Naked units?

[Aemilius Paulus]

I think today a soldier is MUCH more subject to fear, because he knows that he could have nothing to do to avoid death.

Actually, it is quite the opposite. Both common psychological sense and a couple of books on military theory I have read stated it.

Basically, people are not afraid of what they cannot see as much as they are afraid of what they can see. Historians and psychologists often noted the strange calmness of people during the Battle of Britain. As long a certain group of people was not being bombed right that day, they seemed eerily calm whenever asked about the bombings. They simply could not comprehend that it could happen to them. Well; they could, but they still could not grasp it. Just like adolescents. They know that they can easily be killed; but yet they have an odd feeling that nothing bad will ever happen to them. Psychologists rationalised that we were not programmed evolutionary speaking, to respond to dangers from above, as we had no aerial predators.

Artillery and other long range weapons work similarly, as does the fact that people do not get murdered at close range, butchered with spears, swords, clubs, etc. Slaughter is much more sterilised today, even with the indiscriminate and often maiming nature of weapons. Getting shot simply doe not compare with being disembowelled by a seemingly utterly foreign, savage, barbarian, Gallic Swordsman. Another reason why units rout less and are more resilient nowadays.




As for naked warriors and weather, first of all, once a battle starts, even in the deepest of a winter, you are panting and sweating like swine after couple of moments of combat. The naked soldiers could take their clothing off at the last moment. Secondly, winter battles were rare, as winter campaigns were almost non-existent. "Finding a place to winter" was a common expression for a reason. Logistics was a problem back then, and due to the absence of motorized transport, it was a painfully noticeable absence. Romans had a nifty system, but really, until Napoleon (and the canned food one man invented in a competition created by Napoleon) no armies had a solid, regular, and highly organised and efficient supply system. Living off the land it was.

As for autumn and spring, some moments could be quite chilly, but forget not that one can condition himself to resist the cold. Such as Russian morzhi (walruses), to name a few. The morzhi are people who swim in the dead of the winter in freezing waters with nothing on but swimming trunks. It is not impossible, and the fact that they are moving, exercising, and not standing still, surely helps.

[K-Dogs]

Most of this thread is a horrible goldmine of double entendres.

They might have done it to impress the ladies, too, unless of course they were Gayesatae.

[georgeman51]

Most of this thread is a horrible goldmine of double entendres.

They might have done it to impress the ladies, too, unless of course they were Gayesatae.

What are Gayesatae?

[Ibrahim]

What are Gayesatae?

its a pun of Gaesatae-note the Gay-esatae.

[Celtic_Punk]

You bitch about European winters! HAH!! I do the polar dip every year here in Canada. If I can last in below freezing waters, naked with nothing but swimming trunks. I'd have no problem with the cold if I was keeping myself warm with killing other men.

I'm quite doubtful about that. In antiquity you could actually SEE the enemy and you can DO something to avoid death. You could be succesful or not, but your destiny was influenced by your skills.

Today, death come from far away. You can do nothing against an hidden sniper, or even a good aiming enemy soldier with an assault rifle. Needless to talk about any form of artillery.

I think today a soldier is MUCH more subject to fear, because he knows that he could have nothing to do to avoid death.

I think seeing thousands of angry heavilly armed men rushing at you is much more frightening than a sniper. To fight on the ancient battlefield you must mentally prepare yourself. I am more inclined to believe the fear factor on both the modern battlefield and those of the classical era would be quite similar. The same way you stand on the line and prepare yourself to go toe to toe with the romans, or celts, or persians, or whathave you, is the SAME mental preparation you'd have done to take that step out of your C-47, to step off the landing craft onto France, to go over the top! It's all the same. Every soldier must prepare himself for the moment that is to come. To take that first step out the back of your LAV in an ambush, its the same feeling the boys felt when they went over the top.
You cannot make the assumption it's not. There is no way in Hell you could prove otherwise.

[Exosus]

Nords? This is no Mount and Blade . It is Norse. Nords only exist in M&B.

Good to see a fellow fan . Or maybe simply a fellow absent-minded person .

The word Nord is actually something which was appropriated from history by the fantasy industry. Nord was originally one of a few singular specific forms of Norse, the other most common being Norseman. I don't have a reference handy, but the word does appear in historical texts. It has fallen out of fashion with the academic community in direct proportion to its rising popularity in fiction.

