British fighter ace Robert Roland Stanford Tuck, shot down and captured on 28 Jan 1942, escaped from his prisoner of war camp, subsequently making his way through the Russian lines to the British Embassy in Moscow and then home.
On January 28th, 1942, while on a low-level mission over northern France, his Spitfire was hit by enemy flak near Boulogne and he was forced to crash land.
He was captured by German troops and spent the next three years in several POW (prisoner of war) camps until he made a successful escape on February 1st 1945. After spending some time fighting alongside the advancing Russian troops as an infantry officer he found his way to the British Embassy in Moscow. He eventually boarded a ship from Russia to Southampton, England
Robert Stanford Tuck died on May 5th 1987 at the age of 70
February 2, 2023: Russia reported that they had 2,600 tanks available at the time of February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. There was visible evidence that nearly 1,600 were lost during the first few months of the invasion. While 924 were destroyed, another 664 were damaged and abandoned. Most of these tanks were undamaged and captured intact after their crews abandoned them. These were repainted to identify them as Ukrainian and used against the Russians. Many of these tanks eventually became unusable because Ukraine did not have replacement parts for them. Ukraine used similar tanks but not all of the replacement parts for Ukrainian tanks were suitable for the captured Russian ones.
Russia had a similar problem with the thousand tanks that survived the invasion and over a thousand more that were brought in as replacements. The replacement parts problem was even more acute for the Russians because they changed their tank tactics in the face of the numerous Western top-attack ATGMs (Anti-Tank Guided Missiles) that quickly destroy Russian tanks because of the way these tanks use their autoloaders, which puts many exposed shells and their propellant charges in the turret. If the turret is hit by a top attack ATGM, all those propellant charges explode, killing the three-man crew and often blowing the turret off the tank.
Russia responded to this by using their remaining tanks only for direct-fire artillery support for Russian troops. This meant using HE (high-explosive) shells that explode when they hit something, usually the ground, and create many high-speed metal fragments that will wound or kill troops and damage structures and unarmored vehicles. These shells are effective if they hit something but they are not accurate and often just hit the ground, where most of the fragments go into the ground or fly harmlessly into the air.
In Ukraine Russian tanks have used more HE shells than ever before. Russia used them occasionally in Afghanistan, and during the Chechen wars of the 1990s. In both these wars Russia had air superiority and could use helicopters and ground attack aircraft as well as conventional artillery. In Ukraine Russia has lost the tank war as well as the artillery war. Using 125mm HE shells fired by tanks seemed to be a practical solution. It was, but there were unwanted side-effects.
Firing HE is less accurate the farther away the target is. That means a 125mm HE shell fired at a maximum range will land up to sixty meters from where it was aimed. The 125mm accuracy problem was confirmed in 2018. That was when the Russian army conducted tests to measure the effectiveness of HE shells fired from the smooth bore 125mm guns tanks are equipped with. The test results recommend against tanks using HE shells. The ones on hand were not discarded but no new ones were manufactured.
Russian tanks in Ukraine appear to have used about 100,000 of these shells and in doing so discovered another problem. These shells caused barrel wear on the 125mm tank gun liners. These liners are common in tank guns and tube artillery. It’s cheaper to replace a worn-out liner than to replace the entire barrel and attached loading mechanism. Tube artillery barrel liners are good for 5,000 to 6,000 shells fired. On Russian tanks the liner wears out after about a thousand shells are fired. Most of the Russian tanks in Ukraine used for firing HE shells found that their barrels already had a lot of wear on them and heavy use of HE increased liner wear to the point where all shells (anti-tank or HE) were much less accurate.
Russian tanks can have their liners replaced but it happens so infrequently that the process is not simple. It involves removing the turret from the tank to replace the liner. This can only be done in one special facility and that means putting the entire tank on a train flat car and shipping it to the facility and then shipping it back. This meant that most of the Russian tanks with worn barrel liners were useless except as machine gun-armed vehicles. That’s hardly worth the fuel and other spare parts (like the tracks) required. This is apparently why Ukrainian troops have seen few or no Russian tanks in the last few months. This means less shell fire at Ukrainian troops and Ukrainian artillery can concentrate on other targets, like Russian infantry and supply stockpiles.
