A Fresh Review of Grossman's Work

[Bill Glasheen]

A little redirection is in order.

In a previous thread, a few individuals got fixated on a single source (Marshall) in a very lengthy and extensively referenced piece of work (Grossman's On Killing) This was followed by a personal anecdote, and subsequently some personal baggage that has no place on this or any Uechi-Ryu.com forum.

That doesn't make the subject any less important.

The following post is a critical and thoughtful review of Grossman's work in On Killing.

I welcome similar reviews if you have them available to post. Rather than fixating on anecdotes and single flaws, let's give this very important subject the consideration it is due.

For what it's worth, Grossman's book is becoming required reading in my dojo if you want to make it to shodan. My choice as instructor, I know. We each have our approaches. But the reasons to include a piece of work like this far outweigh the reasons not to. And frankly there isn't a better alternative that I can think of which broaches this very important subject of killing.

Please leave your baggage at the door. Enjoy the conversation.

- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Book Review - On Killing: The Psychological Costs of Learning to Kill in War and Society

On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill In War and Society is written by a soldier, and it shows. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman is a military psychologist, not a scientist, and as a scientist I found it incredibly frustrating to read this book - almost none of his assertions are sourced or cited in full. Additionally, Grossman's admiration for his fellow soldiers is made manifest throughout the book. Although he makes a good case that these soldiers deserve, if not admiration, at least compassion, his frequent, brook-no-argument assertions that most soldiers are "brave", "noble" people committing a "necessary evil" can be grating to those of a more pacifist bent.

In other words, it was not easy going slogging through this book. However, none of this means that Grossman doesn't have some incredibly thought-provoking things to say.

This book was written to explain a startling fact: throughout most of military history, up until the end of World War II, the vast majority of soldiers (between 75 and 95%) have refused to kill. Brigadier S.L.A. Marshall, who studied this phenomenon during World War II, found that no more than 20% of soldiers would "take any part with their weapons". These results can be found throughout time and across cultures, from Alexander the Great who lost only 700 men in years of fighting, to tribesmen in New Guinea who remove the arrows from their feathers before going off to war, to the soldiers at Rosebud Creek in 1876 who fired 252 rounds for each Native American they hit.

The Battle of Gettysburg is considered one of America's bloodiest battles, but as Grossman shows, it could have been a great deal bloodier. Averages and estimates suggest that during Napoleonic and Civil War times, an entire regiment, firing from a range of thirty yards, would hit only one or two men a minute. Let's break down the numbers:


- a regiment contains between 200 and 1,000 men
- a soldier operating at peak efficiency could get off 1-5 shots per minute
- during training, these soldiers were 25% accurate at 225 yards, 40% accurate at 150 yards, and 60% accurate at 70 yards


Taking the most modest of these estimates - a 200 man regiment shooting once per minute with 25% accuracy - you would expect to see about 50 hits, more than 25 times that which was generally observed. As one officer observed, "It seems strange that a company of men can fire volley after volley at a like number of men at not over a distance of fifteen steps and not cause a single casualty. Yet such was the facts in this instance."

What was happening? Soldiers were resorting to a number of options, anything that meant that they didn't have to kill. Some fell back to support positions. A few faked injury or ran away. Many fired into the air. In Civil War times, conscience-stricken soldiers also had the option of pretending to fire - that is, loading up their muskets, mimicking the movements of a firing soldier next to them, and pretending to recoil. These soldiers would then be carrying loaded weapons or would have loaded their weapons multiple times.

When the fighting at Gettysburg was over, 27,574 muskets were found on the battlefield. Over 90% were loaded. Given that loading a weapon took roughly twenty times as long as firing it, the chances of these muskets representing mostly soldiers cut down just as they intended to shoot are slim. But then how do you explain the 12,000 multiply-loaded weapons, with 6,000 of them loaded with 3-10 rounds apiece?

