Intimate History of Killing

A historian at London's Birbeck College, Bourke (Dismembering the Male) writes that she ""aims to put killing back into military history."" To do so, she focuses on the two world wars and Vietnam, examining American, British and Australian combatants' writings. Soldiers' letters and diaries, she writes, ""weave together domestic trivia with a narrative of murder,"" combining surprising pleasure with persistent guilt. Bourke finds that men at war often harbored contradictory notions of their behavior, claiming that they were ""following orders"" while still trying to accept personal responsibility for their actions. Bourke also examines theories of combat and killing held by psychologists, sociologists and literary writers. Some of the surprises she offers refute conventional belief. In a large-scale firefight, only 25% of men ordered to shoot will shoot; the other three-quarters are ""essential for morale."" Later chapters concern ""fraternizing"" and battlefield homoerotics, war crimes and massacres, doctors, chaplains, and women in combat. Admirers of Paul Fussell's books about both world wars will appreciate Bourke's methods. Against Fussell's stress on war's disagreeable burdens, she emphasizes its mixed motives and even pleasures: many soldiers liked their bayonet training, and many fighter pilots loved their work. A persuasive final chapter attacks the ""brutalization thesis,"" the claim (advanced frequently after Vietnam) that combat obliterates a soldier's conscience. Bourke makes the disturbing and convincing argument that soldiers can kill, and even enjoy it, while retaining their senses of self and society, right and wrong. (Nov.)