
What It’s Really Like to Fight a War - smacktoward
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/opinion/veterans-day-letters.html
======
rdl
Basing things on soldiers sending letters home doesn't seem generally likely
to show a very unbiased view, either. Almost everyone I knew in
Iraq/Afghanistan would send only very sanitized letters (well, emails,
generally) home, except for a small minority who would send over the top
insanity with little basis in reality. The only exception I saw was people
sending letters to friends/relatives who had already been deployed in this
specific conflict (not usually even Gulf War I or Vietnam or whatever era
parents).

The most accurate reporting seemed to be people who kept journals and then
reported on it after they left. Without the journal fallible memory would be a
serious problem, but in the moment it also seemed to be difficult. There were
also a lot of efforts at 1) opsec 2) consequences if you DID share something,
like "my 1SG is a dick..." etc.

The VAST majority of everything is family life related stuff, mundane basics
of life, interpersonal issues, etc. (Especially among units where families
knew each other, like various NG units in smaller towns.)

There was probably a bias in what I saw (I often got asked by people working
around me to help proofread or phrase things, as I was often the one providing
the Internet connection and there), but I mean my own experience was to not
tell parents/etc. that I was anywhere but "Germany" for 5 years as a
contractor, etc.

(The biggest truth of modern war, at least from the US side, seems to be that
there are massive differences in what the experience is like based on your
job, where you're based, luck, etc. This was probably true in previous wars,
but with different balance in different roles -- less risk of spontaneous
death from indirect fire or green on blue on a US support base in WW2, but
inferior logistics, risk of medical problems, etc. From what I saw there were
a small number of SOF-types and some smaller combat units, especially in
Afghanistan, where there was essentially maximum personal "agency" combined
with daily violence, which seemed to be fine, a bunch of people with low
agency as far as their own safety but also low risk (people who spent the
entire war on one of the biggest bases working in admin/medical/etc. probably
were even safer than I was), who were also usually fine, and then some people
who had moderate control over their risk but also had moderate risk (truck
drivers for most of the Iraq war, etc.) which actually seemed to be the
hardest.)

~~~
ryanmarsh
_The biggest truth of modern war, at least from the US side, seems to be that
there are massive differences in what the experience is like based on your
job, where you 're based, luck, etc._

I think people don't realize how extreme the two ends are. It can be surreal
when the two experiences are in close proximity. I recall returning from a
particularly nasty patrol where we were hit pretty hard and almost lost some
guys. When trying to enter a dining facility on a big base some POG officer
chewed us out for our messy uniforms. His uniform was neatly starched. I have
no idea how he managed to do that, we were grateful for electricity and
running water. I recall tanks/APCs pulled up in front of a convenience store
on one camp, like taking the car up to CVS for some snacks.

I recall showing up to one large base to drop of a prisoner. We were
particularly dirty and smelly. It had been a messy week out in our sector and
there were perfumed young girls in PT uniform (shorts and t-shirt) wearing
makeup and giggling and frolicking amongst the fast food joints. I could smell
their perfume. They looked at us like Sasquatch had wandered in from the
woods.

I knew guys that had our AO before us, and described a World War Z type battle
with bad guys crawling over the walls. I remember our battles there, not
seeming as bad, right after we left I heard how that same camp received a
nasty VBIED attack. Years later I met some younger guys who'd been on that
camp and they complained how boring it was.

Some people were mortared every night, some people spent their deployment
missing family and bored to tears. Some people passed out candy, some put
parts of their buddies into body bags. All within 20 or 30 miles from each
other.

~~~
rdl
An extra weird thing for me (as a contractor and pretty "free range", since it
was in-theater awarded, and multiple parallel contracts) was I could be at a
party in the IZ, then sitting in the back of an old BMW with just a Hi Power
between bases, working on some weird UNIX network driver issue or RF
interference problem, video conferencing with an O-7 and his staff, riding on
a medevac helicopter sitting in someone else's blood (always look first),
shopping at a huge PX and stocking up on discounted thorlo socks, knives,
etc., on a super sketchy Uzbek cargo An-12, and then driving 200kph to a 4.5
star hotel, all in a few days, with basically no one telling me what to do or
particularly responsible for me. Plenty of other contractors basically stayed
on one base, lived under close control, and had basically one job for 12
months (or on some contracts, especially guys from Asia, they were there for
_years_ in the same place). And other contractors were doing convoy security,
or vehicle recovery, or other close-to-military jobs.

~~~
ryanmarsh
The lawlessness and chaos of a combat zone can be very freeing for the
adventurous.

Nowhere else can you “hitch a ride” on someone’s multimillion dollar military
aircraft.

------
AcerbicZero
I did a few rotations through Iraq and Afghanistan, and one of the few things
I really learned is that everyones experience is different....but the same. I
think they ended the move 'Jarhead' with a similar quote, and it didn't truly
resonate with me until I'd experienced it myself.

Some people get deployed and spend the whole time in Kuwait but in some ways
they suffer just the same as those of us sleeping in the dirt getting mortared
every 3 hours. Its just a different form of the same experience.

