Fellow Soldiers Research Articles

Tatars and Imperialist Wars: From the Tsar's Servitors to the Red Warriors

Drawing on the accounts of Tatar soldiers and Muslim chaplains as well as the Tatar press, this article probes the ways in which the Russo-Turkish War, Russo-Japanese War, and the Balkan Wars shaped Volga-Ural Muslim literati discourse concerning citizenship, the nation's body and soul, and its fates in a growingly violent world order. It concludes that all these elements were crucial to Tatar political workers of the Red Army for finding solutions to their coreligionists' sufferings from the imperialist wars in Bolshevik class universalism, which drove their fellow soldiers from the Great War to the Civil War.

“True” Conservatives in Fifties America: Robert A. Taft and the Politics of a Hoosier Soldier in Korea

“True” Conservatives in Fifties AmericaRobert A. Taft and the Politics of a Hoosier Soldier in Korea Douglas A. Dixon (bio) On November 6, 1952, a Hoosier soldier serving in Korea, Private David Dixon, declared in a letter to his mother that “the biggest news . . . is the election results. . . . We can say we put our man in; now I hope he continues to do what he has said he would in all those campaign speeches.”1 Dwight Eisenhower, the president-elect, had promised to bring the boys home, the most important campaign pledge no doubt for Dixon’s mother and for many soldiers.2 Yet Eisenhower missed the mark in at least one notable comparison to this private’s first choice, Republican presidential candidate Robert A. Taft. Dixon told his mother: “I myself still stick to Taft and his isolationist ideas.”3 These words flowed in the context of the Hoosier soldier’s lamentations about the lack of the war’s progress, US involvement in it, and the Korean people’s bitterness toward the war and perceived corruption of South Korean president Syngman [End Page 58] Rhee. His vote of confidence in Taft, just months after the Republican National Convention had put Ike on top, followed the line of reasoning that Americans had no business fighting in faraway places as a “bunch of suckers.”4 Taft had publicly voiced similar aspersions on intervention abroad while participating in World War I relief and later during the Second World War: “I am an isolationist” if that means “isolation from European wars.”5 A teenager during Hitler’s advances, Dixon very likely would have heard of Taft’s ideas, particularly as they differed from 1940s presidential candidate and Indiana native Wendall Willkie. By 1948, during the young man’s final year of high school, Taft was receiving plenty of coverage as a presidential candidate.6 Dixon’s anti-interventionist foreign policy preference, however, hardly skimmed the surface of this Hoosier private’s political ideology. The totality of his Korean War correspondence very likely put him firmly in the midfifties Republican column, in turn, fitting in neatly with the majority of citizens from Indiana who went to the polls during a time that has been characterized as the “Republican revival.”7 There was, perhaps, little to recommend him to Adlai Stevenson’s candidacy, though this is an area worthy of exploration beyond the focus here. Indianans have had a long tradition of intense somewhat evenly divided partisanship, especially in southwestern Indiana.8 More importantly [End Page 59] for this investigation, Dixon’s preference for Taft over Eisenhower may suggest more nuanced points of comparison, that of institutional self-identity among the most critical. These differences between the two leading Republican presidential candidates and how they may have resonated with the values of Private Dixon and conservatives in Indiana and the nation are the primary focus here. Dixon’s Korean War letters discuss numerous beliefs and values of consequence to Hoosiers and the nation in political contests during the early Cold War period. Moreover, his ideas may reflect specific coalitions within Indiana.9 His firsthand experience with army bureaucracy, the army’s lack of determination to seek victory wholeheartedly, and inefficiency likely colored negatively perceptions he held of government generally. Dixon was no army regular, either, and this, too, may partly explain why he was sensitive to the differences he felt between many of his fellow soldiers and himself in his letter of November 6, 1952: “The [presidential election] news was received with rather shocking results to true army men, for they seem to be against Ike.”10 His correspondence leaves little doubt that he viewed national news surrounding the war with suspicion (while favoring the local perspective), that he believed money should be spent frugally, that hard work toward a useful purpose was central to living right, and that communism was bad—though war worse.11 The Hoosier private’s images of Koreans are mixed, but generally, he emphasized American superiority. A strong attachment to beliefs connected to his Protestant upbringing and commitment to religious duties also defined him, [End Page 60] with important implications for political identity. Family and rural roots no doubt...

