On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society

by Dave Grossman

The prisoners were unarmed, impotent, and strangely at peace with their lot in life. They had no personal capacity or responsibility to kill, and they had no reason to believe that the incoming artillery or bombs were a personal matter. The guards, on the other hand, took the matter as a personal affront. They still had a capacity and a responsibility to fight, and they were faced with the irrefutable evidence that someone was intent on killing them and that they had a responsibility to do likewise. The psychiatric casualties among the guards—as among most other soldiers in the same circumstances—represented an accepted method of escape from the unbearable responsibility inherent in their roles as soldiers.