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Introduction |
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The study of group behavior in the military has been of particular interest because of the unusual external stresses to which those in the Armed Forces are subjected. Beginning with the classical paper, “The Small Warship,” by Homans in World War II, wide-ranging studies have investigated many facets of group behavior and performance in a variety of military settings. However, investigation of Social Behavior in Combat has tended to focus on large, ill-defined groups; and especially in the Korean conflict the emphasis was upon those factors that contributed to the development of Psychiatric Casualties. There has been little attempt in the past to study the effects of combat on small, well-defined groups where the adaptations to the stresses of war have been successful. The war in Vietnam has provided a unique opportunity to study the Effects of the Threat of Death or Mutilation in Combat on the Behavior of Small Isolated Groups of men. This paper reports on observations made on a group of
Twelve Special Forces (Green Beret) "A-Team" Soldiers living in an
Isolated Outpost in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam.
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