INSIDE THE MINDS OF SOLDIERS ... TRAINED TO KILL

INSIDE THE MINDS OF SOLDIERS ... TRAINED TO KILL
By Trevor Royle, Diplomatic Editor

Soldiers are trained to kill. It goes with the job and everything in their schooling leads up to the point when the enemy is in their sights and they squeeze the trigger. When it happens few take satisfaction in the act and for most frontline soldiers killing is an impersonal act, distorted to a certain extent by the range and power of modern weapons.

It is unusual for a soldier in battle to see the identity of those they are killing: an Australian soldier who served in Palestine during the first world war likened the experience to hunting, “just like potting kangaroos in the bush”.

After soldiers have been in action their adrenalin is pumping, there is a strong possibility that their own side will have taken casualties and there is a marked tendency to refuse to accept surrender from the survivors.

That’s why soldiers have to be kept under strict discipline during and after battles, otherwise they might start behaving like an earlier group of US soldiers who massacred Vietnamese villagers at My Lai in 1970. Asked why they had opened fire on innocent civilians, one GI replied that it was like “scratching an itch, it’s going to drive you mad unless you do it”.

There is another link provided by the incident at My Lai. The unit involved had been in action for several days and had lost casualties to a hidden enemy, including a much-liked sergeant who was a victim of booby-trap. It was strongly suspected that the Viet Cong gunmen responsible were being sheltered by the local community. So powerful was that distrust that it was easy for senior US officers to encourage their men to dehumanise the enemy. These were not simple Vietnamese peasants but “gooks”, who were legitimate targets and were therefore liable to extermination.

Just as German soldiers fighting on the eastern front were ordered to regard their enemy as “untermenschen”, (sub-humans) to dislocate them from the actual killing of civilians and prisoners-of-war, many US soldiers also entertained the same notion about the Vietnamese.

According to John Parrish, who wrote an outstanding account of the dirty war in Vietnam, the perpetrators of My Lai were basically ordinary law-abiding, down-home Americans who had been brutalised by fighting in a war which was becoming vastly unpopular: “You put those same kids in the jungle for a while, get them real scared, deprive them of sleep and let a few incidents change some of their fears to hate … Add a little mob pressure and those nice kids would rape like champions.”

Lack of leadership was also a factor at My Lai. The officer commanding the patrol, Lieutenant William Caley, had lost control of his men but in that respect he was hardly helped by the orders given to him by his superiors. Before entering the village he had been told that the patrol’s job was to “to neutralise everything, to kill everything”. When he asked if that included women and children he was told: “I mean everything.”

Under those circumstance it would have been very difficult for Caley to rein in his men once the shooting and burning had started. Their blood was up, they had been frightened and were then exhilarated by the action of killing. No doubt they felt some measure of satisfaction that they were getting their own back against a despised enemy who seemed to them to be no different from vermin.

There is, of course, a narrow dividing line between legitimate action in combat and the perpetration of an atrocity and there have been times in history when soldiers have been encouraged to use harsh tactics as a deterrent and to create an atmosphere of fear.

Japanese tactics during the second world war made full use of terror and brutality and, as a result, there was rarely any sympathy for their soldiers when they faced defeat in 1945. A Japanese soldier in the battle for Palau Island remembered sheltering with his company in caves, only for attacking US Marines to “lob incendiary bombs and grenades into the caves, and constantly use flame-throwers as they set out to cook us to death”.

The relentless and unforgiving nature of the US attack was sharpened by the discovery of the Japanese death camps and those present probably felt no sympathy for the men trying to save their lives in the caves.

Guy Sajer, a highly decorated German soldier in the same conflict, knew what it was like to take life but he always insisted that the policy of an eye for an eye was wrong-headed: “War always reaches the depths of horror because of idiots who perpetuate terror from generation to generation under the pretext of violence.”

Those fighting in Iraq will understand only too well the truth behind his words.