Scales on War by Scales Robert H;

Author:Scales, Robert H;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Published: 2016-08-11T00:00:00+00:00

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TOUCH

Wars may be fought with weapons but they are won by men.

—Gen. George S. Patton Jr.

Fear grips every Soldier’s heart as he closes on the enemy. Once bullets start whacking over his head, he is pulled by two opposing psychological forces. One is fear of violent death and the prospect of dying alone; psychologists call this phenomenon “palliation.” The other is the imperative for a Soldier to follow orders, advance, and not let his buddies down. A Soldier chooses the latter when he has confidence in his leaders and when he is in touch with those around him. A Soldier chooses the former when his sense of isolation and detachment forces him to go to ground and huddle in fear.

This “touch” phenomenon, or the sense of a trusted buddy nearby, is the key psychological accelerant that induces a small unit to advance against the enemy. History is replete with examples. No sooner had Soldiers crossed the bloody Norman beaches than they ran into Germans defending behind “hedgerows.” These were thick, impenetrable lines of hedges, some higher than a tank. The Normans had lined their square farming plots with hedges on all sides. The effect of fighting in hedgerows was horrific. Outside, waiting to attack, every Soldier experienced extreme sound deadening. Once he advanced inside these hedgerow “boxes,” he found himself in a maddening acoustical sound chamber, with the horrific staccato of machine-gun fire and the shouts of wounded men resounding all around and amplified many times.

The defending Germans dug in behind these dense walls of foliage and punched holes through them to create protected fields of fire, from one hedgerow to the next. U.S. Soldiers had been trained to listen for orders from their leaders, scan to the next hedgerow, and shoot any German who showed his head. The Germans had developed other habits after four years on the Eastern Front. As soon as a lookout spotted the Americans, the Germans began ripping the opposite hedgerows with a steady fusillade of machine-gun fire. To senior U.S. commanders, the German pattern of fire was indiscriminate and seemingly wasteful for an army so short of ammunition. The Germans’ intent was not to hit anything but to make noise and intimidate by fire. In the dark, they talked and shouted incessantly, oblivious of the stunned Americans only a few yards away. Sometimes they whistled and sang to each other. Of course, later in the Normandy campaign the U.S. command came to realize that the German actions made sense. Their boisterous antics were simply a means for keeping in touch in the dark. Their “team chatter” dispelled their own personal anxiety and struck fear into the U.S. infantry, who hugged the dirt and huddled silently in the open looking for targets they could not see and listening silently for orders from sergeants who were probably already dead.

A Soldier’s greatest fear is to die alone, separated from his comrades. The sound of his comrade’s voice steels him and gives him assurance that his buddies—although they cannot be seen in the darkness—are only an elbow’s length away.

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