How soldiers deal with the job of killing

[Ken White]

Fascinating and horrifying stuff. How does one prepare young officers to exert the authority to bring matters back under control when they boil over (which they will and his sergeant is out there slitting throats and cutting ears off with the rest of them)?

Rank is generally a stabilizer but not always. There are also examples of Officers ordering, suggesting or implying such actions are acceptable. Or recall the notorious example of young LT Calley at My Lai in Viet Nam who participated in the shootings and whose Platoon Sergeant tried unsuccessfully to stop him and the men (personally, I'd have buttstroked the LT but that's just me... )...

...It seems that our job in this regard (30 years ago) was so much easier when we knew what was right and what was wrong (as taught by our mothers and not some military instruction) and did not have the type of politically imposed RoE soldiers have to live with today.

Quite true...

I agree BTW, with your 5% and think the percentage who can kill without hesitation and no enjoyment is really about 80 and of those at least 50%, probably most, will suffer little to no remorse or psychological damage. I suspect the total of those severely traumatized by actually killing is smaller than the number traumatized by seeing death and destruction but who have not killed or had to do so as I believe that action seems to perform a balancing act of sorts on the old psyche. I also believe both numbers combined will in truth average less than 10% of troops committed (METT-TC dependent, as always, obviously intensity of combat and / or length of time committed will have an effect... ).

I'd like, BTW, to know how much of that 'psychological damage' is induced by those who think there just must be some there and keep probing or pushing until some erupts...

(Those guesstimates are applicable to a generation now past, in or approaching their 60s but I suspect that the numbers are valid for the current generations as well.)

[JMA]

Rank is generally a stabilizer but not always. There are also examples of Officers ordering, suggesting or implying such actions are acceptable. Or recall the notorious example of young LT Calley at My Lai in Viet Nam who participated in the shootings and whose Platoon Sergeant tried unsuccessfully to stop him and the men (personally, I'd have buttstroked the LT but that's just me... )

I suggest just as officer training should cater for a worst case scenario so should (senior) NCO training cater for a situation when the officer loses it.

Buttstroke seems like the correct response under those circumstances to me. But that is when he has already crossed the line, you want to jerk his chain before he does though. I suggest the trick is to know when things are starting to come to the boil and defuse it then. I am reminded of the classic sergeant comment of "leave this to me Sir, I'll take it from here... while you report in by radio".

My experience tells me that a fatal combination is created when you end up with captures/wounded in a contact where you have taken casualties. A should have known better (for the officer and the sergeant) example was own forces took a casualty who was CASEVACED and a capture was put with the call-sign who had taken the casualty for the ride home as they had a spare seat now. Comes over the radio that the troopie did not make it. According to the corporal shortly thereafter the capture attempted to escape from the chopper flying at 80 knots at tree top level and disappeared into the trees.

Also the two recent courts-marshall of the Brits reported in the press relating to "assualt" of prisoners involved these prisoners being guarded by troopies from the contact (or being accessible to them) in which he was taken captive when recovered to base. The moral of that story is that even if you get a cook to guard him you need to put some distance between the capture and the troopies who bagged him. Officers and sergeants should be taught this stuff.

Here's a "what would you do" question for an officers or Snr NCOs course:

"Your platoon responds to support a call-sign reporting a contact. They report they have pulled back but can't account for one troopie. With the arrival of the choppers the enemy breaks contact and your platoon sweeps forward to locate the missing troopie. You find the body stripped of kit and mutilated (genitals removed) and with the amount of blood from the wound it was probably done when he was still alive. One of your troopies recognises the dead troopie as a friend from school days who he grew up with. At the same time your flank section/squad reports successful contact with enemy with a mix of enemy kills and captures."

What must you as platoon commander/platoon sergeant anticipate in terms of possible reprisal actions and how would you act to prevent the situation getting out of control?

Note: actual situation, mutilation post mortem (due to lack of bleeding), the company despite numerous contacts produced no captured enemy (on that day nor) for about the next month.