Lest We Forget: World War I and New Mexico by David V. Holtby

Reviewed by: Lest We Forget: World War I and New Mexico by David V. Holtby Joshua E. Kastenberg Lest We Forget: World War I and New Mexico. By David V. Holtby. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018. xi + 548 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $32.95 cloth. The carnage of the "War to End All Wars," or more aptly, World War I, ended over a century ago. Unlike the Civil War sesquicentennial, which resulted in hundreds of books, the century anniversary of the United States' involvement in the first modern global conflict was rather muted. Nonetheless, quality scholarship resulted in studies on the alteration of laws, science, and medicine, as well as economic and social upheaval. And there were a small number of superb localized histories that studied the war's effects on communities. David V. Holtby's' Lest We Forget: World War I and New Mexico falls into this latter category. Holtby presents a thoroughly researched narrative history that brings several New Mexicans to life, through the haze of a century laden by yet another world war, a depression, and various other political, social, and global conflicts. He notes, in a chapter titled "Sleepwalkers," that "the battlefield's casualties reveal ordinary New Mexicans doing extraordinary things," and then adds that "they deserve to be heard." His book succeeds in doing more than that. New Mexico was one of the two newest states when the US went to war against Imperial Germany and its allies. Its demographics were more than a mirror of the nation. There were citizens who traced their lineage to a period before the Spanish Land Grant of 1692; yet, wide sections of the US would not have viewed them as citizens. Holtby's use of original source material explains the patriotism of, and other reasons for, Hispanic New Mexicans as well as Native Americans joining the armed forces. One only need look at the bibliography to learn of Holtby's use of the personal correspondences and governmental records of the state's participants in the war. He brings to life their experience of basic training, journey to the Western Front, and life (and death) in the trenches. This includes the fact that some of the Nuevomexicano soldiers did not read or write [End Page 245] English and had to rely on fellow soldiers to make it through military life. Holtby also provides insight into the role of women during the war, including the importance of their efforts in promoting the war and gaining employment. Women, it has been written, achieved a foothold in the nation's economy and political life as a result of the war, and Holtby provides evidence that this occurred in New Mexico. Yet he also shows how in a population divided by race, ethnicity, and economy, the roles and advances of each group were hardly uniform, and that Anglos socially benefited more than any other group. If there is one shortcoming in the book, and this shortcoming is minimal, it is that he does not spend enough time on how the military's unique disciplinary system or how the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917 and 1918 affected the state population. New Mexico was, and is, not New York. Its population in 1917 placed it at the bottom of the list of state populations. And its demographics, though hardly homogenous, were unique to it. Yet any scholar who seeks insight into how a global conflict affects a state population should read this book, for it contributes superbly not only to New Mexico history but also to the history of the nation. Joshua E. Kastenberg School of Law University of New Mexico Copyright © 2020 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

A CHRONICLE OF CALCUTTA JEWRY

Studies conducted into minorities like the Jews serves the purpose of sensitizing one about the existence of communities other than one’s own one, thereby promoting harmony and better understanding of other cultures. The Paper is titled ‘A Chronicle of Calcutta Jewry’. It lays stress on the beginning of the Jewish community in Calcutta with reference to the prominent Jewish families from the city. Most of the Jews in Calcutta were from the middle-east and came to be called as Baghdadi Jews. Initially they were influenced by Arabic culture, language and customs, but later they became Anglicized with English replacing Judeo-Arabic (Arabic written in Hebrew script) as their language. A few social evils residing among the Jews briefly discussed. Although, the Jews of our city never experienced direct consequences of the Holocaust, they contributed wholeheartedly to the Jewish Relief Fund that was set up by the Jewish Relief Association (JRA) to help the victims of the Shoah. The experience of a Jewish girl amidst the violence during the partition of India has been briefly touched upon. The reason for the exodus of Jews from Calcutta after Independence of India and the establishment of the State of Israel has also been discussed. The contribution of the Jews to the lifestyle of the city is described with case study on ‘Nahoums’, the famous Jewish bakery of the city. A brief discussion on an eminent Jew from Calcutta who distinguished himself in service to the nation – J.F.R. Jacob, popularly known as Jack by his fellow soldiers has been given. The amicable relations between the Jews and Muslims in Calcutta have also been briefly portrayed. The research concludes with the prospect of the Jews becoming a part of the City’s history, peacefully resting in their cemeteries. Keywords: Jews, Calcutta, India, Baghdadi, Holocaust

