Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, May 21, 1993                   TAG: 9305210451
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: PAXTON DAVIS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FRIENDLY FIRE

What most of us have long suspected is now confirmed by systematic studies done by the U.S. Army's Office of the Surgeon General: As many as 15 percent of the combat deaths suffered by American infantry during World War II, Vietnam and the war in the Persian Gulf can be attributed to the rifle and other fire of American forces themselves, not the fire of "enemies."

The conventional wisdom, probably emanating throughout history from officers in positions of high command, has been that deaths from "friendly fire" amounted to 2 percent.

Most common soldiers exposed to fire under complex, frequently murky circumstances have known instinctively that accurate firing, whether from rifles, machine guns or field artillery, is an uncertain business - and that, because one often does not know precisely what one is firing at, it is as easy to kill a friend as it is an enemy.

Military legend, not to mention the ingrained fear of commanding officers that they may commit errors damaging to their own careers, is built on the model of the Battle of New Orleans, or even Waterloo, where closely massed formations advanced on an enemy across carefully defined open ground; they are thus highly visible and present unambiguous targets.

But since the American Civil War, and perhaps even before it, most battles have been fought in thickets, bogs, covered ground, on slopes and in defiles where natural obstacles are many and visibility is limited and always difficult.

Add to that the fact that weapons of far faster fire, greater range and immensely greater destructiveness were constantly being added to the armaments of war and the chances of bloody mistakes rose alongside them.

Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson is the most famous casualty of "friendly fire," but no one who has ever been under wartime fire can doubt that many others went undiscovered.

The surgeon general's report, written by Col. David M. Sa'adah, closely studied the individual dead and wounded, including autopsy reports, in four American battles: the campaign of the 530th Provisional Composite Unit in Burma in 1943-44; the defense of the beachhead at Bougainville Island in the South Pacific in 1944; American casualties in Vietnam from 1967-69; and the Persian Gulf war.

The conclusion, reportedly a sensation in Pentagon corridors, was that the "friendly-fire" casualties in Burma were as high as 14 percent; in Bougainville 24 percent; in Vietnam 11 percent; and in the Gulf war 17 percent.

No doubt such estimates will be disputed by Army higher-ups fearful that yet another scandal will turn public sentiment against their excesses and blunders. No doubt sentiment will be offended, and no doubt, too, the hawks of American society will again talk grimly of the inevitability of tragic death in any war. No doubt anti-war sentiment will rise.

It should. If Bosnia does not remind us of the senselessness of most fighting, the surgeon general's report should. It happens that I was on the periphery of the combat in which so many members of "Merrill's Marauders" - the popular name for the 530th Provisional Composite Unit in Burma - fell.

The unit went into Burma in 1943, spearheading the Allied attempt to retake that land from the Japanese, with 3,500 infantrymen. When their role ended in August 1944, only 340 were left. They'd fought on jungle trails, up and down steep hills, in swamp water and across an airstrip both they and the "enemy" were using simultaneously; they'd been fired on frequently by their own Chinese "allies." It was not surprising to those of us on the periphery that they rarely knew where their wounds came from.

Paxton Davis is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.