The Human Dimensions
In the Close Fight
his night’s patrol had been a wasted effort. Three hours
T
of carefully scripted maneuver through enemy terrain
had resulted in nothing but fatigue and sore muscles.
The squad moved through the darkness on an invisible tether,
each man marking the distance from his buddy as if a hidden
hand moved them closer or farther away, depending on the
By MG Robert H. Scales
U.S. Army retired
cover available. Now they were working across a wide ridgeline stepping over or around boulders and scrub pines that impeded progress.
The soldiers were particularly alert now because they knew
the enemy’s habit of ambushing returning patrols just out of
machine-gun range from their patrol base. Perhaps the enemy
knew the night was too quiet, the patrol schedule too routine,
and the temperament of the men too focused on hot food and
the security of the walls and wire of the fortified outpost that
awaited them just a mile or two away.
Nothing is more searing in the human consciousness than
the silence of night broken by the intense staccato of gunfire.
Thank God this enemy always shoots high against figures silhouetted in the skyline. Only one man was down, the rest
flopped prone into a firing position. Now the fight of their
lives would begin. …
May 2012 ■ ARMY
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This narrative is repeated virtually every day by our
ground forces in some of the most dangerous and inhospitable places in the world. The lives of soldiers in small
units depend on the ability to fight and win in the close
fight. Their fight is a very human one, a test of skill and a
will to win. For a moment, place yourself on this ridgeline
and imagine how the psychological strength of these men
might be amplified by better understanding the human
dynamics that make soldiers and leaders into superbly
competent small units.
■ See and sense the enemy so that there are no surprises. Every psychological advantage on the battlefield is
enhanced by knowledge of the enemy. Courage, cohesion,
audacity, and the ability to maneuver without caution or
friction are vital. In fact, dominance in the close fight is defined by one side seeing the enemy while remaining unseen.
■ Emotional stability. Maintain condition short of the
emotional breaking point. War is a test of will. Lord Moran
in his classic work, Anatomy of Courage: The Classic Study of
the Soldier’s Struggle Against Fear, defines courage as a crucible of emotional staying power that is drained by exposure to all of the wearing effects of close combat. First
among these is fear, of course, but there are others: thirst,
fatigue, hunger, a sense of isolation, distrust of leaders and
fellow soldiers and the fear of dying alone. Even the besttrained small units begin to drain the crucible of courage
once serious shooting begins and the rate of emptying accelerates as the battle continues. The unit “breaks” when
the crucible empties and the unit is stressed beyond its
emotional breaking point. When a unit goes beyond this
point it can no longer remain cohesive and effective and
must be removed from the battlefield to be rebuilt physiMG Robert H. Scales, USA Ret., is CEO of Colgen, a consulting firm that focuses on landpower. This article will be part of
a new book, Yahara’s Long Shadow, a history of landpower
in the American Era since World War II.
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ARMY ■ May 2012
cally and emotionally. The key to long-term fighting power
is for commanders to anticipate the breaking point in the
heat of battle and remove the unit from direct combat immediately before it collapses.
■ Group resilience. Resilience is a collective trait that
defines the ability of a unit to snap back from emotional,
psychological or physical erosion after a close-combat engagement. This emotional elasticity comes from a unit that
has a reserve of those traits that define the ability of a unit
to be stretched and returned to full combat capability in a
very short time: Physical fitness is essential. So also is the
ability of each soldier and leader to quickly shake off the
trauma of initial contact.
■ Graceful degradation of collective resolve. The ability to moderate the rate of emotional decline in combat is
essential. Anecdotal evidence from previous close-combat
engagements strongly suggests that the ability to flatten
the sine curve of collective emotion in the close fight is an
important component to staying effective and avoiding
moral collapse throughout the engagement.
