On killing

by Unknown

  tiny who "begged for the bullet" by pleading to be executed with a rifle shot rather than the bayonet. More recently, according to AP news articles, we have seen this in Rwanda, where the Hutu tribesmen made their Tutsi victims purchase the bullets they would be killed with in order to avoid being hacked to death.

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  It is not just the killer who feels this profound revulsion toward the intimate brutality of a bayonet kill. John Keegan's landmark book The Face of Battle makes a comparative study of Agincourt (1415), Waterloo (1815), and the Somme (1916). In his analysis of these three battles spanning more than five hundred years, Keegan repeatedly notes the amazing absence of bayonet wounds incurred during the massed bayonet attacks at Waterloo and the Somme. At Waterloo Keegan notes that "there were numbers of sword and lance wounds to be treated and some bayonet wounds, though these had usually been inflicted after the man had already been disabled, there being no evidence of the armies having crossed bayonets at Waterloo." By World War I edged-weapon combat had almost disappeared, and Keegan notes that in the Battle of the Somme, "edged-weapon wounds were a fraction of one per cent of all wounds inflicted."

  Three major psychological factors come into play in bayonet combat. First, the vast majority of soldiers who do approach bayonet range with the enemy use the butt of the weapon or any other available means to incapacitate or injure the enemy rather than skewer him. Second, when the bayonet is used, the close range at which the work is done results in a situation with enormous potential for psychological trauma. And, finally, the resistance to killing with the bayonet is equal only to the enemy's horror at having this done to him. Thus in bayonet charges one side or the other invariably flees before the actual crossing of bayonets occurs.

  Actual bayonet combat is extremely rare in military history. General Trochu saw only one bayonet fight in a lifetime of soldiering with the French army in the nineteenth century, and that was when French units collided by accident with a Russian regiment in the heavy fog of the Crimean War's Battle of Inkerman in 1854. And in these rare bayonet engagements actual bayonet wounds were even rarer yet.

  When this uncommon event does occur, and one bayonet-armed man stands face-to-face with another, what happens most commonly is anything but a thrust with the bayonet. Just as Roman legionnaires had to fight the tendency to slash with their swords KILLING AT E D G E D - W E A P O N S R A N G E 123

  rather than thrust, so too do modern soldiers tend to use their weapons in a manner that will not necessitate thrusting into their enemy's bodies.

  Holmes says that despite all the bayonet training soldiers receive,

  "in combat they very often reversed their weapons and used them as clubs. . . . T h e Germans seem to have a positive penchant for using the butt rather than the bayonet. . . . In close-in fighting the Germans preferred clubs, coshes, and sharpened spades." N o t e that all of these are bludgeoning or hacking weapons.

  He goes on to give a superb example of the subtle and unconscious nature of this resistance to bayoneting: "Prince Frederick Charles asked a [World War I] German infantryman why he did this. 'I don't know,' replied the soldier. ' W h e n you get your dander up the thing turns round in your hand of itself.'"

  Numerous accounts of American Civil War battles indicate the same resistance to use of the bayonet on the part of the vast majority of soldiers on both sides. In melees both Yank and R e b preferred to use the butt of the weapon, or to swing their muskets by the barrel like a club, rather than gut the enemy with their bayonets.

  Some writers have concluded that a specific characteristic of this brother-against-brother civil war must have been the cause of the soldier's reluctance to bayonet his enemy, but wound statistics from nearly two centuries of battles indicate that what is revealed here is a basic, profound, and universal insight into human nature.

  First, the closer the soldier draws to his enemy the harder it is to kill him, until at bayonet range it becomes extremely difficult, and, second, the average human being has a strong resistance to piercing the body of another of his o w n kind with a handheld edged weapon, preferring to club or slash at the enemy.

  Since personal kills with a bayonet are so extraordinarily rare on the battlefield, it is much to Richard Holmes's credit that his lifetime of study in this field has gleaned the following personal narratives from individuals w h o contributed to this "fraction of one per cent of all wounds inflicted" in modern war.

