I’ve always wondered about soldiers, they go out and kill strangers who they might not have any reason to dislike apart form the fact that they are also trying to kill them back. So given that killing is a soldier job and after a certain point a soldier might even become complacent and casual about it, then why wouldn’t a soldier kill someone who he really had a good reason to dislike. I’m reminded of fraging incidents, where the common soldiers murder their superior officers because they lack confidence in their leadership, or because the officer teats the men badly or takes risks with their lives to boost his own advancement. The usual method of dispatch in Vietnam was the fragmentation grenade, I think towards the end of the war incidents like this had escalated to such an extent that continuing to fight that war was impossible. The peace movement was one thing but this actually sabotaged the army’s ability to wage war. I think the actual extent of this is covered up by the US military even now, I’d be interested to know how many officers were really murdered by their own men?
I have to look up the exact statistics on that in my diary, I will get back to you as soon as I find it. Although I don't know too much about fragging....
1.) They only killed superior officers when said superior officer was incompetant and had a tendancy to screw everything up, usually it was luietenants but rarely captains. 2.) You used a grenade because the calibre of an American weapon is a 5.56 and the AK is a 7.76, thus an autopsy would reveal he was shot by his mean, where it is impossible to determine with a frag grenade, atleast at that point in time.
Found this Re: The Gulf War : Fragging (US forces only), Total: since March 2003, all month 2005 via icasualties.org Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Fragging, assaulting a superior officer using a fragmentation grenade or other explosive was surprisingly common during the Vietnam and Gulf wars. The most reliable figure for Vietnam was 730 suspected incidents from 1969 through 1971, much higher than in U.S. wars before or since. Prior to Vietnam, assaults against U.S. military officers were extremely rare. World War I saw one incident leading to court martial per 12,700 servicemen, a ratio said to have remained fairly steady up until the Vietnam War. During the Vietnam War, the Fragging rate rose from one incident per 3,300 servicemen in 1969 to a peak of one per 572 servicemen in 1971. In one division in Vietnam -- Fragging during 1971 have been authoritatively estimated to be running about one a week. Often word of the deaths of these officers would bring cheers at troop movies or in bivouacs of certain units. Few Vietnam Fragging cases ever went to trial, so comparison with earlier wars is risky. Still, these are astonishing statistics, suggesting an army at the point of degenerating into a mutinous rabble. You'd think in the wake of Vietnam the U.S. military would have closely investigated Fragging to avoid another brush with chaos. It has been esteemed that suspect incidents like these in Vietnam, had doubled at the height of the Second Gulf War, the Gulf War is Vietnam on Meth. The Art of War by Sun Tzu, attributes the highest importance to the notion of “The Moral Law”, soldiers will not readily risk their lives over an extended period of time for a cause they don’t believe in. When the only aim or the soldier is to survive his tour of duty, gung-ho, reckless and incompetent officers become a much greater threat to their lives then enemy combatants.
When I first got to Viet Nam ( A newbe) I woke to an explosion just 4 tents down from where I was sleeping. I thought it was a mortor attack, turns out this prick captain had a claymore strapped to the top of his tent that sent him back home in a bag. Reason: got a lot of guys killed from being a dumb ass and treated people like shit. It happened. He wasn't missed...smiles.
Are you surprised about the statistics of Fragging shown on that chart about the Gulf War? Because for the most part it hasn’t really been a hot war except for the beginning and do up think living with the stress of constant ambush from hidden combatants and road side bombs escalates this sort of reaction. In WW1 and 2, for the most part soldiers knew were the enemy was and when an attack was likely at least more so then in Vietnam and Iraq.
