Best Defense
Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

George Patton, meet Joseph Heller

So on my day off over the weekend I paging through the July 1944 issue of the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry and this passage, about the experiences of a psychiatrist serving with an infantry battalion in North Africa in 1943, jumped out at me (italics are his, not mine): It soon became apparent that a ...

By , a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy.
U.S. Army
U.S. Army
U.S. Army

So on my day off over the weekend I paging through the July 1944 issue of the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry and this passage, about the experiences of a psychiatrist serving with an infantry battalion in North Africa in 1943, jumped out at me (italics are his, not mine):

So on my day off over the weekend I paging through the July 1944 issue of the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry and this passage, about the experiences of a psychiatrist serving with an infantry battalion in North Africa in 1943, jumped out at me (italics are his, not mine):

It soon became apparent that a tense, tremulous soldier was not necessarily a psychiatric casualty. He was if we made him one and sent him back, but often he was not a casualty simply because he was not permitted to be one. A state of tension and anxiety is so prevalent in the front lines that it must be regarded as a normal reaction in this grossly abnormal situation.

The second sentence made me think of General Patton slapping two soldiers in the August 1943 in Sicily, and made me wonder if he thought he could “not permit” them to become casualties. (Of course, the first soldier he assaulted, Pvt. Charles Kuhl, was suffering from dysentery and malaria, and those afflictions were not going to be knocked out of him, no matter how hard Patton swung or kicked-and he did both.)

And the third sentence seems to me to be a great summary of the message of Joseph Heller’s wonderful Catch-22.   

Thomas E. Ricks is a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy. Twitter: @tomricks1

Read More On History | Military

More from Foreign Policy

Children are hooked up to IV drips on the stairs at a children's hospital in Beijing.
Children are hooked up to IV drips on the stairs at a children's hospital in Beijing.

Chinese Hospitals Are Housing Another Deadly Outbreak

Authorities are covering up the spread of antibiotic-resistant pneumonia.

Henry Kissinger during an interview in Washington in August 1980.
Henry Kissinger during an interview in Washington in August 1980.

Henry Kissinger, Colossus on the World Stage

The late statesman was a master of realpolitik—whom some regarded as a war criminal.

A Ukrainian soldier in helmet and fatigues holds a cell phone and looks up at the night sky as an explosion lights up the horizon behind him.
A Ukrainian soldier in helmet and fatigues holds a cell phone and looks up at the night sky as an explosion lights up the horizon behind him.

The West’s False Choice in Ukraine

The crossroads is not between war and compromise, but between victory and defeat.

Illustrated portraits of Reps. MIke Gallagher, right, and Raja Krishnamoorthi
Illustrated portraits of Reps. MIke Gallagher, right, and Raja Krishnamoorthi

The Masterminds

Washington wants to get tough on China, and the leaders of the House China Committee are in the driver’s seat.