I don't know if I can word this correctly but ..........
I'm an average bloke, so I guess with the training ( and younger) I could be
An average soldier. What intrigues me is how you make the next step to the
More elite sections.
As an average bloke, I'd expect to have to shoot other soldiers, but the
More close up secret work like sneaking into somewhere and having to
Kill coldly ( like cutting someone's throat).
Can the army train you to do that ( without thinking about it) or do the military
Look for recruits who already have that ability ?
I'm not knocking the army, if I was a hostage, I'll love the see a few blokes
Smashing through the windows to free me. )
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
I believe you have to be in above average physical shape to qualify for elite units, but physical toughness can be buildt. What is more important is the mental side; the will to continue, courage etc. You also have to really want to become an elite soldier. I remember a friend of mine visited his then girlfriend after qualifying for a special forces unit. She asked him if he had considered what she might think about him joining a unit like that. His reply was a bit chilling: "You have to understand I have dreamt of joining the parashute jaegers for much longer than I have dreamt of you ..."
I believe there is some phsycological screening of the candidates for some of these units, but largly it's about conditioning. They build a powerful esprit d'corps, a solid self confidence and your sense of what's normal changes a lot. I was in a normal support unit, but it's weird to think of how normal it felt to walk into a shop with a battle rifle on my back.
I'm sure there are members of this foru who can answer this better than I, but this is my take on it.
Yes that's what I was getting at Number24, The physical side I can understand, But it's
the Mental side that Intrigues Me, Like Bond, these Soldiers may have to kill. In a cold
Blood in an up close way.
Now I couldn't do that, so ( Without any details) Can you be trained to put aside any
feelings of guilt or ways of stopping it from praying on your mind ?
As I'm guessing killing an enemy with a knife or with bare hands must be very different to
being a soldier in a shootout situation.
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
Yes that's what I was getting at Number24, The physical side I can understand, But it's
the Mental side that Intrigues Me, Like Bond, these Soldiers may have to kill. In a cold
Blood in an up close way.
Now I couldn't do that, so ( Without any details) Can you be trained to put aside any
feelings of guilt or ways of stopping it from praying on your mind ?
As I'm guessing killing an enemy with a knife or with bare hands must be very different to
being a soldier in a shootout situation.
Like I said I wasn't in an elite unit and thank God I haven't been in a war. They put a lot of work into changing your mindset, conditioning you and familiarizing you with the sights, sounds, routines and actions of war. Royal Marines sailing south to the Falklands to fight the Argentinians were ordered to fire at targets in the water, mainly to make them acustomed to the sights, sounds and smell of firefights. If you repeat an action often enough it becomes automatic, almost robotlike. An infantryman should be able to dissasemble and assemble his rifle in complete darkness.
But killing a human being is a huge step and I've read that a very large portion of WWII soldiers killed only one enemy or none at all during the whole war - it was just a step too far. Even elite training a can only prepare you so far. An Israeli ex-paratrooper told me that training helps, but you only know how you will react when you experience real combat. I remember reading of a SEAL-team on Grenada where they came under light fire and paniced.
Interesting -{ , I was wondering if the high fail rate of people trying to
Join, the " Best" units, may not have been because of the physical fails
But because mentally, the trainers knew they could not do it.
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
I should add, My Dad always said my Grandfather told him during the war. Most people
tried to shoot the other guy in the stomach, as It didn't kill him but did make him
out of action.
( Although this might be a myth, and maybe it's a nasty way to kill someone after all )
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
Asp9mmOver the Hills and Far Away.Posts: 7,485MI6 Agent
Thuderpussy, the answer to your question is too complicated to answer properly and in short. But you're trained to such a high degree that when a contact happens, your training takes over. Some people think about it afterwards, some don't. Obviously with varying results and degrees of thought.
During training, most people quit of their own accord and it really is mental. Those dropping out because they can't take it physically are far less than you'd think.
Originally Posted by Excerpt from "Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows", Melanie Joy
Unnatural Born Killers
There is a substantial body of evidence demonstrating humans' seemingly natural aversion to killing. Much of the research in this area has been conducted by the military; analysts have found that soldiers tend to intentionally fire over the enemy's head, or not to fire at all.