Clearly there is among soldiers (as among most people) a deeply ingrained resistance to killing ones fellow human beings. Grossman devotes most of his book to discussing the ways in which this resistance can be overcome and the consequences to a soldier's psyche when that happens. In doing the former, Grossman is not being terribly original - I found the discussions of emotional and physical distance from the victim, obedience to authority and group absolution of responsibility, taught me nothing new, although someone with little knowledge of these topics might find them pretty fascinating (they are fascinating topics).

Where Grossman really shines is in his discussions of psychiatric casualties. He theorizes that psychiatric trauma is due primarily not to incredibly high levels of physical stress and constant fear, but to the moral strain of overcoming one's instinctive revulsion towards killing. The idea that psychiatric casualties - henceforth abbreviated PCs - are due to fear of death is pretty intuitive. That was a major reason for the German bombing of Allied cities, and the Allies' bombing of German civilians. The war was already causing incredible numbers of PCs (there were more allied PCs than soldiers killed by enemy fire during WWI) and it was thought that civilians would be much less prepared to deal with the horrors of war. The bombers expected massive numbers of PCs among civilians... and got pretty much none.

Why? Could it be that, as rough as things were for civilians in a besieged city, the one thing they were not forced to do was kill? Anecdotal evidence bears this out - when prisons are bombed, psychological trauma is observed only in guards, not prisoners. Both groups are endangered, but only one holds the moral responsibility for the lives of others. A look at military patrols also finds few PCs. Soldiers on patrol in enemy territory are in incredibly dangerous positions. But patrols are given orders not to engage the enemy under almost any circumstances - they are not required to kill, and therefore their level of psychological trauma is low.

Grossman makes a convincing argument. He then goes on to discuss how modern militaries, recognizing this issue, have worked to overcome soldiers' natural resistance to killing and have subsequently increased firing rates. Whereas in WWII, only 15-20% of infantry fired their rifles, 50% of soldiers in Korea did so and almost 90% of soldiers did so in Vietnam. Grossman credits this rise to the American military's campaign of desensitization to violence, dehumanization of the enemy, and above all, their use of classical and operant conditioning techniques. One of the most important changes was in the targets used in target practice. No more stationary white circles collected at the end of the session! Explains Grossman:

"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... these hits are then exchanged for marksmanship badges which have some form of privilege or reward association with them (praise, public recognition, three-day passes)"



A trainer for the Israeli Defense Forces describes his tactics:

"I changed the standard firing targets to full-size, anatomically correct figures because no Syrian runs around with a big white square on 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.'"



Grossman spends an entire section detailing the plight of the Vietnam veteran, trained in these methods and killing at a rate unparalleled in human history. The human revulsion for killing is not conditioned away in these men, merely suppressed. Previous generations of returning soldiers came home to monuments, to parades, to individuals and society as a whole assuring them that what they'd done was right and necessary. Even then, veterans still battled with their guilt. Vietnam veterans came home to cries of "Murderer!" and "Babykiller!" For Vietnam veterans, there was no hiding from what they'd done. Their fellow citizens echoed what their own consciences already told them - that they'd done something terribly, terribly wrong.

Is it any wonder that as many as 1.5 million veterans - more than half of those who served in Vietnam - suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? Is it any wonder that so many Vietnam veterans are divorced, addicted to drugs, homeless?

Let me step away from the Vietnam veterans for a moment, because as sad as their story is, that's not the take-home message I got from this book. For me, the most insightful section was the section on war crimes, what Grossman labels "atrocity". Now, Grossman doesn't actually say anything that interesting, although he does provide a pretty thorough "spectrum of atrocity" and a list of reasons why soldiers and societies might resort to atrocity. But as I read this section, in the context of Grossman's previous arguments, I found myself wondering:

If you accept that human beings have an intense, instinctive resistance to killing others of their own species, and if you devote months of training to overcoming that resistance, to systematically breaking down those barriers and applying stress and authority in all the right places, to destroying that part of a human that screams out that killing is wrong - what is to stop a soldier when he faces a surrendered enemy, a civilian, a child? You've already told him not to listen to his conscience. You've already trained him to ignore any feelings of empathy. You've trained him to kill, and that's what he's going to do.

