Combat is such an urgent business, however, that most men simply defer the psychological issues until later. “A tired, cold, muddy rifleman goes forward with the bitter dryness of fear in his mouth into the mortar bursts and machine-gun fire of a determined enemy,” Stouffer wrote in The American Soldier. “A tremendous psychological mobilization is necessary to make an individual do this, not just once but many times. In combat, surely, if anywhere, we should be able to observe behavioral determinants of great significance.”
