I have always thought any empathy for not wanting to kill the enemy would disappear fairly quickly when they are activity trying to kill you. I don’t buy that original 75% figure at all. It might have been around that figure when people initially got into combat but I am sure it would change pretty quickly if you survive long enough in a combat situation. I just don’t see if people are shooting at you for long enough you are going to not start shooting back at them.
As noted, SLA Marshall’s works have been controversial, to say the least.
This is is a pretty concise article addressing Marshall’s claims on lack of aggression amongst U.S. infantrymen. His studies were apparently very far from scientific.
I’m pretty sure I’d have a hard time firing back.
On the other hand, it would never even occur to me to join the army.
On the other other hand back then people were drafted so…
An article here by Eric Raymond posits that human beings, for the most part, are inherently reluctant to kill other human beings. He refers to an article written by a Major David Pierson, which I found here. Pierson claims the existence of “natural killers” who are immediately capable of taking a life without further conditioning, but suggests they are a small minority.
I can accept the claim that it is difficult for most people to take a human life, even when their own life is threatened. I once saw dashboard-cam video of a police officer involved in a one-sided shootout with a gun-wielding perp. The perp repeatedly shot at the officer, but the officer simply could not bring himself to fire his gun - not once, not even in self-defense. Perp finally disabled the officer with a shot, then walked over and shot him to death.
Roger Spiller, who is quoted in the article above, addressed a military history seminar I took in grad school. Essentially, his findings were that much of Marshall’s work was fabricated outright. Spiller interviewed several of Marshall’s associates (a particular one that sticks in my mind was Marshall’s driver, who I believe is the aide quoted in the hnn article), and found compelling evidence that Marshall did not conduct the interviews that he claimed as justification for his theses. In sum, everything about Marshall’s work that was subject to scrutiny proved invalid, according to Spiller.
It should be noted that Spiller was one of the most respected experts on combat psychology in the field at the time. He concluded his discussion of Marshall by citing an anecdote from Vietnam where a young soldier whose company had just been ambushed jumped up and started firing. After being knocked to the ground by his sargeant, he protested that his instructors had told him to put as much fire downrange as possible because three out of four soldiers wouldn’t pull the trigger. Integrating bad studies into training gets soldiers killed.
I read somewhere that when firing at the enemy for the first time, up to 40% of soldiers “fire high” to miss. I think this was in reference to the “old days” where armies would line up and fire at each other in an open field, like the American Revolution and certain battles of the Civil War. Regardless, soldiers are just human beings. Once they’ve been injured or lost some close comrades, then they are more willing to aim to kill.
What your commentors are saying about SLA Marshal and today’s training emphasis on instinctive shooting to hit “targets” is pretty much what I’ve read. There is a lot out there about the average human response to killing in war by some fine writers and historical researchers.
Here’s a sketch from life:
A friend of mine was highly aggressive as we grew up, extremely competitive in sports and successful at all competition due to an innate ruthlessness in taking advantage of any weakness. When he was working his mouth as part of the psychology of a competition he claimed to have the “killer instinct.”
He was entirely different sitting in his bedroom at home after his Vietnam tour telling me of his experience as part of an ad hoc, night reaction force of clerks pushing up a road towards the overrun defense line of a major base in Vietnam, against an unknown number of elite Vietcong sappers. Two bunkers were knocked out, and a jeep had been ambushed and its occupants killed. My friend missed being ambushed by a 1 in 3 chance of sheer stupid luck, and lay in a ditch all night with bullets going overhead while helicopter gunships and regular combat troops finished off the pinned-down sappers. The next day he was sent out with his fellows to drag the Vietcong bodies up to the road. He had a thousand yard stare and spoke softly, using vivid snapshot images, as he told me this story, particularly when he passed me the psychological warfare flyers in English found in the pockets of the dead sappers: “There is no hatred between Vietnamese and Americans, so why are you killing us?” He got over it, serving in the National Guard for 20 years, including time as a squad leader, and at age 59 in Iraq as public relations specialist going out with the troops and writing news stories. Still, he found the actual experience of war quite sobering. The “killer instinct” was the first casualty.
On the other hand, another of our mutual friends, the nicest Irish Catholic teenager you’d ever want to meet, was a helicopter crew chief in Vietnam at the same time. He killed many, many enemy from the air using his M60, even landing to check bodies so they could claim them as legitimate “kills” under the rules of the day. He was awarded the Soldiers’ Medal for one bit of desperate heroism, flying an LOH full of wounded home with the pilot and himself also wounded: one had to steer with the pedals, the other had to handle the collective and stick. When his tour was over, he returned to normal civilian life, showed no signs of any stress I’ve ever heard of, married, had kids, fine member of the community, and was again the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet, working as an airport maintenance manager. He even won a national award for innovation in snow clearing.
a war can change the human psyche, even before that person is drafted and sent to the front. you know the old adage “boys grow up fast in times of war?”