Military Loyalty as a Moral Emotion

Loyalty between soldiers is idealized as an emotion that promotes cohesion and combat effectiveness. However, little empirical work has examined how military personnel understand, feel, and enact loyalty. We use a symbolic interactionalist informed frame to explore the lived experience of 24 retired Australian Defence Force members via in-depth semi-structured interviews. Our analysis revealed three core themes: (1) Loyalty as reciprocity, where there was an expectation that loyalty would be returned no matter what. (2) The importance of emotional connection for cohesion. (3) Loyalty as a prioritizing process, where a soldier’s loyalties gave them a way of choosing between competing demands. Loyalty is a moral emotion that enabled sensemaking. Close interpersonal loyalties tended to trump wider/diffused loyalties. Respondents understood their loyalties to fellow soldiers within wider social constructs of mateship and professionalism. The findings show the risks that come from a reliance on loyalty for combat cohesion.

Help-seeking behavior among Danish veterans with self-reported mental problems – a 22 years register-based follow-up study

Purpose: To estimate the prevalence of utilization of mental health services (MHS) among Danish veterans with self-reported deployment-related mental problems and to identify predictors for help-seeking behavior for mental problems among veterans.Materials and methods: Data on deployment characteristics was obtained from a telephone survey in 2011 among a random sample of veterans deployed during 1996–2009. Only respondents reporting sustained or less sustained mental problems were included, and data from national registers on mental health service utilization and prescribed psychotropics covering up to 22 years of follow-up was obtained. Logistic regression analysis was performed to identify predictors of help-seeking.Results: Of 434 respondents with self-reported problems, 333 (77%) received any mental health service after deployment. Of those, 48 (23%) received any help within the first 2 years after deployment start while 128 (61%) did not receive help until after 4 years. Significant predictors for MHS utilization included sustained mental problems, combat exposure characteristics (being injured in combat, watching a fellow soldier suffer injuries), and deployment-related factors (being deployed to >1 mission and being deployed to Afghanistan).Conclusion: These findings highlight the importance of time, and hereunder of a long follow-up period, when measuring the prevalence of help-seeking behavior for individuals experiencing mental problems after military deployment.

The Politics of Sex Abuse in Sacred Hierarchies: A Comparative Study of the Catholic Church and the Military in the United States

The paper explores similarities in patterns of abuse and in patterns of how the known abuse cases are handled by the Catholic church and the U.S. military and develops preliminary explanations of why. The paper considers how the two organizations deal with external efforts by civil authorities at oversight and prosecution, and the extent to which they invoke their sacred status authority to evade responsibility and civilian oversight. The paper finds that the handling of sex abuse in each organization has been affected partly by the institutions seeing themselves as sacred, as something apart from the secular state, beholden to alternative authorities. The paper highlights the fact that child sex abuse by religious officials and sexual assault of soldiers by fellow soldiers and officers constitute profound challenges for democracy in the US and elsewhere, as the institutions claim and may be accorded separate and privileged status, beyond the reach of democratic laws and procedures. It is a warning about the costs of public deference to other institutions. The study utilizes documentation of Catholic church clergy child sex abuse cases in the US, and documentation of sex abuse cases in the US military.

War, Snipers, and Rage from <em>Enemy at the Gates</em> to <em>American Sniper</em>

Shooting people, murder and war are inherently violent activities to which the concept of rage might seem inextricably linked, but deeper examination reveals levels of complexity. Despite what we often perceive, soldiers are actually trained to operate in a calm and dispassionate manner. This is especially the case for military snipers, who perform the role of hiding in the battlefield, waiting for the chance to take single aimed shots to kill an unsuspecting enemy. My study examines the concept of rage and compares the level of rage in the film American Sniper (2014), set in the Iraq war with that of Enemy at the Gates (2001), set during the siege of Stalingrad in the Second World War. I argue that a form of controlled rage can be seen in the world of the sniper, and I set this against the acceptance of violence in an America where mass shootings appear to be an ever-growing expression of individual rage.

