Foreword
It is impossible to describe war, the conditions of any war, as normal. The act of war is an abnormality in itself, the concerted action of one group of men to utterly destroy another group. And yet, some "wars" are more abnormal than others.
War dehumanizes. It turns men into self-serving monsters-sometimes for the sheer sake of survival, sometimes for the strange gratification that the terribly frightened get from exercising power over the terribly helpless.
Cruelty, as this book makes clear, is the providence of the totally insulated coward. A man who is afraid may be cruel to prove his lack of fear to himself and others. He continues cruelty to prove again and again to himself that hs is strong and without fear, to dispell any lingering doubts.
Such men cannot live with the knowledge that every man is afraid. Their fear is that fear will run away with them if the slightest opening is given. And, most of all, they fear others of their own kind.
The African wars bring out the worst in modern man. The natives still practice cruelty as a cult made necessary to give them strength. To insulate their fear. The mercenaries who bring death for money must be stronger, better, braver because they have more to fear than the semi-civilized barbarity of the Japanese or Germans of World War II. They have the primitive evil of fear itself to confront.
THE PUBLISHER