Hope on the Battlefield

August 7, 2007 5:23 PM

Hope on the Battlefield by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman.An article on our "intense resistance to killing other people. A resistance so strong that, in many circumstances, soldiers on the battlefield will die before they can overcome it."
posted by chunking express (37 comments total)

I also learned there is a magazine all about "ground breaking scientific research into the roots of compassion and altruism."
posted by chunking express at 5:25 PM on August 7, 2007

I bought this guys book. His project appears to be that 'conditioned response' gained by video gaming plus easy access to guns are going to bounce back on society in the form of lethal teenage super-soldiers. I didn't really buy his argument - I wish I hadn't bought his book.
posted by fingerbang at 5:51 PM on August 7, 2007

Jack Thompson Lite ™
posted by Bighappyfunhouse at 5:52 PM on August 7, 2007

The guy's clearly got credentials, but:

"We can see the discrepancy in dozens of modern conflicts, including in Somalia, where 18 trapped U.S. troops killed an estimated 364 Somali fighters."

The eighteen soldiers were the ones who died. Nearly half in the helicopter crashes and the Delta Force insertion. Almost one hundred rangers were trapped and they had significant air support. This is easily Wikipediable and such a glaring mistake in an argument that to at least some degree relies on the math is a little disturbing from someone so highly qualified.
posted by Cyrano at 5:54 PM on August 7, 2007

He's right - you can't deny the evidence. In ages past, they didn't have videogames and they didn't have giant wars where people killed each other violently, cruelly, and needlessly. You can argue all you want about correlation and causality, but you can't argue with the fact that there was basically no murder, violent crime, nor armed conflict until video games and violent movies came along.
posted by freebird at 5:57 PM on August 7, 2007 [6 favorites]

See also- On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill
posted by rollbiz at 6:02 PM on August 7, 2007

See also Killing The Dead Elephant In The Living Room.
posted by y2karl at 6:03 PM on August 7, 2007

I did a graduate thesis on the behavior of soldiers on the battlefield during the First World War. Grossman is top notch. You can bet he's actually read the after-action reports on Somalia, not just "Blackhawk Down." It is his job.

S.L.A. Marshall's work is for real and a revolution in training came out of it. It is indisputable.

fingerbang overstates Grossman's thesis in On Killing, making it seem more crazy than it is. We should have real concerns about what is going to happen. Grossman's concern is that the military throws these people away and doesn't worry about the societal cost--they pass that on to the VA and the rest of society. If we worked on this at the front end, the problems might be much less.
posted by Ironmouth at 6:11 PM on August 7, 2007

Not sure if it's the same author, but I've heard this before, and am quite interested by the phenomenon.

The argument goes that we are brought up from day one by our parents - & society generally - with the imperative not to harm other people, and that this becomes so ingrained that something like only 5-10% of soldiers can actually kill an enemy when they are face-to-face with them (as opposed to, say, pressing a button in a helicopter or on a ship at sea). More often, a soldier will flinch & semi-deliberately aim to only wound, or even entirely miss the enemy.

This phenomenon is also used to explain the firing squad - many of the shooters will apparently completely miss the sitting duck target, and the result of the squad approach is that no single person can be certain that they fired the fatal shot.

The result of this phenomenon is that military trainers & commanders need to be able to identify the small proportion of killers from the rest, and assign the others to non-infantry roles. The alternative is to turn killing into a conditioned technical/mechanical response, that takes place without intervening thought (raise rifle to shoulder - position left foot at 45% slightly in front of right - breathe out - squeeze trigger slightly - realign according to sights - take into account movement - etc).
posted by UbuRoivas at 6:12 PM on August 7, 2007

No shit.

Sure, people don't like to kill. At least one would hope. Yet, they dislike being hungry and scared even less. Kill or die, I know what I'm going for.

Indeed, today many video games are actually replicating military training and conditioning kids to kill—but without “stimulus discriminators” to ensure that they only fire under authority.

Because we lose our reluctance to kill when we're told to kill by someone in authority? That's like the gay guy who keeps blowing me, even knowing I'm straight.

