War Combat Research Articles

Do appraisals of military service indicate current distress in aging Vietnam War combat veterans?

Appraisals of military service, both desirable and undesirable, assessed via Elder and Clipp's (1989) scale, are associated with psychological distress in veterans. Aging combat veterans (CV) are at increased risk for posttraumatic stress disorder and other psychological disorders yet may underreport symptoms and not seek treatment that could be beneficial. It is unknown whether desirable and undesirable appraisals of military service are associated with mental health outcomes above and beyond typical risk and protective factors, such as age, education, and combat exposure. Therefore, we examined associations between appraisals of military service and assessments of psychological distress in Vietnam War CV, currently the largest cohort of aging veterans. Male Vietnam War CV aged 60 and older (n = 134) were selected from a larger study. Regression analyses examined the associations between appraisals of military service and measures of physical and psychological well-being and distress. Both desirable and undesirable appraisals of military service exhibited associations with measures of psychological distress, with undesirable appraisals being more strongly associated with distress than desirable appraisals. In regression analyses, appraisals were related to mental health outcomes over and above covariates. In addition, appraisals were more strongly related to psychological versus physical well-being measures, with undesirable appraisals more strongly related to mental health and well-being measures than desirable appraisals. Assessing appraisals of military service may identify veterans experiencing psychological distress who may benefit from referral for psychological interventions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Supplemental Material for Do Appraisals of Military Service Indicate Current Distress in Aging Vietnam War Combat Veterans?

Supplemental Material for Do Appraisals of Military Service Indicate Current Distress in Aging Vietnam War Combat Veterans?

Martial necropolitics: The position of the combatant in the Russo-Ukrainian war

The Russo-Ukrainian War has produced a myriad of necropolitical discourses regarding the justification of death and the subjugation of lives to potential death. Contemporary necropolitical scholarship has primarily focused on the civilian, subaltern dimension of this paradigm in a wider context, yet in this war, combatants from the opposing armed forces are the individuals most consistently embedded in these conditions of potential death. How, then, is the potential death of the combatant justified and legitimized? Through a critical engagement with the concept of the border as the front, this article will explore how the subjugation of Ukrainian and Russian combatants to the conditions of potential death is discursively justified through a framework of the necropolitical logics of survival and martyrdom. Through these logics, two competing necropolitical regimes of truth have arisen, nevertheless leading to the same conclusion – the mobilized bodies of the combatants at the front – yet promising different versions of a life beyond death itself.

Combatants, Masculinity, and Just War Theory

Over that last several decades the ethics of war has grown into a major subfield in philosophy at the same time as large literatures have developed on the relation between gender and war as well as feminist approaches to the ethics of war. This article aims to contribute to these literatures and to bring them into closer contact. It argues that canonical just war theorists such as Grotius, Pufendorf, Vattel, and Walzer rely on appeals to masculinity to help ground the obligations of soldiers to participate in war upon command. This appeal helps them overcome their otherwise weak arguments for the political subordination of soldiers, or what I call the Internal Problem of the soldier. It also helps explain a problem that has vexed contemporary ethics of war scholars, namely, the supposed equal right to kill combatants in war, or what I call the External Problem of the soldier. If this is true, then just war theorists should be much more concerned with the gender and war literature and find common ground with feminists who have treated the problem of the political standing of soldiers as a philosophical priority.

Film Review: Jagun Jagun, Nigeria, 2023. Produced by Euphoria 360 Media. Netflix. 129 minutes, Yoruba (with English subtitles). No price reported. Directed by Tope Adebayo and Adebayo Tijani

I intend to argue in this review that the Yoruba film Jagun Jagun represents the transition of the Yoruba Travelling Theatre into the big screen motion picture. It has been a remarkable transformation from stage crafts to filmic crafts, while still retaining the “family” involvement in the vibrant business innovations of the New Nollywood. Doing this focuses on configuring the interface between technology and entrepreneurship with its attendance use of traditional visual elements, songs, dance, imageries, metaphors and other Yoruba poetic renditions for aesthetic values. However, it is noted that the inappropriate mingling of both traditional and modern visual effects influenced by the Western postmodernist style in filmic framing, composition, sound, music and war combat mode. Generally, the film occludes the postcolonial thematic relevance in the modern political African leaders in their visionless Machiavellian ideology.

La mujer combatiente en la Guerra de España

El objeto de estas páginas es ofrecer una nueva perspectiva, tanto en el ámbito cuantitativo como en el cualitativo, en relación con el colectivo de mujeres que combatieron adscritas a unidades armadas que defendían la causa republicana. El estudio es el resultado del análisis de fuentes documentales y la elaboración de una base de datos que incluye información civil y militar de 3200 mujeres. Se aportan nuevos datos relativos a la afiliación política, distribución y función en los frentes de combate, organización y unidades militares, estado civil, oficio, origen geográfico o edad, así como una aproximación al número de ellas que fallecieron en los frentes que asolaron parte del territorio peninsular entre el 17 de julio de 1936 y el 1 de abril de 1939.

