by Matthew Ellard (Posted Wed Feb 12, 2014 4:29 am)
My father was Group Captain Ellard, a psychiatrist who enlisted in in the RAAF in 1968 in response to the Malaya, Indonesian insurgency & Vietnam campaigns. His duties were normal military stuff concerning applications of psychology to mass recruitment, specialist recruitment, group efficiency, reduction of drug & alcohol abuse, PTSD recovery rates and so on. When my father passed away I sorted through his personal and professional libraries into boxes.
I have a box of American, UK and other papers and books, that detail the peak of knowledge concerning military psychologyas at 1979. This is when Australia and the UK had finished fighting insurgent wars similar to modern day insurgent wars. Most of the information is statistical lifted from IDF, American and UK surveys. Apparently the Korean war is the start of modern physiological statistic gathering for the US.
My aim is to read through everything at share some "gems". This includes ridiculous recommendations for the future (after 1980) and some things that the military "got right" with their future predictions.
Combat Troop AWOL in Vietnam
My first "gem" is from HumRRO (The Human Resources Research Organization) who was asked in 1967 by the US Army, to determine why "Combat troop AWOL" rates were so low in Vietnam compared to WWII. They performed a deep analysis. Kings College in the UK, wrote a review of this research and pointed out that, when surrounded by Vietcong in the jungle, that going AWOL was simply not an attractive option and no such research was required for UK forces in Malaysia. I laughed when I read this.
Amazingly, considering NATO, the UK and Americans have very different concepts about military training and management. I don't fully understand why yet.
The Dirty Dozen & Stupid Soldiers
In US Military psychology criminals and mentally retarded appear under the subset "marginal men". During WWII 1,300 prisoners were paroled to join the US army. They had the same honorable discharge rate as normal soldiers. So in 1953 at Fort Leonard Wood, criminals and mental retards were trained for combat to see if this was a good source of soldiers. The result? USAPRO concluded that criminals and mental retards make very poor soldiers. I guess that's why no one has remade the "Dirty Dozen" in a post war environment.
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My father was Group Captain Ellard, a psychiatrist who enlisted in in the RAAF in 1968 in response to the Malaya, Indonesian insurgency & Vietnam campaigns. His duties were normal military stuff concerning applications of psychology to mass recruitment, specialist recruitment, group efficiency, reduction of drug & alcohol abuse, PTSD recovery rates and so on. When my father passed away I sorted through his personal and professional libraries into boxes.
I have a box of American, UK and other papers and books, that detail the peak of knowledge concerning military psychologyas at 1979. This is when Australia and the UK had finished fighting insurgent wars similar to modern day insurgent wars. Most of the information is statistical lifted from IDF, American and UK surveys. Apparently the Korean war is the start of modern physiological statistic gathering for the US.
My aim is to read through everything at share some "gems". This includes ridiculous recommendations for the future (after 1980) and some things that the military "got right" with their future predictions.
Combat Troop AWOL in Vietnam
My first "gem" is from HumRRO (The Human Resources Research Organization) who was asked in 1967 by the US Army, to determine why "Combat troop AWOL" rates were so low in Vietnam compared to WWII. They performed a deep analysis. Kings College in the UK, wrote a review of this research and pointed out that, when surrounded by Vietcong in the jungle, that going AWOL was simply not an attractive option and no such research was required for UK forces in Malaysia. I laughed when I read this.
Amazingly, considering NATO, the UK and Americans have very different concepts about military training and management. I don't fully understand why yet.
The Dirty Dozen & Stupid Soldiers
In US Military psychology criminals and mentally retarded appear under the subset "marginal men". During WWII 1,300 prisoners were paroled to join the US army. They had the same honorable discharge rate as normal soldiers. So in 1953 at Fort Leonard Wood, criminals and mental retards were trained for combat to see if this was a good source of soldiers. The result? USAPRO concluded that criminals and mental retards make very poor soldiers. I guess that's why no one has remade the "Dirty Dozen" in a post war environment.
Read Main Topic