The Art of Manliness - #613： How Soldiers Die in Battle

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast war is about many

00:00:12.080 things glory violence courage destruction but at its heart is death each side in a conflict tries

00:00:17.980 to kill as many of the enemy as possible while avoiding being killed themselves the way these

00:00:22.480 deaths have played out over thousands of years of warfare have changed not simply based on the

00:00:26.200 way martial technology has changed but also on the way that the psychological and cultural pressures

00:00:30.800 that have led societies and individual men to fight have changed my guest today michael stevenson is a

00:00:35.360 military historian who explores these evolutions in his book the last full measure how soldiers die

00:00:40.300 in battle today michael and i discuss the forces that led soldiers to their fate over the centuries

00:00:44.320 from advancements in weaponry to the expectations of social class at the beginning of our conversation

00:00:48.460 michael discusses why he wanted to write this book and the balance he had to walk in trying to describe

00:00:52.680 the reality of death on the battlefield without conveying these details in a sensationalistic

00:00:56.960 or titillating manner we then trace the history of death and war beginning with its primitive

00:01:00.840 beginnings and working our way to the modern day along the way we discuss how gunpowder changed the

00:01:04.860 nature of warfare the effect that distance has on how heroic a confrontation seems why artillery

00:01:10.020 is particularly terrifying what motivates soldiers to fight and much more this is a surprisingly

00:01:14.780 enlightening and humane look at an oft glossed over aspect of the human condition after the show's

00:01:19.460 over check out our show notes at awim.is slash last full measure

00:01:23.520 okay michael stevenson welcome to the show thank you you published a book the last full measure how

00:01:38.220 soldiers die in battle which is a historical survey of human warfare and specifically how how soldiers die

00:01:45.540 in battle i'm curious what kickstarted that research project of yours i was working as the editor for the

00:01:52.080 military book club in new york and i was reading a ton of military history but it seemed to me that

00:02:01.560 quite often what was missing was a real understanding of what actually happens on the battlefield that

00:02:09.620 sometimes we have a kind of generalized and rather fuzzy view of it sometimes filtered you know through

00:02:17.860 movies or through novels or whatever and i wanted to find out because it seemed to be important to

00:02:26.160 honor those people who gave their lives by understanding exactly how it happened and so i set out to try and

00:02:38.160 trace it through as far as i could through the centuries in order to get a sense of what was

00:02:46.920 different but also perhaps what connected these things what connected the experience of being

00:02:54.400 in combat and i was you know i was much more concerned about the combat experience than i was about

00:03:01.040 i mean most soldiers who died in warfare died from disease but that wasn't really my objective i wanted

00:03:08.960 to find out if you like what happened at the sharp end and at the beginning of the book you noted that

00:03:14.700 this was you were walking a tightrope with this book what made writing this book or about this topic

00:03:19.720 a challenge i think it was that you know you're writing about something that is by its nature

00:03:26.880 gruesome i mean you know whether you're talking about men being killed in the greek phalanx or being

00:03:35.540 killed by an ied in iraq this is gruesome stuff but i think that it needs to be understood

00:03:42.180 without it somehow becoming just another part of the sort of pornography of violence that attracts

00:03:51.120 quite a lot of people to this subject and how did you go about you know making that balance

00:03:58.360 as you were writing this i mean were there moments where you thought i got to pull back or there were

00:04:02.580 moments where i had to go a little bit further than maybe i want it is hard because you know if you

00:04:08.260 don't actually lay out what happens in battle in all its gruesomeness you're not really getting to

00:04:15.800 the truth of the experience but on the other hand you don't want it just to be a a sort of gore fest

00:04:24.220 and so actually it just comes down to making individual decisions whether the examples you use

00:04:30.900 of how soldiers are killed progresses the argument or whether it's just thrown in just to be you know

00:04:36.940 titillating and i hope well i tried very hard not to let it be the latter and more the former

00:04:42.780 i think you succeeded with that as you were researching what factors were you looking for

00:04:48.080 to figure out how how soldiers die in combat how it's changed throughout history

00:04:53.560 oh i think it's it's kind of specific in the sense that there are lots of factors that bring the

00:05:00.260 soldiers to their death partly you know how does weaponry affect the ability to um what's their

00:05:11.160 lethality of a weapon what are the tactical context in which those weapons are used and then something

00:05:18.320 that's a bit harder to pinpoint but it's important what are the cultural drivers that lead men into

00:05:26.560 battle and determine how they act in combat that's a harder thing but in a way a kind of more interesting

00:05:34.340 thing because you could you can you know trace the development of weaponry through the centuries

00:05:40.920 and see you know do i have to be face to face with somebody in order to inflict a mortal wound or can i do

00:05:47.360 it from a mile away so that that can be traced quite easily it's much more difficult to trace

00:05:53.160 to chart if you like the social and cultural influences and we'll probably talk about some of those

00:06:01.280 cultural and social influence but what's an example you know that people might have heard about of how