Studies of combat activity during the Napoleonic and Civil Wars revealed stirking statistics. Given the ability of the men, their proximity to the enemy, and the capacity of their weapons, the number of enemy soldiers hit should have been well over 50 percent, resulting in a killing rate of hundreds per minute. Instead, however, the hit rate was only one o two per minute. And a similar phenomenon occured during World War I: according to british Lieutenant George Roupell, the only way he could get his men to stop firing into the air was by drawing his sword, walking down the trench, "beating [them] on the backside and ... telling them to fire low".1 World War II fire rates were also remarkably low: historian and US Army Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall rerported that, during battle, the firing rate was a mere 15 to 20 percent; in other words, out of every hundred men engaged in a firefight, only fifteen to twenty actually used their weapons. And in Vietnam, for every enemy soldiers killed, more than fifty thousand bullets were fired.2
What these studies have taught the miltiary is that in order to get soldiers to shoot to kill, to actively participate in violence, the soldiers must be sufficiencly desensitized to the act of killing. In other words, they have to learn not to feel -- and not to ffeel responsible -- for their actions. They must be taught to override their own conscience. yet these studies also demonstrate that even in the face of immediate danger, in situations of extreme violence, most people are averse to killing. In other words, as Marshall concludes, "the vast majority of combatants throughout history, at the moment of truth when they could and should kill the enemy, have found themselves to be 'conscientious objectors'".3
1: Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in war and Society. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996, 12.
2: Grossman, Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door. New York: Broadway Books, 2005.
3: Grossman, 15.
There's a book called I think 'Tiger Force'. It's written by the military investigator who was tasked with tracking down the members of a recon team who worked in Vietnam. What basically happened was the recon missions quickly turned into search and destroy as the members went batshit crazy. The investigator was to bring the war criminals to justice, the book is his story. Be warned though, it's proper 'ear necklace' stuff, but if you want an insight into the mentality of soldiers then it's a bit of an eye opener.
I remember a mate of mine ,telling me that during Gulf one ,he bayoneted this bloke,and he wouldn't die, to the point where he stabbed him so many times, he thought that there was something wrong with his bayonet,
(had the lads swopped it for a rubber film prop )
The trouble is ,we are all conditioned to what we have seen in films ,
you see a cowboy get an arrow in his back ,and he drops dead, so I suppose if you stab a bloke 4 to 5 times ,you would expect him to die instantly, again I new another mate in the same war who shot a bloke with his side arm ,and he didn't die instantly either , , but it could just be war stories,
Once again, I'm coming from knowing nothing about the subject but .....
I did watch a documentary describing some violent deaths and the things
They aren't allowed to show in movies and TV. Such as the muscle spasms
Etc. They showed a clip from an Italian cop show which did show it, but it
Was heavily criticised for being so violent.
So I think that leads to many of us expecting, one shot and you're dead. Although
I remember Chrisisall, posting a video of a lawyer being shot six or eight times by
A guy with a grudge, who walked away from it and didn't even realise he'd been hit
So many times.
Also in films when you get shot you fly across the room,but I've been told you don't
You drop like a puppet whos strings have been cut.
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
Asp9mmOver the Hills and Far Away.Posts: 7,485MI6 Agent
There are so many variables TP, but it's not as easy or as clean as you see in movies. Far from it. And yes, they just drop, no dramatic flyback.
From my own experiance you just react to the situation you find yourself in, luckily I've never had to kill another person but I've come close and I was suprised at how I just reacted without really thinking, it was all on instinct,
If you take all emotion out of the equation you create worse soilders not better ones!
Bond: so why do you need me?
Q: i'll admit every now and then a trigger needs to be pulled
Bond: or not pulled. It's hard to know which sitting in your pajamas.
I always thought M was a randomly assigned initial, i had no idea it stood for.....
Once again, I'm coming from knowing nothing about the subject but .....
I did watch a documentary describing some violent deaths and the things
They aren't allowed to show in movies and TV. Such as the muscle spasms
Etc. They showed a clip from an Italian cop show which did show it, but it
Was heavily criticised for being so violent.
So I think that leads to many of us expecting, one shot and you're dead. Although
I remember Chrisisall, posting a video of a lawyer being shot six or eight times by
A guy with a grudge, who walked away from it and didn't even realise he'd been hit
So many times.
