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2006-12-26 Home Front: WoT

StrategyPage: The Limits of Combat Fatigue

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Posted by ed 2006-12-26 08:11|| || Front Page|| [7 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 I've got a theory that combat units have a few 100% warriors, the vast majority are 50% warriors, and a few 0% warriors.

By this I mean that a 100% warrior is a "natural" in combat. They are noticeably more capable than the typical soldiers, and use what training they have to maximum advantage. But they are uncommon.

A 50% warrior is the typical soldier. They perform their tasks well, but cannot compete with a real warrior and win. They also are the ones who tend to run out of juice after about 200 days. Their reserves are exhausted, and take years to recover.

A 0% warrior usually never gets into a combat unit in the first place, unless he is inspired and motivated by warriors so much that he somehow gets through the screening process. But he collapses under pressure and in a short time either gets killed or gives up however he can give up.

Ironically, a 0% warrior often fully supports the war, comes from a family with lots of soldiers in it, and is miserable when they wash out. But they just can't be made to fit for any length of time.

Posted by Anonymoose 2006-12-26 10:01|| 2006-12-26 10:01|| Front Page Top

#2 I agree Moose. The guys I know that seem to have the most problems were the ones that weren't "right" to begin with. I generally think if you are squared away before you go, you can put things that happen in combat into proper prospective. I'm not saying that you don't think about it alot, or you don't have bad dreams, but you do function and carry on with your life. Personally, I think a lot of guys abuse the PTSD thing, which makes the real cases of it hard to distinguish from posers.

Posted by 0369_Grunt 2006-12-26 10:21|| 2006-12-26 10:21|| Front Page Top

#3 Hell, before when we came back (before political correctness) we got laid and drank our asses off. So much for stress,

Posted by Joe of the Jungle 2006-12-26 10:39|| 2006-12-26 10:39|| Front Page Top

#4 Figure WW II. How long, actually, was any line division actually in combat?
The Pacific campaign was characterized by savage campaigns lasting mostly for weeks, a couple for months, with long delays in between.
The guys who went ashore on D-Day had just under a year to go, June to the following May, and most guys who fought in the ETO got there later than June. My father's divison went into the line in October, for example.
The Italian campaign took longer, following a break after Torch, but in many cases, it was new formations who were involved.
Point is, two one-year tours amounts to a hell of a lot more time in combat than most guys in WW II ever approached.

Posted by Richard Aubrey">Richard Aubrey 2006-12-26 10:46|| 2006-12-26 10:46|| Front Page Top

#5 Yes, but you're looking at it from the American point of view. The British and Germans had much longer periods of warfare, the British on a small scale, the Germans at a very large scale. IE, we're talking the Highlanders and Seventh Armoured, plus most of the original Wehrmacht & the older Waffen-SS formations, not counting all of the units formed from scratch or re-formed after the large-scale unit losses of early 1943.

I've never read SLA Marshall, I have to admit. Did he get any information from the Germans, or was it all original, American research? I would think that the German experience would be a much more extreme source of "test to destruction" cases.

Posted by Mitch H.">Mitch H. 2006-12-26 13:03|| http://blogfonte.blogspot.com/]">[http://blogfonte.blogspot.com/] 2006-12-26 13:03|| Front Page Top

#6 Mitch.

There are two other issues: One is that the length of combat and its intensity meant that very few guys got their two hundred days in. They were frequently killed or severely wounded.

The other is that the Brits had a doctrine of frequently relieving battalions, instead of keeping them in the line until they were practically worthless. I believe it was about ten days. The relieved battalions rested, got medical attention, took in replacements and did some additional training and functioned as the reserve.

It has been said that this reduced the amount of combat fatigue. Robert Graves, in his memoir of WW I "Goodbye to All That" said that when he was in the trenches, a subaltern's effective span was about three weeks. Took him some time to learn, and after three weeks of being in command, he got to be ineffective due to "neurasthenia". I asked my father what happened to the EM. Could be the responsibility on the shoulders of an adolescent was worse than being a private. Or, as my father said, perhaps the Brits didn't keep records of how the EM fared. Perhaps the famous British discipline kept them on the straight and narrow until they were either dead or completely out of their skulls. But, given the casualties, they were probably dead first.

It would seem odd, but it could be that a less-intense combat situation would, by allowing far more people to survive to 200 days and beyond, give us far more combat fatigue than in other wars.