00:06:08.080 you know that might lead that might contribute to how someone dies in war i suppose it's partly about

00:06:15.360 what society expects of the warrior what the society who is sending that the man into battle would

00:06:26.380 expect them to do so i suppose for a greek citizen fighting as a hoplite in the phalanx

00:06:38.960 it might be very different from say a gi fighting in iraq and you know it's complicated to think about that

00:06:49.360 i mean one of the issues about the book is um it's such an enormous chronological spread

00:06:55.240 so that you know what motivated a greek citizen to fight in the hoplite would be somewhat different

00:07:02.340 from say a man being conscripted into let's say the u.s army in world war ii or in vietnam

00:07:11.780 no that that makes sense um and as you said you i mean this is a comprehensive historical survey i mean

00:07:18.260 you start you try to go back as far as you can and so like do we know like when humans started battling

00:07:25.040 each other in an organized fashion yeah well i guess that well some historians say was you know about

00:07:33.400 400 000 years ago when hominids i guess you know there there must have been tribal conflicts but i think

00:07:42.600 in terms of when recognizable weaponry comes in it's probably about 40 000 years ago where you have

00:07:51.480 the atlatl which is a sort of spear but a projected one you know it's not just hand thrown as it must

00:08:01.200 have been you know when humans were hunting animals they had spears and they they threw them but

00:08:06.520 or stabbed them but the atlatl comes into history about 40 000 years ago where men could actually

00:08:14.420 throw dart like missiles and then 20 000 years ago you have the bow and arrow which you know ups the

00:08:22.000 ante but i would imagine that it starts and it's quite interesting i think it starts probably through

00:08:29.600 territorial conflict and i think as far as we know the object obviously is is to win but to win

00:08:38.380 without suffering too many casualties yourself so in fact the earliest warfare this is this is my

00:08:46.340 feeling about it is not what we might call heroic warfare it's not sort of charging you know

00:08:54.800 man to man it's more to do with ambushing because with ambushing you get a high reward

00:09:03.760 and with a much lower risk to you the ambusher and what's fascinating is that this early model if you

00:09:12.580 like is really what we experience in very modern warfare where guerrilla warfare is probably the

00:09:22.520 predominant mode of combat at the moment and it's the same kind of idea that ambush whether it's

00:09:31.680 using ieds or in ancient in prehistoric times it would just be obviously you know sticks that were

00:09:38.840 hardened fire hardened sticks or spears or thrusting in weapons gave you the advantage of surprise and

00:09:48.280 also to be hidden from your enemy which is very important no i mean that's you you make the point

00:09:54.420 that that idea of ambush and raids is a it's an eastern an eastern type of warfare yeah i mean you

00:10:01.060 even see it in amongst native americans that's that was their preferred method of of fighting well

00:10:07.020 well it's interesting this because when you look at it from a western perspective

00:10:10.980 this form of warfare which you've described you know eastern north american native americans

00:10:20.220 was was despised by europeans and white north americans because it was considered to be cowardly so

00:10:29.260 when the crusaders for example are invading palestine and the holy lands they are deeply frustrated

00:10:36.420 that the muslims that they're fighting uh won't actually just come up front and fight them they

00:10:44.100 they use horse archers to torment them they try and draw out small units of european knights in order to

00:10:53.540 you know cut them out and it's interesting that for example u.s cavalrymen fighting indians in the

00:11:03.600 19th century make the same kind of comments about their opposition that the crusaders did about the

00:11:12.580 muslims they were fighting in the 12th century well let's talk about this this rise of this western

00:11:18.780 attitude and tactics towards warfare and this seems to have developed uh with the ancient greeks

00:11:24.100 and you point out the greeks warfare there's two ideas about what warfare was like for the ancient

00:11:30.700 greeks on one side you have this idea that ancient war was ruthlessly violent with high casualty

00:11:36.500 rates but then there's this other argument that ancient greek warfare was actually just more of a

00:11:41.600 ritualized shoving match yeah what did your research find i think both actually this is the problem

00:11:48.220 both of those things can be they're not mutually exclusive so you can have the ritualized

00:11:57.520 shoving match which can be pretty bloody particularly for the warriors who are in the front you know two or three

00:12:04.220 ranks i mean what tends to happen is this that there's a face-off usually between the opposing sides

00:12:11.860 and then there's this very interesting kind of dynamic maybe that's not quite the right word a kind of lightning

00:12:19.460 strike where one side decides to really start moving forward and they start to pick up speed

00:12:27.120 and they want to get through the killing zone the missile killing zone of you know arrows and spears as

00:12:35.180 quickly as they can and to lock in with their opponents and that can be very bloody in the in the

00:12:43.800 front ranks but i think at some point it's a little bit like how animals fight at some point

00:12:51.060 one side decides that that's enough and it must be a very extraordinary experience because i think it's

00:12:59.580 just somehow communicated you know through the ranks that we are losing or we are winning

00:13:06.060 and they give way and the point in greek warfare which is pretty common up until fairly modern times is