*

There are several sections of this book I've glossed over. Grossman has a tendency to address too much, too shallowly. The last section, on violence in modern American society, points to the role of videogames in conditioning children to commit violence and the role of television and movies in desensitization. Grossman does not assert that this is the main cause of the rise in violence in modern society, but he astutely points out that it could play a role. There is apparently much evidence linking violent television to violent behavior. I say apparently, because Grossman source any of it, but presumably the APA did actually say in 1993 that "there is absolutely no doubt that higher levels of viewing violence on television are correlated with increased acceptance of aggressive attitudes and increased aggressive behavior". Of course, correlation does not equal causation, but in a book of this quality, one would not expect Grossman to really address the issue.

I think I've run out of things to say about this book. I do think that one of the best things about it, though, is the quotes that Grossman collects from the veterans he talks to (he borrows some from other sources too), so I'll end this review by copying some of them for you:

"I was just absolutely gripped by the fear that this man would expect me and would shoot me. But as it turned out he was in a sniper harness and couldn't turn around fast enough. He was entangled in the harness so I shout him with a .45... I can remember whispering foolishly 'I'm sorry' and then just throwing up... I threw up all over myself. It was a betrayal of what I'd been taught since a child."



"We saw the children and the women with their babies and then I heard the poouff - the flame had broken through the thatched roof and there was a yellow-brown smoke column going up into the air. It didn't hit me all that much then, but when I think of it now - I slaughtered those people. I murdered them."



"And I froze, 'cos it was a boy, I would say between the ages of twelve and fourteen. When he turned at me and looked, all of a sudden he turned his whole body and pointed his automatic weapon at me, I just opened up, fired the whole twenty rounds right at the kid, and he just laid there. I dropped my weapon and cried."



"A car came towards us, in the middle of the [Lebanese] war, without a white flag. Five minutes before another car had come, and there were four Palestinians with RPGs in it - killed three of my friends. So this new Peugeot comes towards us, and we shoot. And there was a family there - three children. And I cried, but I couldn't take the chance... children, father, mother. All the family was killed, but we couldn't take the chance."


Posted by Shauna at 10:57 PM

Labels: aggression, book review, killing, war

- Do You Mind?

a blog about brains and behaviors

[Bill Glasheen]

The source of the above review.

Shauna

* Gender: Female
* Industry: Student
* Location: Sacramento : California : United States

About Me

I'm a recent college graduate living in Sacramento and working as a research assistant in an fMRI lab. I'm interested in emotions, social behaviors, group dynamics, political psychology, social psychology and sociology. When I'm not being a huge dork, you can find me writing the first chapters of novels, baking birthday cakes for my friends and cuddling with my cat, Oedipus.

Not bad for a research assistant.

FWIW, I've been there, done that. We all start from humble beginnings. I still have fond memories of my days as a dishwasher at Howard Johnson's Restaurant in Charlottesville.

You can apply for work in our research group any day, Shauna.

- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

Grossman (psychology, West Point) presents three important hypotheses: 1) That humans possess the reluctance to kill their own kind; 2) that this reluctance can be systematically broken down by use of standard conditioning techniques; and 3) that the reaction of "normal" (e.g., non-psychopathic) soliders to having killed in close combat can be best understood as a series of "stages" similar to the ubiquitous Kubler-Ross stages of reaction to life-threatening disease. While some of the evidence to support his theories have been previously presented by military historians (most notably, John Keegan), this systematic examination of the individual soldier's behavior, like all good scientific theory making, leads to a series of useful explanations for a variety of phenomena, such as the high rate of post traumatic stress disorders among Vietnam veterans, why the rate of aggravated assault continues to climb, and why civilian populations that have endured heavy bombing in warfare do not have high incidents of mental illness. This important book deserves a wide readership. Essential for all libraries serving military personnel or veterans, including most public libraries.

