Category Archives: combat

Manipulating public opinion to wage war: Part 3/5

The American Civil War (1861 – 1865) “was absolutely an important moment in the history of the press,” says Penn State’s Risley. “The practices, technological development you begin to see during the war—the importance of the telegraph, the use of illustrations, for example—and the growth in demand for newspapers, so many of these things came together during this remarkable and tragic event.”

The demand for newspapers in both the North and South soared during the Civil War, says Risley, whose book is Civil War Journalism (Praeger, 2012).

This demand for information continued after the war and pushed more newspapers to broaden their readership. “America really became a nation of newspaper readers during the war.” The Civil War also showed officials how powerful the press could be in shaping public opinion, and government officials often struggled finding an even-handed approach in their handling of the press.

“Abraham Lincoln recognized that the press played a role in public opinion and he used the press effectively,” says Risley. “But, he wasn’t afraid to shut down newspapers, something that would not have been acceptable today.” Source: futurity.org

Perhaps more importantly, newspapers were responsible for editorializing the war.  They were the propaganda machines of the day. Though not universally true, many newspapers published biased accounts of events, “factual” testimonials of enemy atrocities, articles proselytizing for specific political and military goals, and emotionally charged letters from citizens affected by the conflict. A quiet war for public support was waged both in the North and the South with the newspapers serving on the front lines. Issues like conscription, use of slaves as soldiers, and the validity of total war were hotly debated in the papers. The newspapers controlled the ebb and flow of public opinion and a particularly popular circulation could determine the outcomes of city or state politics. … Some newspapers were known to falsely report casualty rates or results of battle to bolster public morale. Source: OregonState.edu

But if the Civil War taught the government about the importance of the media, The Spanish-American War (1898) may have been the first true “media war”.

Today, historians point to the Spanish-American War as the first press-driven war. Although it may be an exaggeration to claim that Hearst and the other yellow journalists started the war, it is fair to say that the press fueled the public’s passion for war. Without sensational headlines and stories about Cuban affairs, the mood for Cuban intervention may have been very different. Source: pbs.org

Continued on July 11, 2013 in Manipulating public opinion to wage wars: Part 4 or return to Part 2

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 Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.

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Shell Shock in 1915 becomes Combat Fatigue by World War II and PTSD in 1980

In World War I, PTSD—known as shell shock then—was such a problem that ‘forward psychiatry’ was begun by French doctors in 1915. Some British doctors tried general anesthesia as a treatment (ether and chloroform), while others preferred application of electricity.

Imagine suffering from PTSD and being strapped down to a table with electrodes attaches followed by jolts of electricity to shock you healthy.

In 1917, four British ‘forward psychiatric units’ were set up. Hospitals for shell-shocked soldiers were also established in Britain, including (for officers) Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh.

Patients diagnosed to have more serious psychiatric conditions were transferred to the Royal Edinburgh Asylum.

Near the end of 1918, the use of anesthetic and electrical treatments to treat shell shock was gradually replaced with modified Freudian psychodynamic intervention. The efficacy of ‘forward psychiatry’ was controversial.

Psychodynamic therapy focuses on unconscious processes as they are manifested in a person’s present behavior. The goals of psychodynamic therapy are a client’s self-awareness and understanding of the influence of the past on present behavior.

In 1922 the British War Office produced a report on shell shock with recommendations for prevention of war neurosis. However, when World War II broke out in 1939, this seems to have been ignored.

Then during World War II, the term ‘combat fatigue’ was introduced as breakdown rates became alarming, and the value of pre-selection was recognized.

At the Maudsley Hospital in London in 1940, barbiturate abreaction (an emotional release resulting from mentally reliving through the process of catharsis, a long-repressed, painful experience) was advocated for quick relief from severe anxiety and hysteria, using i.v. anesthetics: Somnifaine, paraldehyde, Sodium Amytal. ‘Pentothal narcosis’ and ‘narco-analysis’ were adopted by British and American military psychiatrists.