The Ukrainians want Western tanks, particularly American M1s and German Leopard 2’s because they are both considered the best designed and effective tanks available. The M1 has extensive combat experience against Russian tanks and has never, so to speak, been defeated by Russian T-90, T-72 or T-55 tanks. Like the Leopard, the M1 has multiple layers of armor protections including an APS (Active Protection System) and safer storage of tank shells and propellant inside the turret. An effective fire extinguishing system can quickly deal with any type of fire. The fire control system is one of the best available, allowing the M1 to accurately fire on the move and hit an enemy tank several thousand meters distant. The United States and Germany can supply all the spare parts needed to Ukrainian users. Worn barrels on the Western tanks are easier to replace.
This may or may not be Yang Kyoungjong. Yang’s was one of the more bizarre stories to come out of World War 2.
Some people are just born cursed. While there are those whose lives seem inexplicably blessed with prosperity, comfort, and peace, others can be destined for squalor, chaos, and pain. Call it karma, luck, providence, or fate, it is tough to comprehend from our limited perspective why life is the way it is.
Sometimes the thugs can seem indestructible. Mind that trigger finger, stud.
Why do some reprehensible people die in their late 80’s after a long life of debauchery and self-abuse while some saint succumbs in their teens to cancer? In medicine, you sometimes get fatalistic about it. The sweet little grandmother strikes her head and strokes out, while the unkillable thug catches half a dozen rounds in a drug deal gone bad and leaves the hospital under his own steam the next day. Someday God will explain such stuff to me face-to-face in a way I will understand. Until then, I haven’t a clue.
A Most Unusual Tale
The German military was quite the heterogeneous mob by the end of the war.
In the peculiarly tragic life of Yang Kyoungjong, we see the curious power of fate at work. According to an interview by the esteemed historian Stephen Ambrose, there were at least four ethnic Asians captured by American forces in the opening days of the D-Day invasion. These troops purportedly did not speak German and were wearing Wehrmacht uniforms. One of these men has been identified as a Korean named Yang Kyoungjong.
Yang Kyoungjong’s story has been immortalized in film.
Before we proceed, appreciate that there is controversy surrounding this story. It was related as fact for years and was even used in an online advertisement for a real estate company in St. John’s, Newfoundland. In 2011 Yang’s story formed the basis for a South Korean movie titled My Way. However, documentary filmmakers in Korea have researched the story and subsequently cast some doubt on its veracity. Regardless, the narrative is nonetheless both compelling and plausible. Try to just enjoy the ride.
Yang Kyoungjong was first forced to serve in the Japanese Kwantung Army.
Born in Korea on March 3, 1920, Yang was a conscript in the Kwantung Army in Manchuria. Operating between 1919 and 1945, the Kwantung Army was the most prestigious command in the IJA (Imperial Japanese Army). While the Kwantung Army saw a great many battlefield successes, they were also responsible for some of the war’s most egregious atrocities. Among these was the infamous Unit 731 which performed biological warfare experiments on both captured civilians and prisoners of war.
World War 2 was a brute force battle of meat. For the Axis in particular there was always a shortage of manpower.
Manpower was always a critical component of any WW2 military campaign. The United States enjoyed vast resources of both men and raw materials for military production. The British drew from across the Commonwealth. The Germans, Japanese, and Russians harvested meat wherever it could be found and threw a uniform on it. This resulted in some peculiar loyalties.
Life in a Russian gulag was ghastly.
Yang Kyoungjong was first press-ganged into service in 1938 at age 18. The following year he was captured by Red Army troops during the Battle of Khalkhin-Gol and remanded to a forced labor camp. By 1942 the Soviet Union was in dire straits and faced the very real probability of national extinction at the hands of the Nazis. This drove Russian commanders to some desperate places.
For Yang Kyoungjong, combat seemed preferable to life in a Russian POW camp.
