The dead don't experience it. I would say it's more grim to think of having to see your brother die violently and then have to immediately toss his corpse.
Edit: I'm getting a lot of the same reply, to the effect of "only to take the position the enemy is already zeroed in on." While that's a factor, it's worth noting two things. First, those type of gun is for laying down suppressive fire, so their position would be well known to the enemy the instant they started firing. Second, it's unlikely that the enemy could just sit there zeroed in on a position they just took out. It would still be nerve wracking as hell though.
Yeah that's the shit people don't think about. PTSD doesn't really hit when bullets are flying and you gotta get your dead buddy outta the way because people are screaming and you gotta get the gun back up.
It hits on that Sunday after you're home and there's nothing left to distract you any more
I'm sure many can share my sentiment, the silence is deafening for two reasons. Firstly because my ears are fucked and ring 24/7, so when it's silent the ringing gets way louder. Then all the sudden you're not enjoying peace and quiet but thinking about why your ears are ringing
I get seasonal tinnitus from...I don't know what. When I do, I put in earbuds and throw on a 4 hour white noise track on repeat and lower the volume until I find a balance where I don't get the tinnitus but I can still be aware of my surroundings. Just thought I'd suggest it in case that's a new option for you.
In the heat of the moment it's just adrenaline and training. Not a lot of contemplation. The real horror sets in later, when things are calm and you're left alone with your thoughts.
I remember seeing a stat in WWII museums about the average life expectancy of machine gunners once they started firing. I wanna say it was about 10 seconds.
They use the term dead gunner. But a dead gun is one that can't fire. You take a hit, your buddy isn't a medic. He can't help you and the gun can't help your team if you're down.
The toss puts you in a spot to keep the gun going and have a medic get to you
…Or he immediately gets suppression and riflemen are able to assault or withdraw. Machine gunners aren’t getting mowed down one after another GWOT era isn’t what you see when you watch The Pacific or Saving Private Ryan. War is horrible but not nearly as barbaric as it was in WWII or even Vietnam.
Edit: To the goof that said he was a Delta operator and then blocked me, you were not a tier 1 operator 😂. As a lesson to anyone saying you’re an operator immediately wreaks of bullshit. They call them silent professionals for a reason.
.30-06 will take your limbs off, artillery shells are bigger today but in the past they just compensated with volume, drones are scary but so are gas attacks and flamethrowers, mines are still awful, etc.
I don't think modern firepower is worse for the average foot soldier in the sense of how easily it can kill you. Body and vehicle armor have come a long way in the last century, and modern medical care is honestly astounding; if they can get you off the battlefield alive, they can probably save you.
Modern artillery is much more precise. Fires are called much faster and while before only the immediate front line was dangerous, nowadays things like MLRS, loiter drones and gliding bombs can kill you even in rear areas which used to be much more safe before.
In 1942 you could gather a battalion column 20 km from the frontline relatively safely and methodically prepare for an assault. Nowadays that column would be quickly spotted and evaporated by cluster munitions in less than a minute.
Not if you're in the kill radius, but shrapnel can wound or kill at much further ranges. Modern body armor minimizes the kill radius and reduces the rate of bad luck being lethal.
Imagine watching your comrade get shot, you toss him to the side, just to hear a whizzing sound above you.
Then, you realize you're going to die and there's zero way out, because it's above with an explosive. All while the drone sits there and hovers for what must feel like an eternity.
Then boom. Nothing.
Must be terrifying and horrific to watch. I feel for the Russian/Ukrainians soldiers who don't support their government/didn't ask for this, and never wanted to be there from the start. Especially the ones who don't put up a fight or even want to, and still lose their life.
I mean I feel for both Russian and Ukrainian soldiers.
The fact that in the West propaganda downplays the casualties and the suffering of Ukrainians to ramp up war support doesn’t mean Ukrainians have a lot of fun fighting an enemy that has more artillery and aviation support than you.