[JMA]

I agree BTW, with your 5% and think the percentage who can kill without hesitation and no enjoyment is really about 80 and of those at least 50%, probably most, will suffer little to no remorse or psychological damage. I suspect the total of those severely traumatized by actually killing is smaller than the number traumatized by seeing death and destruction but who have not killed or had to do so as I believe that action seems to perform a balancing act of sorts on the old psyche. I also believe both numbers combined will in truth average less than 10% of troops committed (METT-TC dependent, as always, obviously intensity of combat and / or length of time committed will have an effect... ).

Good, we agree on the 5% and I guess the give-a-way is their "eyes". You can see it in their eyes.

Again among this 5% there are there is a scale (from 1-10) from the nut case psychopath through to those who get a mild buzz from killing. The "mild buzz" troopies can be tolerated.

Yes, know of a doctor (Brit) who had to deal with a flood of very badly wounded soldiers and has never quite got over it. Then there was the pilot who arrived to carry out a BDA (bomb damage assessment) and just could not handle seeing the bits and pieces (bodyparts) lying around. The (18-19 year old) troopies seemed to take it in their stride.

A total of those who are traumatised by killing or witnessing the destruction and those who enjoy it being under 10%, I agree.

My war was a series of skirmishes rather than one or two really heavy set piece battles. "Throwing the dice" almost daily for months on end kind of wore one down but nowhere as traumatic as a Stalingrad or Okinawa. Maybe that's why the vast majority came through unscathed psychologically.

I'd like, BTW, to know how much of that 'psychological damage' is induced by those who think there just must be some there and keep probing or pushing until some erupts...

Yes, there seems to be an increasing assumption that if you have been in combat you must be screwed up to some extent. I'll agree with them only when they start to dish out healthy disability payments and pensions

(Those guesstimates are applicable to a generation now past, in or approaching their 60s but I suspect that the numbers are valid for the current generations as well.)

Agreed

[JMA]

Yesterday's part (2 of 3) Afghanistan: The Battle for Helmand by Mark Urban was aired on BBC2.
Can be found here in three segments:

1 of 3

2 of 3

3 of 3

enjoy

[JMA]

Here are the other two in the Our War series:

Our War : The Invisible Enemy

This clown (who filmed this) gives officers a bad name.

Our War: Caught in the Crossfire

Interesting comments on RoE

[JMA]

Finally got around to Section 1 of Grossman's book.

Grossman completes the first section as follows:

There can be no doubt that this resistance to killing one’s fellow man is there and that it exists as a result of a powerful combination of instinctive, rational, environmental, hereditary, cultural, and social factors.

Well yes, but does this resistance actually translate into refusing to kill under any circumstances?

There is surely a scale into which all people fall in this regard?

Say from a '10' where he will actively seek out opportunities to kill (the psychopath) to the '0' who will rather die himself than kill a human.

Its (IMHO) a bit like sex where the first attempt is hesitant/tentative/uncertain but it gets easier with experience.

So the statement in Grossman's book is meaningless other than to record that there will be a small percentage of soldiers who resist killing to the extent that they place their own life and those of their comrades at risk. I suggest that the majority of these will find a way to get themselves out of a combat role and thus avoid such a scenario developing.

There are of course a number of "inputs" which help to reduce this resistance to kill. For example the demonisation of the enemy through race/tribal/religious based propaganda and/or through the actions of the enemy (typically atrocities) to the extent where soldiers begin to believe that to kill them would be doing a service to humanity.

I will skip the non-firer aspect as this has been tainted by the SLA Marshall controversy.

[jmm99]

You might want to take a look at Lonnie Athens (Wiki - brief and incomplete outline of his theory of violence) - focused first on his research of violent criminals in American prisons. His general conclusion is that, to understand violence, experience is a more important factor than logic, ideology or genetics.

Athens' theory has been considered by Richard Rhodes - generally in Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist (a brief review of Rhodes' book - but explaining Athens' four stages in a nutshell); and specifically with respect to the SS Einsatzgruppen (in one chapter of Masters of Death).

