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Others have noted that war has its strange appeals, but few scholars before Bourke have suggested that the pleasure of killing is central to the experience of combat. Surprisingly, Bourke's "ordinary killers" are able to cope with the horror of their acts with minimal psychological damage, re-entering society with amazing smoothness. In her view, the reticence of many veterans to discuss their combat experiences may be attributed less to the fear of dredging up traumatic memories than to veterans' reluctance to admit that they actually enjoyed killing the enemy—perhaps even enjoyed killing noncombatants. The traditional military historian is in for a rough ride with Bourke's book.
Conceding that technological developments have depersonalized killing to a degree while making it more efficient over greater distances, Bourke nevertheless asserts in her introduction that "[t]he characteristic act of men at war is not dying, it is killing." Moreover, "the narrative of personalized killing remains central to men's experience of war," despite the fact that in much of twentieth-century combat the enemy's face was not seen.
But in World War II and especially in Vietnam, support troops vastly outnumbered soldiers on the firing end. Surely their "experience of war" isn't readily comprehended by Bourke's thesis?
Not to worry. When soldiers did not actually observe the effect of their actions, Bourke says, they imagined killing. Their war stories, she admits, are permeated with fantasy. Well, fine. But by conflating fantasy with real experiences she is charting a dangerous methodological course.
Predictably, Bourke's thesis has drawn hostile fire. Despite nearly 100 pages of documentation, she pays very little attention to the scholarly work on combat experience by Dave Grossman, John Keegan, Richard Holmes, or J. Glenn Gray. Moreover, she builds her case with insufficient discrimination. Firsthand accounts form the backbone of her argument, and she accepts them as gospel rather than sometimes the product of hyperbole and braggadocio. One of her critics has suggested that she and her readers take heed of General Sir Ian Hamilton's caution that "on the actual day of battle naked truths may be picked up for the asking; by the following morning, they have already begun to get into their uniforms."
Anecdotal sources, of course, can be helpful provided care is used to develop their context, motive, and representiveness. Clearly, radically different histories of "face-to-face killing" in the twentieth century could be constructed by selecting other sets of war narratives and source materials. In addition to the numerous firsthand accounts from diaries and letters, Bourke also uses literary and cinematic sources as well as anti-war polemics without much concern for bias and veracity. In a Chronicle of Higher Education interview, she states: "Look, this isn't moral history; it's morally engaged history. The text is uncertain; the author is uncertain."
This approach to source material may be justified by postmodern notions that all written documents are fictional in some measure. But, warns British historian Niall Ferguson, anyone who cares about historical methodology should be concerned by such a "cavalier approach to sources." Bourke's approach is also too narrow for the claims she makes. The Anglo-American experience in twentieth-century combat is of course an important subject, but killing in twentieth-century warfare is by no means comprehended without comparative examination of the combat experience of German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and French soldiers. As Ferguson has noted, "English speakers have not been the century's leading exponents of face-to-face killing. Any attempt to theorize about the phenomenon without reference to the German and Russian experiences is bound to be skewed."
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