Quote:
Originally Posted by Red Devil
I had a huge fight with Wikipedia over his entry in there. Someone had written th article and included naming his as a war criminal because 'he left german prisoners in the water'. Its a long story, but he NEVER did. A complete fabrication. HE even buried dead germans at sea with full military honours. When a guard accidently discharged a psitol wounding a prisoner, he had a full enquiry, had the doc fix up the prisoner, and submitted a full report to the Red Cross. He was a perfect gent.
I won the fight when I was talking to a bloke who was a Wiki editor, explaining the travesty. He agreed with me and had it deleted. Since then I have become a wiki editor myself. but never really have to do much.
I know Walkers grandson, a retired RN Captain, he was furious when I told him about wiki article.
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Good on you for correcting that. What an absolute load of garbage; it is common knowledge that no naval forces were EVER obligated to pick up survivors. Rescuing survivors was done on a case by case basis, if it was safe. (Consider what happened to Cressy & Hogue in WWI when they tried to rescue HMS Aboukir's crew).
When the Germans sank the carrier "Glorious" they didn't rescue survivors because they needed to leave the area ASAP.
Same thing with the British when "Bismarck" was sunk; as we all know "Dorsetshire" had to leave most of the Germans behind because a submarine was apparently nearby.
This was even done when a friendly ship was sunk; off the top of my head I remember that when USS "Preston" and "Walke" were sunk, the battleship USS "Washington" left the American survivors behind. Harsh but logical. Stopping a battleship with over 1,000 men on board to rescue a couple hundred men (as torpedoes are whizzing through the water) would be sheer madness.
At the war crimes tribunals after WWII the Allies rightly conceded that U-Boats not assisting survivors did NOT constitute an atrocity - after all, Allied subs did the same thing. Thus, even assuming Walker did not rescue every U-Boat crew he sank, it's in no way comparable to an atrocity like sinking lifeboats, machine gunning men in the water, etc.