Read Online On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Dave Grossman - Free Book Online
Authors: Dave Grossman
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may become exhausted and "enter into a dazed condition in which all sharpness of consciousness is lost"
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KILLING AND THE E X I S T E N C E OF R E S I S T A N C E
they can still "function like cells in a military organism, doing what is expected of them because it has become automatic."
O n e of the most powerful examples of the military's success in developing conditioned reflexes through drill can be found in John Masters's The Road Past Mandalay, where he relates the actions of a machine-gun team in combat during World W a r II: The No. 1 [gunner] was 17 yean old — I knew him. His No. 2
[assistant gunner] lay on the left side, beside him, head toward the enemy, a loaded magazine in his hand ready to whip onto the gun the moment the No. 1 said "Change!" The No. 1 started firing, and a Japanese machine gun engaged them at close range. The No.
1 got the first bunt through the face and neck, which killed him instandy. But he did not die where he lay, behind the gun. He rolled over to the right, away from the gun, his left hand coming up in death to tap his No. 2 on the shoulder in the signal that means Take over. The No. 2 did not have to push the corpse away from the gun. It was already clear.
The "take over" signal was drilled into the gunner to ensure that his vital weapon was never left unmanned should he ever have to leave. Its use in this circumstance is evidence of a conditioned reflex so powerful that it is completed without conscious thought as the last dying act of a soldier with a bullet through the brain.
Gwynne Dyer strikes right to the heart of the matter when he says, "Conditioning, almost in the Pavlovian sense, is probably a better word than Training, for what was required of the ordinary soldier was not thought, but the ability to . . . load and fire their muskets completely automatically even under the stress of combat."
This conditioning was accomplished by "literally thousands of hours of repetitive drilling" paired with "the ever-present incentive of physical violence as the penalty for failure to perform correctly."
T h e Civil War weapon was usually a muzzle-loading, black-powder, rifled musket. To fire the weapon a soldier would take a paper-wrapped cartridge consisting of a bullet and some gunpowder. He would tear the cartridge open with his teeth, pour the NONFIRERS THROUGHOUT HISTORY
19
powder down the barrel, set the bullet in the barrel, ram it home, prime the weapon with a percussion cap, cock, and fire. Since gravity was needed to pour the powder down the barrel, all of this was done from a standing position. Fighting was a stand-up business.
With the introduction of the percussion cap, and the advent of oiled paper to wrap the cartridge in, weapons had become generally quite reliable even in wet weather. The oiled paper around the cartridge prevented the powder from becoming wet, and the percussion cap ensured a reliable ignition source. In anything but a driving rainstorm, a weapon would malfunction only if the ball was put in before the powder (an extremely rare mistake given the drill the soldier had gone through), or if the hole linking the percussion cap with the barrel was fouled — something that could happen after a lot of firing, but that was easily corrected.
A minor problem could arise if a weapon was double loaded.
In the heat of battle a soldier might sometimes be unsure as to whether a musket was loaded, and it was not uncommon to place a second load on top of the first. But such a weapon was still quite usable. The barrels of these weapons were heavy, and the black powder involved was relatively weak. Factory tests and demonstra-tions of weapons of this era often involved firing a rifle with various kinds of multiple loads in it, sometimes with a weapon loaded all the way to the end of the barrel. If such a weapon was fired, the first load would ignite and simply push all the other loads out of the barrel.
These weapons were fast and accurate. A soldier could
18
KILLING AND THE E X I S T E N C E OF R E S I S T A N C E
they can still "function like cells in a military organism, doing what is expected of them because it has become automatic."
O n e of the most powerful examples of the military's success in developing conditioned reflexes through drill can be found in John Masters's The Road Past Mandalay, where he relates the actions of a machine-gun team in combat during World W a r II: The No. 1 [gunner] was 17 yean old — I knew him. His No. 2
[assistant gunner] lay on the left side, beside him, head toward the enemy, a loaded magazine in his hand ready to whip onto the gun the moment the No. 1 said "Change!" The No. 1 started firing, and a Japanese machine gun engaged them at close range. The No.
1 got the first bunt through the face and neck, which killed him instandy. But he did not die where he lay, behind the gun. He rolled over to the right, away from the gun, his left hand coming up in death to tap his No. 2 on the shoulder in the signal that means Take over. The No. 2 did not have to push the corpse away from the gun. It was already clear.
The "take over" signal was drilled into the gunner to ensure that his vital weapon was never left unmanned should he ever have to leave. Its use in this circumstance is evidence of a conditioned reflex so powerful that it is completed without conscious thought as the last dying act of a soldier with a bullet through the brain.
Gwynne Dyer strikes right to the heart of the matter when he says, "Conditioning, almost in the Pavlovian sense, is probably a better word than Training, for what was required of the ordinary soldier was not thought, but the ability to . . . load and fire their muskets completely automatically even under the stress of combat."
This conditioning was accomplished by "literally thousands of hours of repetitive drilling" paired with "the ever-present incentive of physical violence as the penalty for failure to perform correctly."
T h e Civil War weapon was usually a muzzle-loading, black-powder, rifled musket. To fire the weapon a soldier would take a paper-wrapped cartridge consisting of a bullet and some gunpowder. He would tear the cartridge open with his teeth, pour the NONFIRERS THROUGHOUT HISTORY
19
powder down the barrel, set the bullet in the barrel, ram it home, prime the weapon with a percussion cap, cock, and fire. Since gravity was needed to pour the powder down the barrel, all of this was done from a standing position. Fighting was a stand-up business.
With the introduction of the percussion cap, and the advent of oiled paper to wrap the cartridge in, weapons had become generally quite reliable even in wet weather. The oiled paper around the cartridge prevented the powder from becoming wet, and the percussion cap ensured a reliable ignition source. In anything but a driving rainstorm, a weapon would malfunction only if the ball was put in before the powder (an extremely rare mistake given the drill the soldier had gone through), or if the hole linking the percussion cap with the barrel was fouled — something that could happen after a lot of firing, but that was easily corrected.
A minor problem could arise if a weapon was double loaded.
In the heat of battle a soldier might sometimes be unsure as to whether a musket was loaded, and it was not uncommon to place a second load on top of the first. But such a weapon was still quite usable. The barrels of these weapons were heavy, and the black powder involved was relatively weak. Factory tests and demonstra-tions of weapons of this era often involved firing a rifle with various kinds of multiple loads in it, sometimes with a weapon loaded all the way to the end of the barrel. If such a weapon was fired, the first load would ignite and simply push all the other loads out of the barrel.
These weapons were fast and accurate. A soldier could
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