Why would Walter Silvester lie?
Dear John,
I have a problem with a story that appeared in P & I on 03/11 by Val Noone entitled “Fake news, Melbourne 1966:” about Pallottine Priest Father Walter Silvester.
My problem is this: my wife’s first husband was a former Pallottine Priest and was a close friend of Silvester’s. He says Silvester was reluctant to talk about his U-Boat experiences but he did in private conversations tell him the story about them, including his version of saving the Russian sailors. He believes strongly that Silvester would not have lied to him as a close friend and that he had no reason to.
For this reason I have studied the P & I piece closely and I cannot find anything in it that definitively shows Silvester’s story is untrue. It is full of alleged circumstantial evidence capable of other interpretations, and much wild speculation.
Take Silvester’s war record. Noone acknowledges “the record is incomplete”. This means it is inconclusive. It doesn’t say he did serve on a U-Boat and it doesn’t say he didn’t. In particular, it doesn’t mention any alleged failure to follow orders. Silvester’s story is that he was to be executed but the Admiral in charge of U-Boats protested that he couldn’t afford to lose any more U-Boat Captains so he was let off on condition he then went on a very dangerous mission. This is not the kind of episode that the German command would want on record, so it is not surprising that it is not mentioned in the official documents. This does not prove the incident took place, but it does explain why, even if it did, that there is no reference to it in official records.
Another piece of alleged evidence is a agenda item in notes towards his eventual life story which reads “Correct errors in Herald story”. This is assumed, without evidence, to mean he intended to assert that the events described in the Herald story did not take place. But if this was the case that note would have said “Correct the Herald story”. The fact that it says “Correct errors in the Herald story” seems to indicated that he accepted that the general gist of the story was true but there were some factual errors in it that he wanted to correct.
Thirdly, much is made of the fact that the “final draft completed after Silvester’s death” deals with his war service in a single sentence: “I served in the German Navy from 1939 to 1945.” But again, this neither confirms nor denies the U-Boat story, and it is consistent with my informant’s claim that he was reluctant to talk about it, and with the original Herald article’s author’s statement that “He took some persuading but we managed to get him to tell us about it last night”. Is it possible Tipping bullied him into telling it late at night? How reliable would it be?
Why would Silvester lie about something like this. Noone’s speculation that the whole long complicated narrative was invented by Silvester in order to “promote love and forgiveness” is pretty lame and not consistent with what we know about the man.
So I think you need to seriously consider the possibility that P & I has seriously defamed a dead man who is not able to defend himself.
If I’ve missed something, let me know, but as it stands at the moment I can’t believe Silvester was capable of the alleged deceit. What was in it for him?
Best wishes,
And keep up the good work with P & I. The rest of it is great!
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