Also in films when you get shot you fly across the room,but I've been told you don't
You drop like a puppet whos strings have been cut.
I know of a member of the resistance during WWII who was in a firefight. He got on his bike and cycled for about a mile before he realised he was shot in the stomach. Adrenaline had worked as a painkiller. Regarding the knockback effect: it's about force /counterforce. The shooter and the target experiences the same knockback (recoil) in theory. There are of course padded rifle butts and mechanisms to delay the recoil. When we fired the AG3 rifle (HK G3 - uses a more powerful round than most military rifles today) we adopted a stance to handle the powerful recoil. Since a target who was not running towards the shooter most likely was not poised to counterweight the knock of the bullet, there would be some knockback. Not anything like we see in movies like Open Range (otherwise a fine film)
My only knowledge comes from a couple of friends who are hunters
And they told me that an animal when shot just falls down.
Although it's great to read all these pieces of information. {[]
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
Obviosly the RM train very hard. But sailing to Falklands took them weeks, and the officers knew that landing into a war after such along time on a cruise ship can be a shock. So the officers decided to start some rifle practice to keep them used to the sound of war. This was reported in several books about the Falklands war.
I was going to edit my previous point slightly so I may as well reply - though this will be my last comment.
Number24 I am quoting your original post here: "Royal Marines sailing south to the Falklands to fight the Argentinians were ordered to fire at targets in the water, mainly to make them acustomed to the sights, sounds and smell of firefights."
I don't know if was a translation mishap but that is different to what you said in you post above. But, if it said so in a book, it must be true, right? We've already been told not to believe everything we read especially if that tomb happens to be the Beano. What you have read is just plain wrong - it is skill at arms, not to keep you from forgetting what heavy noise situations sound like because once heard never forgotten & to intimate such is frankly disrespectful on the part of whoever wrote it. Skill at arms (target practice etc) is by definition noisy especially when rattling off a gimpy. i suppose the book mentioned the fact that the operation wasn't only conducted by the Marines? On the Norland everyone was ordered to wear trainers when below deck - that wasn't to save their feet from the discomfort of DMS (perhaps it has been reported so?) I'll not bother with the reasoning behind that one, perhaps it can be looked up.
Again a waste of time attempting to reason with nuggets of 'knowledge' cherry picked from books or the internet.
Back to the reason for the intended edit of my last post. When I was speaking about 'experts' I was generalising.
Anyway, talk away all you like on some subjects about which none of you patently have a clue. However I have no further use for this thread.
As I was editing this I noticed the post which follows. Although I guess it was made in an attempt to draw me I will not comment
While I'm not going to continue this debat either, I have one question: I have stated my very modest experience and knowledge in this area. You seem very sure in your posts and show little respect for other opinions. What is your background in the military and/or other backgorund that makes you so sure?
Well I for one appreciate, all the replies to my question. For all who took the
Time and effort a big thanks. {[] for those who seem to want to merely score
Points by running down the experiences of others, .... I'll wish you a Merry
Christmas, after all it is a time of year for " Reflection" .
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
I was going to edit my previous point slightly so I may as well reply - though this will be my last comment.
Number24 I am quoting your original post here: "Royal Marines sailing south to the Falklands to fight the Argentinians were ordered to fire at targets in the water, mainly to make them acustomed to the sights, sounds and smell of firefights."
I don't know if was a translation mishap but that is different to what you said in you post above. But, if it said so in a book, it must be true, right? We've already been told not to believe everything we read especially if that tomb happens to be the Beano. What you have read is just plain wrong - it is skill at arms, not to keep you from forgetting what heavy noise situations sound like because once heard never forgotten & to intimate such is frankly disrespectful on the part of whoever wrote it. Skill at arms (target practice etc) is by definition noisy especially when rattling off a gimpy. i suppose the book mentioned the fact that the operation wasn't only conducted by the Marines? On the Norland everyone was ordered to wear trainers when below deck - that wasn't to save their feet from the discomfort of DMS (perhaps it has been reported so?) I'll not bother with the reasoning behind that one, perhaps it can be looked up.
