On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (15 page)

Bombing deaths are buffered by the all-important factor of distance.

They represent an impersonal act of war in which specific deaths are unintended and almost accidental in nature. ("Collateral damage" is the military euphemism for such killing of civilians while bombing military targets.) Execution of innocent civilians, a subject to be addressed later in this study, is on the other hand a highly personal act of psychotic irrationality that openly refutes the humanity of the victims.

So what is the difference? Ultimately, the difference is distance.

Chapter Two

Killing at Maximum and Long Range:

Never a Need for Repentance or Regret

To fight from a distance is instinctive in man. From the first day he has worked to this end, and he continues to do so.

— Ardant du Picq

Battle Studies

Maximum Range: "They Can Pretend They Are Not Killing
Human Beings"

Our examination of the killing process at different points along the distance spectrum begins at maximum range. For our purposes

"maximum range" is defined as a range at which the killer is unable to perceive his individual victims without using some form of mechanical assistance — binoculars, radar, periscope, remote TV camera, and so on.

Gray states the matter clearly: "Many a pilot or artilleryman who has destroyed untold numbers of terrified noncombatants has never felt any need for repentance or regret." And Dyer echoes and reinforces Gray when he notes that there has never been any difficulty in getting artillerymen, bomber crews, or naval personnel to kill:

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Partly it is the same pressure that keeps machine gun crews firing — they are being observed by their fellows — but even more important is the intervention of distance and machinery between them and the enemy; they can pretend they are not killing human beings.

On the whole, however, distance is a sufficient buffer: gunners fire at grid references they cannot see; submarine crews fire torpedoes at "ships" (and not, somehow, at the people in the ships); pilots launch their missiles at "targets."

Dyer covers most of the maximum-range types of killing here.

Artillery crews, bomber crews, naval gunners, and missile crews —

at sea and on the ground — are all protected by the same powerful combination of group absolution, mechanical distance, and, most pertinent to our current discussion, physical distance.

In years of research and reading on the subject of killing in combat I have not found one single instance of individuals w h o have refused to kill the enemy under these circumstances, nor have I found a single instance of psychiatric trauma associated with this type of killing. Even in the case of the individuals who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, contrary to popular myth, there are no indications of psychological problems. Historical accounts indicate that the pilot of the aircraft that made the weather reconnaissance for the
Enola Gay
had a series of disciplinary and criminal problems before the bombing, and it was his continued problems after leaving the service that formed the sole basis of the popular myth of suicide and mental problems among these crews.

Long Range: " N o t Eyeball to Eyeball with the Sweat and the
Emotions o f C o m b a t "

"Long range" is defined here as the range at which the average soldier may be able to see the enemy, but is unable to kill him without some form of special weaponry — sniper weapons, anti-armor missiles, or tank fire.

Holmes tells of a World War I Australian sniper recalling how, after shooting a German observer, "a queer thrill shot through me, it was a different feeling to that which I had when I shot my KILLING AT M A X I M U M AND L O N G R A N G E 109

first kangaroo when I was a boy. For an instant I felt sick and faint; but the feeling soon passed."

Here we begin to see some disturbance at the act of killing, but snipers doctrinally operate as teams, and like maximum-range killers they are protected by the same potent combination of group absolution, mechanical distance (the rifle scope), and physical distance. Their observations and the accounts of their kills are strangely depersonalized and different from those that we will see at closer ranges:

At 2109 [on February 3, 1969] five Viet Cong moved from the woodline to the edge of the rice paddy and the first Viet Cong in the group was taken under fire . . . resulting in one Viet Cong killed. Immediately the other Viet Cong formed a huddle around the fallen body, apparently not quite sure of what had taken place.

Sergeant Waldron continued engaging the Viet Cong one by one until a total of [all] five Viet Cong were killed.2

Even given the buffer of the tremendous distance at which snipers work, some snipers can rationalize their actions by killing only enemy leaders. O n e marine sniper told D. J. Truby "you don't like to hit ordinary troops, because they're usually scared draftees or worse. . . . T h e guys to shoot are big brass." And just as a remarkably small percentage of World War II fighter pilots were capable of doing the majority of the air-to-air killing, so too have a few carefully selected and trained snipers made a tremendous and disproportionate contribution to their nation's war effort by remorselessly and mercilessly killing large numbers of the enemy.

