Talk:Sidney Godley

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Contradictions

This article seems to contradict itself (and the article on Dease, as well) to a certain extent. It claims that both Dease and Godley were "manning the machine gun", but in the citation, it sounds a lot more like Dease was an officer directing others to man the gun, which would be in line with officers duties at the time. It also says in the text that he manned the gun for "two hours", which could mean that he manned the gun for some time before volunteering to stay and hold the Germans off (or that he managed to single-handedly hold the Germans off for two hours). But the citation reads

  "In response to an inquiry whether anyone else knew how to operate the guns Private Godley came forward. He cleared the emplacement under heavy fire and brought the gun into action. But he had not been firing long before the gun was hit and put completely out of action. The water jackets of both guns were riddled with bullets, so that they were no longer of any use. Godley himself was badly wounded and later fell into the hands of the Germans."

Perhaps "two hours" is "not long", but it seems a pretty good chunk of time to me. To me it seems to imply that shortly before ordering the withdrawal, Dease ordered him to clear out the dead and man the gun. He kept up fire for a short time after the rest withdrew, but being the only remaining target, he was quickly wounded and the guns damaged. That doesn't add up to manning the gun side-by-side with his officer for an hour or so, and then volunteering to stay behind. Also curious how it clearly states "the water jackets of both guns were riddle with bullets", clearly implying more than one gun. Must be that the producers at the BBC missed that sentence when they were writing the script for Episode 1 of "Our World War", which depicts a handful of plucky Royal Fusiliers at Mons, with a couple rifles and a single machine gun, holding off a whole Battalion of faceless German henchmen armed with a half dozen machine guns and a field piece. Who ever would have expected exaggeration from the television industry?

Also personally curious, one of those little mysteries that can never be answered, whether he really volunteered for a suicide mission like that, or if his officer ordered him to, and then told everyone that he had volunteered, expecting that he was dead by that time. Later, upon discovering he'd won the VC, he could hardly tell everyone that he didn't actually want to be there at all, and only stayed because he was given a direct order. The world will never know; it's not like it would really be any less brave of him, whether he volunteered or was following orders, he stayed behind and fought until knocked out. That's bravery no matter what the details are..45Colt 05:13, 19 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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