On killing Read online

  Before we departed Okonda the young nun asked to meet the soldier who had saved her life. She was clothed now, and had cleaned up a little bit with the help of our medic. I was surprised how young she was — early 20s or younger. . . . She required a number of sutures in her vagina, and would need burn treatments as well. I didn't admire her decision to remain in enemy territory when she was given ample opportunity to leave, but I did admire her spunk. When we met she looked me in the eye and said, "Thank God you came." She had been badly beaten, but not defeated.

  As for me, I had turned 19 only two days previous, and still suffered from the native upbringing of a good Christian family. I lost a lot of that upbringing at Okonda. There was no honor here, no virtue. The standards of behavior taught in the homes, churches, and schools of America had no place in battle. They were mythical concepts good only for the raising of children, to be cast aside forever from this moment on. No, I didn't feel guilt, shame, or remorse at killing my fellow man — I felt pride!

  — Alan Stuart-Smyth

  "Congo Horror"

  There are numerous examples of atrocity committed by nearly all national, racial, and ethnic groups, but this example is one of the best, clearest, and most literate representations of the killology aspects of atrocity.

  Many of the factors and processes that we have discussed — or will be discussing shortly — can be observed clearly in this case study. We see the rapists' instinctive lashing out and defiling of A CASE STUDY IN ATROCITY

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  all that is held dear by those they consider to be their oppressors.

  We see that the rapists' atrocity has enraged and empowered their opponent. We see the rapists entrapped in atrocity: caught red-handed and knowing that if they surrender they will be executed, they have no option but to try to fight. We see Stuart-Smyth's reluctance to kill these men even in the face of their atrocities.

  We see the low target attractiveness associated with the ludicrous and harmless sight of a naked man with his arms waving "frantically up and down, like a featherless black bird attempting to take flight."

  We see the role of obedience-demanding authority in that even in the face of all this provocation Stuart-Smyth must be ordered to kill. We see a diffusion of responsibility in that the individual giving the order to kill did not fire his weapon. We can see the development of Stuart-Smyth's rationalization and acceptance process as he first says, "I didn't feel a damn thing!" and later contradicts this statement by saying, "I didn't feel guilt, shame, or remorse at killing my fellow man — I felt pride!" And we can see that Stuart-Smyth's rationalization and acceptance was gready assisted by the fact that the men he killed were committing atrocities.

  We see all these things. But most of all, as we see them, we see the powerful process of atrocity at work in the lives of the individuals playing out their parts in this tiny microcosm of war.

  Chapter Five

  The Greatest Trap of All: To Live with That Which Thou Hath Wrought

  The Price and Process of Atrocity

  The psychological trauma of living with what one has done to one's fellow man may represent the most significant toll taken by atrocity. Those who commit atrocity have made a Faustian bargain with evil. They have sold their conscience, their future, and their peace of mind for a brief, fleeting, self-destructive advantage.

  Sections of this study have been devoted to examining the remarkable power of man's resistance to kill, to the psychological leverage and manipulation required to get men to kill, and to the trauma resulting from it. Once we have taken all of these things into consideration, then we can see that the psychological burden of committing atrocities must be tremendous.

  But let me make it absolutely clear that this examination of the trauma associated with killing is in no way intended to belittle or downplay the horror and trauma of those who have suffered from atrocities. The focus here is to obtain an understanding of the processes associated with atrocity, an understanding that is in no way intended to slight the pain and suffering of atrocity's victims.

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  The Cost of Compliance . . .

  The killer can be empowered by his killing, but ultimately, often years later, he may bear the emotional burden of guilt that he has buried with his acts. This guilt becomes virtually unavoidable when the killer's side has lost and must answer for its actions — which, as we have seen, is one of the reasons that forcing participation in atrocities is such a strangely effective way of motivating men in combat.

  Here we see a German soldier w h o , years later, has to face the enormity of his actions:

  [He] retains a stark image of the burning of some peasant huts in Russia, their owners still inside them. "We saw the children and the women with their babies and then I heard the poouff— the flame had broken through the thatched roof and there was a yellow-brown smoke column going up into the air. It didn't hit me all that much then, but when I think of it now — I slaughtered those people. I murdered them."

  — John Keegan and Richard Holmes

  Soldiers

  The guilt and trauma of an average human being w h o is forced to murder innocent civilians don't necessarily have to wait years before they well up into revulsion and rebellion. Sometimes, the executioner cannot resist the forces that cause him to kill, but the still, small voice of humanity and guilt wins out shortly thereafter.

  And if the soldier truly acknowledges the magnitude of his crime, he must rebel violently. As a World War II intelligence officer, Glenn Gray interviewed a German defector who was morally awakened by his participation in an execution: I shall always remember the face of a German soldier when he described such a drastic awakening. . . . At the time we picked him up for investigation . . . in 1944, he was fighting with the French Maquis against his own people. To my question concerning his motives for deserting to the French Resistance, he responded by describing his earlier involvement in German reprisal raids against 224

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  the French. On one such raid, his unit was ordered to burn a village and allow none of the villagers to escape. . . . As he told how women and children were shot as they fled screaming from the flames of their burning homes, the soldier's face was contorted in painful fashion and he was nearly unable to breathe. It was quite clear that this extreme experience had shocked him into full awareness of his own guilt, a guilt he feared he would never atone.

