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Midrange.
...the soldier can see and engage the enemy with rifle fire while still unable to perceive the
extent of the wounds inflicted or the sounds and facial expressions of the victim when he is hit. In fact, at this range, the soldier can still deny that it was he who killed the enemy.
Holmes states, "Most of the veterans I interviewed were infantrymen with front-line service, yet fewer than half of them believed that they had actually killed an enemy, and often this belief was based on the thinnest of evidence."
This type of killing has emotional stages:
- the kill is usually described as being reflexive or automatic
- then a period of euphoria and elation,
- followed by a period of guilt and remorse.
If a soldier goes up and looks at his kill the trauma grows even worse, since some of the psychological buffer created by a midrange kill disappears upon seeing the victim at close range.
Hand-Grenade Range
anywhere from a few yards to as many as thirty-five or forty yards and it's a specific kill in which a hand grenade is used. A hand-grenade kill is distinguished from a close kill in that the killer does not have to see his victims as they die.
A very great drawback is that the killers are usually hear their victims scream. Other than that this a killing method that is largely free of trauma, if the soldier does not have to look at his handiwork.
''In the close-in trench battles of World War I hand grenades were psychologically and physically easier to use, so much so that Keegan and Holmes tell us that "the infantryman had forgotten how to deliver accurate fire with his rifle; his main weapon had become the grenade."