JTarrou
1yr ago
Maybe I'll write it up fully someday, but frankly it's pathetic and embarrassing for me. That kid weren't a fighter, just a shitbag. He was in the wrong profession and he got out soon afterward. I still feel a bit bad about it, but that's tempered by the fact that he was such an incredibly useless dirt merchant. I've no doubt he saw me as a horrible bully, and in some sense I was. But I also let him off as easily as I felt I could given the circumstance. Think less MMA, more "big brother has had enough of your shit". At least from my perspective.
how do you avoid doing lasting damage and getting into even more trouble?
Not relevant in this case, but in general by going "to the woodline", i.e. out of sight, out of mind, not on a concrete surface. There's no official code or rules about the fighting that goes on, but there are practical considerations. Punching someone in the face will result in visible injuries and most likely broken fingers for the hitter. Most fights go to the ground, lots of wrestling and short body shots. Weapons are out, so are most intentionally maiming techniques like eye gouging, but the rest is sort of up to the participants. The biggest rule is that the fight decides whatever it is you're pissed about. You don't get to come back next week because you didn't like the result. If it's worth fighting about, it's worth letting the fight decide.
JTarrou
1yr ago
IMO yes, but it's hard to say for sure. Much of that would be conjecture, because aside from a few people I know personally about, who exactly shot somebody is not generally common knowledge. Guys do not talk about it outside their very close group of friends/small unit. There's a sort of conspiracy of silence. I think this is partly because it is so traumatic to most of the guys who do shoot someone, and also avoids shaming the ones who did not. Unless it's my team or patrol, I don't know who ran the gun. I might know that Second and Third squads from some unit got in a firefight, and killed three Iraqis, but I'd never know who did what out there. My sample size for all these broad statements is very small indeed.
The guys who get confirmed kills in multiple engagements usually become known by rumor, but even that could be bullshit. I know a guy who tried to game the conspiracy by claiming to have been on the gun on one particularly grisly dustup, but anyone who knew people knew it was just attention-seeking.
JTarrou
1yr ago
God, wasn't it hilarious and terrible?
I'll tell you what I told myself when I left Ft Irwin.
"If you ever get nostalgic for this shit, don't forget how much it sucked".
JTarrou
1yr ago
1: Better than most psychologically, but physically worse unless they were super in shape.
2: SOF has a much higher floor, but there's overlap there.
3: Couldn't say, that dude was one of my drill sergeants when I went in. Good dude, nearly broke my neck for running in the stairwell once.
4: Another of my drill sergeants had a masters in microbiology from some ivy league school. He rode a Harley and dipped the biggest chaw I ever did see. That was a man loved his job.
5: More effective than average, just because they didn't make the dumbest class of mistakes. No effect on their psychological fitness that I could see.
6: War changes a man, and a lot of it changes him a lot. They strike me as having become something both a bit more and a bit less than completely human. Like a guru or a hooker.
I would say that the culture of the military is far more influential and potent than the official structure of the military. And culture can be very context-dependent. Every unit is a bit different. Some things are nearly universal, some are very particular. In many ways, the culture of the military is there to make the book work.
For instance, the military is very strict on drinking in "the book". But if those rules were followed to the letter, we'd have six mormons and a muslim in the Infantry, and it's hard to staff an army that way. So the time and circumstance of the enforcement becomes crucial. These eventually settle around some widely known area, the same way everyone knows you can do five over the speed limit. After a while, "everyone knows" you can turn up to PT still drunk, suffer through the PT and be off scot-free. It is the function of the NCOs to take these insane pronouncements from Congress and the officers, and find a way to make the paperwork say it got done, while we get on with the business of fighting a war. If we let the command structure have its way, we wouldn't have a military inside a week.
At no point is anyone following the formal rules
Not strictly true, but largely so. I do mention filing to try to get a different roommate (unsuccessfully), and the complaint that got me in trouble was through the formal channels. Formal channels generate formal responses, and paperwork. The severity of my punishment in that story is largely because the complaint came officially, and from another unit. First Sar can't lose face like that, so an example must be made, even if it's stupid. If the complaint had come from within the unit, he'd have probably sent someone to look at my room, seen it was kosher and depending on what sort of terms he was on with Lacava's First Sergeant either quietly informed him or put him on blast with the whole base to make him look bad.
The custom here is a bit strange, but makes sense when you think of radical responsibility. The First Sergeant is responsible for all his men. He's not losing a night with his family because watching some jackass joe empty his barracks room is fun. He's doing it because he has to. Officially, anyone of any rank can correct anyone below them. Unofficially, no one fucks with anyone else's joes. If you have a problem with Private Snuffy, you go find his team leader, squad leader etc. But this in turn involves professional embarrassment, if someone else catches your guys fucking up. It both implies you aren't doing your job training them, and also aren't supervising them properly. The punishments are always worse if someone else complains to your boss than if the boss just catches you himself.
TP = Toilet Paper >.>
edit: Yes, but I'm off to work.