Again a waste of time attempting to reason with nuggets of 'knowledge' cherry picked from books or the internet.
Back to the reason for the intended edit of my last post. When I was speaking about 'experts' I was generalising.
Anyway, talk away all you like on some subjects about which none of you patently have a clue. However I have no further use for this thread.
As I was editing this I noticed the post which follows. Although I guess it was made in an attempt to draw me I will not comment
The target practice is all about familiarisation, muscle memory and keeping your eye in. If practice wasn't needed then it'd be done away with at basic and never gone over again until in battle, right?
The trainers below deck I'm guessing was to reduce noise that could be detected by submarines. A few hundred grunts yomping around in clod hoppers would make quite a din surely?
Hey I'm not doing bad am I?
I'm gonna throw a wildcard out there, are you ok? You seem quite up tight in many of your posts.
Comments
I'm an average bloke, so I guess with the training ( and younger) I could be
An average soldier. What intrigues me is how you make the next step to the
More elite sections.
As an average bloke, I'd expect to have to shoot other soldiers, but the
More close up secret work like sneaking into somewhere and having to
Kill coldly ( like cutting someone's throat).
Can the army train you to do that ( without thinking about it) or do the military
Look for recruits who already have that ability ?
I'm not knocking the army, if I was a hostage, I'll love the see a few blokes
Smashing through the windows to free me.
I believe there is some phsycological screening of the candidates for some of these units, but largly it's about conditioning. They build a powerful esprit d'corps, a solid self confidence and your sense of what's normal changes a lot. I was in a normal support unit, but it's weird to think of how normal it felt to walk into a shop with a battle rifle on my back.
I'm sure there are members of this foru who can answer this better than I, but this is my take on it.
the Mental side that Intrigues Me, Like Bond, these Soldiers may have to kill. In a cold
Blood in an up close way.
Now I couldn't do that, so ( Without any details) Can you be trained to put aside any
feelings of guilt or ways of stopping it from praying on your mind ?
As I'm guessing killing an enemy with a knife or with bare hands must be very different to
being a soldier in a shootout situation.
It's always good to weaken the enemy
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Like I said I wasn't in an elite unit and thank God I haven't been in a war. They put a lot of work into changing your mindset, conditioning you and familiarizing you with the sights, sounds, routines and actions of war. Royal Marines sailing south to the Falklands to fight the Argentinians were ordered to fire at targets in the water, mainly to make them acustomed to the sights, sounds and smell of firefights. If you repeat an action often enough it becomes automatic, almost robotlike. An infantryman should be able to dissasemble and assemble his rifle in complete darkness.
But killing a human being is a huge step and I've read that a very large portion of WWII soldiers killed only one enemy or none at all during the whole war - it was just a step too far. Even elite training a can only prepare you so far. An Israeli ex-paratrooper told me that training helps, but you only know how you will react when you experience real combat. I remember reading of a SEAL-team on Grenada where they came under light fire and paniced.
Join, the " Best" units, may not have been because of the physical fails
But because mentally, the trainers knew they could not do it.
tried to shoot the other guy in the stomach, as It didn't kill him but did make him
out of action.
( Although this might be a myth, and maybe it's a nasty way to kill someone after all )
During training, most people quit of their own accord and it really is mental. Those dropping out because they can't take it physically are far less than you'd think.
Originally Posted by Excerpt from "Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows", Melanie Joy
Unnatural Born Killers
There is a substantial body of evidence demonstrating humans' seemingly natural aversion to killing. Much of the research in this area has been conducted by the military; analysts have found that soldiers tend to intentionally fire over the enemy's head, or not to fire at all.
