| Combat veterans often don't like to talk about their
fighting experiences. They do not wish to boast, but also do not wish to relive
their feelings of disgust and shame. They know that the most common oaths
uttered are not ‘Charge!’ or ‘On, Wisconsin!’ or ‘I have not yet begun
to fight!’ or any of those rallying cries of legend. When young men die on the
battlefield, writes author and World War II combat vet Paul Fussell, the cry
heard most often is:
‘Mother!’
The men of the Third Division don't believe that will happen to them.
They are young, strong and
eager.
Judging from history, their enthusiasm will last right
up to the moment someone shoots back and if it‘s intense, most will bravely do
their duty, but many will curl up into the fetal position or wet
themselves.
If they see as much combat as their grandfathers in
World War II did,
they will, with time,
become jaded,
ground down
and unwilling.
A 1943 survey asked frontline troops how they felt
about ‘getting back into actual battle.’ Less than 1 percent wanted to do it
any time soon. Among Silver Star winners, almost
none wanted to go back. (The Silver
Star is the second highest award for valour -- the Congressional Medal of Honor
is the highest award, but it is often made posthumous, making it hard to ask
them.)
In another study of a division that saw heavy fighting in
World War II, a quarter of the soldiers admitted they had been so scared that
they vomited.
Almost a quarter lost control of their bowels.
Ten percent urinated in their pants.
[Dry mouth and gagging are common symptoms of fear, a
problem for officers who try to shout orders under fire and, instead, squeak]
As the U.S. military girds for war today, shipping tons of
arms and ammunition, thousands of tanks and planes and artillery pieces to
jumping-off points around Iraq, commanders must prepare themselves and their men
for the hardest part of war: overcoming fear.
In an earlier age, commanders killed shirkers and used
alcohol to stiffen spines.
As military historian John Keegan has noted, at
Agincourt in the 15th century, at Waterloo in the 19th century, at the Somme in
the 20th, many soldiers went into battle "less than sober, if not fighting
drunk.
‘Modern American generals must rely on less
crude tools. [Alcohol is forbidden on warships and at forward bases of the U.S.
military, though soldiers seem to be able to get their hands on liquor,
sometimes in mail deliveries from home.] Denial and stoicism, the traditional
warrior virtues, may work for some gung-ho types - Marines, fighter pilots,
paratroopers, the Navy SEALs and Green Berets - but the modern grunt misses his
MTV. And even a valorous medal winner can come home a
post-traumatic-stress-disorder wife beater.
It has long been recognized that men fight, not for God
or country, but out of fear -
fear of being killed
and fear of showing fear.
| The
great combat historian of World War II, S.L.A. Marshall, wrote that fear
affects all men, even the most highly motivated; that no more than a
quarter of the men actually fired their weapons on the battlefield.
Religious scruples against killing was one reason.
A bigger factor was
shock. |
Some men break immediately under fire. Others take
longer. A few, maybe 2 percent, are true war lovers, but they are also deemed
psychopaths driven mad by the stress of combat.
Army psychiatrists in World War II found that every man had an absolute limit of
psychic endurance, at most about 60 days of continuous combat or an aggregate of
200 to 240 days.
Leading men into battle requires more than daring
cliches and a strong jaw. Most presidents, post-Vietnam, have been deeply reluctant to see any soldier
come home in a body bag. For example, President Clinton pulled troops out of Somalia in 1993
right after the bloody fight depicted in "Black Hawk Down."
Determined to show U.S. resolve, faced with a foe armed
with WMD, President Bush seems more willing to run the risk of casualties.
Bush might even be eager to show the world that he is no Clinton.
A war against Iraq, if it comes, will be much shorter -
probably. Americans have become accustomed to one-sided wars with low American
casualties. U.S. forces will again roll over Iraqi opposition - maybe. U.S.
soldiers will be better protected than earlier combatants and kill the enemy
from greater distances - usually.
Then again, the Third Division could find itself
fighting house to house in a city swathed in toxic gas.
‘Train the way you fight, fight the way you train’
is the mantra of the armed services.
"Chesty" Puller, Marine Corp hero of World
War II and Korea, believed there is no substitute for the training given by real
combat. His point is valid. The
urban-fighting drills of the Third I.D. feel a little unreal, staged more for
the CNN cameras perhaps than as preparation for a real fight. Highly trained
paratroopers or commandos may be more likely to do any close-in urban street
fighting in Iraq.
The Third is a mechanized division, depending heavily
on tanks that fight at long range. "You can shoot and hit at very long
distances," says Sgt. Maj. Dennis Oggs, a battalion tank commander. ‘You
feel protected.’
Living with death requires a certain mind-set. Even buttoned up in their airtight, steel-plated
rolling fortresses, tankers have reason to be afraid. The capacity to shoot at
unseen ‘over the horizon’ targets makes U.S. forces especially vulnerable to
killing one another.
The military is constantly trying to cut down on
‘friendly fire’ incidents, all war, including high-tech war, rarely goes as
planned. During one recent exercise in the Kuwaiti desert, the Third I.D.'s
brand-new computerized system for tracking friendly forces blinkered out.
Pilots,
especially marine pilots,
are an insular warrior caste.
No one must deal with fear on a more regular - indeed,
daily - basis than carrier-based pilots. Taking off and landing a wind-tossed
warplane on a pitching deck in the dead of night - night after night - requires
a suspension of normal human reactions.
Death and the enemy are to be mocked, often in crudely
psychosexual terms. The all-male Rattlers refer to Iraq as ‘the Box.’ (Naval
aviators, more politically correct than the Marines because women serve as
aviators too, avoid sexual connotations by referring to Iraq as ‘the
Container.’]
