Quote:
Originally Posted by Abbott Shaull
Another good point. I would also point out that if you were capture in Pact mark vehicle by pact force regardless if you hadn't violated the GC, you would more likely be shot as spies on the spot regardless of the uniform you were wearing at any time of the war.
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Not legally. Of course, as anyone but LWNJ (and maybe RWNJ's too, for all I know), know, the GC is meant only to reduce the amount of nastiness and brutality in war, it makes no pretence at all re preventing it.
And there are all sorts of wrinkles to it and, as well, national interpretations of the same passage(s) vary (often considerably).
Still, there is nothing that would allow you to shoot enemy combatants out of hand if they were merely captured driving/as passengers in one of your vehicles ... if that is all they were doing.
If they were in your uniform, not theirs, then, yes, you might be able to treat them as spies (who also are not to be merely shot out of hand) ... but, and this is where it gets interesting, merely wearing items of your uniform does not
automatically mean they are breaking the terms of the GC! The wrinkle (and this applies to militia and reservists who have not had time, or whom the relevant government hasn't had the uniforms on hand at the time they were raised) is that if they wear some 'identifying mark' that is 'visible at a distance' ... an armband or brassard most commonly, but the US manual on the Laws of Land Warfare (available online, and worth a read) indicates that even wearing a helmet and/or carrying a military weapon would probably qualify as an 'identifying mark'.
And note that 'visible at a distance' is really
potentially visible, there's no requirement that you make your presence known and point out your 'identifying mark' ...
Unless, of course, you are deliberately running a false flag operation like Skorzeny's commandos in the Battle of the Bulge.
Which is not what is implied.
And, even then, even in one of your vehicles still in your markings, as long as the crew clearly indicates their nationality the instant before opening fire - well, that's a legitimate ruse du guerre going back to at least the C18th, and recognised as such even back then by all major European powers and included in the various Hague Conventions.
But, really, read the GC, the commentaries on it (at the ICRC website, though they have reorganised it recently[ish] and they're somewhat harder to find) and the US FM on the Laws of Land Warfare (an item by item explanation of what the US believes the various elements of the GC mean) and the British Army's JSP 383 Manual on the Law of Armed Conflict for
their take on things.
Phil