When you’re packed into a prison camp alongside several thousand of your mates subsisting on sawdust bread and whatever rats you can catch, most anything seems like an improvement. When the desperate Russians came looking for cannon fodder, Yang either volunteered or didn’t resist unduly. Either way, he soon found himself in a Soviet greatcoat fighting under the red banner for Mother Russia and Marxism.
Yang was captured by the Germans during the Third Battle of Kharkov.
In 1943, Yang found himself in Ukraine at the Battle of Kharkov. The Battle of Kharkov was actually four distinct battles spanning nearly two years. The first began in October of 1941 when the Germans captured the city. The last took place in late summer 1943 when the Soviets finally won it back for good. It was the Third Battle of Kharkov in February of 1943 that saw Yang captured by the Germans.
By the end of the war, the Germans were using troops from all over their conquered territories.
By now the tide was turning against the Nazis, and they were beginning to sense the mess they had gotten themselves into. With war raging on three fronts, the German High Command began harvesting the dregs for manpower. Where previously service in the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS might have been a prestigious thing that was both selective and competitive, by this point in the war if you could stand and hold a rifle you met the entrance standards. As a result, Yang Kyoungjong found himself wearing field gray in an Ost-Bataillone.
Most Osttruppen were not intended to be used in front-line applications.
These scratch units went by several titles. Osttruppen, Osteinheiten, and Ostlegionen all meant similar things. With piles of bored and starving Soviet conscripts languishing in prison camps, the Germans enlisted those they felt might be ideologically malleable into these ad hoc support units. Results were predictably mixed.
Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely
Josef Stalin was one of history’s most prominent psychopaths.
Josef Stalin was a turd. He was a relatively small man at 5 foot 5 inches tall. He was also ugly. A severe bout with smallpox as a child left him badly scarred. Stalin was directly responsible for the deaths of between 20 and 40 million people. This makes Josef Stalin one of the most prolific mass murderers in human history.
Stalin looked like an amiable grandfather. He wasn’t.
Stalin ruthlessly enforced a weird sense of justice. To be captured by the enemy in battle was frequently viewed as being tantamount to cowardice or even treason. A great many captured Soviet soldiers faced harsh imprisonment or execution upon repatriation. As a result, while most soldiers like Yang had little use for Naziism, they did find service in an Ost-bataillone preferable to the alternative.
The Germans used the Osttruppen to flesh out their ranks so reliable soldiers were available for combat roles.
Ost-Bataillones were battalion-sized units comprised of a mixture of volunteers and conscripts who were most typically posted in support roles away from the front-line fighting. This allowed the Germans to use their own troops for more serious work. The Ostlegionen were larger formations that were usually ethnically similar and comprised of multiple battalions. One of the roles for which the Germans used these foreign units was as defensive troops in fixed fortifications in fairly quiet places. In early June 1944, that is what brought Yang Kyoungjong to the placid beaches of Normandy, France.
Capture
It’s tough to get your head around just how massive the D-Day invasion was.
Operation Overlord was the most extensive amphibious invasion in human history. Given advances in intelligence, logistics, and military technology it is highly unlikely that this performance will ever be repeated on such a grandiose scale. One of the more revolutionary aspects of the invasion was the widespread use of airborne forces.
German Fallschirmjägers introduced the world to the capabilities of airborne forces in battle.
The Germans really pioneered the widespread use of paratroops. The airborne assault on Crete in 1941 was ultimately successful but only at a fearsome cost. Hitler refused to authorize any further large-scale use of parachute forces in their intended role as a result. German fallschirmjagers were subsequently used as elite light infantry for the rest of the war. The Allies, however, aggressively developed the concept of airborne vertical envelopment.
These hard young studs made life miserable for the Germans in Normandy.
Most of the 13,000 Allied paratroopers dropped on D-Day did not accomplish their specific assigned tactical objectives. Intense ground fire and chaos among the lift aircraft ensured that units were spread randomly and piecemeal across the Norman countryside. However, once these aggressive, highly-trained airborne warriors touched down they proceeded to sow chaos among German combat and support units wherever they found them.