Studies of combat activity during the Napoleonic and Civil Wars revealed stirking statistics. Given the ability of the men, their proximity to the enemy, and the capacity of their weapons, the number of enemy soldiers hit should have been well over 50 percent, resulting in a killing rate of hundreds per minute. Instead, however, the hit rate was only one o two per minute. And a similar phenomenon occured during World War I: according to british Lieutenant George Roupell, the only way he could get his men to stop firing into the air was by drawing his sword, walking down the trench, "beating [them] on the backside and ... telling them to fire low".1 World War II fire rates were also remarkably low: historian and US Army Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall rerported that, during battle, the firing rate was a mere 15 to 20 percent; in other words, out of every hundred men engaged in a firefight, only fifteen to twenty actually used their weapons. And in Vietnam, for every enemy soldiers killed, more than fifty thousand bullets were fired.2
What these studies have taught the miltiary is that in order to get soldiers to shoot to kill, to actively participate in violence, the soldiers must be sufficiencly desensitized to the act of killing. In other words, they have to learn not to feel -- and not to ffeel responsible -- for their actions. They must be taught to override their own conscience. yet these studies also demonstrate that even in the face of immediate danger, in situations of extreme violence, most people are averse to killing. In other words, as Marshall concludes, "the vast majority of combatants throughout history, at the moment of truth when they could and should kill the enemy, have found themselves to be 'conscientious objectors'".3
1: Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in war and Society. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996, 12.
2: Grossman, Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door. New York: Broadway Books, 2005.
3: Grossman, 15.
Vive le droit à la libre expression! Je suis Charlie!
www.helpforheroes.org.uk
www.cancerresearchuk.org
Vive le droit à la libre expression! Je suis Charlie!
www.helpforheroes.org.uk
www.cancerresearchuk.org
(had the lads swopped it for a rubber film prop )
The trouble is ,we are all conditioned to what we have seen in films ,
you see a cowboy get an arrow in his back ,and he drops dead, so I suppose if you stab a bloke 4 to 5 times ,you would expect him to die instantly, again I new another mate in the same war who shot a bloke with his side arm ,and he didn't die instantly either , , but it could just be war stories,
I did watch a documentary describing some violent deaths and the things
They aren't allowed to show in movies and TV. Such as the muscle spasms
Etc. They showed a clip from an Italian cop show which did show it, but it
Was heavily criticised for being so violent.
So I think that leads to many of us expecting, one shot and you're dead. Although
I remember Chrisisall, posting a video of a lawyer being shot six or eight times by
A guy with a grudge, who walked away from it and didn't even realise he'd been hit
So many times.
Also in films when you get shot you fly across the room,but I've been told you don't
You drop like a puppet whos strings have been cut.
This was on Qi a few weeks ago...it said that when shot, people only drop when they realise they've been shot - unless killed outright of course !
If you take all emotion out of the equation you create worse soilders not better ones!
Bond: so why do you need me?
Q: i'll admit every now and then a trigger needs to be pulled
Bond: or not pulled. It's hard to know which sitting in your pajamas.
I know of a member of the resistance during WWII who was in a firefight. He got on his bike and cycled for about a mile before he realised he was shot in the stomach. Adrenaline had worked as a painkiller. Regarding the knockback effect: it's about force /counterforce. The shooter and the target experiences the same knockback (recoil) in theory. There are of course padded rifle butts and mechanisms to delay the recoil. When we fired the AG3 rifle (HK G3 - uses a more powerful round than most military rifles today) we adopted a stance to handle the powerful recoil. Since a target who was not running towards the shooter most likely was not poised to counterweight the knock of the bullet, there would be some knockback. Not anything like we see in movies like Open Range (otherwise a fine film)
And they told me that an animal when shot just falls down.
Although it's great to read all these pieces of information. {[]
" I guess we weren't sufficiently entertaining !"
While I'm not going to continue this debat either, I have one question: I have stated my very modest experience and knowledge in this area. You seem very sure in your posts and show little respect for other opinions. What is your background in the military and/or other backgorund that makes you so sure?
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Time and effort a big thanks. {[] for those who seem to want to merely score
Points by running down the experiences of others, .... I'll wish you a Merry
Christmas, after all it is a time of year for " Reflection" .
The target practice is all about familiarisation, muscle memory and keeping your eye in. If practice wasn't needed then it'd be done away with at basic and never gone over again until in battle, right?
The trainers below deck I'm guessing was to reduce noise that could be detected by submarines. A few hundred grunts yomping around in clod hoppers would make quite a din surely?
Hey I'm not doing bad am I?
I'm gonna throw a wildcard out there, are you ok? You seem quite up tight in many of your posts.
Vive le droit à la libre expression! Je suis Charlie!
www.helpforheroes.org.uk
www.cancerresearchuk.org