The Last Full Measure: How Soldiers Die in Battle - Hardcover

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MICHAEL STEPHENSON is the author of, most recently, Patriot Battles: How the War of Independence Was Fought. In addition to his writing, Stephenson spent more than twenty-five years as a professional book editor, for much of that time with a particular focus on military publishing. For six years he was the editor of the Military Book Club. He lives in New York City.

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ONE

First Blood

Death and the Heroic in Ancient Combat

The Greeks, as I have learned, are accustomed to wagewars in the most stupid fashion due to their silliness and folly. For once theyhave declared war against each other, they search out the finest and most levelplain and there fight it out. The result is that even the victorious come awaywith great losses; and of the defeated, I say only that they are utterlyannihilated.

-Herodotus, The Histories1

ERODOTUS: HISTORIAN OR LIAR? Researcher or fabricator?Famously denounced by Cicero as a fraudster, depicted by some modern historiansas a fictionalizer, he can be seen as the precursor of some ratherdistinguished modern historians who have had, to put it delicately, a littledifficulty with the all too often indistinct boundary between history and"imagined history." But in looking back to the earliest evidence ofwarfare and the fates that befell warriors on those prehistoric and ancientkilling grounds, the Herodotian dilemma-that confused swirl of myth and fact,of dispassionate observation and passionate "interpretation"may serveus well, for the reality is that we walk on uncertain ground, and we would bewell advised to tread it gingerly.

As the quote that heads this chapter suggests, Herodotuslooked at the warfare of his age (fifth century BCE) and saw anything but aheroic clash of arms. Greek warriors could be almost lemminglike in theirtunnel-visioned stampede to oblivion. His view echoes the modern debate-ahawks-versus-doves standoff-about our ancient and prehistoric ancestors.

Was it a clash between those who saw their interests bestserved by ruthless violence and those who saw their interests served byavoiding bloody conflict and reaching some kind of peaceful accommodation? Thehawks see primitive man as truly primitive. This hawks-and-doves dichotomy isreflected in modern studies of early battlefield lethality. There are those whocontend that early combat was merely ritualistic, full of sound and furysignifying nothinga great deal of prancing and empty threats that were designedto minimize the death count. The argument is that in societies of low birthrateand high natural mortality, bloodletting, which could only harm bothantagonists, would be avoided. Instead of real warfare they organized amutually agreed-upon charade in which theatrical gesture replaced killinganargument anthropologist Lawrence H. Keeley dismisses as "the increasinglyirrational meandering in a neo-Rousseauian, postmodernist 'woo-woo land.'" However, the "flower-war" school gained traction in the 1960sand 1970s, perhaps as a reaction to what was seen as the military brutalism ofmuch of the twentieth century, which, despite its self-congratulatory"modernity" and humanism, set a new benchmark for savagery.

John Keegan in A History of Warfare (1993) promotes theidea of self-restraining warfare being a characteristic of"primitives" who "have recourse to all sorts of devices whichspare both themselves and their enemies from the worst of what might beinflicted.?.?.?. Most important of such devices is that of ritual, whichdefines the nature of combat itself and requires that, once defined ritualshave been performed, the contestants shall recognise the fact of theirsatisfaction and have recourse to conciliation, arbitration andpeacemaking."3 But before we can rest in the comfortable assumption thatprimitive warriors were simply thwarted peacemakers, Keegan puts us right:"It is important?.?.?.?not to idealise primitive warfare. It may take avery violent turn." Indeed, Keegan adds, a little euphemistically, it may"have material effects undesired by those who suffer them"-undesiredas in being tortured before being eaten. Our primitive forebears could beunfussy diners.

Robert L. O'Connell in his influential 1989 survey of warand aggression also promotes a view of primitive battle as essentially one oflow lethality:

Most probably fighting was, as it is now amongcontemporary hunting-and-gathering people, a sporadic, highly personalizedaffair, homicidal in intent and, occasionally, in effect, but lacking asustained economic and political motivation beyond that of revenge and,sometimes, women. Under such conditions, ambush and raiding are the preferredmodes of operation, and the target often is a single "enemy." Pitchedbattles, when they occur, represent tactical failure. The object of the forayis rout, not prolonged combat. In such an environment the attacking party willclose only if surprise is reasonably certain; otherwise the aim is to stay atlong range and exchange missiles.4

The distinction O'Connell and Keegan make between"formal" battle and ambush or surprise attack is critical inunderstanding the risk primitive warriors ran. It has been posited that informal battle the total casualty rate (wounded and killed) could be quitehigh-perhaps in the 30 to 40 percent range-compared with, say, an"average" American Civil War battle casualty rate of 12 to 15percent. But because these primitive battles were often standoffs employingrelatively unsophisticated missile weaponry, the death rate was low comparedwith that of modern battle: one killed for about thirty wounded; whereas bycomparison, one man was killed for about every five wounded at Gettysburg, andat the battle of the Somme in 1916 some British battalions took one killed forevery two men wounded. 5 However, some primitive pitched battles could be quitedeadly if the protagonists closed with shock weapons such as clubs, axes, andlances (a pattern that would become characteristic of Greek and Roman warfare).For example, combat among the woodland tribes of eastern North America (beforeEuropeans introduced firearms), in which up-close shock weapons such as clubsand axes predominated, could be highly lethal. However, if we look only atpitched battle the true picture of primitive-warrior fatality would be severelydistorted because the favored mode of battle was what we might term"irregular": ambushes and raids. The loss rate of each incident mayhave been quite low relative to modern warfare, but their frequency andferocity elevated the cumulative kill to "catastrophic mortalities"so that "a member of a typical tribal society, especially a male, had afar higher probability of dying in combat than the citizen of an average modernstate."6

The picture, then, of our warrior ancestors does not fitnotions of heroic warfare in which one warrior meets and defeats another as anequal. Much more likely, the style of doing battle was opportunistic andmotivated largely by an intuitive risk/benefit analysis. When life is squeezedinto the tight margin of survivability, grandiose gestures will give way tocareful calculation. A sure kill by a mob swarming, in a brief moment ofadvantage, over a numerically inferior enemy may not be pretty, but it cuts theodds of harm to the attackers significantly. Early humans were no differentfrom most hunting packs. This was the way they had learned to overcome animalprey, and it was a tactic equally effective against human enemies. In some waysit is not so different from insurgent warfare of our era, which is also basedon isolating and overrunning small groups of the enemy in ambushes and traps-infact on any opportunistic tactic that increases the odds of success, no matterhow "underhanded" it might be. Whether it be Europeans fightingnatives in North America (settlers referred to it as "the skulking way ofwar"); the French fighting Spanish guerrillas during the Peninsular War ofthe Napoleonic era; the French and Americans fighting in Vietnam in thetwentieth century; or the Soviets fighting the mujahideen and Americans theTaliban in modern Afghanistan, insurgent tactics reject a definition of theheroic; based that is, on open and transparent...