Why are wartime comrades so close?
It is a story often repeated. People serving together in a military unit engaged in combat develop strong ties to one another and maintain contact after leaving the military. I have heard it said that the perspective when fighting is not that of serving some great cause or defeating some evil enemy, but rather of protecting the members of one’s unit.
Has anybody ever studied this phenomenon? Does it occur anywhere else other than in combat? For what it is worth, let me float the following idea. Engaging in combat must in some sense be part of our nature, but so is a repugnance toward killing. I wonder if part of the closeness is a kind of shared guilt.
There are other situations I can think of that have some of the characteristics of fighting together, but as far as I know none of them has the same tendency to create lasting friendships: People on a sport team, either amateur or professional or people engaged in dealing with the consequences of some natural disaster, policemen working together.
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9 Answers
We are like lumps of coal.. when subjected to the high pressure, high heat of battle.. we become as diamonds. As our character, our minds.. sort of melt to react to such harsh environments.. they are reformed together. The same happens, although much more slowly, with a marriage.
shared hardship forges strong bonds. Not sure why, I think it leaves a major impression in your life and so do those who share it with you.
For the answer watch Band of Brothers. I think it spells it out quite nicely.
In our ordinary dealings with each other, it’s easy to maintain the illusion that we’re essentially different and independent. Extreme situations like battle and its analogs strip that illusion away.
The cloud of personal stuff that normally envelops each person, giving each his his identity but also separating him from others, is irrelevant. Your personal history, social class, race, education, talents…none of that matters. Being is distilled down to it’s core in the here and now, and in the clarity of that eternal moment there is great intimacy.
Lives may go on after that, and people resume their roles as individuals, cloaked in their identities. But the illusion of independence, having been so clearly seen through, is never again so convincing.
@Harp wow.. great answer… I’m speechless .. wish i could write like that
I have to agree. Great answers from both @NaturalMineralWater and @Harp, one in poetic terms and the other in spiritual terms.
Let me follow up on @Harp. Might we say that war forces one to live in the moment with an intensity that can only come from the need for self-preservation?
No, not exactly. In the case of war, the instinct for self-preservation is what brings the soldier’s full attention to the moment, but once the attention is fully engaged, the self and its concerns are transcended. Which is why we see so many acts of utter selflessness in war: the pure attention to the moment opens the door to the world beyond self, a door which our habitual self-concern typically makes us resist opening. Once that threshold of selflessness has been crossed, that sensation of being free of self-concern can become quite seductive. Soldiers can become addicted to battle.
So to be nit-picky, self-preservation may provide the impetus, but once the attention is fully engaged it becomes irrelevant. Some people may indeed not be able to get there without putting their lives on the line in a physical sense. But even a musician playing in a tightly connected group can get to a point where his attention to the moment allows him to step away from self (daloon has often commented on this). When that happens, the distinctions between members of the band dissolve in what I think would be the same way as between soldiers on a battlefield.
If there is a question of degree, the degree lies in how effectively one is able to focus the attention. That will vary from person to person, and is shaped by one’s physiology and training. For some, it may require a war. For some, even that may not be enough.
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