Interestingly, the article doesn't address so-called asymmetrical warfare where most of the killing is 'over-the-horizon'. I wonder if our soldiers take killing a little better when it's at the tip of a mouse rather than the barrel of a gun. Now, that, would be an interesting read.
posted by cedar at 6:14 PM on August 7, 2007

(oh, or in other words, pretty much what the article said)
posted by UbuRoivas at 6:17 PM on August 7, 2007

I think you'd be lucky to get 15 or 20 percent of people to do anything you told them to do.
posted by StickyCarpet at 6:24 PM on August 7, 2007

I read a book about this a long time ago. I wish I could remember the name.

One example they cited was muskets recovered from Gettysburg. Several had been loaded with the little balls as many as 12 or 13 times, suggesting the "soldiers" had faked firing the weapon and reloaded repeatedly to avoid killing.

Also he had some insane numbers about Vietname. Something about the number of rounds fired compared to kills being insanely high. I'll see if I can find the book.
posted by lazaruslong at 7:00 PM on August 7, 2007

Rollbiz already linked it, actually. Great book.
posted by lazaruslong at 7:01 PM on August 7, 2007

You can bet he's actually read the after-action reports on Somalia, not just "Blackhawk Down."

The after action reports have nothing to do with the factual error I cited. If any part of your argument is wrong (and the statement I quoted is flat out, factually wrong,) then it calls into question all of the rest.

S.L.A. Marshall's work is for real and a revolution in training came out of it. It is indisputable.

Not so much.
posted by Cyrano at 7:24 PM on August 7, 2007

OK, so I was being trite but I still think he lacks academic rigour. (I thought Joanna Bourke was pretty good when I read her).

Anyway, I still think this should be seen in the context of the well known tendency for soldiers in trench battles,to turn the rifle around and use it as a club.

In other words I think the, very real, shock of combat doesn't stop soldiers from being able to fight - just stops them from thinking. And when they're like that - in all but a few individuals - the whole ranged warfare thing is very much beyond them.
posted by fingerbang at 7:24 PM on August 7, 2007

Thanks very much for this post-- I was familiar with this concept/article, but I had forgotten the name of the author and I couldn't figure out how to google it.

Shooting someone in the head/chest is nothing like Ender's Game.
posted by exlotuseater at 7:37 PM on August 7, 2007

I read On Killing. I was at first intrigued; he argues that conflict between primates produces more modes of behavior than fight-or-flight. Chest-thumping display, for example, allows a gorilla to back the other down, resolving the conflict without the death of either competitor. War-whoops and firing into the air are, in his estimation, equivalent human behavior.

However, as I read further, the less and less compelling I found his argument. In particular, he fails to find a method for distinguishing between refusing to fight because you don't want to kill, and refusing to fight because you don't want to die. Survival is a basic instinct and an infantryman soon learns that fire attracts fire. His analysis of the battle of Cold Harbor was particularly poor, in that he completely fails to consider and eliminate alternative explanations for the historical record.

I found his ideas interesting, but his arguments need a lot more work to be convincing.
posted by SPrintF at 7:40 PM on August 7, 2007

posted by cedar at 12:14 PM on August 8:
Interestingly, the article doesn't address so-called asymmetrical warfare where most of the killing is 'over-the-horizon'. I wonder if our soldiers take killing a little better when it's at the tip of a mouse rather than the barrel of a gun. Now, that, would be an interesting read.

On Killing does address this issue in part, through its analysis of crew-served weapons. From memory, the more people involved in operating a particular weapon, the more likely any one individual is to perform their assigned duty, and the more abstract the killing act is - eg firing an artillery piece vs stabbing someone in the neck - then the same phenomenon applies. The one exception to this is the role of snipers. Grossman doesn't dwell too much on sniping in his book, but he does seem to acknowledge that sniping manages to be both distant and intimate at the same time. Peering through a riflescope distances the shooter both literally and figuratively from their target, but at the same time they are unable to have recourse to the usual 'it was him or me' justifications.

Leaving aside any factual criticisms of Grossman, I thought On Killing was a brilliant book. The thesis that fingerbang advances in the second response to this post is only really a minor part of the book. The central proposition - on my reading of it at least - seemed to be that humans have an innate resistance to killing other humans; this resistance can be overcome through various means; irrespective of the means by which you overcome the resistance, there is still a significant psychological cost to the killer; if you don't manage that psychological cost effectively, then you will have big problems when the killer is demobilised.
posted by tim_in_oz at 7:44 PM on August 7, 2007

Thanks... I think I'll be backing away from a discussion where I'm at a disadvantage (you know, 'cause I got no facts) and read the book.
posted by cedar at 7:53 PM on August 7, 2007

fingerbang - Anyway, I still think this should be seen in the context of the well known tendency for soldiers in trench battles,to turn the rifle around and use it as a club.