~~~
dvdhnt
As someone who spent his entire deployment doing SIGINT in Kuwait, I've always
wondered what it's like to have done what you did. Honestly, you spend some
time beating yourself up over it, too - which is just dumb.

~~~
rdl
What amazed me was just how fast people adapt to crazy stuff. I went to some
of the COPs briefly in Afghanistan and once got stuck there for 5 days when it
was supposed to be just overnight. Day 2-3 was pretty bad (but I didn't want
to be That Guy Who Whines, especially as a contractor), but after that it was
easy.

~~~
jngreenlee
The brain is marvelously adaptable...especially in survival situations
(regardless of overall politics/geopolitical strength), many of us ended up in
a fight or die scenario at one time or another...the tools might change, but
the imperative is there...

------
ardit33
One of my favorite people on Quora is Roland Bartetzko. He was part of the
German army, then he fought two wars during the Yougoslavian dissolution as a
volunteer.

One in Croatia-Bosnia and another one with the KLA during the Kosovo
independence war in 98-99 against yougoslavian forces (mostly serbian).

His answers give a very realistic view of the war as combat soldier:
[https://www.quora.com/profile/Roland-
Bartetzko](https://www.quora.com/profile/Roland-Bartetzko)

~~~
emptyfile
His quora account is a treasure cove of knowledge and experience.

As a twenty-something born and raised in Croatia I can say that reading his
answers gave me an insight into war and my country's history in a way that
makes all the other stories from the front that I ever heard totally inane.
The picture he paints of a soldier's mind made me for the first time
understand the psychologically damaged people who walk around my country today
but are still stuck in the war that's been over for 25 years.

I've re read his accounts of the battle of Mostar a dozen times and I get
chills every time.

In short, the guy is legit, but I'm sure that anyone who will read him will
figure that out for himself from the thick morbid reality that seeps from his
writing.

------
platz
Also see r/combatfootage

Citizens should aware of what happens without passing through the media's
filter/framing.

Also, a lot of the value in that sub is also from the comments. It's like the
experts we have on HN, but for armed conflicts.

~~~
solotronics
I was watching a video (helmet mounted gopro) from a small unit doing recon in
Ukraine. They seemed disorganized and were in enemy territory in broad
daylight. They all died on video and then the Russians who defeated them used
one of the cellphones to call the families and let them know they weren't
coming home. Horrible. The thing that struck me is how often does your local
government make a mistake or have incomplete information? Now imagine this
same process applied to your life in a warzone. Everything outside of your
control possibly with inept people who don't care about you making all the
decisions. What a waste of life.

~~~
ttraub
Even in modern warfare, with its surgical accuracy to pinpoint and take out
specific targets, hundreds if not thousands of troops will still die in the
course of a major engagement, counting tactical errors, accidents, and
friendly fire incidents.

It's a sobering thought and one that makes me glad we're disengaging from
foreign conflicts. War is hell.

~~~
thrower123
We really have no concept of what a real shooting war looks like. Twenty years
of counter-insurgencies around the Middle East has amounted to a US butcher's
bill that would be less than one single day during a major offensive in 1916
in France or 1943 in the Ukraine. The generation that was alive during Vietnam
is dying out.

I'm from a backwoods area that disproportionately sends recruits to the
military, and I don't know anybody from the dozens who went over there that
actually fired any shots in anger. The fobbit-fighter ratio is pretty absurd.

~~~
idoubtit
> Twenty years of counter-insurgencies around the Middle East has amounted to
> a US butcher's bill that would be less than one single day during a major
> offensive in 1916 in France or 1943 in the Ukraine.

That's an exaggeration. Iraq 2003-2009 suffered around half the deaths of
France 1914-1918.

WW I, most deaths in a single day: ~30,000

WW I, total deaths from France, cvilians and military: ~1,400,000

Iraq invasion: ~200,000 verified violent civilian death. Total estimations are
2x-5× that number.

These figures were from Wikipedia. From memory, a few comparison points with
other Middle East wars were the USA had a minor role (a _military_ minor role,
since I doubt Saudi Arabia and UAE would have invaded Yemen if the USA had not
provided their full support):

Yemen (2015-): ~100,000 deaths. 10 millions suffer from hunger.

Syria (2011-): ~300,000 deaths

~~~
ncmncm
Americans have been carefully conditioned to count only American casualties.

The number of people killed or mauled in recent wars is so horrendous that any
American complaining of unpleasantness should be ashamed.

------
myrandomcomment
Days and days of shear boredom followed by hours of 100% adrenaline, days of
shaking, weeks of numbness, a bond with those you never would have known and a
smell you never quite forget.