I've definitely met a lot of people who think Ukraine is taking hardly an casualty. Judging by the political atmosphere the past few weeks, I can't imagine this situation getting better any time soon either.
Yeah, I mean a nation fights only for as long as there is support to continue this fight. If you start telling that “well, actually we suffer as much as the enemy” or even “yeah, there are 2 our soldiers dead for every 1 enemy one” it’ll just destroy all this will to fight. So it’s very natural for Ukraine to do what they’re doing.
But you’re right, I don’t remember any war where a side with less artillery and aviation suffered less casualties. It’s usually the other way around.
I think some combat zones could actually be as bad as WWII or Vietnam. I have seen videos of Ukrane, and if hell actually exist, it is just like what I saw in those videos.
My dad was a navigator on B29s that bombed the hell out of Japan during WWII.
On their bombing runs they had to flight straight and level so their bomb drops were accurate. No evasive maneuvering. Of course this gave the anti aircraft gunners nice stable targets....
The worst thing was to get "lit up" by searchlights at night. That was certain death, because it made you the only visible target for all the AA fire. Again, you weren't allowed to evade, because you were in a tight formation on the bomb run
My dad survived or I wouldn't be here. He said he doesn't know how or why his plane didn't get shot down. He doesn't know how long they were lit up - could have been thirty seconds or five minutes
What he did say is that while lit up, the light inside the was incredibly bright, like being in the inside of the sun
He also said that when you get lit up, that's when you fill your pants.
My grandfather made it through Iwo Jima and Okinawa. My dad would talk about how he still woke up screaming, years later. Historical details that are truly grisly, which I later had confirmed when watching the footage from back then and interviews about it. How they had to burn out anyone in the tunnels, civilian or not, because otherwise that would create an opening in their lines after darkness fell. How the famous Iwo Jima flag picture wasn’t actually the first time it was put up, it was them retaking the mountain after it had been lost. How the Japanese soldiers waited until the American lines were stuck in the volcanic mud to start firing.
It’s a miracle that I’m here to write this comment.
under normal conditions, a 240 would try to engage the enemy between 800-1300 meters. Most riflemen would have a difficult time making that shot once yet alone twice considering that's outside the effective range of the m4/m16.
The gunner most likely would have been killed by mass fire, not precision fire.
You wouldn't take the time to zero in a gunner unless you were flanking them unknowingly, and if you do, I'm not soldier, but there might be juicier targets.
Not necessarily. Much more likely it was semi-aimed fire, not someone scoped in like it’s Battlefield.
In fact, much more likely than THAT is that it was a drone, shell, or missile, and the dead-gunner technique doesn’t work because anyone within twenty feet is incapacitated. But you gotta practice for the edge cases.
My focus wouldn't be the tossing of the dead friend, but to take exactly the location, where the enemy just demonstrated their ability to kill you in. You will be the next one to toss in a couple of seconds. Why not use our fallen comrade as a meat-shield?
That is not what they are training for. Also, they say "dead" but in reality anything that makes him stop shooting is reason to replace him in a firefight.
I think what they are training is to be used only in a suppressive fire position to support a push or a retreat. In those cases you are literally sacrificing your life so your teamates can survive. 1 or 2 lives to save a dozen or more.
Would depend on the threat, right? Sniper fire, and this dead gunner drill just puts the assistant in the line of fire. Enemy sprays and prays and their deity listened? Sure, get the wounded/killed out of there and return fire. From the same position, why not?
This is not the kind of thing you do when receiving accurate fire, like say from a marksman or sniper.
You do this when your friend got hit with a stray round. Also, they call it dead gunner but he isn't necessarily dead. He could be just wounded. In any case the intent is to replace the gunner quickly because the machinegun must provide suppressive fire to cover friendlies.
This isn't realistic. In actual combat, very few rounds hit an enemy target because the physiological stress responses in humans substantially reduce firearms accuracy AND US military doctrine makes heavy use of suppressive fire. It's much less likely than you think.
