Several months later these men sprinted into the artillery and machine-gun fire that was plowing up the beaches of Normandy, overran the German positions, and eventually went on to liberate Paris. Combat losses over the course of those two months were around 60 percent, and even higher for officers. What interested sociologists at the Research Branch, however, were non-combat losses—men who went mad from trauma and fear. For every four men felled by bullets there was, on average, one removed from the battlefield for psychological reasons.
