A US soldier tends to a comrade overcome by shock after an Improvised Explosive Device detonated on his vehicle during a patrol in Baghdad, Iraq (Image: David Furst/AFP/Getty)
WHEN the mortar rounds started dropping, David Wells and his US Marine Corps buddies knew what they were supposed to do – get under cover and try to locate the origin of the threat. But when they came under fire in the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2005, things didn’t go according to the training manual.
Wells was a mortuary affairs specialist with the grisly task of ensuring that the marines’ creed of “No man left behind” doesn’t just apply to the living. His unit had been working for hours around a truck wrecked by a buried explosive device, painstakingly recovering the remains of fallen comrades.
Then the first blast went off, and the grim quiet erupted into pandemonium. Far from running for cover, Wells stayed in plain view, dropped to one knee and cocked his rifle. If the mortar attack had been followed by gunshots, he might not have lived to tell the tale. His comrades performed no better. “I remember one guy throwing down his weapon and diving under the truck,” Wells recalls. “One guy just started yelling incoherently. Another was sitting there smoking a cigarette and he didn’t move at all.”
Military training aims to instil the appropriate response to such situations as second nature, but the extreme stress of combat can cloud even the best-trained minds, making people act in confused and sometimes dangerous ways. Researchers are now starting to understand the physiological origins of this cognitive “fog of…