- Mary Ann Hughes, Neill P.L., Pullman, Wash.
Library Journal

[Bill Glasheen]

Author of the Civil War Collector's Encyclopedia F.A. Lord tells us that after the Battle of Gettysburg, 27,574 muskets were recovered from the battlefield. Of these, nearly 90 percent (twenty four thousand) were loaded. Twelve thousand of these loaded muskets were found to be loaded more than once, and six thousand of the multiply loaded weapons had from three to ten rounds loaded in the barrel. One weapon had been loaded twenty-three times. Why, then, were there so many loaded weapons available on the battlefield, and why did at least twelve thousand soldiers misload their weapons in combat?

This origin of this one was tough to track down (took most of my two hours of research) even though it is often quoted, but I got lucky and hit pay dirt, including an explanation for why this happened by someone more familiar with the issue than Grossman. Seems that Grossman may have assumed too quickly when he contends, "these soldiers found themselves to be conscientious objectors who were unable or unwilling to kill their fellow man". Turns out the problem was more likely inadequate drilling (sorry Dave), nervousness and excitement. And just plain screwing up, (cartridges put in backwards or not even broken). So another red flag for Grossmans work, assuming rather than researching or verifying. Just like his hero SLAM.

The book is The "Ulster Guard" (20th N. Y. State Militia) and the War of the Rebellion
By Theodore Burr Gates (commander of the Ulster Guard) first printed in 1879 and the information is on page 298. I do recommend also reading from page 297 to page 301. A BIG book with some interesting things about shooting in battle.

Here's a book I'm going to see if our library will pick up as it may explain the horrible shots fired to hits ratio.
http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/hesrif.html

Oink, oink, this little swine is heading out.

Mike

It seems that we have two people supporting different hypotheses designed to explain some very real (and hard to ignore) data.

The facts are the facts, Mike. Six thousand of the multiply-loaded weapons with from 3 to 10 rounds loaded. There is one sentence there that weakly suggests an alternate hypothesis. One... You're ready to seize on this and dismiss Grossman's hypothesis entirely? Every single case of multiply-loaded weapons (thousands) can be explained with ONE alternate hypothesis? 100%??

Woah!!

Meanwhile, Grossman also talks about the common practice in Gettysburg and other battles of one man loading and another - either a great shot ... or someone who has no problem shooting people - doing the firing.

• It's the preponderance of evidence across hundreds of years that he cites in his book, Mike, that supports his hypothesis "That humans possess the reluctance to kill their own kind."
• The hypothesis also can be supported by watching the way carnivorous species kill other species, but behave in a very different manner to animals of the same species.
• The reluctance to "kill their own kind" also passes the "sniff test." What genetic advantage would a species have that was programmed otherwise?

You've got a lot of citations to go, Mike. Keep it coming!

Re-read the first review, Mike. It isn't gushing at all. But it points to Grossman being on the right path - even if he is a bit sloppy with his research.

If you have an alternate hypothesis that's relevant to using operant conditioning when training soldiers (or not), then we're all ears.

If you have an alternate hypothesis that explains the unprecedented number of PTSD cases after Vietnam, then we're all ears.

- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

Averages and estimates suggest that during Napoleonic and Civil War times, an entire regiment, firing from a range of thirty yards, would hit only one or two men a minute. Let's break down the numbers:


- a regiment contains between 200 and 1,000 men
- a soldier operating at peak efficiency could get off 1-5 shots per minute
- during training, these soldiers were 25% accurate at 225 yards, 40% accurate at 150 yards, and 60% accurate at 70 yards


Taking the most modest of these estimates - a 200 man regiment shooting once per minute with 25% accuracy - you would expect to see about 50 hits, more than 25 times that which was generally observed. As one officer observed, "It seems strange that a company of men can fire volley after volley at a like number of men at not over a distance of fifteen steps and not cause a single casualty. Yet such was the facts in this instance."