A Tombstone of the Roman Legionary Gaius Valerius Victor from Olbia

The article examines the epitaph on the Roman soldier’s tombstone found in 2004 at the necropolis of Olbia. In 2009, 20 m from the place of the find, the male burial of the end of 2nd — 3rd century CE with remains of Roman soldiers’ shoes was discovered. Direct connection of the gravestone with this burial is not excluded. If this comparison is reasonable one can assume that the buried was a soldier-veteran who served 26 years in the Legio I Italica of the Roman army — Gaius Valerius Victor. The tombstone to him was made by T. Aurelio Piscinus, probably a fellow soldier.

Tim O’Brien’s “Bad” Vietnam War: The Things They Carried & Its Historical Perspective

Tim O’Brien was sent to Vietnam as a foot soldier in 1969, during the later part of the Vietnam War that can be called the “bad” or unwinnable war. Based on his experience, O'Brien's writing about the Vietnam War in his award-winning fiction novels is always "bad," meaning that the war was terrible for American grunts like himself, his fellow soldiers, and Vietnamese civilians, with practically no good or inspiring stories. Nevertheless, O’Brien touches upon almost all problems of American soldiers in the Vietnam War, but not many peer-reviewed authors or online literary analysis websites could identify or discuss them all. The purpose of this article is to discuss the war details in O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and its historical perspective, so that young middle and high school readers can understand the meaning behind Tim O'Brien's writing about the Vietnam War. The goal is to summarize the entire big picture of the Vietnam War and to help students determine whether American soldiers’ actions, as described by Tim O’Brien, were morally right or wrong and were legal or forbidden according to the US law of war. The war-related issues that O’Brien mentioned in this novel are: boredom and meaningless death, abusive violence toward Vietnamese noncombatants, drug use, in-fighting, thefts within barracks, grief, rage, self-mutilation, mutilation of enemy corpses, and senseless animal and civilian killings.

Minority representation, tokenism, and well-being in army units

ABSTRACTRacial and ethnic diversity is increasing in the US Army and women are moving into more combat roles. This puts minority soldiers at risk for being underrepresented in their work units. Tokenism theory predicts that when a work group has less than 15% representation in a social group, the numerically underrepresented minority (i.e., token) members are subject to three disadvantages: higher visibility, informal isolation, and role encapsulation. In the Army, where many companies contain small numbers of women and racial minorities, some soldiers may face additional stressors and constraints. We explored psychosocial, organizational, and health outcomes of all identifiable token women (N = 4,425) and Black soldiers (N = 5,040). Tokens were remarkably similar to non-tokens and majority soldiers on outcomes such as coping skills, adaptability, organizational trust, sleep, substance use, and pain. The intersection of token status in terms of race and gender was not related to any appreciable differences. One potential explanation is the shared Army culture that emphasizes group unity and the importance of the mission above individual characteristics and goals. The Army depends on cohesion, organizational identification, and commitment to the group in order to reduce stress and anxiety, and to maximize combat performance. For soldiers who have internalized this culture, it could be easier to see past individual differences such as gender and race and identify others in the unit as fellow soldiers primarily.

Writing the Taiping War into the History of the Southern Ming: Xu Zi, the Militia of Luhe, and the Annals of a Fallen State

Between 1853 and 1858, the militia and hired braves of Luhe county, Jiangsu, distinguished themselves by successfully defending against Taiping attack when surrounding counties and cities all fell. The historian Xu Zi (1810–62) served as a militia leader, commanding a company of troops and working to raise funds to pay for provisions. At the same time, he was writing his history of the Southern Ming Courts: Annals of a Fallen State, With Appended Annotations ( Xiaotian jinian fukao ). In his history, Xu Zi included anecdotes of his wartime experiences, writing the Taiping War into the history of the Southern Ming. What does history do? Xu Zi hoped it could help establish and maintain the coherence of the forces fighting the Taiping. To that end, he presented exemplary figures from the past for people of his own time to emulate, and he narrated those stories to his fellow soldiers. At the same time, his work suggests that the practices of the historian—including investigation of sources, expressions of emotion, and evaluation of policy—could provide avenues for defeating the Taiping. By writing himself into his history of the Southern Ming, he showed how the past could become a tool of war.

