Posted on 11/11/2002 1:37:46 PM PST by ArcLight
Maj. Christopher Miller lay awake on a cot in a filthy room, no larger than a prison cell and cluttered with weapons and ammunition. He couldn't sleep. It was a cold January night at the Special Forces base in Kandahar, and Miller was on the verge of commanding an assault against six Qaeda fighters barricaded inside a nearby Afghan hospital. So many things could go wrong, Miller realized, and it could be disastrous if any of them did. For the first time in his life, Miller would be engaging in C.Q.B. -- a military abbreviation for ''close-quarters battle.'' After years of training, he would finally become, as he told me recently, a ''manager of violence.'' An eight-year veteran of the Special Forces, he had never killed before, had never given an order to kill, had not even seen a dead soldier. All that would change at dawn, because men would surely die in an attack he would initiate with a one-word command: execute.
''That was the first time when I really thought of the human dimension of it,'' Miller recalled. ''At first, it's an intellectual challenge. Then you go, 'We're really going to do this.' All of a sudden it dawned on me, Those bastards are in there right now and they don't have a clue what's fixing to come their way. It was the oddest damn thing.''
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Try telling that to Roger Donlon.
Tell it also, BTW, to the Green Beret captain who dealt with (and saw action with) one Mr. Karzai, who is currently President of Afghanistan. The outcome of the war in Afghanistan turned on the ability of young Green Beret officers like that to work with the Northern Alliance.
Well, then, the 20% who fired must have been expert marksment all.
Well, I suspect there's a bit of envy, too. It's one thing to be a manly reporter. And it's quite another to be a manly reporter confronted by honest-to-God warriors. Such things are not commonly seen at the NYT.
There's an easy solution for that. Next round, hold the grenades for a count of five after arming before you fling them into the room.
Read more on this topic. It concerns how to indentify "natural killers" and how to disperse them among your men so as to make the maximum impact- the theory being that the natural killer will be a catalyst for helping other soldiers overcome the natural aversion to killing other men. It's very interesting stuff. I knew this link would come in handy sooner or later.
Natural Killers —Turning the Tide of Battle by Major David S. Pierson, US Army
LOL! I don't know if I'd hold it for five!
We were always taught to cook it off for 3-
"one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand- Grenade!"and toss it in the bunker, fighting position or room. As a matter of fact, I have never been taught any other way to do it (cooking off the grenade for such obstacles) and was a little surprised the SF guy made any kind of a big deal out of it- maybe it was just the reporter who tripped out on this detail. The SF type actually should've done it that way to start with because a cook-off is SOP for that obstacle.
Didn't anyone ever notice that the other 80% weren't doing anything?
S.L.A. Marshall reported a study of troops in Korea who were found to have not fired their weapons in combat- and those dead troops found in their holes had indeed rarely fired their weapons. Some, of course were killed by overhead mortar or artillery bursts and never even saw an enemy, but there have indeed been cases of soldiers watching an oncoming enemy soldier who take no action to prevent an easy rifle shot or bayonet thrust that finishes them off without a return shot fired.
That may be in part based on a combat trooper's first instinct to take cover [and improve it!] and remain as safe as possible, marksmanhip training of the period that emphasized firing at bullseye [rather than humanoid-shaped] targets at known distances on neatly-manicured ranges, the use of hastily-trained support troops in combat roles in Korea, or the use of the hard-kicking M1 Garand rifle of the period or the lightweight M1 carbine with a notorious repution for not seriously harming those shot with it. Any or all of the above may have been a part of the problem, including biting cold weather and freezing conditions that sapped troop morale- though such things were also a consideration for Finnish troops killing a million Russian invaders during the 4-month *Winter War* of 1939-40, the 101 Airborne at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, and the Russians at Stalingrad.
I can only tell you that the situation reported was not the case I observed during my first hitch in the military as an enlisted man, 1966-1970. The problem in that conflict was keeping riflemen supplied with enough ammunition, cleaning supplies and spare rifles and parts as they burned up, shot out and generally sprayed lead in the general direction of any percieved hostile fire coming their way, sometimes actually hitting something. The M16 was easy to shoot and ranges in Vietnam were generally not distant.
It's also true that in any unit, some guys are experienced and agressive, while some rookies are nervous and hesitant, particularly poorly-trained conscripts. But those conscripts want to go home, preferably in one piece, and once they get motivated, they'll kill anything in their way of accomplishing that goal.
-archy-/-
I suspect that this 10-20% figure relates to the segment of the population that has less of a natural reluctance to kill. This has been overcome in the modern age by the training methods which get men to kill without thinking about it too much. My opinion, though, is that the segment that has little reluctance to kill is also the segment that can get over it and not suffer Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
So my unproven theory is that the other percentage that have been trained to kill and are not really mentally or emotionally equipped for it are the ones who will suffer for it the rest of their lives. Killing someone causes the kind of guilt that few men can really deal with effectively.
Didn't anyone ever notice that the other 80% weren't doing anything?
If I recall correctly 1/3 (firing) was a bit more accurate and I believe that Marshall stated only about 1/3 would fire at one time, but it's been a few years since I read it.
The 20% firing was on the low side.
He has crossed the great divide. He has lost his boyish laughter. He will never again be what he was before.
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