However, by 1945 medical thinking gradually settled on the same approaches that had seemed to be effective in 1918.

The term PTSD was introduced in 1980.

In the UK the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines for management (2005) recommend trauma-focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and consideration of antidepressants. Source: Pub Med.gov

Discover The public image of PTSD and the Vietnam Veteran

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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine, Vietnam Veteran, journalist and award winning author.

His second novel is the award winning love story and suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he didn’t do while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

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US Troops and the Prostitutes that Service Them: Part 3/3

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Before I shipped out to Vietnam, I never received any classes, lectures, inservices or workshops on Southeast Asian culture and at that age—without a college education—I wasn’t curious or interested.

We were US Marines trained to kill. We weren’t there to understand the culture. The only workshop I remember was one about how to avoid getting an STD and how dangerous one strain of syphilis/gonorrhea was in Vietnam.

We were told that if we were careless with a Vietnamese woman, it could be a very painful death sentence from a viral form of an STD that no drugs could cure.

In fact, I didn’t know anyone in my unit who expressed the slightest bit of interest in Vietnam’s culture or history. When we went on five days of R&R during our tour of combat—for example to Hong Kong, Thailand, Okinawa, Japan, or the Philippians—most of us were interested in only one thing: getting drunk and getting laid.

And the hundreds of thousands of US troops who felt the same way were not alone in history.

“According to Beth Bailey and David Farber, during the Second World War a large number of prostitutes in Hawaii, each servicing upward of 100 men a day, made a fiscal “killing.” “Shackjobs,” or long-term, paid relationships with women of Hawaiian or Filipino descent were also common among military personnel stationed in Hawaii (as they were later in Vietnam). …”

And “during the war in Indochina, U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright and Sunday Times of London correspondent Murray Sayle maintained, independently of one another, that U.S. forces in South Vietnam had turned Saigon into a “brothel”—a reference to the estimated 500,000 Vietnamese prostitutes who served an approximately equal number of GI’s. … Source: John Brown University

 

In fact, “There were 20,000 prostitutes in Thailand in 1957; by 1964, after the United States established seven bases in the country, that number had skyrocketed to 400,000.” Source: Prostitution in Thailand and Southeast Asia

In addition, “At the height of the US presence in the Philippines, for example, more than 60,000 women and children were employed in bars, night clubs and massage parlors around the Subic Bay and Clark Naval bases alone. Estimates of the total numbers of Filipina women and girls engaged in prostitution and other sex-based industries range between 300,000 and 600,000.” Source: PeaceNews.info – Command and control: the economies of militarized prostitution

And if you think times have changed, read this: “As recently as 2002, a brothel in Australia closed their doors when a group of 5,500 U.S. Sailors coming back from a war zone stopped off in Australia. From the article: Mary-Anne Kenworthy said she was forced to close the doors of her famous Langtrees brothel for only the third time ever yesterday because her prostitutes were so worn out they could no longer provide a quality service.” Source: Cause of Liberty – Prostitution

Do you condemn those who sinned—if it was a sin—or is it wrong to send a young virgin off to possibly die for his country while denying him the pleasure of a woman even if a prostitute was his only choice? What do you think?

Return to US Troops and the Prostitutes Who Service Them: Part 2 or start with Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

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And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.

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US Troops and the Prostitutes Who Service Them: Part 2/3

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When I joined the US Marines, I was a high school graduate and an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy. I was not an intellectual—instead, I was a walking libido filled to overflowing with testosterone like so many of my fellow Marines.

I turned twenty-one in Vietnam, and up to that time Vietnam veterans were the best educated force the United States has ever sent into combat—79% had a high school education or better. Two-thirds of the men who served in Vietnam were volunteers, and eighty-six percent of those who died in Vietnam were Caucasians, 12.5% were black, and 1.2% were from other ethnic/racial groups.

If I had gone straight to Vietnam instead of spending a few weeks in Okinawa for additional training, I could have died a virgin—having never known what it was like to be sexually intimate with a woman.

