During the cavalry action at Moncel in 1914 Sergeant James Taylor of the 9th Lancers saw how difficult it was to restrain excited men. “Then there was a bit of a melee, horses neighing and a lot of yelling and shouting…. I remember seeing Corporal Bolte run his lance right through a dismounted German who had his hands up and thinking that it was a rather bad thing to do.”
Harold Dearden, a medical officer on the Western Front, read a letter written by a young soldier to his mother. “When we jumped into their trench, mother, they all held up their hands and shouted ‘Camerad, Camerad’ and that means ‘I give in’ in their language. But they had to have it, mother. I think that is all from your loving Albert.”
…No soldier who fights until his enemy is at close small-arms range, in any war, has more than perhaps a fifty-fifty chance of being granted quarter. If he stands up to surrender he risks being shot with the time-honoured comment, ‘Too late, chum.’ If he lies low, he will fall victim to the grenades of the mopping-up party, in no mood to take chances.
Yet Holmes concludes that the consistently remarkable thing in such circumstances is not how many soldiers are killed while trying to surrender, but how few. Even under this kind of provocation, the general resistance to killing runs true.
Surrender-executions are clearly wrong and counterproductive to a force that has dedicated itself to fighting in a fashion that the nation and the soldiers can live with after battle. They are, however, completed in the heat of battle and are rarely prosecuted. It is only the individual soldier who must hold himself accountable for his actions most of the time.
Executions in cold blood are another matter entirely.
Black Areas: Executions
“Execution” is defined here as the close-range killing of a noncombatant (civilian or POW) who represents no significant or immediate military or personal threat to the killer. The effect of such kills on the killer is intensely traumatic, since the killer has limited internal motivation to kill the victim and kills almost entirely out of external motivations. The close range of the kill severely hampers the killer in his attempts to deny the humanity of the victim and severely hampers denial of personal responsibility for the kill.
Jim Morris is an ex-Green Beret and a Vietnam veteran turned writer. Here he interviews an Australian veteran of the Malaysian counterinsurgency who is trying to live with the memory of an execution. His story is entitled “Killers in Retirement: ‘No Heroes, No Villains, Just Mates.’”
This time we leaned against a wall on the opposite side of the room. He leaned forward, speaking softly and earnestly. This time there was no pretense. Here was a man baring his soul.
“We attacked a terrorist prison camp, and took a woman prisoner. She must have been high up in the party. She wore the tabs of a commissar. I’d already told my men we took no prisoners, but I’d never killed a woman. ‘She must die quickly. We must leave!’ my sergeant said.
“Oh god, I was sweatin’,” Harry went on. “She was magnificent. ‘What’s the matter, Mister Ballentine?’ she asked. ‘You’re sweatin’.’
“‘Not for you,’ I said. ‘It’s a malaria recurrence.’ I gave my pistol to my sergeant, but he just shook his head…. None of them would do it, and if I didn’t I’d never be able to control that unit again.
“‘You’re sweatin’, Mr. Ballentine,’ she said again.
“‘Not for you,’ I said.”
“Did you kill her?”
“Hell, I blew ’er f***in’ ’ead off,” he replied. “My platoon all gathered ’round and smiled. ‘You are our
I’m not a priest. I’m not even an officer any more…. I hoped my look told Harry that I liked him, that it was okay with me if he forgave himself. It’s hard to do though.
This is the spectrum of atrocity, this is how atrocity happens, but not why. Let us now examine the why of atrocity, the rationale of atrocity, and the dark power that atrocity lends to those who wield it.
CHAPTER TWO
The Problem: “Righteousness Comes Out of a Gun Barrel [?]”
On a cold, rainy training day at Fort Lewis, Washington, I listened to soldiers talk who had just completed a prisoner of war exercise. One held that the enemy troops should be marched through an area saturated with persistent nerve gas. Another stated that the claymore mine presented the most cost-effective and energy-efficient method of disposing of POWs. His buddy claimed that they were both being wasteful and that POWs could best be used for minefield clearing and reconnaissance for nuclear- and chemical-contaminated areas. The battalion chaplain, who was standing nearby, began to address this obvious moral issue.
The chaplain cited the Geneva conventions and discussed our nation as a force of righteousness and the support of God for our cause. To pragmatic soldiers this moral approach didn’t go far. The Geneva convention was dismissed, and our forward observer said that in school they had told him that “the Geneva convention says you can’t fire white phosphorus at troops; so you call it in on their equipment.” The young artilleryman’s logic was “if we’re gonna find ways around the Geneva convention, what do you think the enemy is gonna do?” Another said, “If we get captured by the Russians, we might as well kiss it off, so why not give them a dose of the same medicine?” To the chaplain’s “righteousness” and “support of God” comments, the cold, wet soldiers’ answers were along the lines of “righteousness comes out of a gun barrel” and “the victor writes history.”
At Fort Benning I too had heard the “Geneva convention and white phosphorous on equipment” line during the artillery pitch in Officer Candidate School, the Infantry Officer Basic Course, Ranger school, and the Infantry Mortar Platoon Officers Course. The treatment of POWs had been addressed by an instructor at Ranger school, and he clearly communicated his personal belief that in a raid or an ambush, a patrol could not be expected to take POWs. I had noted that most of the outstanding young soldiers coming to us from the Ranger Battalion shared this Ranger-school belief.
A Solution: “I’ll Shoot You Myself”
To confront this belief I said basically, “If the enemy finds just one massacre, like our soldiers did at Malmedy in the Battle of the Bulge, then thousands of enemy soldiers will swear never to surrender, and they’ll be very tough to fight. Just like our troops were in the Battle of the Bulge when word got around that the Germans were shooting POWs. In addition, that’s all the excuse the enemy needs to kill our captured soldiers. So by murdering a few prisoners, who were just poor, tired soldiers like you, you’ll make the enemy force a damn-sight tougher, and cause the deaths — murders — of a whole bunch of our boys.
“On the other hand, if you disarm, tie up, and leave a POW out in a clearing somewhere because you can’t take him with you, then the word will spread that Americans treat POWs honorably, even when the chips are down,