American paratroopers captured large numbers of prisoners in the days immediately following the invasion.
One of these American paratroopers was LT Robert Brewer of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. According to the Stephen Ambrose interview, Yang was one of four Asians in Wehrmacht uniforms LT Brewer and his men captured in the immediate aftermath of the D-Day invasion. At the time it was presumed that the four were Japanese. It was later determined that Yang’s three companions were from Turkestan. Yang was processed and sent across the channel to a POW camp in Britain. From there he was further removed to a camp in the US.
The American Dream
My kids and I used to play on the site of this old WW2 POW camp outside Clinton, Mississippi.
The American South was dotted with such camps during and immediately after the war. My family and I lived in Clinton, Mississippi, while I was in medical school. The POW camp outside Clinton had long since been transformed into a sweeping grassy park, but it still retained fields of daffodils planted and cultivated by the 3,000 German and Italian POWs who were held there during the war. Most of the Clinton prisoners were members of the Afrika Korps captured in North Africa early in the war. There is a small contingent of graves in the Jackson, Mississippi, cemetery occupied by German troops who perished in captivity.
Shockingly large numbers of Axis prisoners were held in American POW camps.
Yang Kyoungjong was finally released from captivity in 1947. After such a violent and circuitous trek across all those Asian and European battlefields, Yang was purportedly none too keen to return to the nation of his birth. By the time of his release, he had already been away from home for nearly a decade.
Yang Kyoungjong was inclined to remain in the US after having such a horrible experience fighting in WW2.
Yang purportedly opted to remain in the United States after his release. He is said to have settled in Evanston, Illinois. He died there in April of 1992 at the age of 72.
Ruminations
It is in the lot of the private soldier that we find the true pathos of war.
It is easy to lose the trees for the forest when it comes to the study of war. I have a rabid addiction to military history books myself. My home sags under the weight of such. This is where I find much of the inspiration for our efforts here. My perennial challenge is finding tales of the individual soldier.
It seems to me that Yang Kyoungjong did his time as a soldier. I hope that the rest of his life was peaceful.
Book shops are dirty with tomes about Generals and campaigns. Memoirs about the movement of armies have occupied many a retired General officer in his waning years. However, what fascinates me are the tales of the regular private soldier. The humble dogface is the single entity who does most of the suffering and, in so doing, wins the wars his political leaders craft for him. In the curious tale of Yang Kyoungjong, we find the story of a normal guy caught up in some decidedly abnormal circumstances. I for one hope hope his life was ultimately warm and fulfilling.
Thanks to movies like Platoon, Americans today think of the typical U.S. soldier in Vietnam as an infantryman on jungle patrol facing death and terror daily. But the reality was somewhat different. (U.S. Army)
IN AUGUST 1970, the Army Reporter newspaper profiled some fun-loving clerks of the 25th Infantry Division in Vietnam. Working far from the fighting, these men would never earn a medal for valor, so they created their own: the Silver Paper Clip. In a ceremony brimming with irony, they bestowed the honor on one of their brethren, along with this citation:
Specialist Howard distinguished himself with conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life when he single-handedly answered over 200 telephone calls and processed in fifteen new men, exposing himself to a hail of questions. He moved from the relative safety of his desk to the P.X. where he repeatedly bought cases of soda. He organized and led his section as they swept out their hootch. Ignoring the personnel NCO, he cleaned his typewriter, picked up the mail, petted four dogs, ran off three stencils and took his malaria pill.
THANKS TO MOVIES like Platoon, Americans today think of the typical U.S. soldier in Vietnam as an infantryman on jungle patrol facing death and terror daily. But the reality is that most troops were more like Specialist Howard than Oliver Stone’s Chris Taylor. The high-tech nature of America’s war in Southeast Asia and its sophisticated logistics effort meant that some 75 percent of the 2.5 million soldiers who served there worked in supporting roles, out of danger and in relative comfort.
