THE SOLDIER'S TEST

Aylmer Express Newspaper Article
January 21, 1915

Most Terrifying Position Is Silence Under Fire.

Everyone of us must have wondered how he would feel in battle for the first time. We may get some idea of how the average man feels in such circumstances from a study of the psychology of battle, just published in Italy. Lieutenant-Colonel Mangiarotti, of the 77th Infantry, carefully examined more than 2,000 soldiers who first faced fire in the recent war between Italy and Turkey, and he summarized their statements in the Rivista Militare. He questioned them one by one.

Out of 2,000 men, 1,700 confessed that their most trying moment in the whole campaign was when they first heard hostile bullets whistle about their ears. But almost all of them said they were much less frightened than they expected to be, and that the scare diminished with each battle.

The average soldier finds the most terrifying position to be that of standing motionless in the front rank, exposed to the enemy’s fire without being able to reply. The order to advance or to charge with fixed bayonets is then received as a release from agony. Movement, even into greater peril, distracts the mind and greatly reduces the mental anguish.

Soldiers are seriously affected by the trembling of their superiors. An officer who shakes in his shoes is a coward in the eyes of the rank and file, although the men know that many military heroes – Henry IV, Turenne, and Frederick the Great, for instance- trembled on going into a fight.

Colonel Mangiarotti says that officers must understand this feeling. This is especially true for lieutenants, for this inquiry reveals the fact that in battle all officers from captains upward are non-existent so far as the common soldiers are concerned. They keep their eyes on their lieutenants exclusively. This was brought out when Col. Mangiarotti asked the men what sentiment animated them when the bullets were falling all around them- was it love of country, religion, or their oath of fidelity to their king? “I went ahead,” they replied, almost unanimously, “because my lieutenant went ahead.”

It seems that once the battle is on and the first feeling of terror has vanished soldiers feel as if set free. The fever of combat takes possession of them and they think about nothing else. – Johannesburg Sunday Times.