The difficulty of killing people in real life

[Brian G Turner]

I know we've covered this topic before somewhere - about how most soldiers, even in war, will avoid trying to kill the enemy.

Lindybeige covers this topic in one of his most recent videos, with the claim that the majority of the killing was traditionally done by 2% of the soldiers - which is interestingly split between two very different groups of people:

 

[LittleStar]

Very interesting. Mre so because having watched it, I can now identify that one of my main characters in my WIP fairly neatly fits into one of the VC 1%... Who knew.

I do wonder how this all compares to pre-firearm warfare. We're there only 2% of soldiers who swung the sword to kill as well?

 

[The Big Peat]

Fascinating video.

In answer to LittleStar's video I would speculate that yes, more than 2pc of soldiers swung their sword to kill. You've got to remember the 2pc stat is for a few specific wars and that, as the video says, modern armies do a huge deal better. You read Generation Kill, the lieutenant states to the journalist that each and every one of his men will shoot back. They have no problem with killing. I believe him. Volunteer armies that undergo intense training are a greatly different beast to conscript armies that don't - and I wish the issue of volunteer vs conscript had arisen in that video.

But anyway. Training is the key here. He put the key to overcoming that down to getting used to attacking humans and engaging in painful realistic practice against other humans. And I don't see how you learn the sword, or any other close in weapon, any other way. Certainly all of the martial arts I've done, a huge amount of it is sparring against other people and it hurts. Get them before they get you is something you learn quick. And as such, I don't see how you'd get only 2pc of medieval soldiers willing to kill someone face to face.

I would also speculate that starting younger and a more wide spread culture of hunting could also result in medieval soldiers being more willing to kill.

That said - notoriously, it was a shock for the aristocracy to die in battle. Partially that's because of how well armoured they were, and partially that's because they were worth more alive, and partially because often they'd be fighting kindred... but still, you can see that killing was still something of a taboo.

As for the whole love & family thing - you talk to anyone who was in the military and man, its tight. I only did two years in the OTC and have seen barely anyone from those days since but even in that lowly branch of the military, you form tight, tight emotional bonds. Imagine how tight the bonds are between those who lived together permanently and underwent such great trials together. The army really does try to make everyone your family and to take up that responsibility for each other.

 

[zmunkz]

Interesting video, although I think his personal attitude on violence is influencing his conclusions. The book Violence: A Writer's Guide talks about different classes of people on the spectrum of intrinsic violence (nice - manipulative - assertive - aggressive - assaultive - murderous). I've run into a few people that classify into the aggressive/assaultive categories and I've come to absolutely believe in the wisdom of those delineations. The idea that people in general don't go to violence first (and would rather posture) strikes me as naive, and probably reflects this guy's own intrinsic nature as assertive (or so I assume based on his comments). People tend to perceive others as existing in their own category or lower and consider anyone in a higher category as an outlier... and his statements seem to reflect that perception, although the real world does not. Then of course, the army is more likely to attract people less averse to violence to begin with.

As a specific example of some of his conclusions seeming to drift from the source materials he first cites, look at the discussion of the hole count discrepancy of 500 vs 3. There seem to be a lot of problems with the analysis. How did they count the hits in real combat and conclude there were only three? Based only on fatalities reported by the enemy or something? I imagine there are a huge number of areas on the solid sheet that would not translate into a mortal wound (or even necessarily a hit). Then he gives some good explanations from his source materials including smoke and stress (time to aim as well as jitters from adrenaline explains a HUGE amount) but then dismisses those and adds his own suggestion, apparently arbitrarily, that they were subconsciously aiming to miss in the hope everyone could just run away. I see that more as a bias of his own coming from his particular threshold of violence, and the assumption others have the same threshold.

Then the citation of how a few airforce pilots are responsible for 50% of deaths is also without context. Unlike the earlier statistic he gives, this one does not constrain the statistic to pilots in range of an enemy with clearance to fire, it just says all pilots. Of course a few are in hot zones and get most of the activity, no?

I dunno, as a general premise I think he's certainly right... but 2%... I don't buy it.

 

[Brian G Turner]

The book Violence: A Writer's Guide

The Rory Miller stuff is great and well worth reading.

 

[Denise Tanaka]

In the old days of firing squads, as I recall, they randomly put either "blanks" or live ammo in the rifles. That's why they had a whole row of riflemen aiming at one condemned prisoner. None of the shooters knew, for sure, which gun had the real bullet. So even if they all aimed, and they all shot at the same time, only one was really the executioner.

 

[Null_Zone]

The claim that the majority of soldiers do not try to kill an the enemy comes from one source (Marsahall) really, and that had been called into question given the authors refusal to grant any other researcher access to their data or even state where the data comes from beyond the vagues of terms.

 

[Langadune]

I think there's vital difference between trying not to kill and not trying to kill. From conversations I've had with friends who have been in combat. They've told me they're not necessarily aiming with an intent to kill the enemy, in heavy combat, they're pointing and shooting... relying in their training to kick in (shooting at center mass). Often it's suppressive fire or return fire.