Estonian soldiers and the others in World War One: imagining and encountering friends and foes

ABSTRACTDuring World War I, around 80,000 Estonian soldiers were mobilized into the Russian Army. The warfare and the composition of the Russian Army presented the Estonians with plentiful opportunities to experience and encounter many others. By relying on Estonian soldiers’ letters, diaries, and memoirs, this article takes a look at how the experiences of imagining and encountering others – the enemies (mostly the Germans) and the Estonians’ fellow soldiers in the Russian Army (mainly the Russians) – evolved during the war and contributed to Estonians’ war experiences as well as to their rising national consciousness on the eve of the collapse of the Russian Empire and the emergence of the nation-states.As this case study of Estonian soldiers shows, the images of others were dynamic and were affected by numerous factors, such as propaganda, patriotism (or lack thereof), and direct encounters. The minorities of the Russian Army who often struggled with making sense of the war and with experiencing camaraderie in the multi-ethnic army, could at times perceive enemy others more positively than they perceived their fellow soldiers. While the Estonians mainly pictured the Germans as the enemy, they could also imagine German soldiers as fellow sufferers, or the German Army as a liberator who would free the Estonians from the Bolshevik regime in 1918. Encountering fellow soldiers – mainly the Russians – did rarely generate camaraderie and feelings of shared identity but rather revealed differences between the Estonians and other soldiers, and ultimately resulted in growing separatist and nationalistic fervour among the Estonians.

The Eleventh Hour by Jacques Goldstyn

Reviewed by: The Eleventh Hour by Jacques Goldstyn Elizabeth Bush Jules was born two minutes later than Jim, the boy next door who would become his best friend, and he's never been able to make up for that lost time: "Jim always took the lead; he was faster and stronger than Jules." The two are nonetheless inseparable, and when news of war reaches their Canadian town in 1914, they enlist together. True to the pattern of Jim's hustle and Jules' shuffle, Jim arrives everywhere on time, garnering the best-fitting uniform and the shiniest new convoy ship overseas; he's the first over the hill in any action and has the medal to prove it, while Jules follows in his wake, determined but undistinguished. They do their duty in the trenches, and "sometimes at night, the two friends hugged each other. Sometimes they even cried as they talked about going home." The Great War winds down, the generals and statesmen negotiate an armistice, and the soldiers fight until eleven on the morning of November eleventh. Jim, true to form, battles a tad more furiously than Jules; he catches a fatal bullet at 10:58, leaving his ever tardy friend to return home and rebuild a life on his own. This antiwar parable, dedicated to George Lawrence Price, the last Canadian solider to die in World War I, at 10:58 on November 11, 1918, is a powerful and accessible multi-audience picture book that imbues meaning to the hundredth anniversary of a war's end now shrouded in the long ago while challenging young readers to weigh the merits of current conflicts in the news. For younger children or those who simply focus on the economical text and glance at the loosely cartooned line and watercolor illustrations, Goldstyn offers a compact précis of the war through the experience of two Everymen who "didn't understand all the news reports about treaties and alliances, but … understood that their country needed them." Recruitment, training, and transport; trench and aerial warfare; women taking up domestic and wartime employment on the homefront; armistice, last-second tragedy, and a legacy of commemorations are part and parcel of the Great War, and although impetus and weaponry may shift and evolve, they basically reprise and presage every other war. For older readers, or those inclined to linger and take in the gruesome scenery, Goldstyn conducts a masterclass in visual storytelling. From our first introduction to the baby boys asleep in their cribs, it's clear that Jim, with his curly ginger topknot, has advantage beyond two minutes of lead time; he dozes in a painted, decorated little bed with a cat by his side, while Jules sleeps in a soapbox with a mouse looking on. He's stacking blocks while Jules gnaws on them, toddles while Jules is still on his knees, whizzes along on his two-wheeler while Jules relies on training wheels. It's empathetic Jules, though, who looks at his worn-down [End Page 109] fellow soldiers and realizes they're starting to look like cavemen, and who glances back at the row of German prisoners, wondering whether they're luckier because, for them, the war is over. The violence, acknowledged but underplayed in the text, develops visually. It starts with the shocking moment when the cheerful imagery is besmirched by the blood spatter from the assassinated archduke, then it's brought close to home as Jim bayonets a practice dummy during training, and it climaxes in dark absurdity as Germans and Allies storming a symbolic hill leap to their deaths in a steaming "huge cauldron that kept devouring men." The postwar dénouement, in which Jules makes his livelihood as a horologist, delivers the final irony: Jules now make clocks, which all run two minutes slow, and when there is a wreath-laying ceremony at the war memorial he is, of course, two minutes late. Two minutes. It can be the line between war and disarmament, and it can be the difference between losing or keeping a friend. (See p. 123 for publication information.) Click for larger view View full resolution Copyright © 2018 The Board of Trustees of the University...

