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Moral Dilemmas

Discussion in 'WWII General' started by Mussolini, Feb 21, 2017.

  1. Mussolini

    Mussolini Gaming Guru WW2|ORG Editor

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    The Universe works in mysterious ways and over the course of (what was for me) a 3-day weekend and today, I have come across the topic of Moral Dilemmas a few times. Also, Dilemmas is a very strange word once you write it out. Moral Dilemmas have directly come up in two movies I watched over the weekend (Passengers, Kokodo) and to a lesser extent in the book I just finished reading (Cassino: Portrait of a Battle).

    This post contains spoilers on 'Passengers' so if you have not seen the movie but wish to do so, do not read anymore of this thread.

    In War, Moral Dilemmas must come up countless times on a daily basis, most of which are taken in stride or are not debated heatedly, though of course there are exceptions. They are often depicted in movies as well, so I shall start there.

    For all responses to this thread, please number them so I know to which part of this post you are responding to!

    1. Passengers

    I decided to watch "Passengers" over the weekend as I quite like sci-fi and the previews looked interesting (plus, Jenniger Lawrence is kinda hot). I was pleasantly surprised, then, once the movie started, to discover that it was nothing like the previews and was quite good.

    In a nutshell, the Male Lead (I forget his name, so lets call him Burt) is a lower-class passenger on board a colony ship. He is a Mechanical Engineer on his way to the 'New Earth' 120 years away. Cryogenic sleep is how they travel there and due to circumstances, his pod malfunctions and he wakes up roughly 30 years into the 120 year journey. There are 5,000 people on board the ship all asleep as well and he quickly discovers he is very alone.

    Over the course of a year, we see his mental state breakdown as it would for anyone in solitude, with a bar-tender AI for company, knowing that unless they can go back to sleep, they will grow old and die on board the ship. After much internal debate, he decides to wake up another passenger (J. Lawrence) even though he knows it consigns her to the same fate as him - death in the next ~60 years due to old age, with 30 years after that before the ship reaches the destination. He watches her interviews, reads her bio, etc before waking her up...but doesn't tell her that he woke her up (which comes to light later on), etc etc.

    My Question: Under similar circumstances, would you 'wake' someone up to better your own position, knowing full well that you have stolen their life from them, which essentially amounts to murdering them?

    2. Kokodo

    Kokodo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokoda_(film)) is an Australian movie about stopping the Japanese from reaching Port Moresby. Its quite a good film IMHO and well worth a watch if you have not seen it.

    In this case, the Moral Dilemma comes down to a self-made decision. A Patrol gets cut off from the trail during the initial attack by the Japanese and escape into the Jungle, one of the soldiers is wounded in the leg. They can hear the battle going on around them and need to get back to their lines, to help out their mates and rejoin the fight, all the while dodging Japanese Patrols. But the wounded soldier is slowing them down, unable to use one of his legs.

    They decide not to carry him, making him hobble with them through the jungle and up the steep slopes (which they couldn't carry him up at any rate). At one stage, he gets separated from the group and is found crawling the wrong way by a friend, who then helps him back to the groups camp for the night.

    During the night, when everyone is asleep and the soldier on watch is having some mental issues, he drags himself off into the bushes. In the morning, they notice he is gone and don't say a word to each other before marching off - as the camera pans out, we see the wounder solider hiding in the hollowed out trunk of a nearby tree.

    My Question 1: If he was your mate (or not) would you have at least done a quick search to see where he had gone, or would you understand the decision he made and leave it at that?

    My Question 2: If you were in a position like his, where you were the weakest link and not only your survival but that of your mates/squad was on the line, would you remove yourself from them (knowing it would consign you to death) or would you struggle on?

    2.1 Kokodo Part 2

    Later on in the movie, another of the group has a stomach wound. As the brother of the leader (the squad leader was killed early) the remaining group (4 total) make a stretcher and carry him through the Jungle, before finding a locals shack where they hole up for the night. Part of the group wants to leave him ("He is dead anyway") but his brother does not. Finally, his Brother and the guy who wants to leave do so, leaving behind the wounded man and another solider who has 'had it' to stay behind.

    After they have left, Japanese voices are heard outside. The remaining soldier jumps out of the shack, fires at the Japanese, and then runs off into the Jungle. The Japanese soldiers chase him and don't check the shack, enabling the wounded man to survive (he is picked up by a local and eventually transported to safety) while the solider in the Jungle is mercilessly killed by the Japanese.

    My Question 1: Would you have left the wounded soldier behind while seeking aid?

    My Question 2: Would you have sacrificed yourself so that the Japanese would not get a hold of your wounded mate, even though your actions do not guarantee his safety?


    3. Cassino

    While there are countless accounts of selfsacrifice from the war, I found it quite strange to read about the Gurkhas trapped on the 'hill' who were tacking indirect fire from the smoke-screen artillery.

    What I mean is that the shells used to deploy smokescreen for the troops down in Cassino and trying to cross the river, were landing in among the troops up on the hill, often with fatal results. There was no real way to dig in on the rocky ground and taking a hit from one of these expended shells was often fatal or dismembering.

    Despite the casaulties it was inflicting, it was deemed a necessary evil as it provided cover for the other troops lower down in the valley (albeit with mixed results, as it let the Germans counter-attack and retreat into the smoke as well).
     

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