Portrayal of electronic cigarettes in the news

Portrayal of electronic cigarettes in the news

Feeling right about the Civil War: the Union’s battle for emotional health

ABSTRACT Civil War combat trauma remains a subject of interest to scholars studying the social and psychological changes that the war wrought upon American society. The focus has largely been on the South, but if we look northwards we find that combat trauma was too often masked by victory. But soldiers cannot singlehandedly delineate the contours of the emotional landscape of the wartime North. By locating combat trauma within the emotional nexus of non-combatant communities during and after the war, we can better understand the long-term effects of the Civil War on the development of America as a nation.

Hand-to-hand Combat in World War I as the Royal Hungarian Defence Forces’ Soldiers saw it

World War I. showed so much bloodshed that had never been seen before. On the contrary of the high effectiveness of firepower, combatants had to fight face-to-face many times. Frequently, they could not use their firearms efficiently for various reasons. In many situations, this led to hand-to-hand combat that resembled the struggling of long gone ages. In the era of our topic opinions on hand-to-hand combat were controversial. On one hand, Hand-to-hand combat was emphasized by the training methods of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. On the other hand, armed forces of other countries did not find it so vital. In my opinion, the strife of the Royal Hungarian Defence Forces in World War I. has its own value nowadays as well. Firepower has been increasing and the other factors that forced soldiers to fight in close combat have not disappeared either.

The Christian Military Colonies in Medieval Ethiopia: The Chewa System

From the reign of King Yekuno-Amlak (r. 1270–85) to that of Emperor Tewodros II (r. 1855–68), the army of Ethiopia, one of the East African counties, was divided into two major categories: The first category consisted of local militias under regional governors who had no special type of war combat training. In times of national crisis, they engaged in warfare only when the king called them. Immediately after battle, they were sent back to their regional base. The second category of the army was the royal army (chewa, from fourteenth to sixteenth centuries). Chewa was the regular army of the kings and many of its regiments were deployed in various regions of Ethiopia. It was established only for the purpose of military services, and the members of this army were not allowed to do any other work. This article examines the chewa military system and its dynamics in the medieval period of Ethiopia, roughly covering the period between fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.

On Loving Clothes, and Preferring Not To

On Loving Clothes, and Preferring Not To

"Neskrivljeno neznanje" u ratu - kolateralna šteta i krajnja nužda

In this paper, author aims to determine the existence of the possibility of the inculpable ignorance argument even for acts of combatants in war, in specific contexts of collateral damage and supreme emergency. The argument of inculpable ignorance is extremely important in Just War Theory and international law as an argument which justifies participation of individuals in war, regardless of its moral and legal status. However, by analyzing the very argument of inculpable ignorance as well as the phenomena of collateral damage and supreme emergency in war, author demonstrates that inculpable ignorance can potentially exist in war itself, i.e., during acts done out of such ignorance in war. Process of utilitarian calculus of justness of collateral damage and the process of deliberation of fulfilment of conditions that constitute the situation of supreme emergence are out of combatants' reach, while their knowledge of correctness of decisions and orders derived from these processes is practically impossible. Accordingly, in these particular situations the argument of inculpable ignorance can be valid for acts which violate norms and rules of war, because the truth about the moral-legal status of these acts remains unknowable for combatants.

The Howling Storm: Weather, Climate, and the American Civil War by Kenneth W. Noe