The worst one is PMCS which is Preventative Maintenance Checks and Services. It's just a list of things you check on any mechanical device owned by the military, fill out a form and file it with the mechanics. Oil, coolant, gas etc etc.
JTarrou
1yr ago
Hard to talk generally about such a small sample size. They tend to be partially ostracized from the unit. Everyone wants them on the patrol, no one wants to eat with them. Even infantry are leery about men who kill easily and often.
As to my fellow soldiers, yes and no. I had personality conflicts with people I couldn't whip in a fight, which is scary to a point. Some of the guys were so dumb or jumpy I was worried they'd kill me or someone else on accident. Many of the NCOs are just terrifying people, professionally so. But I was never really worried about someone on my side trying to kill me if that's the question.
JTarrou
1yr ago
I can't say why it is, but it is. In my limited experience, if it's a firefight, about a third of guys shoot back, a third help out, and a third freeze up or hide. Often not who I thought would be in those categories.
There's usually something that needs doing that a brave man can do in combat that isn't killing someone. Those guys dashing through fire to rescue their wounded buddies are in all likelihood trying to offset their lack of appetite for the fight itself. They discover they can display their courage and suffer with the rest of their buddies without killing. The freezers I feel bad for. They found out something about themselves that will be hard to live with too. Of the three, the second group is probably the most healthy psychologically, and will have the easiest transition back to normal life. But that's pure speculation on my part. It just seems psychologically easier.
If it isn't a firefight, or some direct danger, the firing rates plummet. Half of our sniper teams never fired a shot, and in our AO at the time, that's just crazy. No way were they missing that many opportunities. Haji buffet in those days. And those are the specially selected guys who tried out, went to specialty schools specifically to do that job. It's a hard thing to kill someone who doesn't even know you're there. There's no honor in it, no struggle, no danger. In the context of war it's "ok", but it feels like murder because psychologically it is.
JTarrou
1yr ago
I was speaking about the gear and the training rather than the command aspects, but it should be noted that NCOs provide those aspects in the field. The higher ranking grunts very much command men in combat, and they are the only ones to do so. Everyone else is on the other end of a radio.
I do agree we don't have a feudal system, and that Republican Rome is a better comparison more generally. I'm making a much rougher and more specific comparison.
JTarrou
1yr ago
I'll probably cover this more in depth in the future, but I would say the spark, the inclination is nature. In some few, it is so strong that no nurture will change it, but for the vast majority, violence is a hard trade to learn. You need a lot of experience with it. One of the surprising things to me is how few of these incredibly violent men are actually all that keen on killing people. They all talk a good game about smoking haji or whatever, but when they get the chance, most will take any out they can get to keep from ending a human life. Only in the most dire danger to themselves or more likely their fellow soldiers will they actually try to kill someone. And even then in my estimation only about a third can manage it. Guys who are actually trigger happy are either scared shitless or some variety of psychopath (which is often an asset in such situations).
It's the most positive thing I've ever learned about human beings.
Some of the "violent class" might be able to switch it off when they enter into civilian life
Nope. The only ones who can "switch it off" never had it to start with.
JTarrou
1yr ago
Yep, when your elites do a significant portion of the fighting, they have to practice! And mostly, they'll practice on each other. A violent class is always violent, not just in war.
When elites are part of the actual martial tradition, you can expect duelling, dangerous sports and lots of fighting to be popular among those elites. You can mark the slow decline of the American elite martial tradition to the elimination of that culture, mostly because the many of the most prominent members of it chose the wrong side in the Civil War. Duelling dies out and becomes gunfighting among prole cowboys and criminals.
JTarrou
1yr ago
Eh, could be a lot of cultural and structural differences, could be a small sample size. Could be different standards for admission. When I went in, they were scraping the barrel for bodies. The ASVAB cutoff got lowered to a thirty (out of a hundred), and you could get a waiver down to an eighteen (on a multiple choice test). A monkey could have passed.
JTarrou
1yr ago
media representations
That's the real answer. Not to say officers have never, ever gotten into the shit, but it's rare. It was rare in Vietnam, and it's much rarer now. But officers are who write the books about combat. They have the education and the inclination. Officers often belong to connected families. And there is a strong class thing here. Grunts are low-class trash, no one wants a story about a guy who is a total stud in combat, gets hounded out of the military for being too good at his job, beats his wife and drinks himself to death. But that's a much more common story than "West Point Lieutenant saves his unit".
JTarrou
1yr ago
Yeah, the specialty schools like Airborne require a certain score on the ASVAB, not super high but a bit above average. There's a lot of technical stuff to learn for that sort of thing, and languages as well. Actual operators are usually fairly intelligent, although often not in ways that make a ton of sense to people who think "academic" when they think "intelligent".
A lot of guys can't climb the ladder because their test scores are too low.
JTarrou
1yr ago
Key difference today is that the officers do not and cannot fight.
Such men may command soldiers, but they will never command respect.
People are getting hung up on the social status of officers rather than the capabilities.
