On Killing

And for Alan Stuart-Smyth the screamed order “KILL HIM, GODDAMMIT, KILL HIM, NOW!” was necessary to bring him to kill a man who was in the process of swinging the muzzle of a weapon toward him.

In these and many other killing circumstances we can see that it was the demand for killing actions from a leader that was the decisive factor. Never underestimate the power of the need to obey.

“Our Blood and His Guts”: The Price the Leader Pays

In many combat situations the ultimate mechanism that leads to defeat is when the leader of a group can no longer bring himself to demand sacrifice by his men. One of Bill Mauldin’s famous World War II cartoons shows Willie and Joe discussing General “Old Blood and Guts” Patton. “Yeah,” says the weary, disheveled combat soldier, “our blood and his guts.” Although intended as sarcasm, there is a profound truth in this statement, for often it is the soldiers’ blood and the leader’s guts that stave off defeat. And when the leader’s guts or will to sacrifice his men gives out, then the force he is leading is defeated.

This equation becomes particularly apparent in situations in which soldiers are cut off from higher authority. In these kinds of situations the leader is trapped with his men. He sees his soldiers dying, he sees the wounded suffering; there is no buffer of distance to enable any denial of the results of his actions. He has no contact with higher authority, and he knows that at any time he can end the horror by surrendering and that the decision is solely his to make. As each of his men is wounded or killed, their suffering hangs on his conscience, and he knows that it is he and he alone who is making it continue. He and his will to accept the suffering of his men are all that keep the battle going. At some point he can no longer bring himself to muster the will to fight, and with one short sentence the horror is ended.

Some leaders choose to fight to their deaths, taking their men with them in a blaze of glory. In many ways it is easier for the leader if he can die quickly and cleanly with his men and need never live with what he has done. One of the more striking of such situations is that of Major James Devereux, the commander of the U.S. Marines defending Wake Island. The small marine detachment on Wake held out against overwhelming Japanese forces from December 8 to December 22, 1941. The last message sent out before Devereux and his men were overwhelmed was received by radio telegraphy and said simply: S…E…N…D_ M…O…R…E_ J…A…P…S…

But the price for the leader who has lived through such a situation is high. He must answer to the widows and the orphans of his men, and he must live forevermore with what he has done to those who entrusted their lives to his care. When I interview combatants, many tell of remorse and anguish that they have never told anyone of before. But I have not yet had any success at getting a leader to confront his emotions revolving around the soldiers who have died in combat as a result of his orders. In interviews, such men work around reservoirs of guilt and denial that appear to be buried too deeply to be tapped, and perhaps this is for the best.

The Lost Battalion of World War I is a famous example of a unit that was sustained by its leader’s will. This unit, a battalion of the 77th Division, was cut off and surrounded by Germans during an attack. They continued to fight for days. They ran out of food, water, and ammunition. The survivors were surrounded by friends and comrades suffering from horrible wounds that could not receive medical attention until they surrendered. The Germans brought up flamethrowers and tried to burn them out. Still their commander would not surrender.

They were not an elite or specially trained unit. They were only a composite infantry battalion made up of citizen-soldiers in a National Guard Division. Yet they performed a feat that will shine forever in the annals of military glory.

All the survivors gave full credit for their achievement to the incredible fortitude of their battalion commander, Major C. W. Whittlesey, who refused to surrender and constantly encouraged the dwindling survivors of his battalion to fight on. After five days their battalion was rescued. Major Whittlesey was given the Congressional Medal of Honor. Many people know this story. What they don’t know is that Whittlesey committed suicide shortly after the war.

CHAPTER TWO Group Absolution: “The Individual Is Not a Killer, but the Group Is”

Disintegration of a combat unit… usually occurs at the 50% casualty point, and is marked by increasing numbers of individuals refusing to kill in combat…. Motivation and will to kill the enemy has evaporated along with their peers and comrades.

— Peter Watson

War on the Mind

A tremendous volume of research indicates that the primary factor that motivates a soldier to do the things that no sane man wants to do in combat (that is, killing and dying) is not the force of self-preservation but a powerful sense of accountability to his comrades on the battlefield. Richard Gabriel notes that “in military writings on unit cohesion, one consistently finds the assertion that the bonds combat soldiers form with one another are stronger than the bonds most men have with their wives.” The defeat of even the most elite group is usually achieved when so many casualties have been inflicted (usually somewhere around the 50 percent point) that the group slips into a form of mass depression and apathy. Dinter points out that “The integration of the individual in the group is so strong sometimes that the group’s destruction, e.g. by force or captivity, may lead to depression and subsequent suicide.” Among the Japanese in World War II this manifested itself in mass suicide. In most historical groups it results in the group suicide of surrender.

Among men who are bonded together so intensely, there is a powerful process of peer pressure in which the individual cares so deeply about his comrades and what they think about him that he would rather die than let them down. A U.S. Marine Corps Vietnam vet interviewed by Gwynne Dyer communicated this process clearly when he said that “your first instinct, regardless of all your training, is to live…. But you can’t turn around and run the other way. Peer pressure, you know?” Dyer calls this “a special kind of love that has nothing to do with sex or idealism,” and Ardant du Picq referred to it as “mutual surveillance” and considered it to be the predominant psychological factor on the battlefield.

Marshall noted that a single soldier falling back from a broken and retreating unit will be of little value if pressed into service in another unit. But if a pair of soldiers or the remnants of a squad or platoon are put to use, they can generally be counted upon to fight well. The difference in these two situations is the degree to which the soldiers have bonded or developed a sense of accountability to the small number of men they will be fighting with — which is distinctly different from the more generalized cohesion of the army as a whole. If the individual is bonded with his comrades, and if he is with “his” group, then the probability that the individual will participate in killing is significantly increased. But if those factors are absent, the probability that the individual will be an active participant in combat is quite low.

Du Picq sums this matter up when he says, “Four brave men who do not know each other will not dare to attack a lion. Four less brave, but knowing each other well, sure of their reliability and consequently of mutual aid, will attack resolutely. There,” says du Picq, “is the science of the organization of armies in a nutshell.”

Anonymity and Group Absolution

In addition to creating a sense of accountability, groups also enable killing through developing in their members a sense of anonymity that contributes further to violence. In some circumstances this process of group