Reviewed by: The Howling Storm: Weather, Climate, and the American Civil War by Kenneth W. Noe Brian Allen Drake The Howling Storm: Weather, Climate, and the American Civil War. By Kenneth W. Noe. Conflicting Worlds. ( Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2020. Pp. xvi, 670. $59.95, ISBN 978-0-8071-7320-6.) For too long, Kenneth W. Noe argues, historians have forgotten that among the Civil War's most important elements were the elements—its muck and mud, dust and drought, sudden freezes and thaws, driving rain, and blistering sun. In fact, the 1860s was a decade of particularly extreme weather, he observes, and any study of tactics, strategy, and soldiering needs to reckon with that fact. With The Howling Storm: Weather, Climate, and the American Civil [End Page 166] War, Noe thus "takes the Civil War back out in the weather and renarrates its military history" from Fort Sumter to Appomattox, with a keen eye on how the elements shaped bivouac, march, and battle (p. 1). Utilizing everything from Smithsonian Institution records to soldiers' letters, Noe reconstructs daily high/low temperatures and precipitation levels for nearly every major battle and campaign, details the lived experience of that weather, and elaborates on the ways it helped determine victory or defeat. Unsurprisingly, given its massive scope—the book clocks in at 670 pages—its conclusions are complex and varied, rather like the weather itself, but some themes emerge. Global phenomena like El Niño and the North Atlantic Oscillation were profoundly important, for they created both regional events like droughts and pressure systems that then spawned localized heatwaves, rainstorms and floods, and frosts. These, in turn, had significant and sometimes decisive impacts on action in the field, far beyond well-known examples like the Peninsula campaign. Hardly a battle or campaign unfolded—or failed to unfold—without the weather weighing in. The list of attacks, counterattacks, retreats, and pursuits that foundered on storm fronts, blizzards, swollen rivers, and muddy roads is almost endless. Most Civil War histories name-check the weather before moving on quickly to the drums and trumpets, but Noe makes Weather—with a capital W—a vital "third combatant" in every theater (p. 493). The book shines in its depictions of the weather-born miseries of men and animals. After 670 pages of unrelenting heat and rain and mud and ice, The Howling Storm begins to feel like a forced march. But that is the point; Noe's exhaustive account drives home his point that understanding the experience of Civil War combat means understanding the ecological contexts in which it occurred. Even without combat, soldiering was an exhausting, painful, disease-ridden, sometimes fatal, and always constant immersion in the elements, as Noe makes clear through his copious use of soldiers' correspondence and diaries. This was true of many wars, of course, but The Howling Storm's descriptions of mud alone—trapping wagons, halting columns, slicing boots to ribbons in frozen weather, sucking doomed men and animals into its depths in warmer times—give the Civil War the feel of the western front in World War I. They add the human element to the elements, humanizing what could have risked becoming simply a standard military history cum weather report. They also complicate Monday-morning generalship—if you think you could have easily done better than General George B. McClellan in 1862 Virginia, for instance, you might march a few miles in Chickahominy-soaked boots before passing too much judgment. In the end, Noe argues that the weather favored the Union armies to a large degree because of better and more available supplies to deal with it. The weather also may have helped end slavery. If McClellan had been successful in 1862, the war might have ended before military necessity inspired the Emancipation Proclamation. It is an interesting if counterfactual idea and one that environmental historians could ponder. The Howling Storm deliberately sticks mainly to the battlefield, but these sorts of larger arguments are among the most interesting, and it would be nice to see more of them. For instance, there are some fascinating insights into the weather's effects on food supplies, [End Page 167] but they are...

Impact of war on veteran life span: natural experiment involving combat versus non-combat exposed military personnel

IntroductionThere is still uncertainty around the impact of combat exposure on the life span of war veterans. Therefore we made use of a natural experiment to study the impact on...

Experimental Exercises as an Element of Joint Combat Training of the Air Forces and Railway Troops in the Prewar Period and During the Great Patriotic War (1931-1945)

This article deals with the organization of experimental exercises of the Air Force and Railway Troops in the conditions of increasing military threat during the prewar period and the years of Great Patriotic War combat operations. The relevance of the study is due to the lack of scientific research on the history of interaction and joint combat training of aviation and special technical branches units. In the course of this research, the role and place of experimental exercises in the system of joint combat training of the Air Force and Railway Troops were defined, and the main areas of weapons and military equipment testing were analyzed. A conclusion was made about the fundamental role of the Gorokhovets Aviation and Railway Troops test field in the study of joint combat use and in the development of new models of air weapons and recovering equipment for Railway Troops. The effectiveness of using of the experience of such experimental exercises is positively assessed. Conclusions are formulated and scientific-theoretical recommendations are offered to improve joint combat training of Aviation and Railway Troops units at the present development level of the Russian Armed Forces.

Fitzgerald’s War: Bryan Dalyrimple, Josephine Perry, Pat Hobby, and the Politics of Disillusionment

Abstract Although F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fiction includes a number of combatants in the Great War, the global conflagration does not interest him primarily as a theater of combat. Rather, whenever war is discussion in his work, other social issues are implied—namely, disillusion and indifference. In the early short story “Dalyrimple Goes Wrong,” the veteran’s real shell shock occurs when he discovers that military service does not open the doors to upward mobility, and he finds opportunity only in a life of crime (that ironically eventuates a political career). In Josephine Perry stories such as “First Blood,” “A Snobbish Story,” and “Emotional Bankruptcy,” the war is remote history even as it is ongoing; the obligations of patriotism quickly sink into the great Sahara of American apathy. Finally, even in late Pat Hobby stories like “Two Old-Timers,” war is revealed to be nothing more than a flickering cinematic simulacrum of bravery that shapes both cultural and personal memory, a delusion that only insiders like Fitzgerald’s screenwriting hack know is engineered. Reading these three overlooked texts against the backdrop of commentary by H. L. Mencken, Edmund Wilson, and R. H. Tawney, this article argues that the cynicism of the interwar years did not begin in the battlefields but in the parlors, backrooms, and studio back lots of the home front.

