On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (28 page)

Chapter One

Desensitization and Conditioning in Vietnam:
Overcoming the Resistance to Killing

"Nobody Understood": An Incident in a VFW Hall
As I conducted interviews for this study in a VFW hall in Florida in the summer of 1989, a Vietnam vet named Roger started talking about his experiences over a beer. It was still early in the afternoon, but down the bar an older woman already began to attack him.

"You got no right to snivel about your little pish-ant war. World War Two was a real war. Were you even alive then?
Huh?
I lost a brother in World War Two."

We tried to ignore her; she was only a local character. But finally Roger had had enough. He looked at her and calmly, coldly, said: "Have you ever had to kill anyone?"

"Well no!" she answered belligerently.

"Then what right have
you
got to tell
me
anything?"

There was a long, painful silence throughout the VFW hall, as would occur in a home where a guest had just witnessed an embarrassing family argument.

Then I asked quietly, "Roger, when you got pushed just now, you came back with the fact that you had to kill in Vietnam. Was that the worst of it for you?"

"Yah," he said. "That's half of it."

250 KILLING IN V I E T N A M

I waited for a very long time, but he didn't go on. He only stared into his beer. Finally I had to ask, "What was the other half?"

" T h e other half was that when we got home, nobody u n -

derstood."

What Happened over There, and What Happened over Here
As discussed earlier, there is a profound resistance to killing one's fellow man. In World War II, 75 to 80 percent of riflemen did not fire their weapons at an exposed enemy, even to save their lives and the lives of their friends. In previous wars nonfiling rates were similar.

In Vietnam the nonfiling rate was close to 5 percent.

T h e ability to increase this firing rate, though, comes with a hidden cost. Severe psychological trauma becomes a distinct possibility when psychological safeguards of such magnitude are overridden. Psychological conditioning was applied en masse to a body of soldiers, w h o , in previous wars, were shown to be unwilling or unable to engage in killing activities. W h e n these soldiers, already inwardly shaken by their inner killing experiences, returned to be condemned and attacked by their own nation, the result was often further psychological trauma and long-term psychic damage.

Overcoming the Resistance to Killing: The Problem
But for the infantry, the problem of persuading soldiers to kill is now a major one. . . . That an infantry company in World War II could wreak such havoc with only about one seventh of the soldiers willing to use their weapons is a testimony to the lethal effects of modern firepower, but once armies realized what was actually going on, they at once set about to raise the average.

Soldiers had to be taught, very specifically, to kill. "We are reluctant to admit that essentially war is the business of killing,"

Marshall wrote in 1947, but it is readily enough admitted now.

— Gwynne Dyer

War

At the end of World War II the problem became obvious: Johnny can't kill.

D E S E N S I T I Z A T I O N AND C O N D I T I O N I N G IN VIETNAM 251

A firing rate of 15 to 20 percent among soldiers is like having a literacy rate of 15 to 20 percent among proofreaders. O n c e those in authority realized the existence and magnitude of the problem, it was only a matter of time until they solved it.

The Answer

And thus, since World War II, a new era has quietly dawned in modern warfare: an era of psychological warfare — psychological warfare conducted not upon the enemy, but upon one's own troops. Propaganda and various other crude forms of psychological enabling have always been present in warfare, but in the second half of this century psychology has had an impact as great as that of technology on the modern battlefield.

W h e n S. L. A. Marshall was sent to the Korean War to make the same kind of investigation that he had done in World War II, he found that (as a result of new training techniques initiated in response to his earlier findings) 55 percent of infantrymen were firing their weapons — and in some perimeter-defense crises, almost everyone was. These training techniques were further perfected, and in Vietnam the firing rate appears to have been around 90 to 95 percent.2 T h e triad of methods used to achieve this remarkable increase in killing are desensitization, conditioning, and denial defense mechanisms.