‘Basically there are two different wars here in Vietnam. While we are out in the field living like animals, the guy in the rear’s biggest problem is that he can receive only one television station’
Modern armies have always required mammoth support operations. But Vietnam was different. For the first time, the U.S. military turned its rearward bases into replicas of home, with many of the luxuries and consumer goods that post–World War II prosperity had lavished on America. The abundance had an unintended side effect: The uneven distribution of discomfort and danger stoked combat soldiers’ resentment of support troops, who were derided as “rear echelon motherfuckers.” REMFs and grunts may have served on the same side, but they did not serve in the same war.
AS FIGHTING in Vietnam intensified in the mid-1960s, the American war machine required enormous resources not only to subdue the enemy but also to sustain its fighting men. A legion of butchers, bakers, and ice cream makers fed the troops. Librarians shelved books in base libraries, entertainment specialists planned morale-boosting field trips and talent shows, craft-shop attendants minded the kilns and darkrooms, and lifeguards kept watch at the pools. Military-run retail outlets and bars employed even more personnel to stock the shelves, pour the drinks, book the bands, and count the slugs in the slot machines. On rear bases, an army of plumbers, electricians, and refrigerator repairmen kept the water running, the lights on, and the drinks ice cold.
Identifying REMFs on base was easy. Infantrymen returning from the field were lean and grizzled, their uniforms and boots bleached white from scuffs and sun. REMFs, meanwhile, wore fatigues that were often green and crisp with boots that retained a shine. Rich mess-hall fare and sedentary duty meant that more than a few uniforms stretched tight over paunches. Some newly arrived soldiers felt so self-conscious that they tried to distress their uniforms, especially the boots.
Most support troops worked on rear bases, many of which resembled big American cities. The largest was Long Binh Post, about 20 miles north of Saigon. Built over time for more than $130 million, Long Binh eventually had 3,500 buildings and 180 miles of road covering an area bigger than Cleveland. One colonel joked, “If we ever really got attacked, the V.C. would have to use the scheduled bus service to get around the base.”
Home to the army’s Vietnam headquarters, Long Binh was, in the words of one resident soldier, “a virtual REMF citadel.” The shooting war was far away, and soldiers stationed at the post had plenty of time on their hands. To keep them busy, military authorities provided a full slate of recreational opportunities. As of July 1971, the post boasted 81 basketball courts, 64 volleyball courts, 12 swimming pools, 8 multipurpose courts, 8 softball fields, 6 tennis courts, 5 craft shops, 3 football fields, 3 weight rooms, 3 libraries, 3 service clubs, 2 miniature golf courses, 2 handball-court complexes, a running track, an archery range, a golf driving range, a skeet range, a party area, and an amphitheater for movies and live shows.
By 1972, Long Binh Post even had a go-cart track, complete with a starting stand, a public-address system, and a pit for on-the-spot repairs.
Open mess clubs, which served food and alcohol and often featured live entertainment, abounded throughout South Vietnam. At its peak in 1969, Long Binh’s club system had 40 bars with a net worth of $1.2 million, including $270,000 in cash on hand. If soldiers didn’t like club life, Long Binh’s retail stores stocked food and alcohol to host private parties at the pools, barracks, or barbecue pits. An unofficial brothel, a “male beauty bar” with salon services, and outdoor movies rounded out Long Binh’s offerings.
Construction of new recreational facilities on Long Binh Post continued until the end of the war. As late as 1970, more than a year into troop withdrawals from Vietnam, the U.S. Army was still planning to build two 474-seat movie theaters, additional handball courts, two in-ground swimming pools with bathhouses, and a recreational lake. The military scrapped the more expensive construction projects in response to public outrage, but the post’s amenities were still expanding right through the summer of 1971.
Long Binh and other posts had retail stores that would have rivaled today’s big box outlets for their selection, if not their size. Just one of Long Binh’s P.X.s was ringing up more than $800,000 in monthly sales in late 1971, and it was not even the largest in Vietnam. These stores offered a selection of products that, in pre-Walmart days, was unlike anything most Americans had ever seen. As a reporter for a division newspaper raved about the P.X. at Camp Radcliff in the Central Highlands of Vietnam: “There are a lot of shopping centers—in fact, whole towns—back in the world where you couldn’t find snuff, anchovies, baby oil, dice, flash bulbs, radios, and steak sauce in the same store, or even in the same general area. But at Camp Radcliff you can buy almost anything you want.”