So I don't think they are actively trying to avoid killing the enemy, I think they're just shooting without stopping to aim for a kill shot.

 

[Toby Frost]

I find it odd that the original research comes from WW2. If ever armies were willing to kill people - civilians as well as soldiers - it would have been the German and Japanese armies, and both were defeated. It would have been very difficult, if not impossible, to stop them without a lot of people shooting to kill.

There's probably a perfect storm of factors that make killing easier, and training is probably only one (large) factor. The sense that your enemy is not like you, the general value given to life in your society, the feeling that you are defending you own people or are in the moral right, and the sense that that there is no real alternative probably makes it much easier. George Macdonald Fraser recounted using a bolt-action rifle (so no closing your eyes and spraying) to pick off several enemy soldiers and appears not to have been greatly damaged by the experience.

[As an aside, it occurs to me that having a reputation as a horde of merciless psychos, as many SFF super-soldiers do (the Saudakar, for instance), is counter-productive. It tends to make a prepared enemy more determined. Being a coldly lethal professional would probably be more likely to inspire an enemy to surrender, rather than promising to eat his family the moment the opportunity arose].

 

[Brian G Turner]

There's probably a perfect storm of factors that make killing easier, and training is probably only one (large) factor. The sense that your enemy is not like you, the general value given to life in your society, the feeling that you are defending you own people or are in the moral right, and the sense that that there is no real alternative probably makes it much easier.

Totally. Even during Lindybeige's presentation, I was put in mind of Russian forces during WWII, whose level of aggression appears remarkable - unarmed men at Stalingrad charging German lines, women partisans attacking and torturing German soldiers, and the refusal to recognise medics as non-combatants.

Germans were told that Russians were subhuman, so god knows what the Russians were told to drive such aggression - unless it's firmly rooted in protecting family.

 

[The Big Peat]

I haven't seen a breakdown of how people died in WW2 but there's an awful lot of ways to kill someone without ever getting them in your sights. Artillery, bombing, grenade over the top... most of these are better than having an enemy in your sights as well because there's a lot less he can do back to you, not to mention explosives can account for a lot more casualties.

Hmm. May dig around on this. I hadn't realised the initial research was so controversial.

 

[Faye HG]

I watched a documentary on Channel 4 (I think it was aired last year) called 'Psychopath Night' (Psychopath Night - All 4) and they interviewed a solider who rated very high on the Psychopath trait psychological test (indeed, he had a formal diagnosis) and he would be sent into villages and areas in the Middle East to 'clear the path' for the rest of the troops. He would kill anyone and anything, so proved quite handy to the military and by his own admission felt nothing whatsoever either at the time of the action or at his time of recollection in the interview.

 

[Mirannan]

In the old days of firing squads, as I recall, they randomly put either "blanks" or live ammo in the rifles. That's why they had a whole row of riflemen aiming at one condemned prisoner. None of the shooters knew, for sure, which gun had the real bullet. So even if they all aimed, and they all shot at the same time, only one was really the executioner.

I find that rather difficult to believe. Soldiers are presumably trained in the use of their rifles, and there is a very distinct difference between firing a blank and a live round - particularly with old-style full power battle rifles such as the good old .303 Enfield. I've had maybe an hour with such a weapon, and even I could tell. A blank and a live round sound different (the blank is actually louder!) and of course there is a huge difference in recoil.

 

[Vertigo]

I find that rather difficult to believe. Soldiers are presumably trained in the use of their rifles, and there is a very distinct difference between firing a blank and a live round - particularly with old-style full power battle rifles such as the good old .303 Enfield. I've had maybe an hour with such a weapon, and even I could tell. A blank and a live round sound different (the blank is actually louder!) and of course there is a huge difference in recoil.

Having spent time in the army and doing an awful lot of shooting of 'battle' rifles I can only agree and in fact 'huge' is virtually an understatement. The only kind of blank that still gives a significant recoil is on modern self loading rifles where a recoil is required to operate the reloading mechanism. On these rifles (at least back when I was firing the now old British SLR) the 'blanks' actually had wooden bullets in them and required a special device to be fitted over the end of the barrel to 'mash' the wooden bullet. Without that masher the wooden bullet could still be lethal at short range (though hopelessly inaccurate). So I can promise you that whether it is an old musket, a Lee Enfield or a modern self loading rifle it would always be completely obvious, to the shooter at least, whether they had fired a blank or live round. Though maybe not so obvious before they fired.

 

[paranoid marvin]

I haven't seen a breakdown of how people died in WW2 but there's an awful lot of ways to kill someone without ever getting them in your sights. Artillery, bombing, grenade over the top... most of these are better than having an enemy in your sights as well because there's a lot less he can do back to you, not to mention explosives can account for a lot more casualties.

Hmm. May dig around on this. I hadn't realised the initial research was so controversial.

Most casualties are killed by artillery. I guess the new way to kill people nowadays is via a drone. Does this somehow 'dilute' the guilt felt for killing someone, or does it make it even worse?