I found the death of Mellish disturbing in that movie, and Upham did witness that without intervening. I say shoot both of them.
In Bravo Two Zero, the SAS guys were faced with taking a goatherd prisoner or killing him to protect the security of their mission. They let him go, and they wound up being captured and killed. I would venture to say SF guys would do the same. Our cultural values don’t lead us to easily execute surrendered enemies.
That said, I would have shot Steamboat Willie out of hand. And I’d have long fighting-Germans-in-France traditions to back me up. In WW1 it was common for surrendered (or overrun) machine-gunners (and snipers, and flame-throwers) to be killed by both sides. So, squad gets ripped up by MG42 detachment, MG42 gunners get capped by squad survivors.
I’d also be pretty mad at Captain Miller for diverting us from the mission to take out a radar station that wasn’t on our list of objectives.
I struggled with the whole idea of an MG detachment just sitting out in the middle of nowhere on the random chance that Tom Hanks would wander by to be ambushed. Miller’s crew were on a special assignment - there is no real indication that other allied units intended to pass that way, although Miller takes them out on the off chance that another unit might come by.
The MG crew were obviously so poorly placed that any ambush they intended was sprung. And MG crews would not, I imagine, have been left out isolated and unsupported. The point of such a crew is that they are protecting something important - they are pickets protecting a larger group, which means other support, which means that the whole assault by Miller’s crew would have gone to crap in seconds because support for the MG crew would have turned up. The radar station was not defensible by an MG crew because the obvious way to take it out is not with infantry but by air attack, if it wasn’t a wreck already. I don’t recall any attempt by Miller to destroy it or render it useless after the attack.
In storytelling terms, the whole movie is a little episodic, like the Hobbit, with lots of little adventures along the way within an overarching narrative purpose.
The purpose of the adventures is to demonstrate the sacrifice of the courageously decent as they all progressively die. And they can’t die all in one go, or else the story has too early a climax. Thus, Vin Diesel dies after trying to help a kid, Mellish is a Jew who dies attacking nazism, and Wade wants to be a doctor. Miller and Sgt do the right thing and together agree to stay with the defenders of the bridge (and they die.) Ryan survives to “earn” the sacrifice made by the others.
As to the original question, there is no virtue weaker than an untested one. I would like to think I would have sent him back naked, but I cannot imagine what it would be like to be put in Miller’s situation and don’t flatter myself that my moral courage is greater than that of anyone else. The temptation not to let him surrender would be very great, as would the temptation to turn away when the men were obviously about to kill Willie.
In the words of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Never had to (knock on wood)
Or else you don’t accept their surrender. Nothing in the rules of war requires that you do so.
My uncle witnessed something similar at around the same time near Caen. His unit took several prisoners and the commanding officer ordered an SAS sargent who had got seperated from his unit and was temporarily with them (part of the Gloucester Regiment) to escort said prisoners back to HQ.
Sergant and prisoners dissapear around corner. Shots fired, sargent comes back alone: “Sorry sir, they tried to escape and I had to shoot them”. And that was that - no more said.
Click. Bang.
I’m appalled at the number of people who have advocated killing a POW in cold blood.
Plain and simple, it’s illegal and immoral.
Also, from a pragmatic point of view, you don’t execute enemy POWs, because you don’t want them executing POWs that they have captured. In addition, if POWs were routinely executed, nobody would surrender anymore, which would make war even more horrific than it already is.
In the situation at hand, you either hand the POW to a passing Allied patrol, escort him under guard using a member of your unit, or strip him of his weapon and let him go.
Intentionally wounding a POW after capture is illegal and immoral, too, BTW.
robby has said everything I would have said. I know that in those circumstances it would be very tempting to execute prisoners, and I know it happened all too often even among Allied units, but it’s illegal and wrong… and ultimately counterproductive, for the reasons he stated. I voted for sending Upham to escort him back.
I’m with robby. I think a lot of people might be reacting with hindsight. They know Willie goes on to kill Miller, and so they’re treating him accordingly.
Obviously, under the premise, if you’re in the same situation, you have to consider that you know nothing about what he’ll do in the future, and certainly not the fact that he’ll later end up being the guy who kills someone in your unit, in an ironic twist that–let’s face it–doesn’t really occur that often in real life. All you know is that this prisoner was a soldier fighting and following orders, just like you are. The man surrenders and is now in your charge. And so you really shoot this unarmed prisoner? Really?