00:13:15.680 that it's about the ground you can claim and that gives you the victory not necessarily that you've

00:13:24.460 that you've inflicted more casualties because you might not have but they might just have decided that

00:13:31.740 that was enough and in greek warfare you know you have two really conflicting ideas one is that

00:13:43.240 the phalanx which is made up of citizen warriors they value their lives because they have to go back

00:13:52.940 you know they're farmers they're traders or whatever they value their lives they don't want to give their

00:13:59.640 lives away in some sort of crazy blood fest so they're willing to make kind of compromises and yet

00:14:08.580 from what we understand through you know through homer and the iliad is that you have this idea of the

00:14:15.840 individual warrior this individual hero who goes and does battle with his peer and so this is considered

00:14:25.640 and it is a very profound model for the western idea of warfare and actually not just western i mean

00:14:32.920 in japan it's true as well and and actually amongst them amongst them north american indians it's true

00:14:40.800 as well that the the leader has to proclaim himself i mean in the iliad you know all we learn about are

00:14:47.640 the names of the great warriors hector and patrocles and so on we don't learn the names of anybody else

00:14:54.440 and so throughout history it seems to me that one of the things that's fascinating is the idea of

00:15:02.060 the individual who can sacrifice himself and be remembered by his name think of the medieval knight

00:15:09.180 with his proclamation if you like the samurai warrior with the same kind of proclamation

00:15:14.900 that i am an individual i will be remembered by my name and then all the rest who are dumped into

00:15:21.800 you know mass graves at the end of the battle so you know we've been talking high level with the

00:15:27.880 ancient greeks and how their tactics may have influenced how they might have died in battle

00:15:31.660 but specifically like do we have any idea what was the cause of most casualties during ancient greece

00:15:37.300 i think probably most casualties were caused by spear wounds and sword wounds but actually one of the

00:15:46.100 things that um is is overlooked a little bit is that you know this was a huge number of people coming

00:15:53.380 together and a lot of people were simply crushed they were crushed because the two armies come together

00:16:04.260 they're both pushing against each other the rear the rear ranks are pushing forward and pushing the

00:16:12.960 people in the front ranks forward who then trip for and are suffocated this is true certainly in medieval

00:16:22.460 warfare it's certainly true in greek warfare where you have such a a large number of troops in a small

00:16:30.200 area so it's it's not it's not usually thought of much but um i would say that that was a contributory

00:16:38.840 factor and something that you note with the greeks and the romans this carries through to the even the

00:16:44.940 medieval era but purely the romans and the greeks they had they used weapons like artillery that you

00:16:49.900 know missiles but at the same time they had a disdain for it they thought it was less manly or less

00:16:55.420 yeah i think this is a very interesting point actually because i think that okay so the heroic

00:17:00.920 model if you like is set up by one man fighting another man now it might be one heroic you know

00:17:08.420 leader fighting another man whether it's greek or whether it's the medieval knight and but as as

00:17:16.960 weaponry develops their missiles become more and more important so for example you do not find

00:17:25.160 a medieval knight using a bow and arrow and there's a certain disdain for it because

00:17:32.440 it's it's connected in a way to a kind of um social context for example the idea that somebody who

00:17:42.140 just happens to be trained as say an archer or a crossbowman could kill a nobleman you know from

00:17:53.120 200 yards 300 yards or whatever with a crossbow actually a lot longer than that was considered

00:17:59.780 to be deeply immoral and so you find in up to i would say up to the 18th century this idea that um

00:18:09.340 that somehow missile warfare is unfair because it robs the nobleman it robs the socially privileged of

00:18:18.700 their honor and for example in the 15th century if you were a crossbowman and you were captured

00:18:31.140 there was a papal decree that said that you well they would often just be killed but that you would

00:18:36.900 have one of your hands chopped off so that you couldn't do that again so there was a deep mistrust

00:18:44.700 of missile warfare as being non-heroic we're gonna take a quick break for your word from our sponsors

00:18:51.620 and now back to the show so listen you know you mentioned the medieval knight that they had they

00:18:58.600 still had this idea of the the single man going out and doing battle and that's typically when people

00:19:04.340 think of medieval warfare they think of that think of the knight in armor riding on a horse but you

00:19:10.060 highlight that you know that's not how most medieval battles went there there were other people there

00:19:14.460 fighting as well yes so who were those people and what was a medieval battle like i think it was a

00:19:21.500 sort of i've got a feeling that most battles whether it was greek or medieval where it comes down to you

00:19:28.860 know men with with axes with swords with hammers often with agricultural implements that have been

00:19:39.220 adapted to warfare the what happens is a sort of absolutely appalling scrum so as you know the knights

00:19:51.320 very often didn't fight on horseback they thought dismounted and even if they were fighting on horseback

00:19:59.740 you know they were very vulnerable and once they were dismounted even though i mean the the misconception

00:20:07.400 is of course that the knights were so heavily armored that they couldn't move they were like sort of

