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March 28 - September 27, 2024
Exhaustion, memory defects, apathy, hopelessness,
This is why “fortitude,” rather than “courage,” is the proper word to describe what is occurring here.
but the opposite of fortitude is exhaustion.
One key characteristic of a great military leader is an ability to draw from the tremendous depths of fortitude within his own well, and in doing so he is fortifying his own men by permitting them to draw from his well.
“a few men had the stuff of leadership in them, they were like rafts to which all the rest of humanity clung for support and hope.”
Depletion of the finite resource of fortitude can be seen in entire units as well as individuals.
If we understand these concepts, we begin to master the full spectrum of the responses of men in combat. If we ignore them, we do so to the detriment of the individual and to the detriment of that aggregate of individuals that we call our society, our nation, our way of life, and our world.
“I can remember,” he wrote, “whispering foolishly, ‘I’m sorry’ and then just throwing up…I threw up all over myself. It was a betrayal of what I’d been taught since a child.”
I reproached myself as a destroyer. An indescribable uneasiness came over me, I felt almost like a criminal. —Napoleonic-era British soldier
He talked freely about his experiences and about comrades who had been killed, but when I asked him about his own kills he stated that usually you couldn’t be sure who it was that did the killing.
These memories were the scabs of terrible, hidden wounds in the minds of these kind and gentle men.
My biggest fear
Numerous studies have concluded that men in combat are usually motivated to fight not by ideology or hate or fear, but by group pressures and processes involving (1) regard for their comrades, (2) respect for their leaders, (3) concern for their own reputation with both, and (4) an urge to contribute to the success of the group.[5]
This bonding is so intense that it is fear of failing these comrades that preoccupies most combatants.
The responsibilities of a combat leader represent a remarkable paradox. To be truly good at what he does, he must love his men and be bonded to them with powerful links of mutual responsibility and affection. And then he must ultimately be willing to give the orders that may kill them.
and no one blames him for the lives lost in doing his duty.
The enemy is hosed, zapped, probed, and fired on. The enemy’s humanity is denied, and he becomes a strange beast called a Kraut, Jap, Reb, Yank, dink, slant, slope, or raghead.
The dead soldier takes his misery with him, but the man who killed him must forever live and die with him.
In many ways it is simply too painful for society to address what it does when it sends its young men off to kill other young men in distant lands.
As a society, he says, we seem unable to deal with moral pain or guilt. Instead it is treated as a neurosis or a pathology, “something to escape rather than something to learn from, a disease rather than—as it may well be for the vets—an appropriate if painful response to the past.”
from a distance you don’t look anything like a friend. From a distance, I can deny your humanity; and from a distance, I cannot hear your screams.
But when most people think of those who bombed Hamburg or Hiroshima, there is no feeling of disgust for the deed, certainly not the intensity of disgust felt for Nazi executioners.
Historical accounts indicate that the pilot of the aircraft that made the weather reconnaissance for the Enola Gay had a series of disciplinary and criminal problems before the bombing, and it was his continued problems after leaving the service that formed the sole basis of the popular myth of suicide and mental problems among these crews.
One marine sniper told D. J. Truby “you don’t like to hit ordinary troops, because they’re usually scared draftees or worse…. The
guys to shoot are big brass.”
When soldiers do kill the enemy they appear to go through a series of emotional stages. The actual kill is usually described as being reflexive or automatic. Immediately after the kill the soldier goes through a period of euphoria and elation, which is usually followed by a period of guilt and remorse.[4]
The vast majority of personal kills and the resultant trauma occur at this range.
Usually this euphoria stage is almost instantly overwhelmed by the guilt stage as the soldier is faced with the undeniable evidence of what he has done, and the guilt stage
is often so strong as to result in physical revulsion and vomiting.
It was a betrayal of what I’d been taught since a child.
“it is a touching fact that men, dying in
battle, often call upon their mothers. I have heard them do so in five languages.”
the killer finds himself in the position of comforting his victim in his last moments.
We each had had a few drags and that hard look had left his eyes before he died.[5]
It was a truce, cease-fire, gentleman’s agreement or a deal…. The soldier sank back into the darkness and Willis stumbled on.
To pierce is to penetrate, while to slash is to sidestep or deny the objective of piercing into the enemy’s essence.
the resistance to killing with the bayonet is equal only to the enemy’s horror at having this done to him.
“one side or the other usually recalls an urgent appointment elsewhere before bayonets cross.”
And in his superb study of the American Civil War, Griffith also notes many instances in which the most effective firing and killing occurred when the enemy had begun to flee the field.
The essence of the whole physical distance spectrum may simply revolve around the degree to which the killer can see the face of the victim.
The U.S. Army, along with armies in many other nations, trains its Rangers and Green Berets to execute a knife kill from the rear
plunging the knife through the lower back and into the kidney.
resulting in an extremely silent kill.
This option, though psychologically and culturally more desirable (it is a slashing rather than a thrusting blow), has far less potential for silence, since an improperly slit throat is capable of making considerable noise and holding a hand over someone’s mouth is not always an easy thing to do.
But here again we see the natural preference for a slashing blow over a more effective thrusting or penetrating blow.
it was his one kill with a knife that caused him to have nightmares long after the war was over.
As we will observe when we study the process by which the U.S. Army raised its firing rates from 15 to 20 percent in World War II to 90 to 95 percent in Vietnam, this procedure of precisely rehearsing and mimicking a killing action is an excellent way of ensuring that the individual is capable of performing the act in combat.
Many societies have long recognized the existence of this twisted region in which battle, like sex, is a milestone in adolescent masculinity.
If this kind of obedience could be obtained with a lab coat and a clipboard by an authority figure who has been known for only a few minutes, how much more would the trappings of military authority and months of bonding accomplish?
They found that the individuals who had no combat experience assumed that “being fired upon” would be the critical factor in making them fire. However, veterans listed “being told to fire” as the most critical factor.
If the individual is bonded with his comrades, and if he is with “his” group, then the probability that the individual will participate in killing is significantly increased.