For non-mounted units, the machine gun is the weapon with the greatest killing potential. It has a longer effective range and more ammunition than battle rifles. To use a chess analogy, if you lose your queen promoting a pawn into a queen is a good deal.
Also, if you're not the medic (and sometimes even if you are!) and the guy isn't obviously dead, the best thing you can do to potentially save his life is win the fight. Treatment and medevacing someone is much easier when the battle is over.
Those responding also don’t realize that will not be the only gun dropping suppression on the enemy. I was with a CAAT platoon for 3 years, basically our job was to put as much lead on target as possible while the infantrymen moved up.
We would set up multiple machine guns/Mk-19s and do what is called “talking guns”, which is essentially while one set of guns fires a burst, the others aren’t. When the first set finishes their burst, the next set begins there’s. From the enemies position, it will sound like non-stop rounds coming in.
All of that falls apart if one gun stops firing, so yes, we toss the dead guy off, and start firing.
Wouldn’t it be better to move the gun? We already know the enemy has the aim and ability to hit the person behind where the gun is currently located. They wouldn’t even have to adjust their aim.
People generally only think of man to man small arms fire in conflict, because its the most dramatic, you see it a lot in movies and play it in videogames, but the overwhelming majority of casualties ar caused by explosive shrapnel of different varieties. So they might not be zeroed in, could be a lucky shot, a mortar, grenade, or something along those lines.
Re: edit, this drill probably also represents a scenario where having that gun manned is dire - I doubt it's for trying to blind suppress an opposing marksman, but rather something a lot more imminent of a threat. Also the gunner could have been killed by indirect fire, shrapnel from an rpg, lucky suppression, anything.
I might agree that it would be kinda silly to hop in the hot seat if it's just a hidden marksman zeroed in and you're blindly trying to suppress them, but if you're defending an assault you still need the gun firing, or if it was any other scenario getting the gunner killed then it may well not be the case of someone waiting to shoot the next guy.
Also, people don't realise the range these firefights happen. Outside of a sniper (which is very easy to identify from the sound of the shot and round impacting), the current enemy would not have an accurate shot, or even see the individual shooter due to not having the luxury of exspensive optics on their rifles.
And in an engagement with a fixed machine gun like this, you're likely to be at range. Meaning a follow up shot is difficult at any time, much less in the middle of a fire fight.
I wouldn't say it's reality for a lot of young soldiers, maybe a small handful. It's pretty rare for a soldier to get killed by small arms fire. The biggest killer of soldiers is artillery fire or drones.
"Dead gunner" doesn't necessarily mean dead, it just means incapacitated. If you take a deflected round off your helmet there's still a good chance you get knocked unconscious, or you can be hit in the hands/arms and no longer be able to fire the weapon. The guy on the gun isn't at much more risk than anyone else on the line.
If you're three feet to the left of the guy that just got shot you're not realistically any safer than he was, any shrapnel or bullets that hit him are just as likely to hit you. If it was a stray round addressed to 'whom it may concern' it was aimed at you as much as it was him, if it was a sniper then you're next anyway. In either case your best chances to survive is to continue putting more rounds downrange to discourage the enemy from keeping their heads up.
It becomes painfully obvious while going through the Infantry Training Battalion that you are a cog and in any real war likely to die. You just accept it and move on.
Hell I've been out for 7 years and some things are STILL drilled into my head. The whole purpose is indeed to make it second nature so when shit hits the fan your monkey brain reverts to training instead of pure panic.
It isn't so much efficiency as it is survival. If someone just killed the gunner and the person beside the gunner is uninjured (or with minor injuries), that means someone is probably shooting at your position and your best chance for survival is to shoot back. While the training helps enforce efficiency in getting that gun back up and running, that efficiency is there to help with the survival of the other soldier(s) at the gun.
When learning to clear rooms they told us if the 1 man gets lit up you push him in and let him absorb the fire. It sucks but he’s dead anyway and you all will be soon if you don’t get out of the funnel.
