mustangdriver wrote:
Just because it’s not written in a government form (something I feel they would have been pretty sensitive about in a case like this) doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Even today loved ones back home don’t hear the exact details of how a loved one passed unless someone who was there tells them the exact details.
So the discussion of “If there’s no written government form, or photo, it doesn’t exist”.
Did the B-25 “Ruptured Duck” have nose art? There’s no photo. No government form. Just a few guys that said it was there and describe it. But do you believe it was there?
I think it's important to state that lack of evidence is not evidence. This happens too much. Neither are we suggesting that we shouldn't believe what our vets say. Just that we need to be careful relying on anecdotal recollections, even if they are by highly-experienced or respected witnesses. And multiple recollections of the same thing are also often proven to be incorrect because on delving deeper we find that a single witness will have recounted the same tale to multiple recipients, who retrospectively become multiple witnesses.
So it's very important that we don't turn this round and try to create a story along the lines of "this would not have been officially recorded". As with Mark, I've seen very graphic photos in accident reports and graphic details in other primary-source data. So it's a spurious argument that things must have been so on the grounds that they were "too sensitive" to record. The evidence in many examples of primary sources show this to be untrue.
Again I'll re-state that a lack of evidence is not evidence.