on the national media and an interesting discourse analysis could be performed evaluating media perceptions in periods of conflict. Ultimately however little is different. This is not a period which we can describe, perhaps problematically, as "total war". In fact modern conflict is highly limited.

I did until perhaps a year ago when my cousin left the RAF to get married after 15 years or so of service.

I did as a teenager, but the realities of modern conflict fought for entirely dubious motives are highly off-putting. While I question sweeping generalisations, I do find the argument that the Second World War was a "just" war a strong one. The same cannot be said of many of the wars which Britain, or the USA, has fought since. In fact the precise reverse is true of many of them and it has rarely been more firmly the case than it is regarding the invasion and occupation of Iraq the reasons for doing so were patently false. I for one will not offer my neck and the best years of my life to fight in "unjust" wars.

Very little different from any other militant radical faction, such as the Army of God in the States or the IRA in the British Isles. Indeed it seems that the relevance of radical Islam is being vastly over played and is being used as the latest Orwellian Goldstein-type figure to replace communism. A weapon of mass distraction, if you will.

I know that radical Islam, in its modern militant guise, is as much the product of our own history in the west as it is anything else. One only has to have a perfunctory grasp of the history of western intervention in the Middle East to note that. Osama Bin Laden was funded and armed by the CIA. British political weakness over Palestine helped create many of the problems in modern Israel/Palestine. Over throwing Mossadegh led the rise of the Ayatollah's. In fact Western policy in the ME has been one folly after another and has been for decades. We have helped make this mess and now we are going to have to clean it up. But certainly it needs to be opposed, but more intelligently than it has been.

Given that you are statistically more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by an Islamic militant, pretty safe.

Yes, we are poorer.

N/A

I don't know any.

I haven't met an active member of the services for many years. I don't live in a squaddie town.

See above.

Again, I'm not in America, but the reality is largely the same. Britain and the US have been involved in one conflict or another for my entire life, and have been all my mothers life and all her mothers life.

Afghanistan was justified to a degree, but was botched. Iraq... well, the less said about that mess and the cherry picked intelligence which sent our troops in there the better.

They certainly weren't in the UK when I was still in school.

 

Well I guess this thread wasn't really directed at me then. I responded because, as noted, I have conducted a fair number of interviews with veterans.

I can see why requests for information by students who have not put the effort in and done the leg work would be irritating, especially when they say they only have a day or so to write up their work. Essencially they are asking that you provide them with material which they can plagiarise. However I can assure you that I will not be making such requests for information.