The story of Easy Company of the U.S. Army 101st Airborne Division, and their mission in World War II Europe, from Operation Overlord, through V-J Day. Also open discussion of the show The Pacific.
I lately watched "Generation Kill" (thanks to recommendations from this sub!) and then decided to read the book. For anyone not familiar with it: It's about the Iraq War in 2003 and it's a fantastic watch/read! Just yesterday I stumbled upon an interesting parallel to BoB.
Speirs tells Blithe in the show: "You hid in the ditch because you think there's still hope. But Blithe, the only hope you have is to accept the fact that you're already dead. And the sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to function as a soldier's supposed to function."
Now in the book "Generation Kill" when the platoon is ambushed on the bridge, we get this little part about Lieutenant Fick's involvement:
"He decides to jump out of his vehicle and try to direct the Humvees out of the kill zone. Fick's own coping mechanism for combat is what he calls the "Dead Man Walking Method". Instead of reassuring himself, as some do, that he's invincible or that his fate is in God's hand (which wouldn't work for him since he leans toward agnosticism), he operates on the assumption that he's already a dead man, so getting shot makes no difference. This is the mode he's in when he hops out of his Humvee, armed only with his 9mm pistol, and strides into the melee."
I wonder if Fick has seen BoB and was inspired by Speirs in his "method" or if this mindset just comes naturally in combat?
Sort by:
Best
Open comment sort options
Best
Top
New
Controversial
Old
Q&A
I can't explain it, nobody can. Sledge wrote about it in his book too. On the one hand, you have guys who talk about stuff like, I'm going to be careful, I'm gonna get through this, not take chances, etc. First ones killed. Then you have guys like Spiers who are extremely reckless, run right into it, and never get seriously wounded, or wounded at all. Makes no sense how random it all is
‘You can’t control who get hit and who doesn’t. Who falls out of a chopper or why. It ain’t up to you, it’s just war’
Tim Obrain spends a chapter in The Things They Carried discussing this. One of his platoonmates is trying to find the moral of the story in one of their friends dying and after decades of reflecting on it OBrian comes to the conclusion that any war story that has a moral is likely fake; any war story where things just happen, and it makes you just say "oh" likely has some truth to it.
You some kinda war junkie?
It’s not about me, it’s about the guy next to you and that’s it, that’s all it is
It’s a weird feeling to “not give a shit” anymore. I spent most of my 20’s in combat or a hospital…..it was the easiest time of my life in a weird way.
Yup, I remember laying on the ground during a rocket attack in Kandahar in 2012 after being in country a couple months. A couple rockets hit within 20-30 yards of the cafeteria I was in. I was eating a bowl of cereal and looked over to see a newly arrived E-7 with his hands on his head crying. I remember wishing that I could still care about my life like he apparently did about his.
Funny we had a first sergeant in the Marines on his first combat development and we found him cowering in a bunker after a rocket attack. They sent him home after that.
Yeah, I think one of the Webbs actually predicted when he would die… and then he was killed on that exact date.
It's like trying sneak in home late sober versus steaming in home completely off your head.
You are guaranteed to wake your wife up if you come sneaking, but she'll never hear you coming home drunk.
Or it could be she's just pretending in the second instance to save from having to deal with a drunken idiot.
In Foy, Speirs links up with I Company CO Lt Tinsley, and while Speirs is running back across no mans land, Tinsley is immediately killed from errant machine gun fire
Most of the time you’re not moving around while in combat because you get tired really really fast. If you watched alot of the war footages of ww2 to now, alot of soldiers move slow because everyone is hellishly tired. Even some of the footages on storming the beaches of Normandy alot of soldiers are seen exhausted before they even got out of the waters.
And that’s pretty much it. A large percentage of soldiers who die are those who stay still enough for enemies to shoot them. So it’s really an ironic thing how soldiers who try to be careful and moving slowly end up being the ones who get picked off faster.
The only hope you have is to accept the fact, that you’re already dead
I tend to take personal accounts with a grain of salt. I heard enough BS stories filled with holes during my time in the marines to make me skeptical. Funny how you never hear someone say "I was crapping my pants as I did this"
The fatalistic "I knew I was already dead" makes for a good sound bite, but its meh in the wars we fought in during my lifetime. My platoon was far more likely to get wiped out during a helicopter crash than anything combat related. Yah for someone who was in the meatgrinder that was stalingrad or okinawa, I understand them coming to that line of thinking after seeing the never ending horror and death.
I was ambushed in Iraq, and on one occasion I had time to contemplate that this might be it for me, rounds were hitting the berm inches from my face. It was kind of eerie how I kept my bearing and did everything so methodically (thanks to the hours of all that god awful training), but while I was composed on the outside heres what was going on in my head "Oh fuck oh fuck, those round are close, oh fuck, I cant watch, oh shit theyre hitting next to my leg, shit shit hit, I dont even believe in you god but for the love of god dont let me die tonight!!!" But everyone's different I suppose.
I remember watching a documentary about vietnam, and some of the vets talked about guys who had developed that mentality, who no longer cared if they lived or died, and how emotionally dead they were.
I am a combat veteran myself. Although veterans in between themselves can relate, the experience of war and combat itself is in the end an extremely lonely experience.