00:20:13.280 turtles that had been turned on their backs which is not true the armorers were incredibly skilled and

00:20:19.320 these knights had a lot of mobility but nevertheless you know they could be swarmed swarming a knight was

00:20:27.580 you know usually the way in which they died and they could be stabbed through the visor there were all

00:20:34.720 kinds of vulnerabilities through the armpits through the crotch you know just being hammered i mean in

00:20:43.540 agincourt the french knights who managed because of their hubris managed to and also it was very muddy

00:20:51.480 battlefield managed to get mired in the mud and the english archers who had mallets they were called malls

00:21:00.920 which they used to hammer in the stakes from which behind which they would be protected went out onto

00:21:07.900 the battlefield and literally beat the knights to death and it was appalling and it wasn't at all heroic

00:21:15.520 and you can imagine the the catastrophe of the scrum of knights all writhing around in the mud being set

00:21:26.340 upon by all of these men of course these villains as they were called who they despised and uh

00:21:33.680 so at agincourt for example in 1415 henry v has this rather difficult decision to make he's

00:21:42.980 he's captured a lot of french knights and normally the protocol would have been that these knights would

00:21:52.740 have been spared and ransomed but then he's told that it's suspected that there's another french force

00:22:03.680 coming and he's his concern is that he has this bunch of french knights some hundreds in his rear as

00:22:13.720 captives and if this french force somehow links up with them he would be in a very difficult position

00:22:21.760 so he gives permission for his archers to kill the knights and this is considered an absolute

00:22:32.100 abrogation of the chivalric code but he does it anyway well that's another interesting point that you

00:22:41.480 bring up throughout the book is the treatment of prisoners of war because we think it's sort of a

00:22:45.720 given now because you've had the geneva convention for you know most of the 20th century but yeah for most of

00:22:50.680 human history there's just basically give no quarter was the the rule i think it's often often the rule i

00:22:57.200 don't think it happens always but um you know i mean there are plenty of there are plenty of examples of

00:23:05.380 it of of prisoners being killed out of hand in quite you know in modern warfare i mean i think

00:23:13.960 in the heat of battle all kinds of things happen uh we would like to think that men behave

00:23:21.220 with some kind of humanity and often they do and one of the things that moves me very much

00:23:28.940 is reading accounts of soldiers who who kill an enemy and then have this realization that

00:23:40.820 it could have been them you know what i mean is that there's a connection of

00:23:46.080 a shared humanity which is devastating to to some of these soldiers and yet you know i mean

00:23:52.760 it's full of contradiction you have that you have this devastating sense that you've done something that

00:24:02.620 is is absolutely irrevocable and irreparable you've taken somebody's life and then there are other

00:24:10.420 men who just think it's great you know they have a great joy in killing but so you know yes there are all

00:24:22.920 kinds of so-called conventions about prisoners of war but they're often breached and breached for all

00:24:30.800 kinds of reasons a bit like the reasons that i said about henry v at agincourt you know because

00:24:35.800 it's just safer for example in the first world war if there were trench raids you did not take

00:24:41.640 prisoners you got into the first trench and you killed every man that was in that trench i mean the

00:24:47.220 wounded it doesn't matter you killed them all because you couldn't have the possibility of these

00:24:53.440 people suddenly being a threat to you in your rear so they they had to be killed and that was just one

00:25:01.440 of the facts of that kind of warfare so up through the medieval era and then i guess i guess starting

00:25:08.060 the 17th century the 18th century you see the introduction of firearms gunpowder how did that how did

00:25:15.680 that change warfare well i think what use is the night if all of that armor can be breached by

00:25:24.600 a ballistic missile fired by somebody from you know 100 200 yards away and so from about 1600

00:25:34.760 what happens to the armored knight i mean it's interesting in the english civil war which is you

00:25:41.920 know the 1640s you still have noble soldiers in pretty much full in full armor for example at the

00:25:50.740 battle of edgibstone the duke of northumberland is unhorsed and they have to he's he was a royalist

00:26:00.020 and they the parliamentary soldiers who unhorse him have to actually take his helmet off in order

00:26:07.080 to chop his head off but when you look at that period the 1640s very few noble soldiers are wearing

00:26:17.180 armor you know buckskin mobility is much more important so buckskin yes they wear a helmet

00:26:23.480 as we still do today but you do not see the armor other than the knight in full armor anymore because

00:26:30.700 the gun has revolutionized the battlefield but you know it took a while for the gun to actually

00:26:36.960 make a significant difference because early firearms were incredibly inaccurate yes they were

00:26:42.440 yes right up until i suppose mid-19th century i mean you know they were they were pretty inaccurate

00:26:51.200 um in in the american civil war and i think one of the things is not just about whether the weapon

00:26:57.040 itself is accurate and often you know up until what are we talking about so the 1870s 1880s they were

00:27:04.640 pretty wildly inaccurate but it's also about what happens in the context of a battle in the context of

00:27:12.520 combat so that you have lots and lots and lots of examples of men who even with you know rifled muskets