The Rattlers readily admit they are afraid at times,
but they exult in flying jets and their view of combat can be surreal. Capt. Dan
(Knuckles) Shipley described antiaircraft fire on a night mission. ‘It looks
like trails of beads,’ he said, making explosions with his mouth, ‘like
fireworks. It's pretty, it doesn't seem real, and you've got to sort of wake
yourself up to realize that you're being shot at.’
The average grunt has less psychic armor. For every
three or four soldiers wounded or killed in battle, on average, one soldier has
to be pulled off the front line suffering from combat stress. Among
conscripts thrown into heavy combat, the ratio can be as high as 1 for one. (Among well-trained
elite units, like the Army Rangers, the ratio is usually very low, more like 10:1.)
The Israeli Army discovered the cost of fighting with
green troops during the Yom Kippur war in 1973. The Egyptians and Syrians
attacked out of the blue on a day of religious fasting. Hungry, stunned Israeli
reservists were pressed into action. Tank crews were assembled ad hoc. Men who
had never seen each other drove into battle. By morning, many of them were dead or
shell-shocked.
The Israelis had been given a severe lesson in unit
cohesion and training. Units that train together and stay together for long
periods of time almost always fight better.
This obvious lesson should have been learned in Vietnam
by the U.S. Army, which rotated individual soldiers through units, always to the
detriment of morale and fighting effectiveness. Some elite units are allowed to
stick together today, but the Pentagon still replaces soldiers on the front
lines one by one in
most regular Army divisions.
Why? Well, to rotate entire units would require a larger force
than Congress is willing to pay for, or so say the bean counters.
Soldiers do not have to be on the front lines to be
afraid.
Fear can hit anyone. In Kuwait, U.S. troops feel like sitting ducks for a
terrorist attack with chemical or bio-weapons (not unrealistically either, since
British
police believe that terror suspects recently caught with ricin, a lethal nerve
agent, planned to poison the food of British soldiers).
Even in the most storied
outfits, like the Army Rangers and the Navy SEALs, some men wilt under
fire. If these men not be made to feel like cowards, they might not ever go
back into combat.
Since World War I, enlightened military leaders have followed the
teachings of Napoleon's surgeon in chief, Dominique Larrey. In tending to La
Grande Armee through 60 battles in 25 campaigns during the early 19th century,
Larrey had discovered that the best way to treat a shell-shocked soldier was
like any other wounded soldier. Give him sleep and decent food, preserve his
identity as a soldier. Do not disgrace him by treating him as a mental case or
sending him to an asylum or even home for a rest. Get him back into the line as
soon as possible. More often than not, this worked, reported Larrey.
History has borne out Larrey's approach.
When Gen. George S. Patton slapped a couple of
"malingerers" at a field hospital in World War II, he was way out of
line. In both world wars and in every conflict since, military doctors have
found that about 70 percent of soldiers suffering from combat fatigue, if
treated with kindness and respect, went willingly back into battle after three
or four days of rest. About half the others were able to serve in rear echelons
away from the fighting. Only 15 percent or so were truly broken.
Since Vietnam, the U.S. military has grown increasingly
sophisticated about dealing with psychological trauma. "In the '70s, the
answer was always 'three hots and a cot', says the Rev. Raymond Koop, a chaplain
at Fort Benning, Ga. "Now we have critical-incident defusings and
stress-management techniques."
Sure, some old hands, especially in the Marine Corps,
think the military has got a little too touchy-feely. They say that boot camp
has gone soft in the Army and Navy, especially after the inclusion of women in
the early '90s. Instead of wearing combat boots and fatigues, enlistees do the
rope course in sneakers and gym shorts.
There have even been some urban legends
circulating that at some training courses,
frazzled recruits have been allowed to beg out of strenuous drills by holding up
blue or white cards marked with an "S" (for stress).
Soldiers who sign up for combat arms - infantry, armor
and artillery - eventually go through much more realistic training.
The basic idea is to eliminate, or at least lessen, the
surprise and shock of combat. By constant repetition, a soldier's duties are
supposed to become routine, reflexive, automatic. Rather than think - and possibly panic - a combat
soldier is supposed to rely on "muscle memory."
At mock battlefields
like the National Training Center in the California desert, soldiers simulate
real battles, shooting each other with laser beams (soldiers are fitted with
sensors; when they bleep, the soldiers are "dead"). Explosions are
used to replicate the noise and smoke of the battlefield, but live fire is
generally deemed too dangerous.
Iraq cannot be conquered if the men doing the fighting
cannot conquer the gremlins in their own minds. The greatest fear among troops, it seems - worse than
death - is of looking like a coward. Consequently, the military
uses the buddy system knowing that men do not want to shame themselves by
showing cowardice to their buddies.
‘That's absolutely one of the most horrible things to
have to go through, you can't let your buddy down.’ says David Grubb, a Marine
infantryman who enlisted on the day after the 9-11 attacks. He has trained to use a shoulder-fired 83-mm rocket
launcher; he knows when the time comes to use it in combat that he will
be afraid.
‘But what I do with the fear determines whether the
fear is a good thing or a bad thing. If I let the fear overcome me, that's a bad
thing. If I use fear as courage, that's a good thing.‘ Making the switch is
easier said than done,
he knows.
A 20-year-old, and newly married with a baby on the
way, Grubb flashes a big grin. ‘No
matter what happens, I'm coming home so I'll get to see my baby,’ he says.
‘I'm not allowed to die. They can't kill me. They're not allowed to, no matter
what happens.’
On such faith do young men go into battle.
They will never doubt their own immortality,
until the man next to them falls heir to one of the
body bags.
the end.
For more essays in this vein and of this caliber, contact Margot B & Associates http://www26.brinkster.com/margotb
|
