Help with interpretation please.

[JimSmithson]

Aa part of the work I am doing on the 1st Scarpe I spent a little time in Henin sur Cojeul last week walking the ground of a preliminary attack on the 2nd April by 2nd Yorkshires to secure the village. As source material I was using the 21st Brigade diary and the battalions diary, the former having a report on the attack written by the C.O. Brig. Gen Goodman, the latter descibig the action in the handwritten diary. In the attack one platoon set up a strongpoint on the road junction NW of the village. The Brigade report reads as follows:

....and a platoon pushed forward and occupied No. 4 postcapturing 15 prisoners, but they were surrounded and ultimately practically all the party including the prisoners were killed or wounded.

Fine so far. Now from the Yorkshire's own diary:

....and the officer and platoon detailed to push forward to occupy No. 4 Post did so, The platoon captured 15 prisoners but were then surrounded by a strong force of enemy and the whole party practically killed or wounded. The 15 prisoners, however, were prevented from joining the German Army. (my italics)

Am I being overly sensitive to the last sentence in not liking what it is intimating? I would like some other's opinion on this.

Thanks in advance

Jim

[Rockdoc]

I think I'd take that the same way but if you did kill prisoners - who would be unarmed by definition - you wouldn't get much mercy from anyone that takes you prisoner afterwards. They may have seen it as a necessary evil since they would have needed to concentrate on defence and not had the time to keep a wary eye on the men they'd captured.

Sordid. isn't it, even if the motive is understandable?

Keith

[gem22]

Jim

I think you could also read this as meaning that the prisoners were prevented from joining (?rejoining) the German army because the were killed during, and as a result of, the attack by the German force. From what you quoted I'm not convinced that the quote meant that the prisoners were 'executed' by their British captors.

However I do appreciate that your interpretation has as much validity as mine; unless someone can prove one of us wrong.

Garth

[JimSmithson]

Garth

It is the ambiguity of the line that worries me. I am writing a piece on the attack and do not want to make any reference to the notion of what might have happened without more evidence. The mere fact that you are unsure is starting to lean me towards leaving well alone. I would not want to taint any memories, especially Green Howard ones, by intimating anything of this kind.

Any other thoughts from Pals?

Jim

[headgardener]

For what it's worth, I think that it's a curious and interesting snippet of information. All the earlier suggestions in this thread are possible explanations. The reference was, in any case, written after the event by someone who was presumably using a second hand account passed on by one of the few survivors.

I would tend to think that it implies that the Yorks men, faced with being in a tight spot, simply held on to the prisoners rather than release them, and eventually several shells and grenades later, there were very few men, British or German, left to tell the tale. We'll probably never know (unless you keep digging, of course...).

Whatever the truth, I do think that it's an interesting snippet and I, personally, wouldn't feel the need to censor it. If you are concerned with giving an accurate detailed historical account, then it's worthy of inclusion together with some 'explainer' like my suggestion above.

I've often heard it said that true academic historians do the broad sweep of history very well, while amateur historians (sorry, I don't mean to imply that you are one or the other) are often better at digging for less 'academic' sources, as evidenced by so many of the postings on this forum. The benefit of what we might call the 'amateur' approach is that you bring a story to life, and lend more humanity to it, by the inclusion of fascinating details which may otherwise be lost. The drawback of this approach is that the amateur historian often gets lost in the detail, for them the detail IS the history, and that can impede the reading of the finished result. Is the role of the historian to record facts, or to convey meaning to facts? If you're good you do both, but this involves some degree of editing.

My point is that I can see a case for you editing your source material, but for literary reasons rather than for reasons of 'propriety'. Obviously I'm not privy to your work on this so far, but if you're covering the action on a 'minute-by-minute', 'man-by-man' basis then this seems worthy of inclusion.

Just make sure that it makes for interesting reading.

Which is another good reason for inclusion, imho.......