Wasn't the reason behind using one's rifle as a club that everyone was shooting ball a per Geneva convention? You shoot someone with a rifle at close range and the bullet is going to go straight through them. You don't necessarily want to hit a buddy.

Also, wasn't the firing rate not-so-good and the rate-of-jamming also a problem? Rifles - long and unwieldly. I can easily imagine trench scenarios where clubbing someone in the head with the butt of a M1 is a better bet than taking a shot (which - per ball ammo - doesn't guarentee incapacitation).

Maybe bayonettes played a role that I haven't considered...
posted by porpoise at 8:56 PM on August 7, 2007

Does his book address the idea of soldiers running away? Generally prior to WWI, when soldiers knew they were going to lose, they ran away. Generals lost when their armies broke, not when their men were all killed. I wonder if Grossmann has taken this into account when considering the relatively high rates of soldier survival in pre-machinegun warfare.

On the subject of computer games, one's men running away is relatively rare in simulations, as it tends to frustrate the player. Also, the 'courage' shown by in-game FPS soldiers may come as much from the impermanence and mild consequences of their own 'death' as from the depersonalization of their enemies.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 9:17 PM on August 7, 2007

Grossman is ok on balance, but I much prefer Gwynn Dyer. That Civil war gun over loading example may have come from him. I know I've read it as well.
This type of stuff is actually what I'm writing my thesis on currently.
posted by edgeways at 9:20 PM on August 7, 2007

Leaving aside any factual criticisms of Grossman

Um, no. That was my original point. A thesis based on incorrect information isn't a thesis at all. It's a rant at best, no matter how well written it is.
posted by Cyrano at 9:20 PM on August 7, 2007

Cyrano - you've cited one example of an inaccuracy in the man's work. I'm not sure I'm prepared to deride him as a ranter on that basis. From what little I know, his central points on man's innate resistance to killing and the costs in overcoming it don't rise and fall on whether or not he got the number of casualties right in Mogadishu.

PS: I should make it clear - I'm defending the value of his book On KIlling, not the essay in the FPP...
posted by tim_in_oz at 10:53 PM on August 7, 2007

"They compared the data from these units with hit rates from simulated battles using pulsed laser weapons."

Mmm... pulsed laser weapons....

That sounds so much more awesome then it propably is.
posted by Hicksu at 11:07 PM on August 7, 2007

Generally prior to WWI, when soldiers knew they were going to lose, they ran away.

Which often led to their slaughter, as the non-routed army cut down the now non-shielded, non-armed, non-supported-by-their-comrade-on-their-right men. Which is not to say that Grossman is wrong and that humans are "natural born killers," but the species certainly has shown itself flexible enough to get around any inhibitions that it might otherwise have.
posted by moonbiter at 11:57 PM on August 7, 2007

A good book on this subject is An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Combat in 20th Century Warfare, which is basically a longer, more elaborate version of this post.
posted by autodidact at 1:04 AM on August 8, 2007

Seconding fingerbang and autodidact's advice to read Joanna Bourke.
posted by ninebelow at 1:54 AM on August 8, 2007

For once I would be interested in Steven Den Beste's opinion of this matter.

It is my understanding that modern training methods have reduced the number of 'non-shooters' to about 5%.
posted by asok at 2:52 AM on August 8, 2007

Isn't this what the supersoldier drugs are for?
posted by psmealey at 3:55 AM on August 8, 2007

They compared the data from these units with hit rates from simulated battles using pulsed laser weapons

Bullets don't travel at the speed of light - it's a little more complex than point, pull trigger and target falls over. Anyone who has been paintballing, airsofting, hunting or anything involving the idea of hitting something that moves at a distance with something that travels at non-lightspeed can tell you this.
posted by longbaugh at 6:02 AM on August 8, 2007

On the subject of computer games, one's men running away is relatively rare in simulations, as it tends to frustrate the player.

The "Total War" series does this pretty well, to the point where it is actually good strategy to figure out how to get the enemy army to "break" while ensuring that yours doesn't.

