On Killing by LtCol Dave Grossman, 2009, Excerpts
After sixty days of continuous
combat, 98 percent of all surviving soldiers will have become psychiatric
casualties of one kind or another. Spending months of continuous exposure to
the stresses of combat is a phenomenon found only on the battlefields of the
twentieth century. Some psychiatric casualties have always been associated with
war, but it was only in the twentieth century that our physical and logistical
capability to sustain combat outstripped our psychological capacity to endure
it. Even the years’ long sieges of previous centuries provided ample respites
from combat, largely due to limitations of artillery and tactics. The actual
times of personal risk were seldom more than a few hours in duration.
One of the things that occurs among
men in combat is that they feel the high of the exhilaration stage, and then
when the remorse stage sets in they believe that there must be something wrong
or sick about them to have enjoyed it so intensely. It is vital that soldiers
understand that this is a normal and very common response to the abnormal
circumstances of combat, and they need to understand that their feelings of
satisfaction at killing are a natural and fairly common aspect of combat.
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