IoT-based Healthcare Monitoring System for War Soldiers using Machine Learning

In today’s world, warfare is an important factor in any nation’s security. One of the important and vital roles is played by the army soldiers. There are many concerns regarding the safety of soldiers. So for their security purpose, many instruments are mounted on them to view their health status as well as their real time location. Bio-sensor systems comprise various types of small physiological sensors, transmission modules and processing capabilities, and can thus facilitate low-cost wearable unobtrusive solutions for health monitoring. This paper gives an ability to track the location and monitor health of the soldiers in real time who become lost and get injured in the battlefield. It helps to minimize the time, search and rescue operation efforts of army control unit. This system enables to army control unit to track the location and monitor health of soldiers using GPS module and wireless body area sensor networks (WBASNs), such as temperature sensor, heart beat sensor, etc. The data coming from sensors and GPS receiver will be transmitted wirelessly using ZigBee module among the fellow soldiers. Furthermore, LoRaWAN network infrastructure has been proposed to be used between the squadron leader and the control unit in high altitude warzones where cellular network coverage is either absent or does not allow data transmission. The collected data will be uploaded on the cloud for further data analysis and predictions using K-Means Clustering algorithm.

Deployment of personnel to military operations: impact on mental health and social functioning.

Deployment of personnel to military operations: impact on mental health and social functioning.

Un loup pour l'homme by Brigitte Giraud

Reviewed by: Un loup pour l'homme by Brigitte Giraud Jane E. Evans Giraud, Brigitte. Un loup pour l'homme. Flammarion, 2017. ISBN 978-2-08-138916-8. Pp. 246. In the 21 years since the French government announced that the Algerian "conflict" had, indeed, been a "war," fictional and non-fictional works on the subject have abounded. Un loup pour l'homme, Brigitte Giraud's ninth novel, is one such effort. Giraud, who received the Goncourt de la nouvelle in 2007 and the Prix Giono in 2009, demonstrates her craft again in this fiction recounting the Algerian tour of duty of French Army nurse Antoine in 1960. Married to Lila, now pregnant, Antoine is torn between his obligation to his spouse and to his country. Although informed by his doctor that military service in Algeria for "maintenir l'ordre" (19) cannot compare to a war, Antoine, his fellow soldiers, and Lila gradually discover the very different truth of the enlisted men engaging in violent confrontations against the Algerian independence seekers and then suffering the physical, emotional, and psychological consequences of executing their assignments. Giraud excels in portraying how the soldiers cope with their duties. Antoine's hospital work exempts him from combat. However, he sees the atrocities inflicted on the human body firsthand as the wounded men arrive on stretchers. Unable to speak of these experiences in his letters to Lila, Antoine draws pictures of Algiers and the port instead. Nor can he discuss his experiences with his friend Martin, the company cook, with whom he shares fewer laughs and cigarettes as the "guerre invisible" (47) or unspoken conflict intensifies. Whereas Antoine and his wife choose for her to come to Algeria from France and set up house as they await the birth of their first child, Martin, qui "parle en tête à tête avec une salamandre" (153), typifies the lonely soldier who spirals into depression. Fascinated by the French government's silencing of the true nature of the Algerian incidents and the subsequently widespread devastation that the soldiers must also keep secret, Antoine is drawn to Oscar, an amputee whose elective mutism demonstrates his way of distancing himself from the war's horrors. As his nurse and later his friend, Antoine shares in the image of the wolf that has predominated Oscar's life. In this instance, as with her other characters, author Giraud skillfully weaves her theme into the development of the relationship between the two men. For Antoine, the friendship with Oscar proves to be another life lesson on the destruction left in the wake of battle. Not only does Un loup pour l'homme emphasize the foreignness of French soldiers on Algerian soil and their disorientation vis-à-vis their unnamed war, it reiterates this metaphor in their estrangement from their fellow man, loved ones, and ultimately, themselves. Wanting desperately to turn the page on the horrific events of the war, many are forced to concede: "[L]a guerre d'Algérie n'a pas eu lieu" (242). [End Page 209] Jane E. Evans University of Texas, El Paso Copyright © 2018 American Association of Teachers of French