  At the moment of that awakening he did not have the courage or resolution to hinder the massacre, but his desertion to the Resistance soon after was evidence of a radically new course.

  On rare occasions those who are commanded to execute human beings have the remarkable moral fiber necessary to stare directly into the face of the obedience-demanding authority and refuse to kill. These situations represent such a degree of moral courage that they sometimes become legendary. Precise narratives of a soldier's personal kills are usually very hard to extract in an interview, but in the case of individuals w h o refused to participate in acts that they considered to be wrong, the soldiers are usually extremely proud of their actions and are pleased to tell their story.

  Earlier in this study, we saw the World War I veteran w h o took tremendous pride in "outsmarting" the army and intentionally missing while a member of a firing squad, and we saw the Contra mercenary w h o was overjoyed that he and his comrades spontane-ously decided to intentionally miss a boat full of civilians. A veteran of the Christian militia in Lebanon had several personal kills that he was quite willing to tell me about, but he also had a situation in which he was ordered to fire on a car and refused to do so. He was unsure of w h o was in the car, and he was proud to say that he actually went to the stockade rather than kill in this situation.

  All of us would like to believe that we would not participate in atrocities. That we could deny our friends and leaders and even turn our weapons on them if need be. But there are profound processes involved that p
revent such confrontation of peers and leaders in atrocity circumstance. T h e first involves group absolution and peer pressure.

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  In a way, the obedience-demanding authority, the killer, and his peers are all diffusing the responsibility among themselves. The authority is protected from the trauma of, and responsibility for, killing because others do the dirty work. The killer can rationalize that the responsibility really belongs to the authority and that his guilt is diffused among everyone who stands beside him and pulls the trigger with him. This diffusion of responsibility and group absolution of guilt is the basic psychological leverage that makes all firing squads and most atrocity situations function.

  Group absolution can work within a group of strangers (as in a firing-squad situation), but if an individual is bonded to the group, then peer pressure interacts with group absolution in such a way as to almost force atrocity participation. Thus it is extraordinarily difficult for a man who is bonded by links of mutual affection and interdependence to break away and openly refuse to participate in what the group is doing, even if it is killing innocent women and children.

  Another powerful process that ensures compliance in atrocity situations is the impact of terrorism and self-preservation. The shock and horror of seeing unprovoked violent death meted out creates a deep atavistic fear in human beings. Through atrocity the oppressed population can be numbed into a learned helplessness state of submission and compliance. The effect on the atrocity-committing soldiers appears to be very similar. Human life is profoundly cheapened by these acts, and the soldier realizes that one of the lives that has been cheapened is his own.

  At some level the soldier says, "There but for the grace of God go I," and he recognizes with a deep gut-level empathy that one of those screaming, twitching, flopping, bleeding, horror-struck human bodies could very easily be his.

  . . . And the Cost of Noncompliance

  Glenn Gray notes what may have been one of the most remarkable refusals to participate in an atrocity in recorded history: In the Netherlands, the Dutch tell of a German soldier who was a member of an execution squad ordered to shoot innocent hostages.

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  Suddenly he stepped out of rank and refused to participate in the execution. On the spot he was charged with treason by the officer in charge and was placed with the hostages, where he was promptly executed by his comrades. In an act the soldier has abandoned once and for all the security of the group and exposed himself to the ultimate demands of freedom. He responded in the crucial moment to the voice of conscience and was no longer driven by external commands . . . we can only guess what must have been the influence of his deed on slayers and slain. At all events, it was surely not slight, and those who hear of the episode cannot fail to be inspired.

  Here, in its finest form, we see the potential for goodness that exists in all human beings. Overcoming group pressure, obedience-demanding authority, and the instinct of self-preservation, this German soldier gives us hope for mankind and makes us just a little proud to be of the same race. This, ultimately, may be the price of noncompliance for those men of conscience trapped in a group or nation that is, itself, trapped in the dead-end horror of the atrocity cycle.

  The Greatest Challenge of All: To Pay the Price of Freedom Let us set for ourselves a standard so high that it will be a glory to live up to it, and then let us live up to it and add a new laurel to the crown of America.

  — Woodrow Wilson

  In the same way, every soldier w h o refuses to kill in combat, secretly or openly, represents the latent potential for nobility in mankind. And yet it is a paradoxically dangerous potential if the forces of freedom and humanity must face those whose unrestrained killing is empowered by atrocities.

  T h e " g o o d " that is not willing to overcome its resistance to killing in the face of an undeniable "evil" may be ultimately destined for destruction. Those w h o cherish liberty, justice, and truth must recognize that there is another force at large in this world. There is a twisted logic and power resident in the forces T H E G R E A T E S T T R A P OF ALL 227

  of oppression, injustice, and deceit, but those who claim this power are trapped in a spiral of destruction and denial that must ultimately destroy them and any victims they can pull with them into the abyss.