Desensitization: Thinking the Unthinkable

The Vietnam era was, of course then at its peak, you know, the kill thing. We'd run PT [physical training] in the morning and every time your left foot hit the deck you'd have to chant "kill, kill, kill, kill." It was drilled into your mind so much that it seemed like when it actually came down to it, it didn't bother you, you know? Of course the first one always does, but it seems to get easier — not easier, because it still bothers you with every one that, you know, that you actually kill and you know you've killed.

— USMC sergeant and Vietnam veteran, 1982

quoted in Gwynne Dyer,
War

252

KILLING IN V I E T N A M

This interview from Dyer's book provides an insight into that aspect of our modern training programs that is clearly and distinctly different from those of the past. M e n have always used a variety of mechanisms to convince themselves that the enemy was different, that he did not have a family, or that he was not even human.

Most primitive tribes took names that translate as " m a n " or "human being," thereby automatically defining those outside of the tribe as simply another breed of animal to be hunted and killed. We have done something similar when we call the enemy Japs, Krauts, gooks, slopes, dinks, and Commies.

Authors such as Dyer and Holmes have traced the development of this boot-camp deification of killing as having been almost unheard of in World War I, rare in World War II, increasingly present in Korea, and thoroughly institutionalized in Vietnam.

Here Dyer explains exactly h o w this institutionalization of violent ideation in Vietnam differs from the experiences of previous generations:

Most of the language used in Parris Island to describe the joys of killing people is bloodthirsty but meaningless hyperbole, and the recruits realize that even as they enjoy it. Nevertheless, it does help to
desensitize
them to the suffering of an "enemy," and at the same time they are being indoctrinated in the most explicit fashion (as previous generations were not) with the notion that their purpose is not just to be brave or to fight well; it is to kill people.

Conditioning: Doing the Unthinkable

But desensitization by itself is probably not sufficient to overcome the average individual's deep-seated-resistance to killing. Indeed, this desensitization process is almost a smoke screen for what I believe is the most important aspect of modern training. What Dyer and many other observers have missed is the role of (1) Pavlovian classical conditioning and (2) Skinnerian operant conditioning in modern training.

In 1904, I. P. Pavlov was awarded the Nobel Prize for his development of the concepts of conditioning and association in dogs. In its simplest form, what Pavlov did was ring a bell just DESENSITIZATION AND CONDITIONING IN VIETNAM 253

before feeding a dog. Over time, the dog learned to associate the sound of the bell with eating and would salivate when he heard the bell, even if no food was present. The conditioned stimulus was the bell, the conditioned response was salivation: the dog had been conditioned to salivate upon hearing a bell ring. This process of associating reward with a particular kind of behavior is the foundation of most successful animal training. During the middle of the twentieth century B. F. Skinner further refined this process into what he called behavioral engineering. Skinner and the behav-iorist school represent one of the most scientific and potentially powerful areas of the field of psychology.

The method used to train today's — and the Vietnam era's —

U.S. Army and USMC soldiers is nothing more than an application of conditioning techniques to develop a reflexive "quick shoot"

ability. It is entirely possible that no one intentionally sat down to use operant conditioning or behavior modification techniques to train soldiers in this area. In my two decades of military service not a single soldier, sergeant, or officer, nor a single official or unofficial reference, has communicated an understanding that conditioning was occurring during marksmanship training. But from the standpoint of a psychologist who is also a historian and a career soldier, it has become increasingly obvious to me that this is exactly what has been achieved.

Instead of lying prone on a grassy field calmly shooting at a bull's-eye target, the modern soldier spends many hours standing in a foxhole, with full combat equipment draped about his body, looking over an area of lightly wooded rolling terrain. At periodic intervals one or two olive-drab, man-shaped targets at varying ranges will pop up in front of him for a brief time, and the soldier must instantly aim and shoot at the target(s). When he hits a target it provides immediate feedback by instantly and very satisfyingly dropping backward—just as a living target would. Soldiers are highly rewarded and recognized for success in this skill and suffer mild punishment (in the form of retraining, peer pressure, and failure to graduate from boot camp) for failure to quickly and accurately "engage" the targets — a standard euphemism for

"kill."