Friendship in War: Camaraderie and Prevention of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Prevention

Aspects of social support during combat deployment, such as unit cohesion, have been shown to affect later posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) development among veterans. We utilized a longitudinal database to assess how relationship quality with fellow soldiers in World War II (WWII) might be linked with postwar PTSD symptoms. Data were available on 101 men who experienced combat exposure in WWII, documented through postwar assessment. Upon study entry (1939 to 1942), data were collected on the quality of participants' early childhood relationships and their emotional adjustment during college. Data on WWII experiences were collected in 1946. Relationship quality with fellow soldiers in WWII was examined as a moderator of the link between combat exposure and postwar PTSD symptoms. Prewar emotional adjustment was examined as a mediator between quality of childhood relationships and subsequent quality of relationships quality with fellow soldiers during war. Better quality relationships with fellow soldiers attenuated (i.e., moderated) the link between combat exposure severity and PTSD symptom count, explaining a significant percent of the variance, R2 = .19, p < .001. There was also a significant indirect mediation effect of childhood relationship quality on relationships with soldiers through prewar emotional adjustment, ab = 0.02, 95% BCa CI [0.01, 0.05]. Results suggest that better peer relationship quality during deployment may reduce the likelihood of subsequent PTSD symptom development, and that the quality of early relationships may set the stage for better relationships during stressful contexts such as war. These findings have implications for PTSD risk factor screening prior to deployment, and underscore the importance of interpersonal support among soldiers during deployment.

Listening to the din of the First World War

In Great War texts, ranging from memoirs and journal articles to songs and novels, former soldiers comment not only on the extraordinary noise of the battlefield, but also on the importance of listening to that noise. As Erich Maria Remarque laments, “young recruits … are mown down because they are listening anxiously to the roar of the big coal-boxes falling in the rear, and miss the light, piping whistle of the low-spreading daisy cutters”. By juxtaposing a variety of sources in different media, representing different ideological positions, nationalities, and race and class backgrounds, this article documents a distinctive aural culture that emerged along the Western Front. Through battle experiences, the informal pedagogy of fellow soldiers, and formal listening duties, soldiers developed an aural acuity that not only helped them survive but also challenged prior understandings of the relationship between “listening”, “noise”, and “music”.

Protecting the borders: etiquette manuals and ethnology in the erstwhile South African Defence Force

This paper describes the rise and fall of the Ethnological Section of the South African Defence Force (SADF) and examines two inter-related conundra: Why were senior policy makers’ pleas for officers’ courses in ethnology unsuccessful when the SADF had large numbers of ethnologists in its employ? Second, why were they fixated on etiquette manuals which were, content-wise, often laughable? On the available evidence, I suggest that the raison d’être for the use of ethnologists was to encourage white soldiers to accept black fellow soldiers and to improve relations with the local populace. However, rather than promote good relations, the etiquette manuals frequently reinforced the racial order because of their ambiguity. The SADF ethnologists’ insistence on the rigid adherence to etiquette also laboured under the delusion that compelling dominant parties to behave politely would solve the problems arising from structural inequality and exploitation. For their part, senior officers dismissed these poorly qualified ethnologists as impractical and lacking credibility, limiting their use in strategic and tactical operations.