From January 7 to July 24, 1969, U.S. Army snipers in Vietnam accounted for 1,245 confirmed kills, with an average of 1.39 bullets expended per kill. (Compare this with the average fifty thousand rounds of ammunition required for every enemy soldier killed in Vietnam.)3 In the course of calculating confirmed sniper kills, no enemy was counted as a kill unless an American soldier actually was able to physically "place his foot" on the body.

Yet for all its effectiveness, there is a strange revulsion and resistance toward this very personal, one-on-one killing by snipers.

Peter Staff, in his book on snipers, notes that after every war "the 110 KILLING AND PHYSICAL D I S T A N C E

United States military rushes to distance itself from its snipers.

The same men called upon to perform impossible missions during combat quickly find themselves to be peacetime pariahs. World War I, World War II, Korea. It was the same."

World War II-era fighter pilots, firing their battery of heavy machine guns at the enemy, would probably fit into the long-range category, but they are hampered by lack of group absolution and their powerful identification with an enemy w h o is so remarkably similar to them. Colonel Barry Bridger of the U.S. Air Force described to Dyer the difference between air combat (long range) and ground battle (medium and close range):

I would draw one distinction between being a combat aviator and being someone who is fighting the enemy face-to-face on the ground. In the air environment, it's very clinical, very clean, and it's not so personalized. You see an aircraft; you see a target on the ground — you're not eyeball to eyeball with the sweat and the emotions of combat, and so it doesn't become so emotional for you and so personalized. And I think it is easier to do in that sense — you're not so affected.

Yet even with this advantage, only 1 percent of U.S. fighter pilots accounted for nearly 40 percent of all enemy pilots shot down in World War II; the majority apparently did not shoot anyone down or even try to.

Chapter Three

Killing at Mid- and Hand-Grenade Range:

"You Can Never Be Sure It Was You"

Midrange: Denial Based "on the Thinnest of Evidence"

We will call midrange that range at which the soldier can see and engage the enemy with rifle fire while still unable to perceive the extent of the wounds inflicted or the sounds and facial expressions of the victim when he is hit. In fact, at this range, the soldier can still deny that it was he who killed the enemy. When asked about his experiences, one World War II veteran told me that "there were so many other guys firing, you can never be sure it was you.

You shoot, you see a guy fall, and anyone could have been the one that hit him."

This is a fairly typical response by veterans to those who ask about their personal kills. Holmes states, "Most of the veterans I interviewed were infantrymen with front-line service, yet fewer than half of them believed that they had actually killed an enemy, and often this belief was based on the thinnest of evidence."

When soldiers do kill the enemy they appear to go through a series of emotional stages. The actual kill is usually described as being reflexive or automatic. Immediately after the kill the soldier goes through a period of euphoria and elation, which is usually followed by a period of guilt and remorse.4 The intensity and 112

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duration of these periods are closely related to distance. At midrange we see much of the euphoria stage. The future field marshal Slim wrote of experiencing this euphoria upon shooting a Turk in Mesopotamia in 1917. "I suppose it is brutal," wrote Slim, "but I had a feeling of the most intense satisfaction as the wretched Turk went spinning down."

After this euphoria stage, even at midrange, the remorse stage can hit hard. One Napoleonic-era British soldier quoted by Holmes described how he was overcome with horror when he first shot a Frenchman. "I reproached myself as a destroyer," he wrote.

"An indescribable uneasiness came over me, I felt almost like a criminal."

If a soldier goes up and looks at his kill — a common occurrence when the tactical situation permits — the trauma grows even worse, since some of the psychological buffer created by a midrange kill disappears upon seeing the victim at close range. Holmes tells of a World War I British veteran who was a seventeen-year-old private when he viewed his handiwork: "This was the first time I had killed anybody and when things quieted down I went and looked at a German I knew I had shot. I remember thinking that he looked old enough to have a family and I felt very sorry."

