Soldiers, sex education and sexual health, good manners

[oursin]

From today's Guardian:

A chilling article by a Falklands veteran, as to why an American marine shooting a prone Iraqi 'is just what soldiers are trained to do':
all your training is about breaking down soldiering into little pieces, the drills that you do again and again. Then those elements are put back together to build you into an effective

Comments

[chickenfeet2003]

The above passage strikes me as about the inculcation of the antithesis of 'mindfulness'Well yes, but that's because in that situation 'mindfulness' gets you killed. One might point out that the drill for taking prisoners is the same as any other drill; it's what one is trained to do. Thus, if someone shoots a prisoner who has surrendered he is acting outside the way he has been trained. I don't get a feeling f cill when someone points out that soldiers are trained to do things without thinking in combat. Actually, I'm relieved because the quality of thought of a young man who is tired and totally stressed out is likely to produce far worse results than a conditioned action. Let me illustrate with a non military example. In rugby, we practice certain drills like 'ball into contact' and some handling drills hundreds of times on the training field. The reason for that is so that in the 79th minute of a game on a hot, humid August Saturday when you get tackled you do not want your tired, sore body to have to think what to do. You

[oursin]

This may be somewhat tangential, but recently I was sorting some archives relating to the psychology of officer selection and training in WWII. It was discovered that in terms of morale and not cracking up under strain it was officers from the non-traditional backgrounds, rather than the public school products, who were doing much much better. Given that the whole public school system was largely designed to produce an officer class through stern, even vicious, repression of the emotions and any signs of softness (or at least, this is often presented as a justification for the British public school system), I found this ironic. There may well be significant differences between what psychology would be desirable in an officer and in a private soldier.

And why anyone would want to play rugby is, I regret to say, one of those things by which I am totally baffled! I could envisage the value of automatic conditioned responses in something like emergency medicine, which often involves doing counter-intuitive stuff, and over-riding natural

[chickenfeet2003]

It was discovered that in terms of morale and not cracking up under strain it was officers from the non-traditional backgrounds, rather than the public school products, who were doing much much better.

Average quality of sample? Virtual all public school boys would have been seen as potential officers but only a small fraction of the rest. It's not at all unreasonable that the cream of the grammar schools would outperform the average of the public schools.

And why anyone would want to play rugby is, I regret to say, one of those things by which I am totally baffled!

Antidote to sedentary, cerebral existence. Rock climbing has a similar effect but the good climbing's a bit sparse around here.

[oursin]

Yes, but given that all the public school cadre had been assumed to be effective officer material a significant % were very far from it.

[diony]

Thank you for those links!