How do small groups of combat soldiers maintain their cohesion under fire? This question has long intrigued social scientists, military historians, and philosophers. Based on extensive research and drawing on graphic analysis of close quarter combat from the Somme to Sangin, the book puts forward a novel and challenging answer to this question. Against the common presumption of the virtues of the citizen soldier, this book claims that, in fact, the infantry platoon of the mass twentieth century army typically performed poorly and demonstrated low levels of cohesion in combat. With inadequate time and resources to train their troops for the industrial battlefield, citizen armies typically relied on appeals to masculinity, nationalism and ethnicity to unite their troops and to encourage them to fight. By contrast, cohesion among today's professional soldiers is generated and sustained quite differently. While concepts of masculinity and patriotism are not wholly irrelevant, the combat performance of professional soldiers is based primarily on drills which are inculcated through intense training regimes. Consequently, the infantry platoon has become a highly skilled team capable of collective virtuosity in combat. The increasing importance of training, competence and drills to the professional infantry soldier has not only changed the character of cohesion in the twenty-first century platoon but it has also allowed for a wider social membership of this group. Soldiers are no longer included or excluded into the platoon on the basis of their skin colour, ethnicity, social background, sexuality or even sex (women are increasingly being included in the infantry) but their professional competence alone: can they do the job? In this way, the book traces a profound transformation in the western way of warfare to shed light on wider processes of transformation in civilian society. This book is a project of the Oxford Programme on the Changing Character of War.

EARL J. HESS is Stewart W. McClelland Chair in History at Lincoln Memorial University and the author of fifteen books on the Civil War, including Kennesaw Mountain: Sherman, Johnston, and the Atlanta Campaign ; The Knoxville Campaign: Burnside and Longstreet in East Tennessee ; and The Civil War in the West: Victory and Defeat from the Appalachians to the Mississippi.

A professor, historian and contributor to World War II magazine describes the history of the American soldier during four decades of warfare, from the Battle of the Bulge to counterinsurgency combat in Iraq.

C.I.B 1969, A Combat Infantryman's Journey follows a Vietnam Veteran's trip into hell and a soul-searching look at the way back to the life left behind. This story is based on the memoirs of 20 year old army grunt Rick Seaman, from the jungled swamps of enemy territory in South Vietnam to an ongoing, forty year battle with the demons of PTSD. While in Vietnam, the story exposes an amazing event that transpired between a young North Vietnamese soldier and a few desperate American recon troops including Seaman himself. Seriously wounded just minutes later, Seaman entered the next phase of warfare as a patient in a ward full of very young double and triple amputees from the Vietnam War. The final chapters chart his course through the raging waters of anti-war fervor, personal challenges and his mission to create positive strategies for taking down the negative forces that cripple so many returning war fighters.