------
chriselles
I believe letters home from war would be far more likely to provide a
sanitised(group average, not the graphic outliers) perspective on war.

I know with my personal anecdotal perspectives and those of my peers we simply
didn’t want our family/friends at home to worry.

So often “everything is fine”.

My thoughts mirror those of several others here in the often insane absurdity
and dichotomy of conflict.

Contemporary “three block war” conflict seems to be increasing the likelihood
that one person may be exposed to horrific and lasting trauma while another
within the same grid square may be enjoying ice cream while laughing with
friends.

Polar opposite experiences in quite close proximity.

------
gumby
Censorship is considered crucial in war as it is widely believed that if the
folks at home knew the "truth" they wouldn't stand for it and your side would
"lose".

I'm not sure this is correct: widespread targeting of civilians in 20th
century conflict didn't seem to shorten any wars.

------
Jeema101
I think the author of this article is onto something when he says "such
euphemisms do not come close to the 'truth' of warfare." But I think that
maybe we use the euphemisms on purpose in order to distance ourselves from the
reality of what war is, which at it's most basic level... is just ordinary
people murdering one another.

If you really stop and think about it like that, then I think it becomes
clearer how going through the experience of war would mess with you: you're
taught your whole life to respect others, be nice, etc., but then you're
thrown into a new world where that morality is completely turned on it's head.

How does one reconcile that world and it's values with the world of civilian
life and it's values? They're completely dissimilar. I think that would mess
with anyone.

------
mirimir
FYI: [https://www.amazon.com/Live-
Iraq-4th25/dp/B000A7ZJVS](https://www.amazon.com/Live-
Iraq-4th25/dp/B000A7ZJVS)

Recorded and mixed in Baghdad, in ~2004, by members of the 1st Cavalry
Division.

------
ilaksh
Also consider some books written by former soldiers?

I am curious to know if former soldiers turned author generally still believed
the reasons they were given for the wars were true.

~~~
black6
I haven’t written a book (and calling myself an author is a _long_ stretch),
but I did write up a series of personal narratives based on the Wikileaks War
Diary document dump and I touch on how we (myself and my battle-buddies) felt
about the “war” once we had been there for several months. A lot of us started
identifying with the Afghan people.

[https://hornor.space/projects/afghanistan/](https://hornor.space/projects/afghanistan/)

One item that didn’t make it into the narratives (because there is no
Wikileaks cable) was my CO getting replaced in the middle of our deployment
because he began refusing to take the company out on spurious missions.

------
baud147258
When talking about "A Farewell to Arms” why did the author called WW 1 an
"earlier war in Italy"? I don't really see the point

~~~
shantly
That it was also about war in Italy was more important than that the war in
question was WWI. I guess they could have written "WWI in Italy" but that
seems to ask more of the reader without much benefit, I'd say.

~~~
baud147258
Well, it would have avoided to ask the reader to go and check which war is it
about.

------
jdlyga
War being quick, cheap, with victory almost guaranteed has been the
justification for every major conflict for hundreds of years. You never know
when a "quick strike" will lead to a bloody destructive costly war that lasts
a generation.

------
ganitarashid
Wars are started by rich old men and fought mostly by poor young men

~~~
ncmncm
...who don't even know they are are poor.

------
nickthemagicman
There's no better way for human beings...than cycles of violent slaughter? Are
we as a human race doomed to continual animal like conflicts? We as a human
race haven't figured out a solution to prevent wars yet after 100,000 years?
Are we still that hopelessly primitive as a species?

~~~
nexuist
>Are we as a human race doomed to continual animal like conflicts?

We are animals.

>We as a human race haven't figured out a solution to prevent wars yet after
100,000 years?

We have, but the only viable solution - nukes - also kills us too.

>Are we still that hopelessly primitive as a species?

All of us start out as primitive babies.

Some of us are privileged to grow up in safe towns run by responsible civil
servants, with responsible parents, who send them to institutions of higher
education or valuable trades so they can secure a respectable position
society.

Some of us grow up with no school, no parents, no society, and all the hate in
the world.

If you torture any mammal, it bites back. Until we learn to invest in the
wellbeing of others we are cursed to deal with other humans who grow up to
become cruel leaders or their henchmen.

~~~
nickthemagicman
> If you torture any mammal, it bites back. Until we learn to invest in the
> wellbeing of others we are cursed to deal with other humans who grow up to
> become cruel leaders or their henchmen.

Exactly.

Seems like ultimately the solution is to reduce inequality and increase
opportunity around the world.

~~~
refurb
There will always be wars. Unless you can get every human being on the planet
to agree to something, people will resort to violence to get what they want.

~~~
Ididntdothis
Especially if the people who start wars to get what they want aren’t the
people who have to do the fighting. Which is how most wars are fought.

