Conclusion

Let me begin with a story. As my fieldwork progressed, and as I occasionally discussed my project with soldiers and officers, some men joked with me about feeling that I could somehow “peer into their minds.” By these mild jibes, I take it, these men commented about the fact that I had somehow come to understand and to explicitly formulate their doubts and reasonings.

Of course, I could not and was not peering into their minds (I still can't). Rather I at­tempted to look systematically at the publicly shared symbols (naturally occurring meta­phors, images, or even comments) they (and I myself) use to give meaning to military life. Beyond using my own native intuitions and perceptions, I attempted to systemati­cally uncover the means (again, the words, tropes, and imagery) through which these men represent themselves to themselves and to others. As an anthropologist, I did not analyze doctrinal knowledge (of strategy or of tactics), let alone the expertise needed in drills and exercises.

Rather, I aimed to uncover the meanings of soldiering and commanding as they are expressed and used in the everyday lives—in a taken-for-granted, common sense man­ner—of troops and commanders. I did this by systematizing these meanings, and by for­mulating them in terms of a number of basic models by which they are organized. Thus, I have traced out and exemplified a way of looking at military knowledge and at the way such concepts as “combat,” “soldiering,” and the “enemy” are predicated on certain models which organize military knowledge.

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