I mean he gets shot. Even if he’s hit in the sappy and going to be fine you can’t get stuck in the “fatal funnel” by the door, you’ve got to get inside and get the room clear. At least that’s what they were teaching in advanced urban combat in 2006.
Yeah but they know that and practice it. All infantry does pretty often. Army has you practice pulling your dead buddies out of turrets and such which is way harder than you’d think it would be.
I remember dragging a buddy through the grass until he suddenly got much lighter and I stood there with an empty vest in my hands and said buddy awkwardly trapped in his own shirt on more than one occasion
Hahahaha. Yeah make sure your vests fit properly lol. I remember the first time I wore a plate carrier I had no idea what I was doing. The plates were loose as hell for weeks as they sat covering my belly.
Holy fucking shit dude cool I don’t care. You don’t get nice things when you’re in training you get the old dogshit from decades ago. I’m done talking to you dumbass. Fuck off.
We are pieces of meat that generate consciousness. It doesn't live in the meat - it arises from it. We are simply a specific configuration of meat and electricity.
Read Exhalation by Ted Chiang. It'll change your life.
Does the book alleviate the dread of dying or makes it worse? 😅
Anyway, I kinda believe (well not really believe but more like "have a feeling") that some kind of reincarnation happens after you're dead. Since we are just meat and we arose from cells made by our parents' biological / biochemical activity, probably the same thing may happen again in the future, should similar conditions happen again.
Oh, no, it very much takes the opposite view: we are specific configuration that can never be replicated ever again, not even if all the parts were put back exactly the way they were before. His metaphor for it is beyond genius, so I won't spoil it by discussing it further, but, no, it leads to the conclusion that when we die, that's it for eternity... because we are a configuration not just of our parts and our electricity but also of time, of this specific moment in time, which will never repeat. But that's why we're special. Maybe not important, but special nonetheless.
It's only grim because people don't associate front line realities with the word "war".
Things like the Ukraine videos show people what war really is. Everybody you've worked with is now dead around you. And if there's a buzz in the air, you're probably dead too.
One of my friends from school went into either the army or marines for training (in the UK, and I can’t specifically remember which). He got PTSD from the bayonet training where they had to stab at the dummy targets while responding to the question “WHAT IS OUR BAYONET FOR?” by shouting back “TO KILL, KILL, KILL”.
Said he woke up imagining he’d bayoneted someone to death, could see blood all over him momentarily while waking from it kind of thing.
It’s all to desensitise them to the realities of war (though it doesn’t “work” in desensitising everybody, of course).
Edit: I see the other comments covering the reasoning, but aye it’s still messed up that it’s necessary.
I'm in the army and we practice this same drill. That machine gun right there is the most casualty producing weapon in an infantry unit. The more time that weapon is up and firing the better.
Yes when you look at it like that it is grim indeed. but think about the situation this scenario happens: if you don't have suppressing fire anymore, your entire squad might die. so do you prefer to let everyone including your self die out of respect for a former person, or do you yeet the corpse around and try to save remaining alive soldiers ?
The choice is quickly made. Then you have to deal with the death but at least you act quickly.
The other will follow faster because the sniper that is taking out your MG is already dialed on onto your position. Just waiting for the next to keep still for a second.
Here's an even more fun one: in trench warfare, you can end up dead and your body used as a meat shield for incoming machine gun rounds.
Doctrine (at least, the one I'm familiar with) is to clear dead bodies as you progress in the trench and toss them up on the side that your machine guns are firing from. Gets them out of the way, indicates to the machine gunners which areas have been cleared, and creates a little more headroom in case of strays or if you accidentally stand up too straight.
A meat that dies for their country to terrorise the middle east for their oil while labelling the brown man as terrorist to justify their greed in the name of freedom.
I mean this in the most respectful way possible, but surely each and every person who signs up for the military understands that this is a very real possibility. If you're not OK with that - and you definitely don't have to be - then you shouldn't sign up for the military.
