Combat, Survival, and the Rhetoric of Emotional Control
My analysis does not stray far from rather conventional examinations of organizations. This is because there are many such frameworks—in the business world or in the public sector, for example—which may be marked by the use of such a mixture of metaphors.
In order to understand what distinguishes military organizations, there is a need to take into account the kind of environment wherein units like this battalion are supposed to function, namely, combat. The dimension of combat reveals the distinctiveness and the strength of military metaphors.What kind of experience is combat? In the stark words of various soldiers, combat is a matter of “survival,” a situation of “meeting danger,” or “a game you just can't lose.” This kind of imagery is not atypical of the depiction of combat in any modern army. The scene of the actual firefight with the enemy is generally one of utter chaos and confusion. In this situation the soldier not only confronts the imminent danger of loss of life, and perhaps more frightening, the loss of limb, he also witnesses combat wounds and death suffered by others (Moskos 1988: 5). Closely related to this experience are the more “routine” stresses of combat existence: the weight of the pack and the equipment, the taste and quality (or lack) of food and water, loss of sleep and often difficult weather conditions. There is also a constant and gnawing sense of uncertainty not only about all of these material things, but also about the unfolding action on the battlefield (what has often been termed the “fog” of war) (Keegan 1976: 47).
In the context of the IDF, one of the most common terms used to describe the situation of combat is lachats. The literal translation into English is pressure, but the Hebrew includes all of the synonyms and connotation of this English word: stress, anxiety, strain, or tension. It is at this juncture in which the “machine” and “brain” metaphors of military performance meet the highly stressful situation of combat that an entire “rhetoric of emotional control” emerges.
Furthermore, this emotional control, within and later without the combat situation, comes to figure in a key model or scenario of military performance. Finally, this model is then used in order to evaluate soldiers and actions, and to interpret new situations.In the combat situation, emotions—intermingling and externally triggered emo- tions—take on prime importance for soldiers and commanders. In these circumstances, fear, apprehension, dread and at times exhilaration blend together, and issue forth within oneself because of the external situation. The problem becomes one of agency: Who will be master? Situation or person, circumstances or (because this is such a male thing) man? Furthermore, in the military context issues of control of or by the situation (via emotions) are related to the overall aims of the unit (the fighting machine) that are performing actions in order to change the environment. For example, destruction of personnel and equipment, securing advantageous positions, or simply holding ground. Because emotions may impede or hinder the performance of military tasks—they must be overcome, channeled, and above all controlled.
This may become clearer by means of a distinction made in regard to emotions. Lutz (1990) describes a lack of control of emotions in American culture—and I would argue that by extension in most middle-class cultures in the West—leading to uncontrolled action: “running wild” or “boiling over,” for example. In her words (1990: 72), the metaphor of control implies something that otherwise would be out of control, something wild and unruly, a threat to order. This type of argument has been put forward by Katz (1990) in her study of U.S. army drill sergeants. She found that for these men the prime danger of emotionality is lack of control or uncontrolled behavior, which would prove to be an obstacle to military performance.
Under certain situations such as combat, the understood danger is not only wild, untamed, or frenzied behavior but in a curious way the very opposite: lack of action or paralysis.
This aspect of uncontrolled behavior is very often implied in being “pressured” in combat. Here the image seems to be one of physical pressure on one's limbs and body that impedes intended, forceful and effective action. The image of external forces operating on all or parts of one's physical form well fits the logic of causation in this folk model of emotions where an external situation influences emotions which then impede action.It is on the basis of this kind of reasoning, for example, that so much of military psychotherapy has focused on the debilitating effects of combat rather than on treating a variety of uncontrolled behaviors. Shell shock and battle fatigue are expressed in terms of lack of action or lack of control over one's body, therefore hindering military performance. The very terms “combat reactions” and “functional debilitation” capture the notion of the soldier's involuntary response to the firefight in terms of inability to contribute to the military effort.