Hand-Grenade Range: "We Heard the Shrieks and
Were Nauseated"

Hand-grenade range can be anywhere from a few yards to as many as thirty-five or forty yards. For the purposes of the physical range spectrum, when we use the term "hand-grenade range" we are referring to a specific kill in which a hand grenade is used. A hand-grenade kill is distinguished from a close kill in that the killer does not have to see his victims as they die. In fact, at close range to midrange, if a soldier is in direct line of sight when his grenade explodes, he will become a victim of his own instrument.

Holmes tells how in the trenches of World War I one soldier threw a grenade at a group of Germans, and terrible cries followed its explosion. "Although we had been terribly hardened," said the soldier, "my blood froze." Not having to look at one's victim should make this a killing method that is largely free of trauma, KILLING AT M I D - AND H A N D - G R E N A D E R A N G E 113

if the soldier does not have to look at his handiwork, and if it were not for these screams.

The particular effectiveness of these psychologically and physically powerful weapons in the trenches of World War I is told of in detail by Holmes:

Both sides habitually bombed [hand-grenaded] dugouts containing men who might have surrendered had they been given a chance to do so. A British soldier, newly captured in March 1918, told his captor that there were some wounded in one of the dugouts:

"He took a stick grenade out, pulled the pin out and threw it down the dug-out. We heard the shrieks and were nauseated, but we were completely powerless. But it was all in a melee and we might have done the same in the circumstances."

In the close-in trench battles of World War I hand grenades were psychologically and physically easier to use, so much so that Keegan and Holmes tell us that "the infantryman had forgotten h o w to deliver accurate fire with his rifle; his main weapon had become the grenade." And we can begin to understand that this is because the emotional trauma associated with a grenade kill can be less than that of a close-range kill, especially if the killer does not have to look at his victims or hear them die.

Chapter Four

Killing at Close Range: "I Knew That It
Was up to Me, Personally, to Kill Him"

An Israeli paratrooper came face to face with a huge Jordanian during the capture of the Old City of Jerusalem in 1967. "We looked at each other for half a second and I knew that it was up to me, personally, to kill him, there was no one else there. The whole thing must have lasted less than a second, but it's printed on my mind like a slow motion movie. I fired from the hip and I can still see the bullets splashed against the wall about a meter to his left. I moved the Uzi, slowly, slowly it seemed, until I hit him in the body. He slipped to his knees, then he raised his head, with his face terrible, twisted in pain and hate, yes such hate. I fired again and somehow got him in the head. There was so much blood . . . I vomited, until the rest of the boys came up."

—John Keegan and Richard Holmes

Soldiers

Close range involves any kill with a projectile weapon from point-blank range, extending to midrange. T h e key factor in close range is the undeniable certainty of responsibility on the part of the killer.

In Vietnam the term "personal kill" was used to distinguish the act of killing a specific individual with a direct-fire weapon and KILLING AT C L O S E R A N G E 115

being absolutely sure of having done it oneself. The vast majority of personal kills and the resultant trauma occur at this range.

For analysis purposes I have divided examples of close-range encounters into those in which the narrator elects to kill, and those in which he does not kill.

To
Kill
. . .

At close range the euphoria stage, although brief, fleeting, and not often mentioned, still appears to be experienced in some form by most soldiers. Upon being asked, most of the combat veterans w h o m I have interviewed will admit to having experienced a brief feeling of elation upon succeeding in killing the enemy. Usually this euphoria stage is almost instantly overwhelmed by the guilt stage as the soldier is faced with the undeniable evidence of what he has done, and the guilt stage is often so strong as to result in physical revulsion and vomiting.

W h e n the soldier kills at close range, it is by its very nature an intensely vivid and personal matter. A U.S. Special Forces (Green Beret) officer described his revulsion during a personal kill while reacting to an ambush in Vietnam:

I took two of the men and went around the flank . . . to outflank them and take them out. Well, I got around to the side and pointed my Ml6 at them and this person turned around and just stared, and I froze, 'cos it was a boy, I would say between the ages of twelve and fourteen. When he turned at me and looked, all of a sudden he turned his whole body and pointed his automatic weapon at me, I just opened up, fired the whole twenty rounds right at the kid, and he just laid there. I dropped my weapon and cried.