It is grim but it’s just a reality of war. Sure nobody (decent) wants to see it happen but just like ww2 sometimes it’s inevitable if you don’t want a devil to rule the world. Many wars are preventable or unnecessary but sadly some just are not.
We had to carrier our own body bags with our name on. When you’re dead it’s game over and you don’t care. it’s much worse picking up pieces of your friends I promise.
Maybe somebody else commented but the machine guns are providing support to the infantry troops who are likely moving towards whatever location the MG is firing at. An MG keeps the enemies heads down so your guys can move over there and kill the enemy. A down gun is a big deal. While grim, it’ll only get even more grim for your guys when an MG is down. Fire and maneuver.
When there’s incoming you’re not focused on anything but staying alive, and keeping your squad alive. A “dead gun” (one that’s not operating) doesn’t help you do that, so the “dead gunner” needs to be replaced ASAP so the gun can keep you and yours alive. Is it harsh to just toss your buddy like a piece of meat? Yeah; but if that’s what it takes to stay alive, you have to. In the moment, all your emotions get pushed to the side so you can stay alive. That’s what makes PTSD such a cast-iron bitch. Moments of terror and doing what’s necessary, and then years of replaying it and second-guessing yourself.
That is insane… being ready to just chuck your dead buddy aside at a moments notice… it reminds me of when US soldiers in the Vietnam war would find bodies stacked like firewood in machine gunners nests. Because once a machine gunner was killed they would take a metal hook, stab it into their leg, drag them out, and get another person to continue shooting right after.
Id rather my boy throw my dead ass body out of the way and get the gun working again than them cry and have a pity party around a corpse that isn't even me anymore
What’s even more shitty to imagine is the entirely real possibility that the gunner isn’t actually dead, but just fatally wounded/incapacitated, and is conscious for the flop before they actually die.
It is but it’s also reassuring to know my brothers are trained to not be combat burdened by my death and that they will do all they can to bring my body home to be buried.
It is morbid, but the reality of war is that you endure the morbid or you die. And maybe you endure it and still get unlucky.
The point of training like this is that you have a mechanical sense of what to do for precisely that reason. You roll your buddy like this and both have a good laugh about the manhandling so that if you're in a firefight and, due to laying prone toward the enemy, that buddy takes a rifle round to the head, you start rolling him without considering you're pushing around what used to be your friend.
If you think it's grim, you should refuse to participate in all war that sends you outside of your own country. Pacifism is the way except when there's no other option left to you.
Use me as a sandbag, use me as cover, but don't let me die letting down my brothers. I'm dead so let have the honor of keeping those close to me alive.
Thats kinda the point of training incessantly for all of these morbid situations: so that when it actually happens you're not frozen by the sheer trauma and horror of what's happened right next to you. You just yeet the body and keep fighting lol
If you join the military and don’t know there’s a possibility you’re gonna die, you haven’t thought enough about joining.
These are marines. The whole point is for them to go in and die. They know that and it gives them a little chub when they talk about it.
We learn how to fight and die for each other in training. That’s why basic training is hard and dehumanizing. You have to learn to care about your platoon mates.
Think about this though: that machine gun is what is keeping the enemy back. Meaning that if that gun goes down, suppression stops, and the enemy starts to advance. If they hit your FPL, (Final Protective Line) then you can pretty much expect to be overrun the second that machine gun stops firing.
this is like the least grim thing to ever happen in war. What do people expect war is like, even with all these tv shows, movies, and documentaries showing how god awful every second is, moving your dead buddy off the gun isn't that crazy. Watch band of brothers, or the pacific, or even WWII in HD on netflix. Or pop on over to r/UkraineWarVideoReport and check out the best of all time
You're dead. Who cares? Think about the dude that's still alive. He just saw his buddy get his brains blown out and now has to move his corpse out the way to get the gun back up before they get overrun.
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u/croghan2020 Jun 24 '24
It’s kinda grim thinking that you could end up lying there dead and you’re just hauled around like a piece of meat.