00:27:24.460 in the civil war they they load them you know five six times men forget to take out the the rammers

00:27:33.600 because it's such a panic it the stress is so extraordinary that even men with relatively

00:27:45.180 accurate weapons don't use them properly so for example the ramrods are you know you have to i'm thinking

00:27:54.120 about the war of independence particularly the ramrods are stuck into the earth because you cannot keep

00:28:01.240 putting the ramrod back in its its holder in the musket you just stick it in the earth and you ram it down

00:28:08.100 the musket and of course the earth begins after a while to jam it up and so even you know right from the

00:28:17.140 beginning of gun warfare there's the inaccuracy of the weapon itself and the inability of the soldier

00:28:27.600 to use it properly and because in early gun warfare the because the guns you know took a relatively long

00:28:34.660 time to reload yeah when they weren't accurate one of the things that commanders did is they basically

00:28:39.500 bunched people up together yes we'd have you know rows and then they basically did warfare like they did

00:28:45.840 in medieval time you know just like one side on one side the other side on the other sure and first

00:28:51.140 line would shoot their thing and then the next line would shoot and they kind of you know reload but

00:28:56.240 that actually made you more susceptible because people just aim at that at that that grouping of

00:29:01.280 people yeah i mean yeah i suppose you know the the but you have lots of occasions where i mean

00:29:10.200 here are a couple of things one is that you know people say oh this american civil war the highest

00:29:16.680 lethality of any war in history which you know maybe would be true but then there are lots and lots of

00:29:23.900 of anecdotes about how much lead had to be expended to kill a man i mean the the joke was that you needed

00:29:33.620 to fire as much lead as a man weighed to kill one man so you have these two rather contradictory things

00:29:42.920 that and i think what it is is that if you take the whole picture you can make an argument that you

00:29:49.540 know the lethality is not quite as great as one might imagine but if you take more localized things like

00:29:56.680 oh you know certain regiments in certain battles the lethality is absolutely horrific where you have

00:30:06.240 frontal attacks against prepared defenses and you're right you know because you had to get men close

00:30:14.080 together to make that discharge count it could count very horribly if you were close enough the one

00:30:23.260 thing that it seemed like extremely terrifying this i think you know um goes through even modern warfare

00:30:29.320 when the introduction of gun gunpowder was artillery you know cannonballs like that seemed to be the thing

00:30:35.620 that a lot of soldiers were afraid of the most yeah yeah because it's more spectacular isn't it i mean

00:30:43.640 if you see somebody hit by cannonball it's a very different experience of seeing somebody hit by a

00:30:49.720 mini abel and you know talking about um civil war again but um it's just so much more dramatic and this is true

00:30:57.360 i think uh you know in the first world war and the second world war i think what soldiers

00:31:04.000 really feared most was artillery because it's probably true that in the first world war and the second world war

00:31:11.780 artillery was the most lethal thing that soldiers faced but there's something else too and that is

00:31:17.300 you're completely helpless to be under an artillery bombardment is to be absolutely without any defense

00:31:29.120 whatsoever and that was horrifying and i think that's what frightened most soldiers more than

00:31:38.220 probably any other kind of weaponry and speaking of sort of the cultural and social influence on how

00:31:44.260 that influence the way soldiers died the point you made officers were expected to still lead from the

00:31:50.280 front they were expected to you know be cool in the face of battle and so as a consequence of that

00:31:56.280 officers had the highest lethality rate during the 18th 19th century yes not just the 18th 19th

00:32:03.140 century but looking at certainly at world war one the officer fatalities as a percentage were much much

00:32:10.840 higher so you have this thing which goes way back doesn't it it goes way back to the beginning of

00:32:16.320 warfare which is that and this interests me quite a lot this you have a military structure which says

00:32:24.880 here are the here are the officers and they're going to lead you and they are going to take the highest

00:32:30.780 risks because they're out front and what does that reflect up until probably quite recently up until

00:32:38.640 probably the second world war the officers reflect a social division the officers just like the greek

00:32:47.480 warriors in the ilia just like the medieval knight the in the 18th century the officers represent a

00:32:54.340 social distinction now this is this fascinates me that they aren't necessarily militarily the most

00:33:01.000 effective it's not the most effective way to deal with things because after all if your officers aren't

00:33:05.960 particularly trained you know they can do some pretty damaging things to the men and to the

00:33:13.620 outcome of the battle but up until world war ii i'd say officers were designated by social class

00:33:21.060 and sometimes and many times they were very effective because if you take the medieval knight as

00:33:27.680 representing an officer you know they've been trained for most of their life to do this stuff

00:33:32.260 but it isn't always true in the sense that you know to become an officer in in the 18th century 19th

00:33:40.160 century army often meant you you got there because of your social position rather than because of your

00:33:46.900 military training and i think that broke down obviously in world war one well actually it's it's primarily

00:33:54.000 true in world war one the officer class is still a socially elevated class world war two i suppose breaks it