254

KILLING IN V I E T N A M

In addition to traditional marksmanship, what is being taught in this environment is the ability to shoot reflexively and instantly and a precise mimicry of the act of killing on the modern battlefield.

In behavioral terms, the man shape popping up in the soldier's field of fire is the "conditioned stimulus," the immediate engaging of the target is the "target behavior." "Positive reinforcement" is given in the form of immediate feedback when the target drops if it is hit. In a form of "token economy" these hits are then exchanged for marksmanship badges that usually have some form of privilege or reward (praise, public recognition, three-day passes, and so on) associated with them.

Every aspect of killing on the battlefield is rehearsed, visualized, and conditioned. On special occasions even more realistic and complex targets are used. Balloon-filled uniforms moving across the kill zone (pop the balloon and the target drops to the ground), red-paint-filled milk jugs, and many other ingenious devices are used. These make the training more interesting, the conditioned stimuli more realistic, and the conditioned response more assured under a variety of different circumstances.

Snipers use such techniques extensively. In Vietnam it took an average of 50,000 rounds of ammunition to kill one enemy soldier.

But the U.S. Army and USMC snipers in Vietnam expended only 1.39 rounds per kill. Carlos Hathcock, with ninety-three confirmed sniper kills in Vietnam, became involved in police and military sniper training after the war. He firmly believed that snipers should train on targets that look like people — not bull's-eyes. A typical command to one of his students (who is firing from one hundred yards at a life-sized photograph of a man holding a pistol to a woman's head) would be "Put three rounds inside the inside corner of the right eye of the bad guy."

In the same way, Chuck Cramer, the trainer for an Israeli Defense Force antiterrorist sniper course, tried to design his course in such a way that practicing to kill was as realistic as possible. "I made the targets as human as possible," said Kramer.

I changed the standard firing targets to full-size, anatomically correct figures because no Syrian runs around with a big white square on D E S E N S I T I Z A T I O N AND C O N D I T I O N I N G IN V I E T N A M 255

his chest with numbers on it. I put clothes on these targets and polyurethane heads. I cut up a cabbage and poured catsup into it and put it back together. I said, "When you look through that scope, I want you to see a head blowing up."

— Dale Dye

"Chuck Cramer: IDFs Master Sniper"

This is all common practice in most of the world's best armies.

Most modern infantry leaders understand that realistic training with immediate feedback to the soldier works, and they know that it is essential for success and survival on the modern battlefield.

But the military is not, as a rule, a particularly introspective organization, and it has been my experience that those ordering, conducting, and participating in this training do not understand or even wonder (1) what makes it work or (2) what its psychological and sociological side effects might be. It works, and for them that is good enough.

What makes this training process work is the same thing that made Pavlov's dogs salivate and B. F. Skinner's rats press their ban. What makes it work is the single most powerful and reliable behavior modification process yet discovered by the field of psychology, and now applied to the field of warfare: operant conditioning.

Denial Defense Mechanisms: Denying the Unthinkable
An additional aspect of this process that deserves consideration here is the development of a denial defense mechanism. Denial and defense mechanisms are unconscious methods for dealing with traumatic experiences. Prepackaged denial defense mechanisms are a remarkable contribution from modern U.S. Army training.

Basically the soldier has rehearsed the process so many times that when he does kill in combat he is able to, at one level, deny to himself that he is actually killing another human being. This careful rehearsal and realistic mimicry of the act of killing permit the soldier to convince himself that he has only "engaged" another 256 K I L L I N G IN V I E T N A M

target. O n e British veteran of the Falklands, trained in the modern method, told Holmes that he "thought of the enemy as nothing more or less than Figure II [man-shaped] targets." In the same way, an American soldier can convince himself that he is shooting at an E-type silhouette (a man-shaped, olive-drab target), and not a human being.