On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (27 page)

Just as I was feeling sorry for him, the Marine showed me the U.S.

Government Ml carbine the gook had used on us. He was wearing a Timex watch and sporting a new pair of U.S.-made tennis shoes.

So much for feeling sorry for him.

This narrative gives a remarkable — and almost certainly unintentional — insight into the early aspects of rationalizing a personal kill. N o t e the writer's recognition of the killer's humanity associated with the use of words such as " h e , " " h i m , " and "his." But then the enemy's weapon is noted, the rationalization process begins, and " h e " becomes "the body" and ultimately "the gook."

O n c e the process begins, irrational and irrelevant supporting evidence is gathered, and the possession of U.S.-made shoes and a watch becomes a cause for depersonalization rather than identification.

To the reader this rationalization and justification is completely unnecessary. To the writer this rationalization and justification of his kill are absolutely essential to his emotional and psychological health, and their progression is unconsciously revealed in his narrative.

Sometimes the killer is quite aware of his need for and use of rationalization. N o t e the conscious rationalization and justification in this account by scout helicopter pilot D. Bray: We began to be very efficient executioners, a role we took no real pride in.

I had mixed feelings about this, but as bad as it was, it was better than leaving NVA alive to attack American troops somewhere else.

Often orders for the day would be: Find NVA in this or that area

. . . to pick up for interrogation.

We would drift up and down hillsides, following trails and literally looking under big rocks until we would find several NVA huddled on the ground, trying to hide. We would radio back to headquarters as we backed off far enough to arm our rockets.

Orders would be "Wait, we're checking it out." Then the bad T H E KILLING R E S P O N S E STAGES

239

news would come, "Wrong area, Fixer. Are they making any signs of surrender?"

We would reply, "Negative," and then they would come back with, "Kill them if you can."

"For God's sake, can't you send someone out to take them prisoner?"

"There is no one available. Shoot them!"

"Roger," we'd reply, and then we'd cut loose. Sometimes they would understand and take off running for cover, but usually, they would just crouch in their holes until our rockets hit. Common sense told me that the senior officers were right; it was foolish to send a platoon after every little band of three or four armed men, but it took all the rationalization I could muster before I could accept what I was doing.

. . . Distasteful as it was, looking back, I can see that what we did was the only effective way to counter the NVA tactic of breaking into such small units that there was no effective way to go after them.

All of this comes as an introduction to Bray's magazine article in which he tells of the time when he didn't ask for orders. Instead he landed his little two-seater helicopter and, at great danger to himself and his copilot, captured a solitary NVA soldier, rather than executing him, and subsequently brought the prisoner home sitting in his copilot's lap.

Here again we see an article that appears to represent a deeply felt request for understanding by the reader. The average reader probably sees no need to justify these kills, but the killer does.

The point here is that it is this one incident of which Bray is — I think justifiably — proud. And it is this incident that he wanted to tell in a national forum. His message can be seen over and over in these personal narratives about Vietnam: "Look, we did our j o b and we did it well, and it needed doing even though we didn't like it; but sometimes we just had to go above and beyond what was expected of us in order to avoid the killing." And maybe by writing and publishing this article he is telling us that "this time, the time when I didn't have to kill anybody, this is the time that 240

THE KILLING RESPONSE STAGES

I want to tell you about. This is the time that I want to be remembered for."

Sometimes the rationalization can manifest itself in dreams. Ray, a veteran of close combat in the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama, told me of a recurring dream in which he would talk with the young Panamanian soldier he had killed in close combat. "Why did you kill me?" asked the soldier each time. And in his dreams Ray would attempt to explain to his victim, but in reality he was explaining and rationalizing the act of killing to himself: "Well, if you were in my place, wouldn't you have done the same? . . .

It was either you or us." And over the last few years, as Ray worked through the rationalization process in his dreams, the soldier and his questions have gone away.

Here we have seen some aspects of how rationalization and acceptance works, but we need to remember that these are just some aspects of a lifelong process. If the process fails it will result in post-traumatic stress disorder. The failure of the rationalization and acceptance process in Vietnam, and its subsequent impact upon our nation, will be looked at in "Killing in Vietnam," the next section of this book.