00:34:01.080 down pretty completely and i would imagine now in modern armies it's almost entirely gone uh that it's

00:34:10.120 you know merit merit gets you your status as an officer rather than social background not not entirely

00:34:17.160 actually i still say to some extent it's true today in that um you know if you come from a military

00:34:22.600 background you tend to come from a certain kind of social class i don't know whether i mean it'd be an

00:34:29.660 interesting thing to look at you make the point with the silver war the 19th century that we started

00:34:35.840 to see this it's sort of like a transition point between ancient to modern warfare you know what happened

00:34:43.100 there do you think that made that transition oh i think just the lethality of weaponry but i think in the

00:34:50.140 sense that if you look at it from the very earliest to the most modern there's some idea about distance

00:34:58.480 that the heroic is defined by closeness closeness to your enemy you know with north american indians it

00:35:08.900 wasn't necessarily that you had to kill your opponent but you had to touch him the i.e you had to get

00:35:16.160 close to show your bravery well you can be killed by a sniper from a mile and a half you can be killed

00:35:24.120 by an ied which has been laid by somebody you know two weeks before and set off with a mobile phone

00:35:31.980 from you know a mile away and so that idea of of proximity has evaporated as weapons become more

00:35:42.740 effective from a longer range and now we've got to a situation in fact where you don't actually need

00:35:47.500 people at all you know drone warfare and one imagines you know smart weapons on the battlefield

00:35:54.500 begin to make the role of the human less and less important and then i mean another so i mean after

00:36:03.300 the civil war you had the boer war in south africa which was another sort of transition from

00:36:08.220 sort of that ancient warfare to modern warfare you see more mechanization and then world war one i mean

00:36:14.040 that's sort of noted as the war that ended any romantization of warfare that is or heroic ideal

00:36:20.340 i mean hemingway the lost generation all made the case that world war one just ended words like courage

00:36:26.080 and honor you know what changed like what was it just the pure mechanization the the the machine gun

00:36:33.240 the the the chemical gas was that the thing that just sucked out any sense oh i think i think you're

00:36:39.400 looking at just being over totally overwhelmed by the weaponry available i mean you have artillery of

00:36:48.200 extraordinary accuracy and massive power you know you have mass troops going against machine guns gas i think

00:36:58.380 it's a less i don't know gas i think has a lot of sort of dramatic impact i'm not sure that it accounts

00:37:04.520 for huge numbers of casualties i i think probably artillery and you know machine guns were the primary

00:37:14.260 killers in world war one and there's a kind of anonymity that i mean it's it's shocking to me that um

00:37:22.120 when you go and look at the uh cemeteries in france and belgium first of war cemeteries

00:37:30.700 how many men weren't even found the men in gate i think has about 50 000 names of men who were

00:37:38.700 their bodies were never recovered you know artillery simply evaporated them and or buried them or whatever

00:37:46.420 and this idea of uh just never even being recovered you know it's just extraordinary

00:37:54.940 that that is if you want to put it crudely that is the most anti-heroic way you can be killed in

00:38:02.760 warfare i mean another thing i mean you said men but oftentimes these were boys these were

00:38:07.720 16 year old 17 year old boys who died during world war one yeah it's interesting this because i think

00:38:15.920 reading quite a lot about world war one which happens to interest me particularly i think british

00:38:22.520 people are particularly fascinated by it in a way that americans aren't only in that you know

00:38:29.700 the losses involved were so much more impactful on british society than they were american society but

00:38:38.100 um you know the the enthusiasm with which these young men joined up and also

00:38:47.540 the uh there's what you might call the lax criteria there were for allowing young men in

00:38:56.760 you just you know you just lied you just said you know i was 17 last birthday and they go are you sure

00:39:03.540 and they yes you're in but there was great enthusiasm for this war which actually wasn't entirely

00:39:11.180 extinguished i mean we think that god if you'd been through that experience and yet a lot of men still

00:39:18.340 held steadfast to their belief in the necessity of the war and and it this interests me quite a lot in

00:39:25.200 that um what happens i think is that societies construct the scaffolding the the ideological

00:39:34.300 scaffolding that is meant to make men want to fight but actually once men are in warfare and they see

00:39:42.280 what it's like they create their own internal motivation and it's usually attached to their unit their

00:39:50.640 their buddies their friends and then they disconnect from the social you know these are the reasons why

00:39:58.260 we're fighting men get out there they disconnect from all that and that's why you find in the first

00:40:03.340 of war and second of war why men actually rather dreaded going back to say in this to britain on leave

00:40:12.620 because they were going back to a group of people who didn't really understand at all what they were

00:40:18.600 going through and often they just wanted to get back to their unit even though it was going to be

00:40:25.360 a very very dangerous thing to do because they wanted to be back with men who understood what they were

00:40:31.380 going through and this is critical i think throughout history that the soldier has to know that what

00:40:38.120 he's doing is at least recognized and the only people that usually can recognize it are the people

00:40:45.540 that are also going through what you're going through no sebastian younger the journalist in