In both books, Rhodes concludes:

"He now firmly resolves to attack people physically with the serious intention of gravely harming or even killing them for the slightest or no provocation whatsoever. . . . He has suddenly been emboldened and made venomous at the same time. . . . The subject is ready to attack people physically with the serious intention of gravely harming or killing them with minimal or less than minimal provocation on their part." Says Rhodes, "that is, he is ready to become an ultraviolent criminal."

That is a valid comment re: genocides, serial killers, multiple killers and the "mind of the murderer" in general. As to genocides and Athens' theory, see Dimensions of Genocide: The Circumplex Model Meets Violentization Theory, by Mark A. Winton (2008, case study of Rwanda).

The bottom line is that Athens' theory generally holds up (although as Winton points out, it is non-exclusive and ties in with other approaches - including some of Grossman[*]) with respect to "bad guys".

However, if it is truly a "general theory", it should also hold up for "good guys" - with adjustments in terminology. Athens gets into that in Violent Encounters: Violent Engagements, Skirmishes, and Tiffs (Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 2005), in his Conclusion:

CONCLUSION

The interaction between perpetrators and victims when violent crimes are either attempted or completed can be best understood if it is seen as arising during social acts—activities that require the voluntary or involuntary participation of at least two parties for their completion. With the obvious exception of suicide, all violent crimes constitute social acts because there must be at least two parties for them to be committed—a perpetrator and a victim. Lawful violent acts constitute social acts just as much as unlawful violent acts do. In the cases of excused and justifiable homicides, as well as excused and justifiable batteries, there must also be at least two parties—a perpetrator and a victim. The same is also true in intergroup violent criminal and noncriminal violent action, except that in this case, the victims and perpetrators are collectivities rather than individuals. In collective social acts, it is groups rather than individuals who perform the separate roles, communicate through their spokespersons, assume each others’ attitudes, and try to work out a congruent social object or plan of action for carrying out the larger social act in which they are the acting agents (Blumer 1966, 540; 1969, 52, 55-56; 1981, 148).

As in the case of individual social acts, there are two kinds of collective social acts: cooperative and conflictive. Unlike in cooperative social acts, in conflictive ones, the acting agents, no matter whether they are individuals or groups, cannot form a congruent social object or plan of action because they cannot agree on who should perform the superordinate and subordinate roles in carrying out the social act. Unsurprisingly, violent encounters do not arise during individual or collective cooperative social acts but instead during conflictive ones. It may be speculated that the violent encounters that emerge during either individual or collective conflictive social acts fall into the same three basic subtypes that differ in terms of the number of the five stages of a violence encounter that are completed: (1) role claiming, (2) role rejection, (3) role sparring, (4) role enforcement, and (5) role determination. During a violence engagement, all five stages must be completed; during violent skirmishes, only the first four of these stages must be completed; and during violent tiffs, only the first three must be completed. Thus, despite the differences in legal status between lawful and unlawful violence and between individual and collective acting units, the grounded theory of violent criminal social acts that individuals perpetrate described here could be potentially applied to violent social acts that are both lawful and unlawful and that both groups and individuals perpetrate and, thereby, to all violent social action.

Before this extrapolation can be safely made, however, appropriate amendments would undoubtedly have to be made to the theory. Any general theory of violent social actswould have to take into account the added complexity that an increase in scale in the social act’s acting units would introduce into the proposed explanation (Blumer 1981, 148-149). Undoubtedly, the nature and size of the groups involved in a dominance encounter could significantly affect the actual social practices at work during the different stages.

As Blumer (1959, 129-30) pointedly observes, large and small groups must utilize different social mechanisms to perform their roles or “mobilize for action” in social acts:

“A. . . reflection of the collective factor in the case of large groups is the organization on which they must rely when mobilizing for action. A small group uses confined, simple and direct machinery. Corporate action in a large group requires the articulation of more units which are also likely to be more diverse, more removed from each other, and related through bridging links. . . . The mobilization of this extended, diversified, and indirectly connected organization requires forms of leadership, coordination, and control which again differ from those in small groups.”

