Military history, irregular warfare, scams, and formative experiences

Some recent conversations at my website, which I have much enjoyed, have given rise to the following reflections:

A Canadian military veteran who has had a strong and beneficial influence on my website in years past (and who has a strong influence even now) is the late Phil Gray. If you click on the link in the previous sentence, you will come across many posts associated with a message that he originally sent me by email.

As well, I’ve written extensively about the wartime work of William Stephenson and related topics such as the Special Operations Executive and irregular warfare.

I began to write about these topics because I had been thinking, since the 1970s, of comments by a woman, whom I have met on a number of occasions over the years, who had worked with William Stephenson during the Second World War.

Formative experiences

Also among my recent interests is a focus on details that are concerned with formative experiences as they relate to history, in particular under – but not limited to – conditions where accurate biographical details about a person may be lacking.

The fact that a larger life-context is equally as important as a person’s biography is among the more significant insights (insights like assumptions being subject to error, of course) that have crept up on me in all of my years of thinking, reading, blogging, and reflecting about what the concept of personhood entails.