  In one such narrative, a lance corporal in the German infantry in 1915 describes a bayonet kill:

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  We got the order to storm a French position, strongly held by the enemy, and during the ensuing melee a French corporal suddenly stood before me, both our bayonets at the ready, he to kill me, 1

  to kill him. Saber duels in Freiburg had taught me to be quicker than he and pushing his weapon aside I stabbed him through the chest. He dropped his rifle and fell, and the blood shot out of his mouth. I stood over him for a few seconds and then 1 gave him the coup de grace. After we had taken the enemy position, I felt giddy, my knees shook, and I was actually sick.

  He goes on to state that this bayoneted Frenchman, apparently above all other incidents in combat, haunted his dreams for many nights thereafter. Indeed, the "intimate brutality" of bayonet killing gives every indication of being a circumstance with tremendous potential for psychological trauma.

  An Australian soldier in World W a r I, writing in a letter to his father, puts a distinctly different light on bayoneting Germans: Strike me pink the square heads are dead mongrels. They will keep firing until you are two yds. off them & then drop their rifles & ask for mercy. They get it too right where the chicken gets the axe. . . . I . . . will fix a few more before I have finished. Its good sport father when the bayonet goes in there eyes bulge out like prawns. [Sic]

  If we can believe what is said here, and if both the killing and the lack of remorse were not just idle bragging to his father, then this soldier represents one of those rare soldiers w h o have the internal makeup to participate in such an act. Later in this book we will address predisposition as a factor in killing, with particular emphasis on the 2 percent who are predisposed toward what has been termed

  "aggressive psychopathic" tendencies. And in the section "Killing and Atrocities" we will more closely consider the process in which soldiers who fight at close range and attempt to surrender stand a good chance of being killed on the spot by the soldiers they had most recently been trying to kill. T h e objective here is to gain insight into the nature of killing with edged weapons, and into the nature of those w h o are able to kill in this manner. And from KILLING AT EDGED-WEAPONS RANGE

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  what we can observe, it must be a rare and unusual individual who can find such activity to be "good sport."

  Another Australian, a World War I veteran of the first Battle of Gaza, who apparently did not participate in any bayonet kills, described bayonet fighting as "just berserk slaughter . . . the grunt-ing breaths, the gritting teeth and the staring eyes of the lunging Turk, the sobbing scream as the bayonet ripped home." Here we see combat at its most personal. When a man bayonets a person who is facing him, the "sobbing scream," the blood shooting out of his mouth, and his eyes bulging out "like prawns" are all part of the memory the killer must carry forever. This is killing with edged weapons, and it is no wonder that it is so extraordinarily rare in modern warfare.

  We can understand then that the average soldier has an intense resistance toward bayoneting his fellow man, and that this act is surpassed only by the resistance to being bayoneted. The horror of being bayoneted is intense. Lord Moran said that during his long years of experience in the trenches of World War I, the one time

  "when I had a bayonet a few inches from my belly I was more frightened than by any shell." And Remarque, in All Quiet on the Western Front, tells of a German soldier who was caught while in possession of one of the saw-
backed pioneer bayonets and was subsequently brutally killed and left as an example to his peers.

  Holmes tells us that Germans in both wars who were found with such weapons were so treated by captors who were horrified by the weapon and thought that it was deliberately designed to cause added suffering.8

  Soldiers who would bravely face a hail of bullets will consistently flee before a determined individual with cold steel in his hands. Du Picq noted, "Each nation in Europe says: 'No one stands his ground before a bayonet charge made by us.' And all are right." A human wave of cold steel — be it pikes, spears, or bayonets — coming at one's position would be cause for understandable concern on anyone's part, and as Holmes puts it "one side or the other usually recalls an urgent appointment elsewhere before bayonets cross." Very often neither side can bring itself to 126

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  close with the enemy's bayonets, the advance falters, and the two parties begin to fire at one another from ridiculously short ranges.