JTarrou
1yr ago
That's the thing about a warrior elite, you can't stop them fighting. At best you can point them at people you'd rather have them fight.
How many duels you see on college campuses today? What are the values inculcated by our school system, popular child-raising techniques an general culture? Who is it that, if they are sufficiently angered, might shoot it out in the street in the US today? Who carries guns? College professors? Programmers? CEOs?
The blood is still there, the culture is still there, it's just moved down to the lower classes.
JTarrou
1yr ago
In the old days, yes. In those days, the elites were the ones who did the fighting, or at least some significant portion of it. They had a culture of martial virtue (as they saw it). They trained incessantly from childhood. You don't go to a seminar to learn how to fight, you have to be raised that way. You have to understand at a molecular level the terrible logic of violence. You have to have had practice. You don't want your first fight to be to the death.
This is no longer the case, the elites as a class do not fight, they do not train to fight, they are totally incapable of it. The social model of a fighting elite with real skin in the game has been dead at least since WW1, IMO. There was for a time a sort of rump petty rural elite who could provide a few educated and intelligent officers who wouldn't pass out at the sight of blood or shit themselves during a mortar drop. Those days are mostly over. Violence is abhorred among the educated set, so much so that they are incapable of distinguishing a mean tweet from a bullet. This is not a culture that produces warriors.
JTarrou
1yr ago
I don't see most of it as deficiencies. For academia, sure, but this ain't academia. It isn't a middle class occupation. These men are as they must be, in all their flawed and tragic glory. If you care about money, this ain't the place for you. If you care about safety and comfort, fuck off. If you care about family and relationships, keep dreaming. You can only serve one master, and it had better be your team.
War is a great criminal enterprise, and the men who can tolerate or even excel at it are not generally wired up for civilian success. The things that are adaptive in one environment are not in another.
JTarrou
1yr ago
Eh, we lost a couple officers too, but it was their own stupidity. The one time two captains decided to go on patrol they wandered off into the city with their interpreter like blondes at a music festival and started chatting up randos on the street. VBIED got em. Couldn't have happened to a nicer couple of dipshits. Might have contributed to none of the other officers trying it, which was a relief to me. Nothing I needed less in my life than a retarded Lieutenant trying to secret-squirrel his way into a medal.
JTarrou
1yr ago
Quite the opposite. As fewer and fewer people do the actual fighting, the ones who do get better and better. The source populations that reward such service are becoming a military class. We are also more and more estranged from the officer class, which exerts less and less influence.
Far from impotent, I contend we are seeing the beginning separation of a military caste. And you only need to get a good majority of fifty thousand guys on side to have the monopoly on violence in the US.
JTarrou
1yr ago
Our current class of infantry is probably the smartest and best educated in human history. Read what Napoleon used to write about his infantry. Military discipline is quite good. Self-destruction and anti-social leanings are pre-requisites. The normal and the well-adjusted rarely choose of their own free will to go to war these days, much less as the guy in front. Much of what I'm describing isn't even individual characteristics, but just part of the culture both in the source populations and the military itself. You can't have an army without a core of violence. To get that, you need violent men. That means a culture of violence, with a set of norms and status carrots and sticks to keep it all more or less under control.
It's a culture very foreign to those who grew up middle class, but very recognizable to those who grew up in harder environments. As I said, rude and frightening to the outsider. For those who climbed Sand Hill and drank the Kool-aid, it is a life unlike any other. All the best and worst times of my life happened there.
JTarrou
1yr ago
Did that make it harder to fit in because you're different from everyone else in some noticeable way?
Yes, to a point. I was part of the unit, but my social group was smaller than most, my interests foreign. For my part, I was as prickly in person as I am on the internet, so I wasn't exactly winning friends and influencing people.
Is there stigma against intelligent people, or is it simply the stigma against perceived cowardice that correlates with intelligence?
Not as such, I don't think. There's definitely a bit of stigma against intellectualism, but I think that's politically mediated.
Did being a strong, competent, aggressive person like everyone else mean they respected you anyway and didn't care about you being smart, or did you have to prove yourself above and beyond what the more typical infantry people did?
If I'd been strong and aggressive maybe. I might be a bit of a barbarian psychologically, but I'm still a skinny nerd from a pacifist religious family. I had to prove competence. Early on, all my team leaders would saddle me with the heaviest gun for road marches, and make me do cas-evac drills and hand-to-hand with the biggest guys. They had to be sure I could pull my weight, literally. I didn't hold it against them, but fuck was Malo heavy. I held up my end and they got the message pretty quick. Of course, positive attention from the NCOs is almost as bad as negative attention.
For the other joes, I could hold my liquor and I'd fight anyone win or lose, so I was respected if not loved. My sketchy camp cooking gave me the most popularity.
Or were you able to leverage your intelligence towards making your life even easier than everyone else?
A bit, but just for classroom stuff, which isn't difficult anyway. Military curriculum is set up to teach absolutely anyone who can tie their shoelaces and a few who can't. It's not exactly the GRE.
You don't.
That's why you actually have to go do it to find out.
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