Fire Away

In vietnam, the m-16 got a bad rap because the John Sunnunu had to downgrade the powder used in the ammunition , causeing breach fouling and miss firing and hang firing. This was not done because guys were not fireing. In fact, when in a stressfull dangerous situation the tendency is to blindly fire until the weapon needs reloading. Adolf Hitler knew this, his infantrymen were supplied mostly bolt action rifles because he couldn't see the sense in firing without a target.. Interestingly enough, he supplied more pistols to his armies than any other army has before or since. This led to the developement of the assault rifle, the Sturmgevire (spelled incorrectly I know) being the first, pitched to Hitler as an automatic pistol.

I had great faith in suppressive fire and was quite convinced if I put enough down range it would keep anyone from popping their head up to fire some back. Fear or moral convictions generally are overidden by the basic instinct to survive. Maybe a more accurate account can finally be used as a model. To think the academics used a model from someone whose most exciting moment from being afield was one mule kicking another mule kind of puts in perspective the average soldiers view of the media and their expert analysts. If someone really wanted to know what was going on inside the heads of those under fire perhaps they should actually ask someone who actually carried a rifle and used one.

How very strange that my personal experience - both in 3 years of combat and many years of laser simulation at various Army posts coincides with what Marshall wrote many years ago.

One of the toughest problems I have ever faced is trying to get the infantryman and tanker - American, Vietnamese or Lebanese - to fire his weapon when he cannot clearly identify the target. That applies both to actual combat and to the US Army National Training Center. You can check the stats there. Unless things have changed drastically in the last 20 years or so, it has always been very difficult to get the American "shooter" to fire on likely enemy positions in a fast-breaking situation. In our unit, we always talked about the number of "killers" vs. "fillers" and/or "fodder".

Clearly the kids in Iraq and Afghanistan are better trained than we were, but we worked hard to build that training foundation. The first few seconds in a quick-breaking firefight are crucial - trainers have to work hard to get the soldiers to open up without clear targets. The downside of this training is, of course, what all soldiers fear most - "fratricide". That's how we get good young Rangers - former professional football players - killed.

It used to be hard, fast SOP that one of the first things that an infantry unit did after securing an objective was to redistribute ammunition. Why? Because some folks always had a lot left while others always had very little left. I say again, "always" - as in "without exception".

Mr.Marshall must have been counting all the dead solders in his statistics. They don't shoot very many rounds. My son is a marine who saw a lot of firefights in Iraq's Anabar Province and he brought several movie clips of those battles. I assure you that every man in his squad or platoon was on line and fighting for his and his brothers lives. If a man could shoot, he did. Many of their firefights were multidimensional in that they often had bad guys after them from two or three directions at once. You'll never hear any of them calling themselves heros though. As they often told me, they were just doing their job and trying to keep their brothers alive. Mr. Marshall is not the only journalist to conjure up action and heroics to crutch their lacking egos.

Probably the worst article I have ever read. I think the premise of such an idea being fabricated is neat... but seriously, the author depends solely on 3rd person testimony which is the exact problem the author finds with people believing the myth.

Outside of names, book titles, and the name of some wars, there is not one discernable fact.

Probably the worst article I have ever read. I think the premise of such an idea being fabricated is neat... but seriously, the author depends solely on 3rd person testimony which is the exact problem the author finds with people believing the myth.

Outside of names, book titles, and the name of some wars, there is not one discernable fact.

Seriously, why wasn't more research put into this article. There has been much research done on this and the military's attempts at resolving this issue by creating what is essentially precursors to today's video games. I expect more thoughtful journalism.

Back about 1982, I spoke to SLA Marshal's grandson. He was then a journalist working for one of the Seattle newspapers. He had admired his grandfather, but they had a bit of a falling out over the Vietnam War. After his death, his grandson decided to write a biography about his grandfather, perhaps as a way of reconciling after the fact.

But he immediatly ran into trouble when he tried to document his grandfather's statements regarding his combat experience in WWI and his real service record which showed him being in an engineer unit. Because my father had been a combat engineer in Korea, I had written him to let him know that his status as an engineer didn't necessarily preclude him from being in combat.