  Those w h o value individual human life and dignity must recognize from whence they draw their strength, and if they are forced to make war they must do so with as much concern for innocent lives as humanly possible. They must not be tempted or antagonized into treading the treacherous and counterproductive path of atrocities. For, as Gray put it, "their brutality made fighting the Germans much easier, whereas ours weakened the will and confused the intellect." Unless a group is prepared to totally dedicate itself to the twisted logic of atrocity, it will not gain even the shortsighted advantages of that logic, but will instead be immediately weakened and confused by its own inconsistency and hypocrisy. There are no half measures when one sells one's soul.

  Atrocity — this close-range murder of the innocent and helpless — is the most repulsive aspect of war, and that which resides within man and permits him to perform these acts is the most repulsive aspect of mankind. We must not permit ourselves to be attracted to it. N o r can we, in our revulsion, ignore it. Ultimately the purpose of this section, and of this study, has been to look at this ugliest aspect of war, that we might know it, name it, and confront it.

  This let us pray for, this implore:

  That all base dreams thrust out at door,

  We may in loftier aims excel

  And, like men waking from a spell,

  Grow stronger, nobler, than before,

  When there is Peace.

  — Austin Dobson, World War I veteran

  "When There Is Peace"

  S E C T I O N V I

  The Killing Response Stages:

  What Does It Feel Like to Kill?

  Chapter One

  The Killing Response Stages

  What Does It Feel Like to Kill?

  In the 1970s Elisabeth Kübler-Ross published her famous research on death which revealed that when people are dying they often go through a series of emotional stages, including denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In the historical narratives I have read, and in my interviews with veterans over the last two decades, I have found a similar series of emotional response stages to killing in combat.

  The basic response stages to killing in combat are concern about killing, the actual kill, exhilaration, remorse, and rationalization and acceptance. Like Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's famous stages in response to death and dying, these stages are generally sequential but not necessarily universal. Thus, some individuals may skip certain stages, or blend them, or pass through them so fleetingly that they do not even acknowledge their presence.

  Many veterans have told me that this process is similar to — but much more powerful than — that experienced by many first-time deer hunters: concern over the possibility of getting buck fever (i.e., failing to fire when an opportunity arises); the actual kill, occurring almost without thinking; the exhilaration and self-praise after a kill; brief remorse and revulsion (many lifelong woodsmen still become ill while gutting and cleaning a deer). And finally

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  The Killing Response Stages

  t h e a c c e p t a n c e a n d rationalization process — w h i c h in this case is c o m p l e t e d b y eating t h e g a m e a n d h o n o r i n g its t r o p h y .

  T h e processes m a y b e similar, b u t t h e e m o t i o n a l i m p a c t o f these stages a n d t h e m a g n i t u d e a n d intensity o f t h e guilt i n v o l v e d i n killing h u m a n beings are significantly different.1

  T h e C o n c e r n S t a g e : " H o w A m I G o i n g t o D o ? "

  US Marine Sergeant William Rogel summed up the mixture of emotions. "A n e w m a n . . . has t w o great fears. O n e i
s — it's probably an overriding fear — h o w am I going to do? — am I going to show the white feather? Am I going to be a coward, or am I going to be able to do my job? And of course the other is the c o m m o n fear, am I going to survive or get killed or w o u n d e d ? "

  — Richard Holmes

  Acts of War

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  Holmes's research indicates that one of the soldier's first emotional responses to killing is a concern as to whether, at the moment of truth, he will be able to kill the enemy or will "freeze u p " and

  "let his buddies d o w n . " All of my interviews and research verify that these are deep and sincere concerns that exist on the part of most soldiers, and it must be remembered that only 15 to 20

  percent of U.S. World W a r II riflemen went beyond this first stage.

  T o o much concern and fear can result in fixation, resulting in an obsession with killing on the part of the soldier.2 This can also be seen in peacetime psychopathologies when individuals become fixated or obsessed with killing. In soldiers — and in individuals fixated with killing in peacetime — this fixation often comes to a conclusion through step two of the process: killing. If a killing circumstance never arises, individuals may continue to feed their fixation by living in a fantasy world of Hollywood-inspired killing, or they may resolve their fixation through the final stage, rationalization and acceptance.

  The Killing Stage: "Without Even Thinking"

  Two shots. Bam-bam. Just like we had been trained in "quick kill." When I killed, I did it just like that. Just like I'd been trained.

  Without even thinking.

  — Bob, Vietnam veteran

  Usually killing in combat is completed in the heat of the moment, and for the modern, properly conditioned soldier, killing in such a circumstance is most often completed reflexively, without conscious thought. It is as though a human being is a weapon. Cocking and taking the safety catch off of this weapon is a complex process, but once it is off the actual pulling of the trigger is fast and simple.