In ancient times, and even as recently as the late 1800s, language was far less standardized than it is now. Many slight variations existed for any given word, and Nord(ic) is an example of that. Most of these variations died out and were lost to history or filed under "archaic/obsolete" but that one survived for whatever reason. One form actually appears in Mirriam-Webster, although it is incorrect regarding the nominal form.

Regarding the OT it's pretty much been answered. Demonstration of bravery, intimidation of the enemy, paradoxical love of, and disregard for, one's mangina, etc.

[Owen Glyndwr]

There would definitely be a "brag factor". If you could go into battle without any sort of protection at all, and come out, not just alive, but also victorious, it definitely did something for your status as a brave man and a renowned warrior.

[Watchman]

I think seeing thousands of angry heavilly armed men rushing at you is much more frightening than a sniper. To fight on the ancient battlefield you must mentally prepare yourself. I am more inclined to believe the fear factor on both the modern battlefield and those of the classical era would be quite similar. The same way you stand on the line and prepare yourself to go toe to toe with the romans, or celts, or persians, or whathave you, is the SAME mental preparation you'd have done to take that step out of your C-47, to step off the landing craft onto France, to go over the top! It's all the same. Every soldier must prepare himself for the moment that is to come. To take that first step out the back of your LAV in an ambush, its the same feeling the boys felt when they went over the top.
You cannot make the assumption it's not. There is no way in Hell you could prove otherwise.

People don't seem to have been gettings PTSDs overmuch back in the day, though. One suspects the difference comes from the "dosage" of fear - in modern wars soldiers are under the threat of death, and hence considerable stress, more or less all the time they're in the war zone; and extended periods of stress are just plain unhealthy for anyone.
And they still get the same brief, intense bouts of sheer terror in actual combat that were all the soldiers of bygone ages normally had to deal with, too.

By the by, by all accounts hand-to-hand combat is also much more... viscerally scary than getting shot at. Back in the musket-and-bayonet days for example your average line infantry unit could get shot to shreds and still hold its position quite stubbornly (period observers speak of "closing lines towards the center" as the men shifted to close the gaps that appeared in the line) - but a single determined bayonet charge was wont to put even fresh ones into flight in one go.

[ARCHIPPOS]

one of my my granpas fought in the Big War, he served in a destroyer of an allied naval force ... he told me that in times of crisis with planes bombing and flying around ,torpedoes running through, men blown up in pieces or burnt alive or amputated or ships sinking taking their entire crew with them sailors performed their duties in a strange "panickless" almost mechanised way... stress and fear was an everyday companion but somehow it disapeared during the battle durin which training and the need to take immediate actions prevailed... i would have liked to ask him more abt the subject but sadly he's dead

[Watchman]

Far as I know the modern training paradigm is to drill the soldiers in their tasks thoroughly enough that under fire they don't "freeze up" but do something if only on "autopilot" - hopefully the correct thing, but I understand that generally doing almost anything is much better than doing nothing.

[Cute Wolf]

Don't forget the inferior fellings from the Romans and Hellenes...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Psst.... the Romans value large... thing.... and they are affraid to see a Celtic warrior with 33 cm or much more... on the other hand, all Hellenes naked statues seems to have a small... thing

[Watchman]

You know I heard adrenaline - notoriously copiously produced by assorted glands in combat - mainly just shrinks your "Tower of Power"...

[Rilder]

You know I heard adrenaline - notoriously copiously produced by assorted glands in combat - mainly just shrinks your "Tower of Power"...

If I'm in the heat of battle the last thing I'm worried about is my penis size.

[Celtic_Punk]

Far as I know the modern training paradigm is to drill the soldiers in their tasks thoroughly enough that under fire they don't "freeze up" but do something if only on "autopilot" - hopefully the correct thing, but I understand that generally doing almost anything is much better than doing nothing.

this is true till the last part. Sometimes doing nothing is what you need to do. Training replaces instinct, which is what is going to get you killed in the firefight. You've got to shut down your brain and act on your aggression and training. Fear seizes up your instinct. all thats left is your training. Its the only thing that should be in your mind. "Clear your mind, your ass will follow."