[Bill Glasheen]

For what it is worth I personally think there is a lot of substance to the overall message of what Grossman writes. No one can truly deny the psychological impacts of killing (or even being in the position to kill, whether followed through or not) and the post-event stress. But there are clearly some specific areas where the supporting sources are weak at best, or more correctly have not been fully evaluated, which indicates that some of his finer points may need re-evaluation or refining. This kind of critical evaluation of a researcher's work is necessary.

And for the true researcher there is nothing wrong with that, it is expected. I have yet to meet a researcher worth his salt who agrees with everything he wrote 5, 10, 15, etc, years ago. Sometimes it is specific 'facts' that they now say are just plain wrong while the general thesis is still sound; sometimes it is the whole thesis that they would expound differently today. I would place Grossman in the former category, some of the facts are incorrect but the general thesis of On Killing still stands. For all we know, Grossman may feel the same way.

One problem with any publication is that it sets the author's thoughts at a given time in stone essentially forever, regardless of how the author's views may change after it is published. How would Grossman write On Killing today, 13+ years later? What supporting evidence would he use now?

It is important to remember that there is no final word on anything, including from the experts. If all experts' research were the final word on their topics there would quickly be nothing left to research.

[Bill Glasheen]

"Shauna" appropriately was frustrated with Grossman's work.

On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill In War and Society is written by a soldier, and it shows. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman is a military psychologist, not a scientist, and as a scientist I found it incredibly frustrating to read this book

So how can Shauna (the scientist) and I (a scientist) find merit in his book as scientists?

Actually it's pretty easy.

Null Hypothesis 1

Humans are not reluctant to kill their own kind.

You read several chapters of evidence in the form of many citations which seem to suggest a pattern. Then you either accept or reject the null hypothesis. When you are doing a scientific study and you are looking for an effect, it doesn't have to be THE ONLY effect in the experiment. It's nice when you can run a clean, sterile experiment where all things are controlled. But that's not the case here. Grossman mines military history for data, and we are to use our human pattern recognition skills to look for variation from the null hypothesis that doesn't appear to be random.

In my thinking, a reasonable person could possibly reject the null hypothesis based on personal experience. Mulling through some data may make it possible to do in somewhat of a quantitative fashion.

Rejecting the null hypothesis doesn't require one to quantify the degree to which the absence of killing in various scenarios is due to one vs. other factors. Most of running life involves the sum and interaction of multiple factors - the net of which is the effect we see.

Null Hypothesis 2

A reluctance to kill cannot be systematically broken down by use of standard conditioning techniques

I think a good psychologist can speak off the cuff about this one. To say that one cannot change behavior is to deny the field of behaviorism. Right now behavioral therapy interventions are one of the few forms of psych therapy outside of pharmaceuticals that insurance companies consider "evidence based."

Null Hypothesis 3

There is no reaction of an average person (soldier) to killing.

Quite a bit is being published on this based upon the most recent military interventions in the Middle East.

Combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, mental health problems, and barriers to care

It took me 10 seconds to find this article - amongst dozens on the subject.

- Bill

[Glenn]

I have not seen it yet, but Grossman does have a follow-up book that was published just last year, On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and Peace. According to the Table of Contents listed online it includes a chapter entitled "Making the Decision to Kill". Being published 12 years after On Killing, this chapter may bring to light any changes in Grossman's views or his sources.

Not sure how useful his science fiction book The Two-Space Waris to this discussion, but it shows he has a lighter side.

[IJ]

"The reluctance to "kill their own kind" also passes the "sniff test." What genetic advantage would a species have that was programmed otherwise?"

Without disagreeing with Bill's point, I offer a few observations:

Felines, at least, (and at least, lions and housecats) will kill innocent, freaking adorable kittens/kits when it serves their reproductive aims. This happens when a new male takes over a pride or area and wants to mate; the females are brought into heat again with the execution of their offspring.

I've also seen a video of a male hippo mangling a baby hippo introduced to him by the mother (other father) -- very sad video since I was also expecting just a cute baby hippo video.