Pathways to Violence in Civil Wars: Combatant Socialization and the Drivers of Participation in Civilian Targeting

AbstractRecent research has drawn attention to the role of socialization in shaping the behaviors of rebel combatants during civil wars. In particular, scholars have highlighted how vertical and horizontal socialization dynamics can bring combatants to engage in a range of wartime practices, including the use of violence against civilians. This article synthesizes existing theories of combatant socialization and combines them into an integrated framework, which casts the focus on individual pathways toward civilian targeting and specifies the underlying sociopsychological mechanisms through which socializing influences motivate participation in violence. Specifically, the article charts five key pathways that operate through different mechanisms and that are based upon varying degrees of internalization regarding the legitimacy of civilian targeting. In each case, I also identify a number of unit-level factors that are likely to make a given pathway particularly prevalent among combatants. The article then illustrates how these pathways map onto the actual experiences of civil war combatants by examining the drivers of individual participation in violence against civilians among low-ranking members of the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone. The case study evidence highlights the equifinal nature of violence perpetration during civil wars, shedding light on the different social needs, influences, sanctions, and constraints that may motivate involvement in violence. By analyzing rebel behavior through the prism of perpetrator studies, this article thus seeks to establish the civil war literature on firmer theoretical grounds, providing a synthetic account of the individual experiences, motives, and trajectories that are often left unaddressed in this body of research.

Doomed Youth: Antonio Cánovas, a Young Sportsman in Time of War in 1930s Spain.

During the Spanish Civil War (SCW) 1936–1939, many young working-class sportsmen volunteered. They were both physically and politically active and some of them outstanding athletes. The search of these unknown men has just begun. Doomed Youth is a tribute to them and the first step toward a bigger attempt to better comprehend the role of sportsmen volunteers enlisted during the first months of the SCW, a fact that to date has received little scholar attention. Archival research, especially war combatants' family records as well as newspaper archives, oral memories of the protagonists left alive, and historical contextualization were defined as the appropriate methods to conduct the research. This paper is devoted to one of these young volunteers, Antonio Cánovas, recently dead in 2018 at the age of 98, whose life story in the 1930s and 1940s may be taken as the epitome of the young working-class sportsman of the cutting-edge regions of Spain in the first half of the 20th century: youngsters aware of their political and social rights whose dreams of social justice and active life were dashed by the war.

The Effect of Adding Virtual Reality Training on Traditional Exercise Program on Balance and Gait in Unilateral, Traumatic Lower Limb Amputee.

Objective: Lower limb amputation is common in war combat and armed conflict as well as in traumatic settings and presents a challenge for health care providers. The incorporation of advanced technologies, particularly virtual reality, presents an opportunity to address the main consequences of amputation, principally balance and gait. The aim of this study was to investigate the additional effect of virtual reality with a traditional rehabilitation exercise program on balance and gait in unilateral, traumatic lower limb amputees. Materials and Methods: Thirty-two traumatic lower limb amputees, fulfilling a postfitting rehabilitation program at least 6 months ago, were recruited and randomly assigned into two identically sized groups; group C (control group) experiencing the traditional exercise program and group VR (virtual reality group) experiencing an addition of a virtual reality training. The intervention was conducted over 6 weeks at a rate of three sessions per week. Outcome measures assessed before and after 6 weeks were the Berg Balance Scale (BBS), Timed Up and Go (TUG) test, Dynamic Gait Index (DGI), and 6-minute walk test (6 MWT). Results: Both interventions induced improvement in all measured parameters (P < 0.05); however, virtual reality demonstrated significant superior effects only on the balance markers, TUG test, DGI, and BBS (P < 0.05), but not on the 6 MWT (P > 0.05). Conclusion: Virtual reality is a promising, amusing, and safe intervention for addressing balance and gait in unilateral, traumatic lower limb amputees.

Reduced Legal Equality of Combatants in War

AbstractThe focus on the moral rights of combatants in the ethics of war ignores a very important point: although morally unjust combatants cannot be considered moral equals to just combatants, especially with regard to the right to kill, there are sound moral reasons why the laws of war should accept a kind of equality between them, a concept referred to as “reduced legal equality.” Reduced legal equality is not about equal moral rights but about granting legal immunity to combatants for their conduct in accordance with the laws of war. This article shows that reduced legal equality of combatants is not only the morally best legal regulation in our nonideal international world but also the correct interpretation of international law.