00:40:50.440 his book tribe he makes that point as well and it still happens today like soldiers get back because

00:40:55.560 it's not because they not necessarily they believe in the the the bigger mission right for the nation

00:41:01.360 state but it's like they want to get back to their to their buddies well i think i think when you look

00:41:06.300 at soldiers who've been in iraq and afghanistan and in vietnam i mean they feel in a way that

00:41:14.880 they're in a vacuum that um that nobody really understands what that's why ptsd is so appalling so

00:41:25.220 prevalent is that they carry this experience inside of them and they cannot find a way to express it or

00:41:33.640 so many of them can't because you know what have we done we have we don't have conscripts anymore

00:41:40.680 we don't have national service anymore we just send these professional soldiers out there

00:41:46.260 and um they feel in a way abandoned i think and particularly when they come back

00:41:53.520 and something that's interesting about starting i mean i would say the 18th century but particularly

00:41:59.700 in the civil war and especially in world war one and world war two we actually have diaries and

00:42:05.120 letters from men fighting and as a result you're able to get you know see this a ghastly picture

00:42:11.180 some of these guys got very detailed and explaining how a buddy next to him you know one minute laughing

00:42:18.680 next minute you know dead you know i mean in a very ghastly way yeah and i mean some of the more

00:42:25.620 more haunting descriptions you provide in the book it was particularly in world war one i mean people

00:42:30.380 forget this about artillery shells sometimes they would you know detonate above you but the air

00:42:35.980 blast would just just devastate your internal organs and kill you and soldiers would stumble upon groups

00:42:42.040 of men that just look like they're just lying they still look kind of alive but they're they're not

00:42:47.020 well i think that must have been you know that is the weirdest thing because there are accounts not

00:42:54.740 just from world war one but thinking of an account from the american revolutionary war where

00:43:00.980 a cannonball passes so close to a man's head that he's killed instantly without any mark on him at all

00:43:11.280 and it's because the shockwave of the ball has killed him and i think you know it must have been

00:43:17.680 horrifying to come across soldiers who've been killed without really any mark on them of course

00:43:25.300 normally there were plenty of marks but um it was so it was so abhorrent uh and shocking but yes you're

00:43:35.780 right i mean you know you could be killed there's a there's a an anecdote of a soldier in the european

00:43:41.760 theater in mobile two he's way behind the lines he's in a tent where they're showing a film he's

00:43:49.000 leaning forward with his elbows on his knees there is a shell burst from a long long way away and a piece

00:43:57.140 of shrapnel kills him through the back from you know two miles away and uh it's as though death

00:44:06.580 finds a way to reach out in some bizarre way that you cannot account for and i mean the other thing

00:44:15.520 that struck me particularly from the letters and diary entries from world war one was just how common

00:44:20.200 death became and it became like just another thing that happened like some you know i think there's a

00:44:25.200 journal entry from a british officer where they're having tea yeah ultimately blew up and then you

00:44:30.480 know a couple guys a guy died and it was blood everywhere and they cleaned it up and they just

00:44:35.760 kind of kicked dirt over the blood and then they kept going with their their tea i mean they became

00:44:40.340 very callous to it because they had to to survive but you know this is part of something else i mean

00:44:46.900 i think the anecdote you're referring to are officers who are taking tea because right that's you know

00:44:54.840 it was part of and i would imagine you're describing british officers correct but it was part of the

00:45:01.760 social expectation of that class that you did not show undue emotion in a situation like that you know

00:45:14.060 there had to be so for example at the battle of waterloo general paget is riding alongside wellington

00:45:23.860 and paget is hit by a cannonball and it takes off his right leg and he's still in the saddle

00:45:31.500 and he turns to wellington and he says my lord i've just lost my leg and wellington turns to him and says

00:45:39.280 good god sir so you have and that's it paget actually survives goes on to father i think about 12

00:45:47.220 children but um you know that idea that you did not show any shock in the face of the most shocking

00:45:56.140 and horrible thing was actually something that your class taught you all right moving into world war ii

00:46:02.000 there were new technologies that brought new ways for soldiers to die there were bomber and fighter

00:46:07.120 planes parachutists as well as amphibious warfare and when people think of world war ii they typically think

00:46:13.840 of d-day of normandy and the way you described it and the letters and diaries from soldiers

00:46:19.460 there were so many ways to die when invading the beach sometimes even before you got onto the beach

00:46:25.020 there's um there's an anecdote in my book where one of the landing craft captains pilots whatever

00:46:32.520 just gets into a complete funk and you know they're being shelled and whatever and he just lowers the ramp

00:46:41.000 and these heavily you know i mean these soldiers are carrying 60 70 pounds worth of stuff but he

00:46:50.440 lowers the ramp into 15 feet of water and the men just go over and of course they drown

00:46:57.200 and about you know 20 of men do this until the men behind them just say i'm not you know this is wrong

00:47:05.540 i'm not doing this and yes you could you you could drown you you could be wounded and just drown because

