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was. To this day, I firmly believe that grunt and I could have ended the war sooner over a beer in Saigon than Henry Kissinger ever could by attending the peace talks.
    — Michael Kathman
    "Triangle Tunnel Rat"
    O u r first step in the study of killing is to understand the existence, extent, and nature of the average human being's resistance to killing his fellow human. In this section we will attempt to do that.
    W h e n I started interviewing combat veterans as a part of this study, I discussed some of the psychological theories concerning the trauma of combat with one crusty old sergeant. He laughed scornfully and said, "Those bastards don't k n o w anything about it. They're like a world of virgins studying sex, and they got nothing to go on but porno movies. And it is just like sex, 'cause the people w h o really do it just don't talk about it."
    In a way, the study of killing in combat is very much like the study of sex. Killing is a private, intimate occurrence of tremendous intensity, in which the destructive act becomes psychologically very much like the procreative act. For those who have never experienced it, the depiction of battle that Hollywood has given us, and the cultural mythology that Hollywood is based upon, appear to be about as useful in understanding killing as p o r n o -
    graphic movies would be in trying to understand the intimacy of a sexual relationship. A virgin observer might get the mechanics of sex right by watching an X-rated movie, but he or she could KILLING AND THE E X I S T E N C E OF R E S I S T A N C E 3
    never hope to understand the intimacy and intensity of the procreative experience.
    As a society we are as fascinated by killing as we are by sex —
    possibly more so, since we are somewhat jaded by sex and have a fairly broad base of individual experience in this area. Many children, upon seeing that I am a decorated soldier, immediately ask "Have you ever killed anyone?" or "How many people have you killed?"
    Where does this curiosity come from? Robert Heinlein once wrote that fulfillment in life involved "loving a good woman and killing a bad man." If there is such a strong interest in killing in our society, and if it equates in many minds to an act of manhood equivalent to sex, then why hasn't the destructive act been as specifically and systematically studied as the procreative act?
    Over the centuries there have been a few pioneers who have laid the foundation for such a study, and in this section we will attempt to look at them all. Probably the best starting point is with S. L. A. Marshall, the greatest and most influential of these pioneers.
    Prior to World War II it had always been assumed that the average soldier would kill in combat simply because his country and his leaders have told him to do so and because it is essential to defend his own life and the lives of his friends. When the point came that he didn't kill, it was assumed that he would panic and run.
    During World War II U.S. Army Brigadier General S. L. A.
    Marshall asked these average soldiers what it was that they did in battle. His singularly unexpected discovery was that, of every hundred men along the line of fire during the period of an encounter, an average of only 15 to 20 "would take any part with their weapons." This was consistently true "whether the action was spread over a day, or two days or three."
    Marshall was a U.S. Army historian in the Pacific theater during World War II and later became the official U.S. historian of the European theater of operations. He had a team of historians working for him, and they based their findings on individual and mass interviews with thousands of soldiers in more than four hundred infantry companies, in Europe and in the Pacific, immediately after 4
    KILLING AND THE E X I S T E N C E OF R E S I S T A N C E
    they had been in close combat with German or Japanese troops.
    The results were consistently the same: only 15 to 20 percent of the American riflemen in