But Mr. Marshall was kind enough to call me in response to my letter. He thanked me for my comments, but said that since the article first was written, he had discovered many other discrepencies between S.L.A. Marshall's statements, writings, and claimed experiences. He had reluctantly come to the conclusion that all of his grandfather's statements would have to be classified as "unreliable", at best. At the time I spoke to him, he was seriously considering abandoning the entire project, although apparantly he did finish it and publish his findings as a book.

This reads like an apology for Marshall-- there is too much explaining of why he lied.

Journalists should not give deceitful journalists so much credit.

I don't necessarily believe that the US service men did not fire on the enemy. But this article brings two points to mind. One is a PBS show I remember seeing years ago about how historians and archaeologist would dig up the weapons used by the soldiers in the civil war and they would have 3 or 4 or 5 "musket rounds" stuffed into the barrel, none of which had ever been fired. Supposedly they had been putting on a show. But we know so many soldiers dies in that war, someone was firing something! The other point I recall is seeing a show about this topic on the Discovery channel some years ago. That show acknowledged that the Army recognized this as a problem even up to the Korean war and set about to solve it. They employed psychologist who studied the problem and recommended a "positive feedback conditioning" method of training. The result were the little round disks down range which the soldiers in training would shoot at. When they hit the disk it fell backwards. The show reported that the ratio of rounds fired to enemy deaths in Viet Nam changed dramatically as a result - that is to say the number of rounds expended to produce an enemy death fell sharply. My question is, why is this not part of this article?

I've read "Men Against Fire", and had wondered about that claim. I always thought it was situational... WWI with its intense shelling would provide a strong incentive for keeping your head down. It would take a man with a really steady nerve to stick his head up and fire while there are incoming rounds. For infantry on the assault, however, running towards an enemy without at least firing seems counter-intuitive. I remember reading that the Army did a study in Korea where they looked at how many ment died with clean rifles, and supported Marshall's contention. I'm not sure if that study was done early in the war, when training and morale were poor, and running was common, or later when the combat was close and bloody. Footage from Vietnam shows everyone blazing away, and my own experience in Iraq showed little reluctance to shoot. I'm not sure about how accurate the fire sometimes was, but it was certainly enthusiastic.

I don;t know if SLA Marshall lied... I suspect he took an overly specific situation and applied too general rules, or he made the too common mistake of trying to shoehorn the data into a conclusion he;d already drawn.

This is an interesting article and if you really want to know more on this subject take a look at the book "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society " by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman.

I don't quite understand why this has casued a stir at all. Is it not a good thing if we can continue to win wars with only 25% of our men firing their weapons? I served in a decorated combat unti and have been fired upon; I can testify to the fact that of the 25% that do fire their weapons probably only 5% even know what they are firing upon. This is a behavior, that while may be necessary to survive, can deal a painful emotional blow to anyone. I have treated children with gunshot and shrapnel wounds, and it is not something that brings me peace. I have also spent a gret deal of time with war veterans to include a WWII Medal of Honor awardee. Very few men that claim to have "fought charlie" have indeed done so and many that have either refuse to speak of it or regret their actions. I am thankful that 75% of soldiers are free from the trauma of killing; as the son of a Vietnam vet that committed suicide and as a war veteran myself, I understand that it is not only soldiers suffer the horrors of war.

I wonder if the shooting behavior of troops in combat might be changing over time with changes in weapons technology? In WWI and WWII, most riflemen had to focus on an enemy, take dead aim and hit the target with a good shot. Today's assault weapons rely somewhat on the "more is better" theory of spraying as much lead as possible in the general direction of the enemy. Not having been faced with either opportunity, I can nonetheles see that you might get different behaviour with different modes of weaponry.

When the bad guys shoot at you, you return fire or you die. You would know this if you had ever served a day in the military. Arm-chair quarterbacks and soldier want-a-bees need to learn to shut up and just be thankful heroes puts their lives on the line each and every day.