Chapter Two

Applications of the Model:

Murder-Suicides, Lost Elections, and

Thoughts of Insanity

An Application: Murder-Suicides and Aggression Responses
An understanding of the killing response stages permits understanding of individual responses to violence outside of combat. For instance, we may now be able to understand some of the psychology behind murder-suicides. A murderer, particularly an individual who kills several victims in a spree of violent passion, may very well be fixated in the exhilaration stage of killing. But once there is a lull, and the murderer has a chance to dwell on what he has done, the revulsion stage sets in with such intensity that suicide is a very common response.

These responses can even occur when aggression intrudes into our day-to-day peacetime lives. They are far more intense when one kills in close combat, but just a fistfight can bring them up.

Richard Heckler, a psychologist and a high-level master of the martial art of aikido, experienced the full range of response stages in a fight with a group of teenagers who attacked him in his driveway: 242

T H E KILLING R E S P O N S E STAGES

When I turned my back someone shot out of the back seat, grabbed my arm, and spun me around. A bolt of adrenalin surged through me and without a moment's hesitation I backhanded him in the face.

I was suddenly released from all restraints. I'd been assaulted physically, it was now my right to unleash the fury I felt from the beginning. As the driver came towards me I pushed his grab aside and pinned him by the throat against the car. . . . The kid I hit was stumbling around holding his face. I was in full-bloom righteous indignation by this point. Having given myself total permission to set justice in order I turned to settle matters with the kid under my grip.

What I saw stopped me in horror. He looked at me in total and absolute fear. His eyes were glazed in terror; his body shook violently. A searing pain spread through my chest and heart. I suddenly lost my stomach for revenge . . . seeing that boy's terror as I held his throat made me understand what Nietzsche meant when he wrote . . . "Rather perish than hate and fear, and twice rather perish than make oneself hated and feared."

First we see the actual, initial blow being struck reflexively without thinking: "without a moment's hesitation I backhanded him in the face." Then the exhilaration and euphoria stage occurs: "I was suddenly released from all restraints. . . . it was n o w my right to unleash the fury I felt." And suddenly the revulsion stage sets in:

"What I saw stopped me in horror. . . . A searing pain spread through my chest and heart."

This process might even help to explain the responses of nations to killing in warfare. After the Gulf War, President Bush was the most popular president in recent American history. America was in the euphoria stage as it had its parades and congratulated itself on its performance. T h e n came a kind of moral hangover very much like the revulsion stage, which was just in time for President Bush to lose the election. Could this be pushing the model too far? Perhaps, but the same thing happened to Churchill after World War II, and it almost happened to Truman in 1948. Truman was APPLICATIONS OF THE MODEL 243

lucky enough to have his election three years after the war was over, which may have been sufficient time for the nation to begin the rationalization and acceptance stage. This may indeed be stretching the model too far, but perhaps it will give future politicians something to think about when they consider going to war.

"I Thought I Was Insane": Interaction Between Exhilaration
and Remorse

When I talk to veterans' groups about the killing response stages their reactions are always remarkable. Any good speaker or teacher recognizes when he has struck a chord in his audience, but the response of veterans to the killing response stage — particularly to the interaction between the exhilaration and the remorse stages —

is the most powerful I have ever experienced.

One of the things that appears to occur among men in combat is that they feel the high of the exhilaration stage, and then when the remorse stage sets in they believe that there must be something

"wrong" or "sick" about them to have enjoyed it so intensely.

The common response is something like: "My God, I just killed a man and I enjoyed it. What is wrong with me?"

If the demands from authority and the threatening enemy are intense enough to overcome a soldier's resistance, it is only understandable that he feel some sense of satisfaction. He has hit his target, he has saved his friends, and he has saved his own life. He has resolved the conflict successfully. He won. He is alive! But a good portion of the subsequent remorse and guilt appears to be a horrified response to this perfectly natural and common feeling of exhilaration.
It is vital that future soldiers understand that this is a normal
and very common response to the abnormal circumstances of combat, and
they need to understand that their feelings of satisfaction at killing are a
natural and fairly common aspect of combat.
I believe that this is the most important insight that can come from an understanding of the killing response stages.

Again, I should emphasize that not all combatants go through all stages. Eric, a USMC veteran, described how these stages 244 THE KILLING RESPONSE STAGES

occurred in his combat experiences. His first kill in Vietnam was an enemy soldier whom he had just seen urinating along the trail.

When this soldier subsequently moved toward him, Eric shot him.