■ Cognitive clarity. Seeing is not enough. Commanders
must be able to deaden their emotional highs and lows so
that they retain the ability to make decisions intuitively
with less than perfect information and often alone, under
extreme stress. Cognitive clarity comes with the ability to
trust emotion over reason, to develop a finely tuned ability
to decide under pressure and ignore the caution that
comes from waiting on more information or wasting time
trying to invoke traditional military decision-making
processes.
■ Trust in available support. Every small unit in contact knows that it cannot fight alone. Confidence in winning, audacity to continue the fight and willingness to stay
when outnumbered all depend in large measure on trust
that soldiers will be supported by others. No small unit
carries enough ammunition and supplies to last for very
long. No soldier will fight audaciously unless he is sure
that he will be evacuated if wounded. No soldier carries
enough killing power on his back to achieve firepower
dominance over an enemy likely equipped with small
arms as lethal as his own.
■ Trust in leaders. At the small-unit level trust comes
from confidence among soldiers that a leader’s decisionmaking skills will give them the greatest chance of surviving contact with the enemy. Thus a soldier’s trust at the
small-unit level is less sensitive to other factors traditionally sought at the operational or strategic level such as intelligence or rank. Soldiers will always follow a leader who
braves the crack of the first round and reacts in a manner
that will get the mission done at the least cost in blood.
■ Moral suppression. Those familiar with the dynamics
of close combat will attest to the phenomenon of moral authority in the close fight. When units enter the deadly zone
usually both sides are aware of who will win. Past performance and reputation are powerful forces that often make
one side assume a position of inferiority. Conversely, soldiers who are confident in their abilities and those of their
buddies and leaders generally cannot be beaten. Suppressing an enemy’s will to fight can only be done by achieving
a long-term, sustained level of moral dominance through
extraordinary battle skill and audacity demonstrated over
time. In today’s networked environment subjected to exposure by the global media, however, a single incident of
poor performance or substantial loss in a single engagement will have an inordinate effect on the performance of
the entire ground effort.
■ Heightened senses. Some soldiers and leaders possess an intuitive ability to see the battlefield. Part of this
skill, of course, comes from familiarity with physical surroundings. Others gain the advantage by exercising an extraordinary ability to “read” emotions of the indigenous
population. Some can actually sense the presence of the enemy and smell out particularly dangerous situations. The
best of these native scouts use onboard or remote elec38
ARMY ■ May 2012
tronic sensors to see well ahead, deeply beyond their immediate surroundings.
■ Comfort with killing. Destroying a life is not a natural act. As we have seen in the alleged acts of a single
rogue infantryman recently in Afghanistan, mindless
killing is an act of psycho pathological behavior and cannot be tolerated in combat. Thus an effective small unit
must possess a delicate emotional balance between restraint and ultimate aggression in close combat. Most experienced combat veterans will testify that the hardest kill
is always the first. More often than not, first kills will have
to be experienced against an enemy to whom killing is a
natural act. Thus one of the most difficult leadership tasks
in the human dimension is for a commander to inure his
team emotionally to killing from the very beginning of an
operation with no psychological workup.
■ Lessened fear of spatial and temporal isolation. The
greatest single source of psychological friction on the battlefield is the fear of dying alone. The fear of a violent
death permeates a soldier’s being, and long isolation saps
all of his senses. This fear is reduced by constant reinforcement by leaders and the touch of a nearby buddy. As the
fight begins, the noise and confusion of the close fight amplifies the need for reinforcement and touch at the very
time when both are very difficult to achieve.
As the Army and Marine Corps downsize in the years ahead,
the number of close-combat soldiers will certainly, and unfortunately, be reduced in proportion. Ten years of war have
been the catalyst that accelerated the modernization of soldier weapons and equipment. Now that peace is near and
money grows short, materiel modernization will surely slow
or even stop. After years of study, lecturing and prodding I
believe now more than ever that the best investment we can
make of our diminishing human and capital resources
would be to use the human sciences to improve the fighting
power of close-combat soldiers, to focus as much on what
goes in the soldier as what goes on the soldier.
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