Sedona, AZ –Modern warfare has made killing so easy. Young, computer game savants man screens thousands of miles away from the people they kill with drones and other remote-operated weapons.
Compact rockets, anti-tank shoulder-mounted missiles, sniper rifles that can kill from a mile away, precision explosives that can take out people riding in the driver’s side of a car while leaving those on the passenger side unscathed, are but a few of the inventive ways one can engage in long-distance killing.
Of course, this makes killing much easier. One is not really killing flesh and bone humans from such distances, because they are only dots and blurry images on a screen.
When was the last time we heard of modern armies involved in a fixed-bayonet charge? Or 200 men charging a machine gun nest to grab a little piece of hill?
It hasn’t always been this way when we look down the dusty bins of ancient history and study the way wars were fought back then.
With knives, swords, and spears, the killing was up close and personal. Armored minions would clash on grassy battlefields and tear into each other, chopping off heads, arms, legs, any part of their enemies that could be mashed or skewered.
Think how it must have been for these ancient warriors facing each other across the battlefields, whipping themselves into a killing frenzy, yelling at the top of their lungs, then charging.
The sound of thousands of feet slamming into the ground, the horses galloping next to the charging armies, the clash of steel against steel, swords slashing and cutting, lances impaling, blood and sweat and flying body parts everywhere, arrows falling from the sky like black, feathered rain.
The battles would last for hours. And only the strongest, bravest, most skilled, and vicious warriors would still be standing at the end of the fight, even if only on one leg.
Here are a few ancient battles that were fought mano-a-mano, with tens of thousands churned through the meat grinder of gruesome death, in a single battle alone.
- Battle of Marathon (490 BCE)
– Leaders: Miltiades (Greek), Datis and Artaphernes (Persian)
– Casualties: Approximately 6,400 Persian soldiers, around 200 Athenian soldiers
- Battle of Gaugamela (331 BCE)
– Leaders: Alexander the Great (Macedonian) vs. Darius III (Persian)
– Casualties: Estimates vary widely, with tens of thousands killed or wounded on both sides.
- Battle of Cannae (216 BCE)
– Leaders: Hannibal (Carthaginian) vs. Roman Consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro
– Casualties: Around 50,000 Romans killed, while Carthaginian casualties were much lower, around 5,700.
- Battle of Thermopylae (480 BCE)
– Leaders: King Leonidas I of Sparta (Greek) vs. King Xerxes I (Persian)
– Casualties: Estimates suggest around 2,500 Greeks and tens of thousands of Persians, though exact numbers are uncertain.
- Battle of Adrianople (378 CE)
– Leaders: Emperor Valens (Roman) vs. Fritigern (Visigothic)
– Casualties: Roman casualties numbered around 15,000 to 20,000, with the Visigoths inflicting heavy losses.
These soldiers did not die from 1,000-pound bombs dropped on their heads. They massacred each other up close and personal, face to face.
Imagine being one of these men who had to chop and stab their way through hordes of other men intent on killing you any way they can.
No way! Give me a bomb any day. Boom! And it’s all over.
Picture a battlefield of dead soldiers, limbs strewn everywhere, oozing blood and guts, rotting, maggots feasting on 50,000 dismembered corpses.
Not a pretty sight.
But war is war, and the objective is to kill more of them than they kill of us. By any means possible.
Like they say, “All is fair in love and war.”
Whether we kill our enemies with hypersonic missiles or a battle-ax, all that matters is victory.
By Tommy Acosta
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3 Comments
While hand to hand/face to face combat still occurs and is probably occurring in Gaza and Ukraine as I write this. But its occurrence widely avoided whenever possible by the armies of today.
Cruise missiles/smart munitions and drones can do the job of killing that entire Infantry Division’s struggle to do, especially in Urban Warfare Environments. It can be done from several thousand cowardly miles away from the intended targets.
Trained skilled snipers have always been a tremendous threat on the battlefield. Today’s snipers are claiming confirmed kills at distances of up to 2.361 miles by a Ukrainian sniper in 2023. A single good sniper can keep hundreds of armed enemy personnel from advancing. Top enemy leadership can be killed without risking high numbers of personnel to do so and can usually be done without the Sniper/Spotter being located and killed or captured because of the devastating lethality of today’s Sniper Weapons Systems and high tech optics.
Since Vietnam we have had the ability to see in darkness (not total darkness back then because the initial infrared scopes lacked internal diopters our equipment contain today necessary for a night vision device to operate effectively in complete darkness.
We also now have shoulder fired smart grenade launchers that can fire upon one target while the operator is searching for other targets with the optics. It’s a fire and forget grenade launcher.
Our anti tank missile systems can kill an entire tank crew without causing any significant damage to the tank itself by firing a high velocity armor piercing missile that penetrates the vehicle’s armor upon impact creating a quarter sized hole while creating a second exit hole also about the size of a quarter which sucks the oxygen rapidly out of the vehicle and the crews hearts, lungs and even brain matter from the eyes, ears, nose and mouth.
We have low yield nuclear grenades, mortars, artillery rounds and “backpack” or “suitcase” nukes.
There are lasers capable of burning a 12” in diameter hole through 10” of steel from 10 miles away and we have them mounted on humvee’s, tanks, ships and a variety of aircraft despite the US having signed a pact against the use of laser weapons on the battlefield.
Although we claim to have destroyed the last of our chemical weapons stockpiles over the past year, I guarantee you we still have an ample “emergency” “contingency” supply of each of the most lethal of them.
Roger Waters says it best when it comes to describing today’s warfare in the song The Bravery of Being out of Range on the Final Cut album.
Mankind has willingly evolved to decimate itself with the intention of killing our enemies and those we despise which will ultimately end up being ourselves!
Question-.were you ever in the armed forces/in combat, or even in a combat zone? If so, I’ll listen. If not, who cares what you “think”?
I think I recall either he or someone else mentioning service in Vietnam? Not positive on it though.
I don’t mind people who never served (especially in combat) having opinions about war. It’s everyone’s world after all. I have problems with arm chair generals and sh#thouse lawyers telling lies and spreading propaganda about what is or has happened in any given conflict and what caused it without even knowing A) where said conflict is on a map B) what the military and social economic history of the region is and C) what the ethnic makeup of the region is and who is doing the fighting and why. We have politicians and even some former military leaders who have failed to know the answers to such questions prior to involving our troops in several of our most recent conflicts and it has resulted in senseless needless loss of life. So it’s easy to understand if Joe civilian doesn’t get it right either. But telling utter lies and spreading conspiracy’s or siding with tyrants over our own military and intelligence services or standing with tyrants is something that needs to be called out in real time.