Then of course we have the worst four letter word in the batt, in the vocabulary of the battle, and that is fear. Fear is the general experience of all soldiers in battle. Particular actually before a battle. The kind of apprehension, the kind of nervousness as one contemplates what is about to happen. This is especially true for soldiers who have already been through it and who actually know that as awful as they can imagine, reality is going to be much worse. Now fear is actually much more common in the battlefield than our popular imagination would like to accept. All men, all normal men, perhaps psychopaths, sociopaths, might not feel fear. But all normal men and women when confronted with this kind of setting, when confronted with this kind of danger are going to be fearful. There is a great deal of evidence that many soldiers for example in World War I did not go over the top even when faced with gun point threats. Even when faced with the possibility of execution. The very idea of having to climb out of that trench or going to that battlefield is too overwhelming. It's overwhelming even the immediate threat of an officer threaten to shoot them. But let's consider the psychological anguish of witnessing, or experiencing, or inflicting pain on others. How fearful this must be. Let's go back to this Goya's most famous painting. Look at the incredible look of horror, of confusion, as this man faces the French soldiers. He knows he's about to die. And it's that moment of wonderment, that moment of non reality that everyone fears. But of course that also involves when you are doing something, imagine being conscious of you all of the sudden you thrusting a sharp blade through another human being. Or the aftermath of battle. Consider what it would be like to be on this beach ten or 12 hours after the battle and to witness these bodies, to see this desecration, to see this finality of death and realizing that it was possible. Now, the development of modern effective ammunitions brought new horrors with World World War II. Actually beginning with the Civil War of the United States continued to the nineteenth century World War I and World War II, and resulted in wounds such as this. Not only did we improve ammunition, but always improved medical care. So wounds that might have been life threatening before, could be easily survivable. But survivable in a state that would perhaps be unimaginable. And again, these kinds of images, these kinds of thoughts were all in soldiers heads. Many soldiers, beginning in the 19th Century, especially with the, with the introduction of massive firearms, many soldiers described the experience of being covered in comrades innards or injury from bones flying from shrapnel is actually fairly common. The actual physical pain suffered from wounds is indescribable. What perhaps saves many soldiers but also dooms them, is shock that the body simply shutting down because the amount of pain that it's experiencing is indescribable. This might save the mind in a sense, but it also condemns the body to an early death. We're talking about bodies and minds being taken to the absolute level of horror and of fear. The fear of mutilation particularly, is even greater than the fear of death. Here is some illustrations from after World War I, someone with their jaw that has been shot off. Here we have a man without an arm. Here we have a soldier again without an arm. These kinds of injuries, of going back to normality, but now incapacitated. The most famous fear is of course any injuries to the groin. That all languages, all soldiers, talk about, please not that. Then there is the horrific forms of death. Death that might not be sacralized. Death that might not be celebrated in any way. Death that might not be recognized. Remember I talked about that existential fear of the loneliness of death. Now imagine an anonymous death. A death that has absolutely no kind of consequence, that has no memory. For this reason, particularly elite troops have a tradition of bringing their dead back from battle. Because it is the last recognition of that individuality, that humanity of the person. There's also the possible loss of dignity in death, the absolute horror in death. There is a wonderful quotation, I shouldn't say wonderful, there is a horrific quotation from an account from World War I, which talks about a particular and dramatic form of death in the Passchendaele. And it talks about a soldier who is describing an evening as he sits in the trenches. And he says, from the darkness of all sides came the groans and wails of wounded men. Faint, long, sobbing moans of agony and despairing shrieks. It was too horribly obvious to me that dozens of men with serious wounds must have crawled for safety into shell holes. And now the water was slowly rising above them and powerless to move, they were going to drown. Imagine this. Not just the quick out of a bullet, but the extended period of pain for the wound, of seeking comfort, perhaps, in a shell hole. Of finding a little bit of comfort at first as the water begins to hit the face and as you begin to drink it. And then that realization, the realization that the water is not stopping. That one is not able to move and that the water's going to kill you even if the bullets didn't. Imagine the horror of those men who are safe, who are on the other side of the trench as they hear the symphony of pain and the symphony of horror all around them. Uncertainty is as great a source of fear as any. Will we win? Will I be brave? Will I be mined? Will I die? Battlefield is perhaps the most extreme example of where humans lose control over their individual lives. All of a sudden death can come randomly. There's very little that one can do to prevent death, even if there is that sense of powerlessness. That sense of not being able to control one's life. I always use the example with my classroom of fear of flying. Many people fear flying not because of the immediacy of death, but because we're all terrified of the minutes when where we know that we're going to die and the plane is falling and that sense of powerlessness, that sense of facing something inevitable about which we can do nothing. How does fear manifest itself? One of the classic emotions is apprehension. There is restlessness. There are, unfortunately and quite commonly, involuntary bowel and bladder movements. There's extreme silence. Or inappropriate manic behavior. There's trembling. There's vomiting. There's a fast heartbeat. There is sweat. There is diminished sense of sound. An increased visual clarity. There's a dissociation from reality. People don't want to be here. In the famous words from Micheal Herr's Dispatches, a GI tells him I don't like this movie. This sense of not wanting to be here, and having your body involuntarily act in this form. We often see from war movies soldiers about to go into battle, and they look like something out of a fashion shoot. I've never been in battle, but I suspect it's full of precisely these kinds of emotions, these kinds of involuntary expressions of sheer terror. Well we shouldn't be surprised then that cowardice is very, very common on the battlefield. For those going through battle for the first time, fear of being found a coward is very common. After that, fear of battle, simple fear of battle becomes important. So cowardice is not to be found as a rare occurrence. It's the normal reaction to this kind of horror. Because of this, desertion has always been a concern. Leaders often select battle sites in routes especially to limit desertion, or if we talked about with coercion, create particular spaces in which some coercion can be used in order to make it easier for soldiers to face that other fear. The assertion is often a measure of the societal support for the, for a war. For example, the US Military in World War II experienced a fraction of the recession, desertion, that did during the Vietnam War. Another ap, aspect of battle is non-participation. Or battle pacifity. You don't run away, but you want to, in a sense, remove yourself. Remove yourself from battle and not shoot, and try in a sense, to take yourself away from this horrific experience. Non-participation, there are many signs that this was quite common. There are the famous surveys by SLA Marshall after World War II. There are archaeological finds of Civil War battlefields that find a significant number of muskets that are armed and yet have not been shot. As in, and it appears that soldiers simply would not pull the trigger. Is it any wonder that this little boy would react this way? Given this kind of terror, given this kind of horror. Given the consciousness, again we're not animals. We are conscious of responsibility. Who would not want to stop? Who would not want to remove themselves and simply hide? [BLANK_AUDIO]
