画像引用：WikiLeaks soldier’s court-martial wrestles online evidence ru
http://s1.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20130625&t=2&i=744783036&w=644&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&sq=&r=CBRE95O1TN000
３月４日の英文添削「日本語での解釈例」への挑戦として以下のものを書いてみました。講師のどなたかに添削して頂き結果を後日投稿します。これを機会によい英文が書けるようになりたいと思います。
A tail gunner was being court-martialed. He had committed a serious military regulations violation. His duty was to counterattack the enemy airplanes coming from behind. In a few years, it would have become possible for a pilot to shoot the enemies behind him while looking straight ahead, but in his age they were still in the primitive stage that the pilot took care of the enemy planes ahead, and the tail gunner, sitting at the seat set up at the rear of the plane, was to shoot the enemy planes behind.
“What did you hear in your headset?” demanded a superior officer.
“Well,” replied the airman, “I heard my squadron leader holler, ‘Enemy planes at 5 o’clock!'”
This meant that he had correctly heard the order. To shed light on the contradiction between this fact and his unaccountable behavior thereafter, another officer persisted, “What action did you take?”
“Why, sir,” replied the gunner, “I just sat back and waited. It was only 4:30.”
It was this moment that the officers finally found the reason of the gunner’s unaccountable behavior. They now knew that he had thought that the enemy planes were coming at 5 o’clock, and that he didn’t act immediately because it was still 4:30. This was a civilian’s attitude. In the military, 5 o’clock was a clock position and it meant 30 degrees to the right from right behind. For the tail gunner who was facing the behind, it was 30 degrees to the left from right ahead. His duty had been to shoot the enemy planes in that direction immediately.
He was now being court-martialed because he hadn’t followed the order from the leader. It turned out that it was not because he couldn’t hear the order. Nor was it because he got mixed up with left and right, and he was looking at the wrong direction. It was because he hadn’t learned the basic military language to understand the order. Furthermore, it was now obvious that he didn’t understand why he was being court-martialed in the first place.