You earlier said something about intense bouts of fear in firefights aswel, this doesn't happen in the war we fight today. A few of my buddy's in country right now send me back videos of firefights, arty strikes, airstrikes, all sorts of awesome stuff! one of my buds is a .50cal gunner on an HMMWV, hearing them scream "Wooohooo!" more than anything else tells me that their havin' the time of their lives.
"There's nothing in this whole world that makes you feel more alive than being shot at by a towelhead with an PKM", so he says. I bet you any warrior that fought under good old Vertingorix would tell you the same. "There's nothing in this world that makes you feel more alive than 10 000 romans running straight for you!", or something along those lines. Liquid courage probably went along way too for some of those battles.

The fact of the matter is there is something powerful when you have an army behind you... In this case you literally did have an army behind you. And though you might have pissed your pants thinking about being dizembowelled by a spear 20 minutes ago, Now that the lines are closing, its just like WWI when you went over the top, whether you were scared or not. You forgot about that fear, and you ran, and you ran, and you ran. And with 15, 20 000 men all smashing their shields together and yelling and screaming and being obscene, you couldn't help but become insatiably thirsty for the inevitable. After all, for a Celt, to die honourably in battle was the greatest thing a man could do. Same with the Spartans, and I'm sure many many other peoples from the books of history.
I guarantee you all the same goes for the professional class of warrior then as it does for now. Your time spent training gives you an eagerness. I myself am quite eager to fight a war. I've trained and trained, I've spent more than enough time shooting paper targets stabbing dummy's and clearing killhouses. We're all eager. Eager to kill, Eager to fight, Eager to test ourselves and our training. Its not that we're messed up in the head or anything. But its like when you learn CPR, you think about using it for real, you wonder, could you really save a life? Its the same thing, you train and train and train. You become eager to do your job. Your will to fight grows and grows. It will outweigh your fears 10 fold. I am 150% certain the same went for the professionals of antiquity.

[Mikhail Mengsk]

I don't think your buddy would be so adrenalinic under heavy artillery barrage. When you are FIGHTING, adrenaline can overwhelm fear. When you are under fire, and you could do nothing against the enemy, is much different. Snipers are the most fearsome threat in urban warfare, because you KNOW that if you make the wrong move, he will kill you. Artillery can kill you even if you are far from the battle field.

Ancient warfare was all about the single battle. A few hours or a day of adrenaline and fear. In modern warfare, you are ALWAYS in danger. In WW1 and WW2 soldiers fired to themselves trying to be evacuated. The stress accumulates day by day, always growing.

WW2 american military studies stated that a soldier would reach the best of his battle conditions in the first weeks, but after 90 days the risk of a mental collapse was almost sure. Much depends on training and individual "strenght", but after 90 days an "average" soldier is very near to collapse.

[Exosus]

There was a good point regarding PTSD in modern soldiers. I had always wondered what it was that changed things - whether modern men were simply more prone to mental difficulties or perhaps there was simply much lower reporting at the time, but the concept of a more limited scope of danger may have contributed greatly.

Do you have a reference where you got that concept from, or is it your original thinking? I would like to quote that in the future if it exists somewhere . . .

Regarding the penis size differential between Romans and Celts

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

the difference flaccid is considerably less than the difference erect. Romans and Greeks both, in general, fall into the category of men whose penises gain the vast majority of their size upon arousal, while many (not all) Celts maintain roughly the same size, give or take a couple inches, at all times. In modern terms, Celts are showers, Romans are growers. If we assume that combat would lead to a testosterone increase to a degree which would create a kind of false arousal, asexually, as it does in many or most men when faced with melee, and to a lesser extent ranged, combat, then the difference would be relatively slight.

I think I may have died a little inside having participated in that conversation at an intellectual level. Thanks for that /wrist O.o

[Celtic_Punk]

You are speaking about a conflict between two first rate militaries. Where battles result in numberless casualties on both sides. Where as on the MODERN battlefield things are not so brutal or bloody. The casualty counts are much lower. The amount of enemy ordinance fired as us is exponentially lower. And we're fighting people who have no damn clue how to fire a rifle, let alone execute complicated infantry manoeuvres. Hill boys, all of them, flippin' hillboys.

You can hear the rounds from the Taliban flying over their heads, green red and yellow tracers all up the line, and nobody cares. Its the most intense, incredible, and probably pretty fun experience anyone can experience. All this changes when a friend goes down though. Things change from counting the one's you drop to getting your buddy out alive if he still is. The gravity of the situation changes. collapsing back on your vehicle is probably a lot more scary than when you rushed out of it. Especially when you are providing covering fire for your buddy bleeding from his chest profusely. As long as everything is fine, your havin' the time of your life.

