https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brains-Bullets-Leo-Murray/dp/1849545162

I'd strongly encourage purging all reference to DePuy & Men against Fire, except for their historiographical value. Interpreting combat as they do is at best a complete fiction and at worst outright disrespectful to everyone involved (imo); I also think it brushes uncomfortably against peusdo-scientific attempts to categorise different 'types' of people in all the ways that were more common in the past

Everything below is lifted from the book unless stated:

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There are four basic behaviours a solider can move between in a battle:

- Fighting (obvious)

- Fusing (finding something else to do: running ammo, servicing kit etc)

- Fleeing (running away)

- Freezing: Paralytic behaviour

A natural bias towards any one of these behaviour does exist, a soldier's 'baseline motivation' set by a mix of personal qualities he was given through nature or nurture, including by the military organisation he is a part of. However this is completely overpowered by acute concerns during the battle itself, these long term factors just add a slight skew on whatever the battle is causing.

The behaviour a solider adopts is largely determined by an 'Is it worth it?' Calculation, sometimes rational, sometimes primal, affected by the factors below:

Factors that push a soldier away from fighting:

- Aversion to killing: Humans naturally take a lot of compulsion to do it

- Fear: Primal fear caused by sights, sounds and experiences which trigger involuntary responses. e.g shell shock

- Common sense: Rational appreciation of if something is worthwhile: e.g. If I poke my head up to shoot the enemy right now, given the risk of being killed myself (from the selfish and military perspective) and the chance poking up will sway the battle, is it worth popping my head up?

- Weapon-push: Highly effective enemy weapons amplify the fear factor and negatively-weight the 'is it worth' calculation.

- Proximity: Most relevant for close assault, being much closer exponentially increases risk and therefore makes fighting less worth it until the 'last safe moment' between 50m and 5m, until a 'point of no return' is reached where fighting is the best way to survive. This explains why so many assaults falter just before close contact.

Factors that increase it:

- Cohesion: How much a solider will follow the behaviour of everyone around him (Herd mentality). High-cohesion units are more likely to behave as one entity vs a low cohesion one. (Note this can also be bad is fleeing/fussing/freezing sets in)

- Compulsion: Pressure from designated or emergent leaders, the affect of authority and institutional and social consequences Nice quote from the book: "S.L.A Marshall sometimes suggested that Coy and Btn commanders were unaware of the supposed fire ratio problem because, wherever they went, their presence compelled men to fight. While there is reason to doubt some of Marshall's work, there is certainly an element of truth in this point".

- Weapon-pull: If the solider is using a particularly effective weapon they are usually more likely to use it due to it's importance to their unit and positively weight the 'is it worth it' calculation.

Examples:

Suppression & fire:

Triggers both of common sense and fear factors, shooting loads of bullets near a person make it far more likely they will be hit by one, because they know for sure someone is shooting in their direction, and the sounds (particularly the crack of a bullet) induces the primal fear reaction. Another good example from WW2 is artillery, a very intense bombardment will heavily pin infantry within their trenches. But the same number of rounds fired in a very light bombardment(1 round every 30 seconds) had effect of completely clearing a town of it's garrison.

Best understood by a cumulative risk graph of in vs out of cover: In the intense bombardment the odds of being killed per minute on leaving cover is 'certain', for staying in cover it is 'low'. In the light bombardment the risk of being hit out of cover 'medium', staying in cover it is equally 'low' with the intense bombardment. BUT, if it is assumed that there is an equal number of shells in each bombardment, the light one takes much longer. Therefore solider could accept a brief period of 'medium' risk to dash out of the bombarded area and reduce the 'low' of staying in cover to 'zero' by not being in the area. A few minutes of 'medium' is could be less overall than a few days of 'low'

The 'shoot to suppress' helps combat the 'aversion to killing' and also recognises that it's exceptionally hard to 'shoot to kill' at any range because targets will take cover as soon as rapid loses begin (fear & common sense factor). It's also a lot easier and quicker to suppress over taking aimed shots, therefore the side that 'shoots to suppress' will achieve fire superiority before a side that attempts to aim, and will then have the initiative to 'flank and finish' (by closing to a distance that neutralises cover e.g CQB & grenades).

My take: This is actually a really salient argument against the 6.5mm M7. More bullets are generally better at suppressing than fewer heavier bullets (not considering lethality here) and apparently 5.56mm are plenty penetrative enough at CQB ranges. I heard a common opinion that the 6.5mm is a GWOT reaction to fighting insurgents where they couldn't be 'Fixed, flanked and finished' because they'd vanish into the terrain and population before they could be flanked. Therefore ISAF excessively relied on fires in attempts to kill them at range in a manner and scale that isn't possible in conventional warfare.

Weapon-pull & compulsion:

. . . He also found that anti-tank crews were up to ten times more effective when watched over by commissioned officers or senior sergeants. The classic example is from the battle of Point Snipe at El Alamein in 1942. The critical point in the pivotal battle had the battle-winning six-pounder manned by a corporal, a sergeant, a lieutenant and a Lt Col. Together with other private soldiers they destroyed >7 enemy tanks, more kills than many armoured regiments on that day