  World War II veteran Fred Majdalany wrote that there was a lot of loose talk about the use of the bayonet. But relatively few soldiers could truthfully say that they had stuck a bayonet into a German. It is the threat of the bayonet and the sight of the point that usually does the work. The man almost invariably surrenders before the point is stuck into him.

  In the modern bayonet charge one side or the other usually breaks and runs before they meet, and then the psychological balance tips significantly. But this does not mean that bayonets and bayonet charges are ineffective. As Paddy Griffith points out: A great deal of misunderstanding has arisen from the fact that a

  "bayonet charge" could be highly effective even without any bayonet actually touching an enemy soldier, let alone killing him. One hundred per cent of the casualties might be caused by musketry, yet the bayonet could still be the instrument of victory. This was because its purpose was not to kill soldiers but to disorganize regiments and win ground. It was the flourish of the bayonet and the determination in the eyes of its owner that on some occasions produced shock.

  Units with a history and tradition of close-combat, hand-to-hand killing inspire special dread and fear in an enemy by capitalizing upon this natural aversion to the " h a t e " manifested in this determination to engage in close-range interpersonal aggression. T h e British Gurkha battalions have been historically effective at this (as can be seen in the Argentinean's dread of them during the Falklands War), but any unit that puts a measure of faith in the bayonet has grasped a little of the natural dread with which an enemy responds to the possibility of facing an opponent who is determined to come within "skewering range."

  What these units (or at least their leaders) must understand is that actual skewering almost never happens; but the powerful human revulsion to the threat of such activity, when a soldier is confronted with superior posturing represented by a willingness or at least a KILLING AT E D G E D - W E A P O N S R A N G E 127

  reputation for participation in close-range killing, has a devastating effect upon the enemy's morale.

  Back Stabbing and the Chase Instinct

  Combat at close quarters does not exist. At close quarters occurs the ancient carnage when one force strikes the other in the back.

  — Ardant du Picq

  Battle Studies

  It is when the bayonet charge has forced one side's soldiers to turn their backs and flee that the killing truly begins, and at some visceral level the soldier intuitively understands this and is very, very frightened when he has to turn his back to the enemy. Griffith dwells on this fear of retreating: "Perhaps this fear of retreat [in the face of the enemy] was linked to a horror of turning one's back on the threat. . . . A type of reverse ostrich syndrome may have applied, whereby the danger was bearable only while the men continued to watch it." And in his superb study of the American Civil War, Griffith also notes many instances in which the most effective firing and killing occurred when the enemy had begun to flee the field.

  I believe that there are two factors in play in this increased killing of an enemy whose back is turned, and of the resultant fear of turning one's back to the enemy. The first factor is the concept of a chase instinct. A lifetime of working with and training dogs has taught me that the worst thing you can ever do is run from an animal. I have never yet met a dog I could not face down or at least incapacitate with a kick as it charged, but I have always known both instinctively and rationally that if I were to turn and run I should be in great danger. There is a chase instinct in most animals that will cause even a well-trained and nonaggressive dog to instinctively chase and pull down anything that runs. As long as your back is turned you are in danger. In the same way, there appears to be a chase instinct in man that permits him to kill a fleeing enemy.

  T h e second factor that enables killing from behind is a process in which close proximity on the physical distance spectrum can 128

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  be negated when the face cannot be seen. The essence of the whole physical distance spectrum may simply revolve around the degree to which the killer can see the face of the victim. There appears to be a kind of intuitive understanding of this process in our cultural image of back shooting and back stabbing as cowardly acts, and it seems that soldiers intuitively understand that when they turn their backs, they are more apt to be killed by the enemy.