The attitude comes in degrees, I think. In Iraq, for me, it was when I realized I wasn't looking for EIDs anymore. It wasn't complacency, I just thought if I got hit by one it would be inevitable.
That was the tour I would say I had my most trauma, so it could all be connected psychologically.
Yeah one of my senior Marines in Iraq straight up did not give a fuck if he lived or died. He didn't even bother keeping his head down on overwatch.
There's a great moment in the Generation Kill show that addresses Fick's approach without using these words.
He's taking cover behind a Humvee with Rolling Stone and has a short speech about how some people think Iraq is dangerous but here in cover behind the Humvee, Rolling Stone is just as safe as if he was at home. Then Fick leaves cover to move up the line
I remember that, great scene! It's taken almost literally from the book.
I'd speculate that Fick hadn't even seen the show yet. I read his book, One Bullet Away. He joined in the late 90s and was deployed during 9/11, went into Afghanistan and then went through Recon training shortly after returning from that deployment then deployed to Iraq. Again, just speculating.
I read his book, too (very interesting read, by the way). He was stationed at Camp Pendleton before his second deployment (to Iraq) and he stayed with his friend in a flat in Oceanside. He even describes going for a run at the beach the evening before deployment.
Judging from this (renting a flat outside the camp, going on regular runs on the beach) I guess he would've had plenty of time to watch BoB between Afghanistan and Iraq, despite Recon training and other military activities.
I have no idea though if he actually watched it though.
Fun fact: Fick earned his jump wings at Fort Benning (where Winters was stationed for a while). Judging from his book, Fick hated jump school (or at least the Airborne sergeant hated him lol).
The concept of accepting that you're already dead as a soldier predates warfare as we know it. Musashi and Sun Tzu both talk about it in their writings. I know the Book of Five Rings and Art of War have both been on various military reading lists over the years so it's no surprise this has manifested over and over on different battlefields.
Not everything was invented by Band of Brothers. Geez.
My experience was that after a few very anxious weeks in Afghanistan fatalism calmed my nerves quite a bit lol
At some point you just decide to not live in fear. It's not fatalism it's just acceptance that you can only control so much and trying to control anything other than your actions and reactions is a waste of your mental and physical energy.
Didn't it also pass by in the old All Quiet On The Western Front (?), how there exists the Soldier's Minute.
Which is, if I recall correctly, that only this next minute exists, don't think about anything beyond this minute, nothing exists outside of it.
Probably Speirs' run would fall under that, or John Basilone doing the machine gun thing in the Pacific.
Being the pawn in the intricate chess game of modern war.
Hope to never have to experience that up close tho
i think that method may be a pretty common way to deal with fear and anxiety in a war
It was actually that scene in Band of Brothers that helped me cope with multiple deployments and just accept it for what it is. I sent two guys home on my first patrol and it hit me like a moment of clarity. My personal, non-scientific observation was that the guys who "had something to live for" and were scared all the time were the ones that had the mental breaks and suffer the worst ptsd back here.
After a while in Iraq I didn't care if I lived or died. Bizarre mindset. It wasn't even depression as it was detachment. Hard to explain.
It's a common reaction to combat stress and can be an indicator of early PTSD according to the book "Achilles in Vietnam". It's been a part of combat as long as combat has existed.
It works and I think about 25% of soldiers that don't use it can't cope. There was just so many rounds coming at you all day long and getting mortared every night, you just couldn't cope if you were worried about dying. When you first get to combat you think it's kinda like a movie...not consciously but you don't really have any context for what's happening other than movies. Then all the rounds start flying and you can't really process that another dude is actively trying to kill you. Then someone you knows in your platoon or another gets killed and then it all gets real. Everybody thinks they are the guy in the movie that makes it to the end but you start thinking, maybe I'm the guy that gets killed when the gate drops...
There was a massive study started by the War Department in 1944 that ran through 1948 to understand the experiences of soldiers, airmen, Marines, and sailors to try to distill their experiences and outcomes. Among the findings they found that this attitude, starting with early war bomber crews, often led to better coping and execution of duties by survivors.
Nathaniel Fick was a lieutenant and served in combat before 2003 in Afghanistan. He is the definition of a leader and also has no mention of BoB in his own autobiography "One Bullet Away."
You just don’t think about it, that’s the way to deal.
Rudy called it "the sacred geometry of chance"
Counterpoint: there are no atheists in foxholes.
This is one of those sayings that people like to repeat as if it's some sort of fact instead of an opinion.
If you understand the perspective of an atheist you'd understand why it makes no difference whether you're in a foxhole or not.
I don't fully understand the thiest perspective so I'm not sure why the saying makes sense. Is the idea that you'll be so scared you just have to start believing, just in case you're wrong about being an atheist?
It’s just a dumb thing religious folks say to feel smug.
It really does feel that way, doesn't it? Like every time they repeat it they think "lol those dumb atheists will realize how dumb they are the next time they're in a foxhole".
I really do want to keep an open mind though, which is why I asked for clarification. It definitely feels smug and insulting, but making that assumption would be smug on my part. Maybe I'll get an insightful response and I will be proven wrong.
Yeah I had a buddy who was blown up by an IED 9 times. He was the most atheist dude I've ever met.