As far as snipers go? The vast majority of those clowns can't hit anything to begin with. Line up the top 10 shooters of the tallywally-ban, and I could outshoot em all on any given day. And you can quote me on that.


Like naked celts, the taliban rely on fear as their weapon. The only thing we're scared of is the road exploding. And even thats in the back of the mind of EVERY soldier, except the doctors that pick up the pieces afterwards. Its a lottery, when your number is picked, its your time. There's nothing you can do. If you live by that, nothing should scare you.

EDIT: to Mikhail Mengsk - Nearly every morning he's woken up by mortar barrages inside the perimeter. 81mm mortars are no howitzers, yeah, but thats still heavy duty ordinance. Thats an artillery barrage in my book, and the army's.
This is not 'Nam. The man in the black pyjamas was a worthy adversary. These clowns can't tell a receiver from a firing pin for chrissake.

[Watchman]

You earlier said something about intense bouts of fear in firefights aswel, this doesn't happen in the war we fight today. A few of my buddy's in country right now send me back videos of firefights, arty strikes, airstrikes, all sorts of awesome stuff! one of my buds is a .50cal gunner on an HMMWV, hearing them scream "Wooohooo!" more than anything else tells me that their havin' the time of their lives.
"There's nothing in this whole world that makes you feel more alive than being shot at by a towelhead with an PKM", so he says.

All this is because the "war we fight today" is so horrendously lopsided - ragged urban guerillas and angry hill tribes with shoelace budgets and virtually no heavy weaponry to speak of versus some of the most grossly potent and best-equipped space-age military forces on the whole planet.

I suggest reading witness descriptions on what kind of great fun it is to be at the receiving end of an artillery barrage or a massed armoured attack, of which kinds of experiences the World War memoirs for example are quite full of, to get a more realistic and balanced perspective regarding what modern war between at least reasonable equals is like psychologically.

[Exosus]

There are still significant numbers of PTSD sufferers coming out of the War On Terror though - much greater than those that came from, say, the Roman conquest of Gaul. How do you reconcile that?

[Watchman]

Me ? I was just pointing out that said friend's perspective was clearly skewed by the simple fact he wasn't on the receiving end of all the heavy ordinance and general ghastly firepower and junk modern wars involve. Lopsided, as it were.
Also machoBS psychological coping mechanism, but I figured that was too obvious to require pointing out; doesn't keep people from coming back all scarred inside either, far as I know.

[Celtic_Punk]

All this is because the "war we fight today" is so horrendously lopsided - ragged urban guerillas and angry hill tribes with shoelace budgets and virtually no heavy weaponry to speak of versus some of the most grossly potent and best-equipped space-age military forces on the whole planet.

I suggest reading witness descriptions on what kind of great fun it is to be at the receiving end of an artillery barrage or a massed armoured attack, of which kinds of experiences the World War memoirs for example are quite full of, to get a more realistic and balanced perspective regarding what modern war between at least reasonable equals is like psychologically.

Don't get me wrong, I was by no means belittling that war. Read the earlier posts I made. There is not a single day that I get up and don't think about what kind of courage it must have taken my grandfather to get up every day, sometimes multiple times in a day to get into the cockpit of his spitfire, and rise up to meet hundreds of german aircraft. with only 20 seconds of ammunition and still take it in stride. Hell, what I remember of the man you'd never be able to tell that more than half of his friends died when he was no older than I am now. That's courage.

What was it that Churchill said? "Never in the history of man has so much been owed by so many to so few."

[Watchman]

My grandfather was an infantry squad leader - and we fought the Soviets back then. Let's just say that reading firsthand accounts of what it's like to fight an enemy with vastly superior equipement and heavier weaponry, nevermind now general resources, helps put things in perspective.

[Macilrille]

My grandfather was an infantry squad leader - and we fought the Soviets back then. Let's just say that reading firsthand accounts of what it's like to fight an enemy with vastly superior equipement and heavier weaponry, nevermind now general resources, helps put things in perspective.

Simo Häyä...

SISU FTW!!!

But that is OT.

[Celtic_Punk]

My grandfather was an infantry squad leader - and we fought the Soviets back then. Let's just say that reading firsthand accounts of what it's like to fight an enemy with vastly superior equipement and heavier weaponry, nevermind now general resources, helps put things in perspective.

you guys gave birth to the greatest sniper of all time. And only because he was a legendary hunter. Skills of a battlefield sniper are one with a hunter, this much is true. 800 kills in 100 days. Amazing.

