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01/14/2009: "Soldiers fight more bravely when amongst their own kind."
The main finding of "Heroes and Cowards" is that companies composed of volunteers of similar age and occupation who were born in the same areas were the least likely to suffer desertion. (I checked and, sure enough, most of the volunteers in Richard Courtwright's company were farm boys from the same Ohio county.) Factors like age, marital status, pro-Lincoln support back home and whether the army was on a winning streak also made a measurable difference, but the most important predictor of desertion was socioeconomic and demographic diversity. Ms. Costa and Mr. Kahn approvingly quote Ardant du Picq, a 19th- century French colonel and military theorist. "Four brave men who do not know each other will not dare to attack a lion. Four less brave, but knowing each other well, sure of their reliability and consequently of mutual aid, will attack resolutely."
A paradox lurks in the authors' findings. Social cohesion was good for morale, and good morale kept men fighting. But soldiering on in this particular war - fought before aseptic surgery but after the advent of rifled musketry - could have unusually deadly consequences.
If social cohesion increased the likelihood that a Union soldier would stay in the field with his company, of course, the chances of his being killed or wounded rose. But we also learn in "Heroes and Cowards" that such social cohesion improved his odds of survival in Confederate prison camps. Controlling for crowding - the most important predictor of camp mortality - and age, height, occupation and rank (commissioned officers got better treatment), the more loyal comrades a prisoner had, the more likely he was to survive. At Andersonville you needed someone to watch your back. "If one was captured alone, put with strangers and became sick," a memoirist wrote, "it was ten chances to one he would die unattended by any human being." Ms. Costa and Mr. Kahn, who have a knack for comparisons, note that life in Nazi and Soviet camps operated in a similar fashion.
[ It has long been observed that regiments fight best when composed of people from the same locality and culture. Diversity within regiments ruins the strength of an army. It discourages people from enlisting as well. Considering that armies in the west are sent to fight in wars that are bad for their nations and merely further internationalist agendas and increase corporate profits, it doesn't really matter how poorly they fight. The fewer good men enlist and get killed for such idiocy, the better. ]
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123181066383175917.html