— John Keegan and Richard Holmes

Soldiers

Author and World War II marine veteran William Manchester vividly described the same psychological responses to his own close-range kill:

I was utterly terrified — petrified — but I knew there had to be a Japanese sniper in a small fishing shack near the shore. He was 116

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firing in the other direction at Marines in another battalion, but I knew as soon as he picked off the people there — there was a window on our side — that he would start picking us off. And there was nobody else to go . . . and so I ran towards the shack and broke in and found myself in an empty room.

There was a door which meant there was another room and the sniper was in that — and I just broke that down. I was just absolutely gripped by the fear that this man would expect me and would shoot me. But as it turned out he was in a sniper harness and he couldn't turn around fast enough. He was entangled in the harness so I shot him with a .45 and I felt remorse and shame. I can remember whispering foolishly, "I'm sorry" and then just throwing up . . . I threw up all over myself. It was a betrayal of what I'd been taught since a child.

At this range the screams and cries of the enemy can be heard, adding greatly to the extent of the trauma experienced by the killer. Major General Frank Richardson told Holmes that "it is a touching fact that men, dying in battle, often call upon their mothers. I have heard them do so in five languages."

Oftentimes the death inflicted on the enemy during a close-range kill is not instant, and the killer finds himself in the position of comforting his victim in his last moments. Here we see Harry Stewart, a Ranger and U.S. Army master sergeant — the epitome of toughness and professionalism — telling of a remarkable incident that occurred during the T e t offensive in 1968: All of a sudden there was a guy firing a pistol right at us. It looked as big as a 175 [mm howitzer] just then. The first round hit the fireman on my left in the chest. The second round hit me in the right arm, although I didn't know it. The third round hit the fireman on my right in the gut. By this time I had bounced off the wall to my left. . . .

I charged the VC [Viet Cong], firing my M-16. He fell at my feet. He was still alive but would soon die. I reached down and took the pistol from his hand. I can still see those eyes, looking at me in hate. . . .

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Later I walked over to take another look at the VC I had shot.

He was still alive and looking at me with those eyes. The flies were beginning to get all over him. I put a blanket over him and rubbed water from my canteen onto his lips. That hard stare started to leave his eyes. He wanted to talk but was too far gone. I lit a cigarette, took a few puffs, and put it to his lips. He could barely puff. We each had had a few drags and that hard look had left his eyes before he died.5

Even when the killer has every motivation to hate and despise his victim, and every reason to quickly depart his close-range kill, he is often riveted, frozen by the magnitude of what he has done.

Here Lieutenant Dieter Dengler — recipient of the Navy Cross, America's second-highest decoration for heroism, and the only U.S. flier to escape from a Southeast Asian prison camp after being shot down and captured — found himself in just such a situation.

U p o n securing a weapon and breaking out of prison, Dieter was confronted by one of the sadistic guards w h o had tormented him: Only three feet away, Moron [their nickname for this particular guard] was coming at me full gallop, his machete cocked high over his head. I fired from the hip point-blank into him. The force of the blast hung him in the air, his machete still raised, and then spun him backwards to the ground. There was blood gushing from a huge hole in his back. I stood over him with my mouth open wide, amazed that a single slug could do such damage and mindful of nothing but the horrible-looking back.

In all of these narratives it is this emotional reaction that the writer wanted to tell us about. Of all the things that occurred in the months and years of war experienced by these men, the close-range kills quoted here, and all the many throughout this study, appear to be something these veterans wanted to get off their chests. A first sergeant w h o was a Vietnam Special Forces veteran once put it this way when describing combat to me: " W h e n you get up close and personal," he drawled with a cud of chewing tobacco in his cheek, "where you can hear 'em scream and see

'em die," and here he spit tobacco for emphasis, "it's a bitch."

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. . . And N o t to Kill

At close range the resistance to killing an opponent is tremendous.

W h e n 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.

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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.