SUCH ABUNDANCE combined with the relative safety of duty in the rear to make the war itself seem like a distant concern. Writing about Da Nang Air Base in his memoir, Vietnam: The Other War, military policeman Charles Anderson reflects on this sense of isolation: “All of these comforts and services made the world of the rear a warm, insulated, womb-capsule into which the sweaty, grimy, screaming, bleeding, writhing-in-the-hot-dust thing that was the war rarely intruded.” William Upton, who served near the R&R center at Vung Tàu, told his mother upon returning home, “Most of the time you didn’t know you were in a war.”
Combat troops frequently passed through rear bases on their way to and from the States, R&R, or the hospital. These encounters left them bewildered by commanders who gave the most to those who risked the least, and resentful of noncombat troops who enjoyed relative comfort and safety.
Though U.S. Army officials denied friction between combat and support troops, front-line soldiers bristled at how their peers lived. In his memoir Nam Sense: Surviving Vietnam with the 101st Airborne, Arthur Wiknik Jr.—an infantry squad leader and veteran of the bloody assault on Hamburger Hill—seethes: “As near as I could tell, the only danger a REMF faced was from catching gonorrhea or being run down by a drunken truck driver. And the biggest hardship a REMF contended with was when a generator broke down and [his] beer got warm or there was no movie that night.”
In April 1969, 30 members of a combat infantry unit aired their grievances publicly. Writing to President Richard M. Nixon, they argued that “basically there are two different wars here in Vietnam. While we are out in the field living like animals, putting our lives on the line twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, the guy in the rear’s biggest problem is that he can receive only one television station. There is no comparison between the two….The man in the rear doesn’t know what it is like to burn a leech off his body with a cigarette; to go unbathed for months at a time…or to wake up to the sound of incoming mortar rounds and the cry of your buddy screaming, ‘Medic!’”
A year later, retired officer John H. Funston wrote to the New York Times arguing that the army should reward riflemen with extra pay for the hazards they face in the field. The idea of combat pay, he argued, had been trivialized because every soldier received it, “regardless of his rank or whether he is a rifleman being shot at or a lifeguard at a rest area swimming pool.”
SOLDIERS IN THE REAR, meanwhile, regarded combat troops with deep admiration. On his way to an overseas R&R, clerk-typist Dean Muehlberg encountered a company of infantrymen on stand-down at the out-processing center at Da Nang. “We were in awe of the Marines,” he gushed. “We didn’t speak to them or get in their way. We didn’t know their language. You sensed that after the constant threat of death, of terrible harm, nothing else scared them.”
Muehlberg wrote a memoir, REMF “War Stories,” in which he pokes fun at himself, the boring work, and the very idea that he was fighting a war. The quotation marks in the title are deliberate; his 1969 tour was so far removed from combat that his rifle actually grew mold while it sat in its rack.
Muehlberg worked in the Awards and Decorations section, where he processed recommendations for medals and decided what commendation was appropriate. “For the first month it seemed a dirty job,” he writes. “I did not feel worthy! I was sitting in relative security reading grisly, awe-inspiring accounts of the courage of my not so fortunate brothers who were out in the thick of it. And then sitting in judgment on the ‘degree’ of their courage, their deed.”
After the war, enmity between grunts and REMFs persisted in personal memoirs and, later, websites. But in some cases, grunts’ bitterness lost its edge as veterans closed ranks to face a common enemy upon returning home: public and government indifference. Those who joined protests as part of the G.I. movement to end the war and claim federal veterans benefits buried their bad feelings in order to increase their numbers and present a unified front. Thousands of REMFs marched alongside combat veterans. Antiwar veteran groups scarcely acknowledged that the divisions ever existed. To the public, all the returning soldiers were simply “Vietnam veterans.” Only the vets knew that they had served on the same side in different wars.
