• Alaskaball [comrade/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Why give them the dignity of dying with a weapon in their hands when a firing squad gives them the same experience

    • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      'We demand to pass!' Shreider and Prokopovich shouted. 'We are going to the Winter Palace!'

      A sailor, bemused, refused to let them through.

      'Shoot us if you want to!' the marchers challenged. 'We are ready to die, if you have the heart to fire on Russians and comrades ... We Bear our breasts to your guns!'

      The peculiar standoff continued. The left refused to shoot, the right demanded their right to pass and / or be shot.

      'What will you do?' yelled someone at the sailor who doggedly refused to murder him.

      John Reed's eyewitness account of what happened next is famous. Another sailor came up, very much irritated. "We will spank you!" he cried energetically. "And if necessary, we will shoot you too. Go home now, and leave us in peace."'

      That would be no fir fate for champions of democracy. Standing on a box, waving his umbrella, Prokopovich announced to his followers that they would save these sailors from themselves. 'We cannot have our innocent blood upon the hands of these ignorant men! ... It is beneath our dignity to be shot down' - let alone spanked - 'here in...

      • star_wraith [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I think it was Dan Carlin on one of his podcasts that said, that while we don't have a ton of evidence, we have reason to believe in ancient times soldiers shat themselves constantly out of fear before battle. Just massive amounts of shit, all over the place.

        • Sephitard9001 [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          I can see it. I mean when you think of combat back then, somebody had to be in the front slamming straight into the front of the enemy formation. Not sure how I would react knowing that I have to run forward into a charging mob where my survival is almost an impossibility