00:47:12.540 you can't struggle anymore i mean there's just a ton of ways in which you can die yeah i mean then you

00:47:19.780 get on the the beach there could be mines you have to worry about artillery shelling i mean i mean there's

00:47:25.400 things you don't think about when you think about world war ii well i think you know i you know that

00:47:29.340 you know saving private ryan the movie yeah the first 15 minutes or so of that movie are absolutely

00:47:37.100 extraordinary yeah as an evocation of what it must have been like so that brings us to today

00:47:43.040 and as you mentioned earlier we're still you're we're starting to see a return to the past of how

00:47:48.400 you're going back to that raid guerrilla warfare asymmetrical warfare yeah that's changing the way

00:47:54.940 soldiers die again it is and it changes the way in which they feel about their sacrifice i think

00:48:02.600 because you know they're being killed at long distance you know they're being sniped they're

00:48:09.560 being killed by buried you know ieds and mines they can't identify their enemy this comes across as you

00:48:20.080 know very strongly in in uh soldiers accounts of fighting in the vietnam war and in afghanistan and

00:48:26.860 in iraq what's it you know who's this who's the civilian who's the who's the enemy and that feeling

00:48:34.140 of frustration and it's it's it's a double whammy because first of all you can't hit back at the

00:48:39.940 enemy you can't identify them and then you're killing innocent people that is horrifying to you

00:48:46.340 horrifying to most human beings and so where is the heroic confrontation in this and it's interesting

00:48:56.120 that um in in sort of popular culture and i'm talking about popular american culture particularly

00:49:01.680 no no and and british culture too it's the sniper who is identified as the heroic character

00:49:09.000 and it's the and it's you know it's the seal or the special special operations sort of counter

00:49:17.720 guerrilla fighter who is considered to be heroic because they at least have a chance to hit back

00:49:25.700 given the fact that facing death in battle throughout history has always been such a terrifying

00:49:31.360 terrible prospect how do you think men did it and were able to face it i think that they were propelled

00:49:38.080 not by some surge of patriotic energy you know let's do this for the motherland the fatherland

00:49:46.380 whichever land but they did it because their buddies expected it of them my father went to my father

00:49:55.840 was in the british army six years and i would say to him well you know what made you do that what did

00:50:05.200 you feel i mean was it that you were passionately anti-nazi and so on and he'd say oh well of course

00:50:12.240 we hated hitler but he didn't do it for ideological reasons he did it because there was peer pressure

00:50:19.060 to do it oh my buddies were my friends were signing up so i signed up and i think that drives you

00:50:27.000 forward it's um and it's not you know i'm going to be heroic i'm going to get out there and i'm going

00:50:33.200 to take out that machine gun nest i'm sure there were you know there are exceptional human beings

00:50:37.480 who do that kind of thing but for most people it was and it moves me terribly when i think about

00:50:44.160 civil war battles where i'm thinking about the irish brigade going up the hill at mary's height

00:50:51.260 and they're described and they're under just ferocious fire and they're described as pulling

00:50:58.540 their caps down and bending their heads into the fire and going forward well that is a kind of

00:51:06.020 heroism that is just beyond words really michael i mean after you people read this book i mean what

00:51:12.900 do you hope they what do you what do you hope they walk away thinking after they finish they put it

00:51:16.680 down i hope that there's some feeling of humanity about this this book was never written in order

00:51:22.940 to glorify warfare in fact quite the opposite i want people i wanted people to understand exactly what

00:51:28.820 does happen on the battlefield and you know i'd hope that you know i end the book with a

00:51:37.780 i end the book with a letter from an american vietnam veteran and he's writing this letter which he

00:51:46.480 he puts into the wall of remembrance in washington but it's written to a vietnamese soldier whom he

00:51:54.240 kills whom he has killed and he's asking for forgiveness for this and um i wanted to end the book on that

00:52:02.460 note rather than some either triumphal note or some sort of geeky technological you know look into the

00:52:11.440 future no i think that i mean it hit on some of the pat i mean the thing that i got from this

00:52:15.340 was war it's it's a it's a terrible thing but it's a very human thing yes and you know we have to we

00:52:23.180 have to figure it out it's something we have to digest and really understand if we really want to

00:52:26.560 understand ourselves well i think it goes into the deepest parts of us and um you know it's a profound

00:52:35.280 and complicated thing to deal with and you know the flag wavers and the jingoists just represent

00:52:44.280 one small and not i think very honorable part of it and i wanted to and and you know the book has lots

00:52:54.460 of contradictory things in it but that's the nature of the business isn't it it is well michael stevenson

00:53:00.580 thanks so much for your time it's been an absolute pleasure thank you so much my guest

00:53:04.540 today was michael stevenson he's the author of the book the last full measure how soldiers die in

00:53:08.660 battle it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere check out our show notes at aom.is

00:53:12.900 slash last full measure where you find links to resources and we delve deeper into this topic

00:53:16.760 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at

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The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#613： How Soldiers Die in Battle

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