Posted by Richard Aubrey">Richard Aubrey 2006-12-26 15:33|| 2006-12-26 15:33|| Front Page Top

#7 My dad was in the Torch landing in North Africa, fought for five months, and came down with pneumonia. He was sent to a hospital in England, and reassigned. He ended up landing in Normandy within a week of D-Day, fought through the St. Lo breakout, was in the tank breakout that pushed the German army back to their own borders, and ended up as an artillery gunner assigned to support the 101st at Bastogne. From there, he was part of Patton's 3rd Army across Europe, ending up in Plzen, Czechoslovakia, when the surrender was announced. He was originally a tank driver, then a gunlayer for 155s, then an artillery spotter. He saw an IMMENSE amount of direct combat. My mother told me it took him years to get over all the problems he came home with.

We only recognized the most extreme cases of "battle fatigue" during World War II. The war in Vietnam was totally different, and even the most active combat unit rarely saw the enemy - only felt their presence when attacked.

Today's enemy is much the same - a hidden enemy whose presence is mostly felt by IEDs and suicide bombers. That puts much more stress on day-to-day activity. Stress is destructive of the human body, and can cause all kinds of real, physical disabilities. The stress in Iraq and Afghanistan isn't so much the stress of combat as its the stress of anticipation and worry.

As for 100% warriors et. al., horsepucky. We have trained soldiers that do their job, and do it well. Some people adapt better to the training than others, but all can fight effectively. The biggest difference is how these people react to the stress of never being sure if they're going to be attacked when they go out, even if they're just making a mail run. The effects of stress are cumulative, especially if there's no way to relieve that stress. Too much stress, and even the best warrior will break. I've seen good, hardworking commanders end up in the hospital because they couldn't find a way to manage the stress of their position. "Combat Fatigue" is just stress carried to a much higher level than normal. Without the ability to relieve that stress, people break.

Posted by Old Patriot">Old Patriot 2006-12-26 15:50|| http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/]">[http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/] 2006-12-26 15:50|| Front Page Top

#8 I don't know...

My Dad made assault landings on Roi-Namur, Saipan, Tinian and Iwo Jima. He's fine and 83. Course I'm purdy jumpy.

Posted by Shipman 2006-12-26 16:02|| 2006-12-26 16:02|| Front Page Top

#9 Given the variability of species Homo Sapiens, and that some 8% of us succumb to anxiety disorders under normal circumstances (of which post-traumatic stress disorder is an extreme example), I'd expect something similar from those exposed to real fighting. Brain SPECT imaging shows a significant difference in brain activity for a variety of disorders, including anxiety, apparently due to altered levels of seratonin and other brain chemicals. Supposedly intake of alcohol and certain drugs can reset this in the least severe cases -- getting laid would ease other stresses due to being away from home for extended periods of time, I imagine.

Posted by trailing wife 2006-12-26 16:41|| 2006-12-26 16:41|| Front Page Top

#10 Whoops-- PIMF! Go to the home page of that link to see SPECT images of other brain disorders. Very, very cool! Still expensive as it's apparently rather new, but I imagine either the DoD or VA will invest in a couple of the machines to weed out those with legitimate PTSD from the fakers.

Posted by trailing wife 2006-12-26 16:46|| 2006-12-26 16:46|| Front Page Top

#11 I've never read SLA Marshall, I have to admit. Did he get any information from the Germans, or was it all original, American research? I would think that the German experience would be a much more extreme source of "test to destruction" cases.

SLA Marshall's supposed research has been effectively debunked by numerous sources. His initial research concluded that American soldiers in WW2 did not fight. This research was purportedly based on 300-400 interviews with soldiers that never occurred! His claim was that US soldiers rarely fired their weapons and it completely ignored statements from German soldiers, one of which reportedly stated "I never saw any indication that the Americans were unwilling to fire their weapons".

Marshall is definitely not a reliable source and tends to be an apologist for the British and an extreme critic of the US Army.

Posted by FOTSGreg">FOTSGreg 2006-12-26 18:47|| www.fire-on-the-suns.com]">[www.fire-on-the-suns.com] 2006-12-26 18:47|| Front Page Top

#12 While most of the island battles were short and brutal, the New Guinea campaign went on for two years (into 1944).

Posted by Jackal">Jackal 2006-12-26 22:47|| http://home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html]">[http://home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html] 2006-12-26 22:47|| Front Page Top

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