  This same enabling process explains why Nazi, Communist, and gangland executions are traditionally conducted with a bullet in the back of the head, and why individuals being executed by hanging or firing squad are blindfolded or hooded. And we know from Miron and Goldstein's 1979 research that the risk of death for a kidnap victim is much greater if the victim is hooded. In each of these instances the presence of the hood or blindfold ensures that the execution is completed and serves to protect the mental health of the executioners. Not having to look at the face of the victim provides a form of psychological distance that enables the execution party and assists in their subsequent denial and the rationalization and acceptance of having killed a fellow human being.

  The eyes are the window of the soul, and if one does not have to look into the eyes when killing, it is much easier to deny the humanity of the victim. The eyes bulging out "like prawns" and blood shooting out of the mouth are not seen. The victim remains faceless, and one never needs to know one's victim as a person.

  And the price most killers have to pay for a close-range kill — the memory of the "face terrible, twisted in pain and hate, yes such hate" — this price need never be paid if we can simply avoid looking at our victim's face.

  In combat the impact of back stabbing and the chase instinct can be observed in casualty rates, which increase significantly after the enemy forces have turned their backs and begun to flee.

  Clausewitz and du Picq both expound at length on the fact that the vast majority of casualties in historical battles were inflicted upon the losing side during the pursuit that followed the victory.

  In this vein Ardant du Picq holds out the example of Alexander KILLING AT EDGED-WEAPONS RANGE 129

  the Great, whose forces, during all his years of warfare, lost fewer than seven hundred men "to the sword." They suffered so few casualties simply because they never lost a battle and therefore only had to endure the very, very minor casualties inflicted by reluctant combatants in close combat and never had to suffer the very significant losses associated with being pursued by a victorious enemy.

  Knife Range

  As we bring the physical distance spectrum down to its culmination point we must recognize that killing with a knife is significantly more difficult than killing with the bayonet affixed to the end of a rifle. Many knife kills appear to be of the commando nature, in which someone slips up on a victim and kills him from behind.

  These kills, like all kills from behind, are less traumatic than a kill from the front, since the face and all its messages and contortions are not seen. But what is felt are the bucking and s
huddering of the victim's body and the warm sticky blood gushing out, and what is heard is the the final breath hissing out.

  The U.S. Army, along with armies in many other nations, trains its Rangers and Green Berets to execute a knife kill from the rear by plunging the knife through the lower back and into the kidney.

  Such a blow is so remarkably painful that its effect is to completely paralyze the victim as he quickly dies, resulting in an extremely silent kill.

  This kidney strike is contrary to the natural inclination of most soldiers, who — if they have thought about the matter at all —

  would prefer to slit the throat while holding a hand over the victim's mouth. This option, though psychologically and culturally more desirable (it is a slashing rather than a thrusting blow), has far less potential for silence, since an improperly slit throat is capable of making considerable noise and holding a hand over someone's mouth is not always an easy thing to do. The victim also has a capacity to bite, and a marine gunnery sergeant who is the USMC's proponent agent for hand-to-hand-combat tells me that several individuals have told him of cutting their own hand while trying 130

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  to cut the enemy's throat in the dark. But here again we see the natural preference for a slashing blow over a more effective thrusting or penetrating blow.

  Holmes tells us that the French in World War II preferred knives and daggers for close-in work, but Keegan's findings of the singular absence of such wounds would indicate that few of these knives were ever used. Indeed, narratives of incidents in which individuals used a knife in modern combat are extremely rare, and knife kills other than the silencing of sentries from behind are almost unheard of.

  The one personal narrative of a knife kill that I have been able to obtain as a result of my interviews is from a man who had been an infantryman in the Pacific during World War II. He had many personal kills that he was willing to discuss, but it was his one kill with a knife that caused him to have nightmares long after the war was over. An enemy soldier had slipped into his foxhole one night, and during the process of a hand-to-hand struggle he pinned down the smaller Japanese soldier and slit his throat. The horror associated with pinning the man down and feeling him struggle and watching him bleed to death is something that he can barely tolerate to this very day.