…And Not to Kill
At close range the resistance to killing an opponent is tremendous. When one looks an opponent in the eye, and knows that he is young or old, scared or angry, it is not possible to deny that the individual about to be killed is much like oneself. It is here that many personal narratives of nonkilling situations occur. Marshall, Keegan, Holmes, Griffith, virtually all who have studied the matter in depth, agree that such nonparticipation is apparently very common in midrange conflict, but in close-range situations it becomes so remarkable — and undeniable — that we can find numerous first-person narratives.
Keegan and Holmes tell of a group of Americans who jumped into a ditch while under artillery fire in Sicily during World War II:
And lo and behold there were about five Germans, and maybe four or five of us, and we didn’t give any thought whatsoever to fighting at first…. Then I realized that they had their rifles, we had ours and then shells were landing and we were cowering against the side of the ditch, the Germans were doing the same thing. And then the next thing you know, there was a lull, we took cigarettes out and we passed ’em around, we were smoking and it’s a feeling I cannot describe, but it was a feeling that this was not the time to be shooting at one another…. They were human beings, like us, they were just as scared.
Marshall describes a similar situation when Captain Willis, an American company commander leading his unit along a streambed in Vietnam, was suddenly confronted with a North Vietnamese soldier:
Willis came abreast of him, his M-16 pointed at the man’s chest. They stood not five feet apart. The soldier’s AK 47 was pointed straight at Willis.
The captain vigorously shook his head.
The NVA soldier shook his head just as vigorously.
It was a truce, cease-fire, gentleman’s agreement or a deal…. The soldier sank back into the darkness and Willis stumbled on.
As men draw this near it becomes extremely difficult to deny their humanity. Looking in a man’s face, seeing his eyes and his fear, eliminate denial. At this range the interpersonal nature of the killing has shifted. Instead of shooting at a uniform and killing a generalized enemy, now the killer must shoot at a person and kill a specific individual. Most simply cannot or will not do it.
CHAPTER FIVE
At the physical distance in which a soldier has to use a nonprojectile weapon, such as a bayonet or spear, two important corollaries of the physical relationship come into play.
First we must recognize that it is psychologically easier to kill with an edged weapon that permits a long stand-off range, and increasingly more difficult as the stand-off range decreases. Thus it is considerably easier to impale a man with a twenty-foot pike than it is to stab him with a six-inch knife.
The physical range provided by the spears of the Greek and Macedonian phalanx provided much of the psychological leverage that permitted Alexander the Great to conquer the known world.[19] The psychological leverage provided by the hedge of pikes was so powerful that the phalanx was resurrected in the Middle Ages and used successfully in the era of mounted knights. Ultimately the phalanx was only replaced by the advent of the superior posturing and psychological leverage provided by gunpowder projectile weapons.
The second corollary to the distance relationship is that it is far easier to deliver a slashing or hacking blow than a piercing blow. To pierce is to penetrate, while to slash is to sidestep or deny the objective of piercing into the enemy’s essence.
For a bayonet-, spear-, or sword-armed soldier his weapon becomes a natural extension
The Romans apparently had a serious problem with their soldiers not wanting to use piercing blows, for the ancient Roman tactician and historian Vegetius emphasized this point at length in a section entitled “Not to Cut, but to Thrust with the Sword.” He says:
They were likewise taught not to cut but to thrust with their swords. For the Romans not only made jest of those who fought with the edge of that weapon, but always found them an easy conquest. A stroke with the edges, though made with ever so much force, seldom kills, as the vital parts of the body are defended by the bones and armor. On the contrary, a stab, though it penetrates but two inches, is generally fatal.[20]
Bayonet Range
Bob McKenna, a professional soldier and magazine columnist, draws upon more than sixteen years of active military service in Africa, Central America, and Southeast Asia in order to understand what he calls the “intimate brutality” of bayonet kills. “The thought of cold steel sliding into your guts,” says McKenna, “is more horrific and real than the thought of a bullet doing the same — perhaps because you can see the steel coming.” This powerful revulsion to being killed with cold steel can also be observed in mutinous Indian soldiers captured during the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny who “begged for the bullet” by pleading to be executed with a rifle shot rather than the bayonet. More recently, according to AP news articles, we have seen this in Rwanda, where the Hutu tribesmen made their Tutsi victims purchase the bullets they would be killed with in order to avoid being hacked to death.
It is not just the killer who feels this profound revulsion toward the intimate brutality of a bayonet kill. John Keegan’s landmark book
Three major psychological factors come into play in bayonet combat. First, the vast majority of soldiers who do approach bayonet range with the enemy use the butt of the weapon or any other available means to incapacitate or injure the enemy rather than skewer him. Second, when the bayonet is used, the close range at which the work is done results in a situation with enormous potential for psychological trauma. And, finally, the resistance to killing with the bayonet is equal only to the enemy’s horror at having this done to him. Thus in bayonet charges one side or the other invariably flees before the actual crossing of bayonets occurs.
