What I should admit is that I had my fair share of
the blind benevolence of chance and the help of a few
friends when death was an attractive alternative.
Untold prisoners lost their will to live when their hope
for a better future drowned in the unbearable misery
of ghastly conditions.
Creating a better understanding of that phenomenon
and how it can be resisted may be the only merit of
reminiscing.
At Jirst, the atmosphere in the barracks was a strange
mixture of relief that the fighting was over and of
speculation about how long the Japanese would keep
us prisoners.
Reservists who had been called up from essential jobs
thought they would be released after a few weeks and
be allowed to return to their previous function.
Regular military like myself were less optimistic,
although our pathetic ignorance of the Japanese
attitude towards prisoners of war kept us unprepared
for what was to follow...."
Tub goes on to describe the executions of several
Dutch prisoners during the very first months of
captivity. He ends a section with:
War made a mockery of the story that God created
the human race in His image."
Voorzitter Frans Peter Schutte dankt Peter Bruggink voor
zijn bijdrage
foto: Roger Sou part
Tub was well known for his observations on flying
and life in general.
I will close with two series of observations: First, in
1975 he wrote
1. You cannot have two sets of safety philosophies, one
for peacetime and one for combat.
2. Whatever peacetime methods you develop to protect
a man against his own errors and those of others,
should also protect him in combat.
3. When all is said and done and the chips are down,
the safety and survival of a nation are governed by
individual character, not by collective wizardry.
Then, in 1986, in a talk to Dutch pilots at Fort
Rucker, Alabama, he made the following five points:
1. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the principal
driving force in a combat situation is not ftag
and country and similar abstract notions but the
expectations of your teammates and your leader.
2. An essential element of sound morale is the level of
mutual trust cultivated in the smallest operational
units.
3. In the survival situation that faced most allied
prisoners in the Pacific, a crucial role was played by
the cohesiveness of the group and the rare ability of
only a few leaders to maintain discipline and dignity
without the usual props of authority.
4. The more affluent a society, the greater
the likelihood that its members will lack the
resourcefulness and selflessness needed to act as their
brother's "ikeeperin extreme circumstances.
5. When a group of nations faces a common enemy,
no factor undermines the cooperative effort more than
narrow national pride.
Such pride interferes with the timely exchange of
critical information
it raises doubt about the motives and abilities of those
who sing a different national anthem
it obscures the fact that allied nations have a collective
neck as far as their future existence is concerned.
This concludes my talk.
My sincerest thanks go to The Stichting Vrienden,
to General Schulte and to Colonel Kuppen, to
Mr. Gerard van Putten, and above all, to Mr. Jerry
Casius, who has become a family friend.
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