Some humans lack empathy and experience no real problem hurting and killing other humans. Doctors call them ASPD (antisocial personality disorders), others call them "sociopaths," and to a large extent they are also called "convicts." These could be misfires, some kind of brain miswirings, but it's prefectly plausible that a few individuals would have a selective advantage becoming parasites on a productive social framework they don't have to contribute to. Assuming most of the species is building stuff up, it won't drag everyone down, but will support a minority, if a few take what they want when they want it. Ideally (per me) our armies aren't made up of these people.... but you know, you really can't argue that an ASPD person who hadn't yet developed a criminal record might make a great soldier. Likes to kill, doesn't get PTSD from it... hmmm. I'm sure you could find a bunch of politicians, commanders, ASPD nutjobs, and parents of normal people who wouldn't mind the arrangement.

I have also read (can't remember where) a theory that the human brain developed not to build spaceships and cell phones and write poems. Those things didn't propel us to success; something else favored the human brain when it developed long before those things exist. Some researcher of apes was studying their interactions and began to think that human brains were designed to outwit other humans. There were many tests in ape and chimp culture where intelligence was key--for example, concealing an affair, or a food source, or a plan, from a larger / more dominant peer. Passing these tests means survival and reproduction. This doesn't mean we're wired to kill each other but it does make us wonder WHY we aren't. Should we... just be wired not to kill our own group? It sure seems to be easier to get enemies killed if they are cast as "other" (think nazis and concentration camps, or cowboys and indians/slaves--those conflicts all had a fair flavor of "other = animal" as well).

Some researchers do work on gaming theory, where one looks at adaptive styles in networks. For example, say two criminals are brought in at the same time and can either turn their partner in, or deny involvement. They are rewarded if they turn or deny, but punished if they deny but are turned in. The rewards can be varied, and styles of criminals tested in computer models of successive encounters. Simple styles like "always defect" or "always protect" are easily detected and exploited/protected against. In one series I read that the strategy of tit for tat won overall, in other words, cooperate but be willing to fight back. When researchers throw in some error rate, such that efforts of the suspects would sometimes be misconstrued, the most effective strategy was slightly forgiveness minded tit for tat, along the lines of "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me."

Obviously this is a simple stand in for society but we can see how an ability to compete and fight back plays a role in survival, without becoming an overtly self destructive species.

[Glenn]

Overcoming a resistance to kill, even having no real problem killing, is only anti-social if the society is against killing. Not all cultures throughout time and space have shared such inhibitions. Many cultures have had established cultural norms for when it is OK to kill. The Japanese for example, whether it be killing another for a slight or killing one-self to avoid shame. In both cases killing was not only socially acceptable but expected; anti-social were those who did not kill in those circumstances.

[Bill Glasheen]

It sure seems to be easier to get enemies killed if they are cast as "other" (think nazis and concentration camps, or cowboys and indians/slaves--those conflicts all had a fair flavor of "other = animal" as well).

Overcoming a resistance to kill, even having no real problem killing, is only anti-social if the society is against killing. Not all cultures throughout time and space have shared such inhibitions. Many cultures have had established cultural norms for when it is OK to kill. The Japanese for example, whether it be killing another for a slight or killing one-self to avoid shame. In both cases killing was not only socially acceptable but expected; anti-social were those who did not kill in those circumstances.

Grossman talks about this phenomenon in his book. It is part of the conditioning employed to increase firing rates. Training programs dehumanize the enemy, desensitize soldiers to the psychological ramifications of killing, and make pulling the trigger an automatic response.

The Japanese during World War II were taught that the Chinese really weren't "human." This led to the atrocities documented at places such as Nanking.