And that reminds me of a film called Mrs. Henderson Presents staring Judi Dench as Mrs. Laura Henderson who opens a theater in London during World War Two with an all-nude female review for the allied troops, because her son had died a virgin in combat and she didn’t want these young men to die without having at least seen a young, nude woman at least once.

Continued on June 28, 2013 in US Troops and the Prostitutes Who Service Them: Part 3 or return to Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

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US Troops and the Prostitutes Who Service Them: Part 1/3

“The sin we condemn — the sinner … we try to understand.”
– Adam Michnik (1946 – )

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The subject of this series of posts is about US troops and prostitution. It has been said that prostitution is the world’s oldest profession.

For example, in 2400 B.C., the Sumerians listed prostitution in one the earliest lists of professions, and the practice of prostitution in ancient Rome was both legal and licensed, and even Roman men of the highest social status were free to engage prostitutes of either sex without incurring moral disapproval. In fact, rent from a brothel was considered a legitimate source of income in the Roman Empire.

In addition, Hammurabi’s Code (1780 B.C.) specifically mentioned the rights of a prostitute or the child of a prostitute.

And in China—600 B.C.—brothels were legal, while in Greece (594 BC) state brothels were founded and a prostitute’s earnings were taxed. Source: Historical Timeline – Prostitution

 

In fact, historically, “where there are soldiers, there are women who exist for them. … In some ways, military prostitution (prostitution catering to, and sometimes organized by, the military) has been so commonplace that people rarely stop to think about how and why it is created, sustained, and incorporated into military life and warfare.” Source: The Asia Pacific Journal

That leads to when I was a US Marine age twenty in Okinawa on my way to fight in one of America’s wars, and I arrived a virgin who desperately didn’t want to be one. And when I left Okinawa for Vietnam, I had achieved a goal that hundreds-of-thousand—and maybe millions—in the US military have achieved both during peace time and war.

Continued on June 26, 2013 in US Troops and the Prostitutes Who Service Them: Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

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Lasers, Drones and Killer Robots – the future is now: Part 2/2

More than 70 countries already use unmanned drones—aerial vehicles capable of gathering intelligence, or seeking and, if necessary, eliminating targets.

Now thanks to the fact that the science fiction of Star Trek and Star Wars has become a reality, the United Nations has questioned the ethics of “killer robots”. In fact, there was a call for a halt to their use until the ethical issues could be worked out—sort of late, I think, because of those 70 countries already using these weapons to spy and wage war.

Do you think the development and use of drones and killer robots is going to be put on hold honoring this UN request?

It isn’t as if this topic was new. The question of the ethics of these types of weapons first appeared in 1942 when Isaac Asimov introduced the three laws of robotics in his short story “Run Around”.

·         A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

·         A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

·         A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

But Gizmodo.com says Asimov’s Laws of Robotics are Total BS.

Gizmodo says, “Rather, we need to start wrestling with the ethics of the people behind the machines. Where is the code of ethics in the robotics field for what gets built and what doesn’t?” and “What about me? Is it within my 2nd Amendment right to have a robot that bears arms?”

I don’t know about you, but—in today’s world—I wouldn’t mind having a heavily armed robot warrior on guard 24/7 programed to protect my family and home. In fact, it would be nice if when the kids were at school (including college) that a killer drone was hovering over his or her head at all times keeping an eye on his or her safety.

What think you? And I wonder if one day these killer drones and robots will also suffer from cyber PTSD making them even more dangerous.

Return to Lasers, Drones and Killer Robots – Part 1

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”

Lasers, Drones and Killer Robots – the future is now: Part 1/2

When the world was first introduced to Star Trek—the TV series—in 1966 and then the Star Wars films, starting with A New Hope in 1977, the world did not have killer lasers in addition to drones/robot weapons and Internet cyber warfare.