How would we react if this tale were of an American or British soldier surrendering according to the rules of war to an enemy? If the enemy shoots our unarmed soldier, do we think, “oh, well, that’s the logical thing to do?” Or do we decry them as being cowardly inhumane Nazi bastards?
Agree with robby. I would not commit murder. I’d do just what they did in the movie.
I read a similar story that involved an American Special Forces detatment in Iraq or Afghanistan. They didn’t get captured or killed, but they did end up getting into a big firefight.
It seems to me that a small detatchment on a special operations mission should be seeking to avoid engageing the enemy whenever possible. For all Captain Miller knew, there could have been an entire Nazi infantry company just beyond than machinegun emplacement.
I suspect in all the confusion of D-Day, they were simply separated from their main unit somehow or the rest of their unit inadvertantly left them behind like the Nelson and Twombly in Black Hawk Down.
I guess that was my point (partly, at least). From the perspective of a viewer outside the movie it is possible to backstory a reason why the MG crew was there without support, but from Miller’s perspective within the movie, why would he assume that they were not pickets for a much larger group?
I gotta admit, I’m a little shocked and horrified that the majority of voters would have executed the dude. He’s one random enlisted soldier by himself in the middle of rural France. It’s not as though you captured Rommel or some concentration camp commandant or even Germany’s greatest sniper. As far as we know Steamboat Willy was of no particular importance to Nazi cause and similarly there was no reason to suspect that Willy had participated in any particular war crimes, or any other morally questionable acts. An American soldier in Willy’s position would have been expected to act in the exact same manner, and if he acted differently he could be tried for desertion. With the tens of thousands of Germans who were surrendering, deserting, or being killed in France at the time, would Steamboat Willy rejoining his comrades really make any significant amount of difference to the overall war? Would preventing the repatriation of one disarmed German grunt really be worth abandoning the principles of limiting the application of violence as much as possible to achieve large scale goals? Was is not these principles that granted America a certain sense of moral superiority over the Nazis?
Now offer me a million dollars to shoot Willy, especially if it was 1945, Willy might be in trouble. But to execute Willy in the scenario presented by the film? To me it would seem particularly heinous to execute Willy in such manner because his death would be completely pointless.
Oh and Upham was the group’s interpreter, not exactly someone I’d tell to fuck off if I was traveling in a foreign land.
How about if instead of a million dollars I offer you the fact he (or somebody next to him) just killed a comrade you’ve grown to love like a brother over the last couple of years and who has come to your aide several times and who was a non-combatant medic, and with whom you survived many battles including most recently the hell on Earth at Omaha Beach in which you slipped and slid on guts all day long caused by the army this guy fights with, none of the stress and horror you’ve had a chance to cope with because you’re constantly on the move sleeping a few minutes at a time when you can as you’re on what could well be a suicide mission in the middle of a land about which the only thing you really know is that you’re outnumbered by armed-to-the-teeth Germans who will kill you without a second thought the second they get a chance much as they did this medic/kid you love whose guts you’ve now seen and whose cries of agony and for his mother you’ve now heard, and oh- btw- this German soldier will absolutely alert other Germans to your presence if he gets half the chance and you know good and well he’ll rejoin with them rather than turn himself in because you certainly would if positions were reversed. Would that make you less inclined to mercy than ethical debate perhaps?
We’re the Good Guys. We are not barbarians.
I would make sure the shot was clean and he died quickly.
…again… tying him up-gagging him? No one even discusses this?
I believe I’d have him take point.
I agree with robby, the big-picture view is to never execute POWs for both moral and practical reasons. Send him back with an escort is the best move as far as I’m concerned. I couldn’t say whether I’d live up to that in an actual war zone, I’ve never been under that kind of pressure.
@Sampiro - From Steamboat Willie’s point of view, his friends have just been shot up too, he isn’t having a good day either.
That is not necessarily true. You can reject a conditional surrender, but when someone surrenders unconditionally, the victor only makes the promises of treatment outlined in the Haugue Conventions and the Geneva Conventions (assuming the victor is a signatory to the one or both conventions). Murdering someone who has surrendered is not permitted under either treaty.
The correct answer (IMHO) is march him along with you, until you can find a place to leave him where allied forces will take him prisoner. As part of leaving him you can incapacitate him, take his boots, equipment, etc.
Do you really think that would weigh in your judgment if you had captured him?