- Bill

[jorvik]

I think that is a slight oversimplification of facts .....look at the jews and the Holacaust. The Jews were vilified by hitler.IMHO because of what had happened in WW1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_De ... on_of_1917

the Germans then tried to have the Jews deportedi from hitler's Germany ........................it has only recently been reported that the US refused to take them.......You then had the Holacaust. the Germans considered the Jews to be "Enemies in their midst".......and there are photos of Nuns leading Jewish Children tio the gas chambers...everybody supported hitler, big business, the Church etc

I know I am going off topic quite a bit.but with history you really need to get a feel for the " Folksgheist" at that time.hitler had overwhelming support.that often goes unrecorded ......look at the way that Iran and Iraq are being treated now.....worrying times are ahead

[MikeK]

Author of the Civil War Collector's Encyclopedia F.A. Lord tells us that after the Battle of Gettysburg, 27,574 muskets were recovered from the battlefield. Of these, nearly 90 percent (twenty four thousand) were loaded. Twelve thousand of these loaded muskets were found to be loaded more than once, and six thousand of the multiply loaded weapons had from three to ten rounds loaded in the barrel. One weapon had been loaded twenty-three times. Why, then, were there so many loaded weapons available on the battlefield, and why did at least twelve thousand soldiers misload their weapons in combat?

This origin of this one was tough to track down (took most of my two hours of research) even though it is often quoted, but I got lucky and hit pay dirt, including an explanation for why this happened by someone more familiar with the issue than Grossman. Seems that Grossman may have assumed too quickly when he contends, "these soldiers found themselves to be conscientious objectors who were unable or unwilling to kill their fellow man". Turns out the problem was more likely inadequate drilling (sorry Dave), nervousness and excitement. And just plain screwing up, (cartridges put in backwards or not even broken). So another red flag for Grossmans work, assuming rather than researching or verifying. Just like his hero SLAM.

The book is The "Ulster Guard" (20th N. Y. State Militia) and the War of the Rebellion
By Theodore Burr Gates (commander of the Ulster Guard) first printed in 1879 and the information is on page 298. I do recommend also reading from page 297 to page 301. A BIG book with some interesting things about shooting in battle.

Oink, oink, this little swine is heading out.

Mike

It seems that we have two people supporting different hypotheses designed to explain some very real (and hard to ignore) data.

Except that one of the two people actually was around at the time, knew the soldiers, knew the weapons, knew the drills, and the other guy is quoting a book written 100 years later on collectibles and making stuff up to connect his idea to it. Sorry Bill, Grossman once again is grasping at straws to support his claim.

The facts are the facts, Mike. Six thousand of the multiply-loaded weapons with from 3 to 10 rounds loaded. There is one sentence there that weakly suggests an alternate hypothesis. One... You're ready to seize on this and dismiss Grossman's hypothesis entirely? Every single case of multiply-loaded weapons (thousands) can be explained with ONE alternate hypothesis? 100%??
- Bill

I've put Grossman's hypothesis of the 6,000 guns on the same trash heap as Marshall's 15% non-fire number. Both are fabrications and fantasy.

By the way here's what one of Grossman's sources says about the subject and I believe where Grossman gets his numbers from.
Battle tactics of the Civil War
By Paddy Griffith Read pages 85-88.

World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, Ill., 1893
By Committee on Awards, United States World's Columbian Commission. Committee on Awards, World's Columbian
This one shows that they were aware of the problem back then in 1893.

Being on the right track is one thing, but basing your proof on bad history, bad data and bad research is another. So let's remove Marshall's numbers and the Gettysburg nonsense and see what's left. This will be hard because so much of the book hinges on Marshall's magic number.

You've got a lot of citations to go, Mike. Keep it coming!

With a book this bad there sure are, but I do have a life and I don't have time for all of them.

[Van Canna]

Lt. Col. Dave Grossman is a West Point psychology professor, Professor of Military Science, and an Army Ranger.

He is the author of On Killing, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, is on the US Marine Corps' recommended reading list, and is required reading at the FBI academy and numerous other academies and colleges.

He has testified before U.S. Senate and Congressional committees and numerous state legislatures, and he and his research have been cited in a national address by the President of the United States.

If he is good for the Marines...he is good for me
They surely must know something about men in combat.