The laser/energy weapons, and the droids and robots in those early Star Trek and Star Wars films have now become a reality, because in 1999, the Department of Defense (DoD) formally recognized lasers as future weapons and began research and development (R&D).

Now, the R&D has resulted in headlines like Lockheed laser weapon hits its mark again – cnet.com

“Against rockets and missiles, laser weapons work by fixing a high-energy beam on the side wall of the projectile for several seconds, heating it up enough to rupture the skin.”


Killer Robots – Drone Strikes of the future? Young Turks

Another headline says, Military drone with no human control – Smart Planet.com

 “The X-47B is a completely unmanned drone. Meaning, not only no pilot but no human control from the ground. Its missions are initially planned by humans but once these things are airborne they are guided and controlled by on-board computers.”

And Popsci.com reports about A Working Assault Rifle Made with a 3-D Printer

“HaveBlue then decided to push the limits of what was possible and use his printer to make an AR-15 rifle. To do this, he downloaded plans for an AR-15 receiver in the Solidworks file format from a site called CNCGunsmith.com. After some small modifications to the design, he fed about $30 of ABS plastic feedstock into his late-model Stratasys printer. The result was a functional AR-15 rifle. Early testing shows that it works, although it still has some minor feed and extraction problems to be worked out.”

With weapons like the few mentioned in this post, how long before there is no safe place on the Earth and the entire world—including your home—is a battlefield or are we already there?

Continued on June 19, 2013 in Lasers, Drones and Killer Robots – Part 2

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”

Combat casualties and battle-field medicine through the ages: Part 2/2

With the introduction of gun powder, combat casualties increased dramatically, but medical treatment in the battlefield also improved. Field hospitals were introduced by Napoleon. During the Civil War and later in World War I and World War II, trained military medics joined combat units to treat casualties in the field as troops were wounded.

By comparing deaths and the number wounded starting with World War I, we gain a better understanding of how those advances in battlefield medical care improved the odds of survival.

  • World War I (April 6, 1917 – November 11, 1918—one year and eight months): 53,402 deaths and 204,002 wounded in action—an average of 32,170 combat deaths annually.
  • World War II (Dec. 1941 to Aug. 14, 1945—three years and about nine months): 407,300 deaths and 670,846 wounded in action—an average of 108,613 combat deaths annually.

The introduction of the helicopter in Korea and then Vietnam to quickly medevac wounded troops to field hospitals saved many lives.

  • Korea (1950 – 1953—three years): 54,246 deaths and 92,134 wounded in combat—an average of 18,082 combat deaths annually.
  • Vietnam (1956 – 1975—nineteen years): 58,193 deaths and 153,303 wounded in combat—an average of 3,063 combat deaths annually.
  • Desert Storm (1990 – 1991—seven months): 378 deaths and 1,000 wounded in combat—an average of 54 combat deaths a month.
  • Iraq (March 2003 – December 2011—about eight years): 4,403 deaths and 31,827 wounded in combat—an average of 550 combat deaths annually.
  • Afghanistan (October 7, 2001 to present—about eleven years) 2,094 and 18,584 wounded in action—an average of 190 combat deaths annually while back home in the United States more than 30,000 die in vehicle accidents on the roads and highways every year. Sources: Timeline of U.S. Wars and Conflicts and Defense.gov

Today, there are more casualties from suicide than combat. In 2012, the number of active-duty casualties from suicide actually outnumbered the combat deaths in all of Afghanistan, 349 -295.  But it’s even worse than that if you look at the number of suicides by America’s veterans. As of February 4th, TWENTY-TWO veterans kill themselves EVERY DAY. That’s one EVERY 65 MINUTES. Source: Innocence-Clinic.law

Now the challenge is to discover how to treat the invisible wounds and trauma of the mind.

Return to or start with Combat casualties and battle-field medicine through the ages: Part 1

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”

Combat casualties and battle-field medicine through the ages: Part 1/2

Starting with the Roman Empire, it has been estimated that Roman Armies suffered about 885,000 casualties over a nine-hundred year period from 400 BC to 500 AD—that adds up to less than 1,000 average combat deaths annually. Source: Body Count of Roman Empire

It seems that the old way of fighting with swords and spears wasn’t as destructive as modern warfare.