The winter war was a huge display of how a motivated individual can stand up to the many, in the face of all odds stacked against you. It also proves that moral is everything. Had your people been defeated in spirit you'd have been rolled over by the soviets.

[Ludens]

There are still significant numbers of PTSD sufferers coming out of the War On Terror though - much greater than those that came from, say, the Roman conquest of Gaul. How do you reconcile that?

How do you know that? We don't have statistics on that war, and the Romans may not have had a single term for PTSD. It could be a wide-spread problem that simply wasn't noticed by those in who left us records. After all, the writing of commentaries and histories is an upper-class activity; we have no records about how the Roman proletariat felt. Furthermore, our society as a whole is quite obsessed with health and performance, and our media far more able to report on it: just because we didn't hear about it previously doesn't mean it wasn't there.

On the other hand, there are psychological and physiological differences between acute stress and chronic stress. An ancient battle must have been a terrifying experience, but outside of the battlefield you were mostly safe. Modern warriors on the other hand have to be constantly on their guard, because even when in camp they can still be attacked by snipers or mortar fire. There is no sanctuary for them anymore. I think that must contribute too to problem.

[Watchman]

you guys gave birth to the greatest sniper of all time. And only because he was a legendary hunter. Skills of a battlefield sniper are one with a hunter, this much is true. 800 kills in 100 days. Amazing.

Speaking of snipers, a distant relative by marriage was one during the war. Unlike grandpa, who "wrote out" his war traumas like many vets did, he AFAIK *never* refers to those times...
Go fig.

The winter war was a huge display of how a motivated individual can stand up to the many, in the face of all odds stacked against you. It also proves that moral is everything. Had your people been defeated in spirit you'd have been rolled over by the soviets.

More like rank idiocy and institutionalised incompetence do wonders to negate advantages in resources and technology.

[Celtic_Punk]

The finnish defence is attributed to hardy soldiers fighting tired and demoralized massed infantry columns.


plus stalin killed like 90% of his officers because they weren't commies.

F#%in' retard, experienced officers especially at a platoon and company level are indispensable! The difference 1 company can make on a line can be the difference between breakthrough or counter attack. The movies got it right guys! the asshat straight outta westpoint who can't read a compass or doesn't trust his non-coms gets his men killed. Calls in arty short, or freezes up in the middle of an attack. Or just plain makes stupid calls in combat that end up with dead troopers.



By the way you know Simo used a Russian Mosin? the shorter version because he was a short arse himself! I still can't get over his kill count. His kills per day mean at 8 kills a day, taking into account he might not kill the same number of men each day, or he might not kill any? this means he must have averaged around 5-8 kills a day. Sometimes getting as many as 15 kills or so in a day. This means he probably took out a freakin platoon single handedly! He was a definite trooper. A true soldier, and a well motivated individual. He gets my handshake, thats for sure.

[Watchman]

I could write you a short article on the topic, thanks. Let's just say that gross Soviet stupidity, and the blunt fact the Red Army wasn't configured to fight in the terrain while the Finnish one was, played a rather major part.

[Reality=Chaos]

There are still significant numbers of PTSD sufferers coming out of the War On Terror though - much greater than those that came from, say, the Roman conquest of Gaul. How do you reconcile that?

You are talking about PTSD as if it were a recognized illness in antiquity.... It was not... I am sure a lot of people got severely twisted by the wars they fought, but without anyone even knowing what PTSD even was it would not be recognized as much.... I'm sure there were psychotic and traumatized soldiers though.... When Carthage was sacked the roman Commander rotated the kill squads that went into Carthage to make sure they wouldn't go mad with slaughter they were wreaking. So most probably they did know that battle did something to a man.....

Modern warfare has a different fear factor... especially in city warfare the enemy is virtually invisible, which I can imagine to be very very unnerving indeed... it also might bring a sense of being powerless to do anything about enemy snipers and whatnot.... Different times different wars different kind of fears....

[Watchman]

I would remind you that "shell shock", as what today's psychology calls PTSD was known back then, first turned up in large scale in the trenches of WW1. It should tell something that the problem was quite novel in spite of Europeans by that point having spent a round half millenia shooting each other to bits - and you get three guesses at what was the main functional difference between that and earlier wars...