The American Volunteer Soldier: Will He Fight? (1997)

This article appeared in the June 1976 edition of Military Review and reports the results of a survey conducted by the authors of the All-Volunteer Force. The findings concerning soldier values, the importance of education to the force and the improvement in performance and attitude of an informed soldier will come as no surprise to today's reader. The conclusion that the volunteer soldier would fight if called upon would be proved in Grenada, Panama and, once again, on the Arabian Peninsula. OVER TWO YEARS have now elapsed since the last draftee entered the military and the US Army began its conversion to an all-volunteer force. Today, the Army is composed entirely of volunteers. This conversion has been assessed and facilitated by a variety of pilot projects, studies and surveys.1 But virtually nothing has been done to answer the most important question of all-will the new volunteer soldier perform well in combat? The purpose of this article is to present an attitudinal profile of the volunteer soldier in combat units and to try to project these attitudes into some kind of understanding of possible combat behavior. We stress, however, that inferring combat behavior from attitudinal items is an impossible task, for it is only in the immediate circumstances of actual ground warfare that the behavior of combat soldiers can be truly assessed. But, short of such circumstances, there are partial indicators which can give researchers and Army leaders some ideas as to what the volunteer soldier's motivation and performance might be. As formidable as predictions of combat behavior are, at least until the end of the draft in 1973, the US Army could base expectations on the experiences of a generation-long reliance on the conscription system. But, today, precious little is known about the attitudes of the new volunteer soldier toward possible combat involvement. How much did the turbulent social unrest of the latter years of the Vietnam War affect the values of the contemporary soldier? What is the interaction between societal values and the commitment of young soldiers to military goals? What does the volunteer soldier think about participation in possible future conflicts? To even pose these questions suggests how elusive- but important-are the answers. We propose that some limited understanding of these issues can be gained by the presentation and interpretation of data we have collected from a survey of volunteer junior enlisted combat soldiers. Theories About Combat Behavior A Historical Perspective. To give a detailed account of theories of combat motivation would take us far afield. But, if we are to examine the attitudes of the volunteer soldier toward combat, we must first refer to some of the more widely known previous writings on the subject. Prior to World War II, Ardant du Picq's Battle Studies: Ancient and Modern Battle-which frontally introduced the notion of soldier morale-had the widest influence over the development of military theory and speculation about combat behavior. Arising out of World War II, two landmark studies appeared which empirically examined American combat behavior in that war. One was S.LA. Marshall's Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War, based upon data collected in after-battle interviews.2 The other was the four-volume series entitled The American Soldier: Combat and Its Aftermath which relied upon large survey samples analyzed by the sociologist Samuel A. Stouter and his colleagues.3 The studies of Stauffer and other sociologists (and Marshall implicitly) strongly emphasized the role of face-to-face or primary groups and explained the motivation of the individual combat soldier as a function of his solidarity and social intimacy with fellow soldiers at small group levels. Correspondingly, the World War II combat studies deemphasized the values systems of soldiers and, to a lesser extent, formal organizational factors as well. …