The ancient military physicians of the Greeks and the Romans had discovered that certain treatments, such as the application of honey and salt mixtures to wounds—mostly from cuts and jabs—aided the troops to recover.

The decline of the Roman Empire didn’t happen overnight. It took centuries, and when the Roman Empire fell in the 5th century AD, military medical support was almost gone. With the decline of an empire, also came the end of effective medical care in Europe.

About a thousand years would go by before the rebirth of military medicine in Europe in Spain near the end of the 15th century after the Spanish drove out the Islamic Moors. During the wars, the Spanish military copied the mobile hospitals used by the Moorish armies.

 

But in the 15th century, the introduction of gunpowder in combat caused more casualties, because almost all gunshot wounds became infected due to the injury—clothing, dirt, and other debris was often forced into the wound by the musket ball—and/or from unsanitary conditions following the injury caused by the surgeon probing for the musket ball or shrapnel with unwashed fingers and/or unwashed surgical instruments.

It isn’t as if sterilizing surgical instruments was going to be a new concept. The ancient Chinese, Persians and Egyptians all used methods for water sanitation and disinfection of wounds. In fact, Mercuric chloride was used to prevent infection in wounds by Arabian physicians in the Middle Ages but not in Europe.

In fact, in Europe and American in the 1800’s, infections after surgery caused almost half of the deaths of troops wounded in combat.

Though the number of killed and wounded in the Civil War (1861 – 1865) is not known precisely, most sources agree that the total number killed was between 640,000 and 700,000 resulting in an average of 160,000  – 175,000 combat deaths annually—a massive leap from the average annual combat deaths during the Roman Empire where the well trained and highly disciplined Roman military also had observant medics who wrote down treatments that worked and passed this knowledge on to be used by the next military doctor. In fact, Roman surgeons used about the same tools that American doctors did only one hundred years ago.

However, as it turns out, the bloodiest war in American history was also one of the most influential in battlefield medicine. Civil War surgeons learned fast, and amputation of arms and legs saved more lives from death by infection than any other wartime medical procedure. Sources: Mental Floss.com,  American Civil War Casualties and Military Medicine through the Eighteenth Century

Continued on Wednesday, June 12, 2013 in Combat casualties and battle-field medicine through the ages: Part 2

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”

The Virtual Wall of one War’s Casualties

The Virtual Wall is an index by state and city of Americans who died in the Vietnam War.

When I learned of the Virtual Wall, I visited to see who died from my home towns.  I started with Pasadena, California where I was born and lived my first two or three years of life. Then I visited Azusa, California where I lived ages 3 to 6.  My last search was for Glendora, California where I lived ages 7 to 19 when I graduated from high school and joined the US Marines.

I counted thirty-one casualties from Pasadena, nine from Azusa and nine from Glendora.

Click on the link above and search for your state and hometown/s to discover who died in Vietnam, and you will be taken to a page that has information about those casualties. Click on an individual’s name and discover more about that person.

Americans who joined the US Military in Glendora, California—who may have attended Glendora High School—and who died in Vietnam were Cummings Jr, Liptak, Smith, Kuebel, Rowles, Talley, Leake Jr, Saunders and Willard Jr.

All of these combat casualties were born within a few years of my birth year so we may have been in the same classrooms and walked in the hallways between classes.

When I worked in the high school library as a student aide, I may have helped one of them find a book for a class report.

The last casualty on the list— Willard Jr—served in the US Marines in the 1st Marine Division—the same division I served in while in Vietnam in 1966. Willard died a few months after I left the combat zone. Liptak, Talley and Kuebel were also Marines who enlisted from Glendora, California.

Sobering thoughts that my name could have been on that list too.

Discover The Creative Writing Class at war with the Vietnam Vet

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”