As General Patton said, paraphrased: Many of you soldiers wonder if you will have the nerve to shoot, but I assure you when you reach out to a buddy and find a bunch of goo where his face used to be, you'll know what to do.
@Cyber Liberty I am a great admirer of Patton,but in some ways he was a fool. The above is an example. When people panic,they ain't going to recover from it soon enough to become anything more than a quivering target.
Patton's biggest weakness was not his ego,as many claim,but the fact that he thought everybody else thought like he did,and only needed to be reminded to do their duty.
It just ain't so. There are people who are cowards,and there are brave people who just can't bring themselves to point a rifle at a fellow human being,even one in an enemy uniform,and purposely shoot them dead. Some won't shoot at all,and others will shoot without aiming,hoping they don't hurt anybody and that the enemy just goes away. It is rarer than you might think to find so(meone in modern life that has the ability to purposely aim at and shoot to death a fellow human being.
Many of the people who do,and I have no idea what the percentage is,end up regretting it in later life and have it cause emotional and mental problems for them.
Which should surprise no one when you consider "Thou shall not kill!"is a Biblical Biggie. Add to that the FACT that almost nobody even kills or butchers their own meat these days. Hell,a lot of people these days only see meat once it's cooked.
IF I remember correctly,a study about this done by the army shortly after WW-2 ended determined that out of a squad of 8 men,only two could be counted on to take direct aim at and purposely kill an enemy soldier and not be bothered by it. Out of the remainder,4 could ususally be counted on to fire in the general direction of the enemy,and the other two either wouldn't shoot at all,or would shoot up into the sky.
Even the army has recognized this since the Patton days.