An article in Harper's Magazine entitled AWOL in America touched on the issue of the refuse-to-kill phenomenon in the army:

[Marshall], during World War II, interviewed soldiers fresh from battle and found that only 15 to 20 percent of the combat infantry were willing to fire their weapons .... When Medical Corp psychiatrists studied combat fatigue cases in the European Theater, they found that “fear of killing, rather than fear of being killed, was the most common cause of battle failure in the individual,”
...
By the Korean War, the firing rate had gone up to 55 percent; in the Vietnam war, it was around 90 to 95 percent.

The article I linked to makes the point that basic training's biggest focus has been on how to ensure that the soldiers will be willing to fire and kill when the time comes, and that involves engaging in a lot of psychological tranining because this isn't something that soldiers are normally willing to do.

Which often led to their slaughter, as the non-routed army cut down the now non-shielded, non-armed, non-supported-by-their-comrade-on-their-right men. Which is not to say that Grossman is wrong and that humans are "natural born killers," but the species certainly has shown itself flexible enough to get around any inhibitions that it might otherwise have.

What explains the willingness of soldiers to engage in wholesale slaughter is, I think, the result of having taken a lot of casualties before the enemy started to retreat. As a result of fatigue and anger, a victorious army will end up being much more destructive in the mopping-up operations than it would have had the victory been easy.
posted by deanc at 7:01 AM on August 8, 2007

So "When researchers compared historical combat performances against the performance of these test subjects (who were using simulated weapons and could neither inflict nor receive actual harm from the “enemy”), they discovered that the killing potential in these circumstances was much greater than the actual historical casualty rates."

This means that people knowing they won't actually hurt their target or be harmed in return show much higher willingness to 'kill' the 'enemy' - because they know it's not real and are much less reluctant than they would be in a real shooting war. Thus they are acting differently in fantasy and reality.

Yet "Indeed, today many video games are actually replicating military training and conditioning kids to kill" - but children and adults playing first person shooters are not indulging in this 'we know it's not real, so we'll shoot to kill' relex, but are instead playing murder simulators, because they suddenly don't know the difference between fantasy and reality - despite pulse laser rifle simulated combat in the field being a damn sight closer to real combat than handling a gamepad.

Paging Jack Thompson...
posted by ArkhanJG at 8:19 AM on August 8, 2007

On the subject of computer games, one's men running away is relatively rare in simulations, as it tends to frustrate the player.

I think this is changing. Many modern real-time strategy games incorporate morale -- when their morale breaks, typically your soldiers change colors and bobble around in a confused manner. It is frustrating, but it adds a great deal of depth. The game I play (Dawn of War) has flamethrower weapons that are meant to break morale, and even a race (the Imperial Guard) whose infantry tends to have poor morale and needs extra commanders and upgrades in order to stand firm.

At any rate, the idea that a video game is a "killing simulator" makes me laugh. Get back to me when games use real guns with live ammunition against realistic targets (as soldiers in training do), as opposed to an abstracted interface with unrealistic targets.
posted by vorfeed at 10:42 AM on August 8, 2007

Fascinating article. Thanks, chunking express.
posted by homunculus at 6:24 PM on August 8, 2007

What explains the willingness of soldiers to engage in wholesale slaughter is, I think, the result of having taken a lot of casualties before the enemy started to retreat. As a result of fatigue and anger, a victorious army will end up being much more destructive in the mopping-up operations than it would have had the victory been easy.

Maybe, although what I understand casualties in ancient battles were fairly limited until one side or the other routed, then it turned into a slaughter. You'd have the footsoldiers shoving at each other in the middle while the cavalries would skirmish on the flanks, and as long as your guys were facing the enemy with arms then you were relatively okay. But once your lines broke, or if you were unfortunate enough to have your cavalry driven from the field, then you were screwed.

You'd end up with casualty ratios that were really lopsided; one army with several hundred or thousand casualties and the other army getting almost completely wiped out. The whole reason Pyrrhus of Epirus is still famous today is because won a couple of battles at a "costly" ratio in men of something like 2:1.

Which is really just a side point. The problem for us today is that even if there is a "intense resistance to killing other people" in homo sapiens in their natural state, that resistance historically seems to be fairly easily overcome through training, peer pressure, and technology.
posted by moonbiter at 12:46 PM on August 9, 2007