"It didn't feel good," he said. "It didn't feel good at all." There was no discernible exhilaration, or even any satisfaction. But later, when he killed enemy soldiers who were "coming over the wire"

in a firefight, he felt what he called "satisfaction, a satisfaction of anger."

Eric's case brings out two points. The first is that when you have cause to identify with your victim (that is, you see him participate in some act that emphasizes his humanity, such as urinating, eating, or smoking) it is much harder to kill him, and there is much less satisfaction associated with the kill, even if the victim represents a direct threat to you and your comrades at the time you kill him. The second point is that subsequent kills are always easier, and there is much more of a tendency to feel satisfaction or exhilaration after the second killing experience, and less tendency to feel remorse.

You don't even have to personally kill to experience these response stages and the interaction between the exhilaration and remorse stages. Sol, a veteran of naval combat in World War II, told of his exhilaration when he saw his ship shelling a Japanese-held island. Later, when he saw the charred and mangled Japanese bodies, he felt remorse and guilt, and for the rest of his life he has been trying to rationalize and accept the pleasure he felt. Sol, like thousands of others I have spoken to, was profoundly relieved to realize that his deepest, darkest secrets were no different than those of other soldiers with similar experiences.

One veteran's letter to the editor in response to Jack Thompson's article "Combat Addiction" reveals the desperate need for an understanding of these processes:

[Jack Thompson's] insight has always astounded me, but this piece was really out of the ordinary. . . . What was really right on target was the combat addiction part. For quite a long time I thought I was insane off and on.

APPLICATIONS OF THE M O D E L

245

Just a simple understanding of the universality of these emotions helped one man understand that he wasn't really crazy, that he was just experiencing a common human reaction to an uncommon situation. Again, that is the objective of this study: no judgment, no condemnation, just the remarkable power of understanding.

244 T H E KILLING RESPONSE STAGES

occurred in his combat experiences. His first kill in Vietnam was an enemy soldier whom he had just seen urinating along the trail.

When this soldier subsequently moved toward him, Eric shot him.

"It didn't feel good," he said. "It didn't feel good at all." There was no discernible exhilaration, or even any satisfaction. But later, when he killed enemy soldiers who were "coming over the wire"

in a firefight, he felt what he called "satisfaction, a satisfaction of anger."

Eric's case brings out two points. The first is that when you have cause to identify with your victim (that is, you see him participate in some act that emphasizes his humanity, such as urinating, eating, or smoking) it is much harder to kill him, and there is much less satisfaction associated with the kill, even if the victim represents a direct threat to you and your comrades at the time you kill him. The second point is that subsequent kills are always easier, and there is much more of a tendency to feel satisfaction or exhilaration after the second killing experience, and less tendency to feel remorse.

You don't even have to personally kill to experience these response stages and the interaction between the exhilaration and remorse stages. Sol, a veteran of naval combat in World War II, told of his exhilaration when he saw his ship shelling a Japanese-held island. Later, when he saw the charred and mangled Japanese bodies, he felt remorse and guilt, and for the rest of his life he has been trying to rationalize and accept the pleasure he felt. Sol, like thousands of others I have spoken to, was profoundly relieved to realize that his deepest, darkest secrets were no different than those of other soldiers with similar experiences.

One veteran's letter to the editor in response to Jack Thompson's article "Combat Addiction" reveals the desperate need for an understanding of these processes:

[Jack Thompson's] insight has always astounded me, but this piece was really out of the ordinary. . . . What was really right on target was the combat addiction part. For quite a long time I thought I was insane off and on.

APPLICATIONS OF THE M O D E L 245

Just a simple understanding of the universality of these emotions helped one man understand that he wasn't really crazy, that he was just experiencing a common human reaction to an uncommon situation. Again, that is the objective of this study: no judgment, no condemnation, just the remarkable power of understanding.

S E C T I O N V I I

Killing in Vietnam:

What Have We Done to Our Soldiers?

With the frost of his breath wreathing his face, the new president proclaimed, "Now the trumpet summons u s . . . to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle . . . against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself."

Exactly twelve yean later, in January 1973, an agreement signed in Paris would end U.S. military efforts in Vietnam. The trumpet would be silent, the mood sullen. American fighting men would depart with the war unwon. The United States of America would no longer be willing to pay any price.

— Dave Palmer

Summons of the Trumpet

What happened in Vietnam? W h y do between 400,000 and 1.5

million Vietnam vets suffer from PTSD as a result of that tragic war?' Just what
have
we done to our soldiers?