Of course, a general theory of violent social action also could not ignore the state’s approval or disapproval of the use of violence. Obviously, this is a factor that could also significantly affect both individual and collective acting units’ performance of their roles in violent social acts. Thus, future research would be needed to determine the exact nature of the amendments that would need to be made in each of the stages through which violent engagements, skirmishes, and tiffs pass to accommodate all violent social acts rather than only the criminal ones that individuals commit.

--------------------------
[*] I've read both of Grossman's books (On Combat and On Killing) - many parts of them more than once, since they obviously relate to actions that are in some cases "war crimes" and in other cases not. I believe Athens' theory is consistent with much of Gerossman's factual material - and also ties in with current training theories and practices for military and police.

Regards

Mike

[JMA]

You might want to take a look at Lonnie Athens (Wiki - brief and incomplete outline of his theory of violence) - focused first on his research of violent criminals in American prisons. His general conclusion is that, to understand violence, experience is a more important factor than logic, ideology or genetics.

Athens' theory has been considered by Richard Rhodes - generally in Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist (a brief review of Rhodes' book - but explaining Athens' four stages in a nutshell); and specifically with respect to the SS Einsatzgruppen (in one chapter of Masters of Death).

In both books, Rhodes concludes:

That is a valid comment re: genocides, serial killers, multiple killers and the "mind of the murderer" in general. As to genocides and Athens' theory, see Dimensions of Genocide: The Circumplex Model Meets Violentization Theory, by Mark A. Winton (2008, case study of Rwanda).

The bottom line is that Athens' theory generally holds up (although as Winton points out, it is non-exclusive and ties in with other approaches - including some of Grossman[*]) with respect to "bad guys".

However, if it is truly a "general theory", it should also hold up for "good guys" - with adjustments in terminology. Athens gets into that in Violent Encounters: Violent Engagements, Skirmishes, and Tiffs (Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 2005), in his Conclusion:

--------------------------
[*] I've read both of Grossman's books (On Combat and On Killing) - many parts of them more than once, since they obviously relate to actions that are in some cases "war crimes" and in other cases not. I believe Athens' theory is consistent with much of Gerossman's factual material - and also ties in with current training theories and practices for military and police.

Regards

Mike

Thanks for posting that as I had not looked at the matter from that direction before. That being from the direction of those entering the service having already killed or needing little provocation to unleash vicious violence (and here I speak of gang members and the like). In a war time situation these people may in fact be drawn to the military in the hope of finding themselves in a position to kill (this would include your average psychopath). These people tend to gravitate towards each other and when they achieve critical mass it is perhaps when the atrocities and massacres happen. (Grossman believes they tend to gravitate to Special Forces).

It would be helpful if these people could be identified in advance (during recruit training) and either got rid of or consciously keep separate. (I must speak to those I served with who were involved with recruit training in this regard).

My approach had been from the point of departure of a middle class boy who grew up in a very non-violent environment and assumed that the vast majority would need some conditioning and motivation to kill in combat. I am correct in that but ignored the dangerous minority who need very little if any provocation to kill. So thank you or adding another dimension to my thinking on this.

Back to Grossman and Section One of his book.

I remain in disagreement with his position that the majority of soldiers will either be non-firers in combat and/or refuse to kill the enemy and as such do not believe that this should be taught as the default position to officer cadets.

I said in post earlier post that killing becomes easier with repetition and notice the following in your Athen's source:

"Prisoner Jean-Baptiste described his first kill.
The crowd had grown. I seized the machete, I struck a first blow. When I
saw the blood bubble up, I jumped back a step. Someone blocked me from
behind and shoved me forward by both elbows. I closed my eyes in the
brouhaha and I delivered a second blow like the first. It was done, people
approved, they were satisfied and moved away. I drew back…Later on we
got used to killing without so much dodging around. (Hatzfeld, 2003, p.
23)"

and

" The killers described becoming crueler with time. They also described that
there were no negative consequences for killing and that there might be
negative consequences for failing to kill."

It is the second part that worries me. I noted the clinical lack of emotion in the killing process among the troopies (some 18-19 year olds) with the repetition. Scary... the more I think about it.