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1

Nurdin, Nurdin, Ahmad Yamin, and Imammul Insan. "The Influence of Directive Leadership Style, Motivation, and Discipline on Performance Personil Kompi 1 Batalyon B Pelopor Brimob Sumbawa." Empiricism Journal 3, no. 2 (December 19, 2022): 168–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.36312/ej.v3i2.961.

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Performance really needs to be considered, where performance is used as an expression of a person's ability to carry out a job. Good performance can be seen from the directive leadership style. Where leadership style is the way a leader influences the behavior of subordinates, so they are willing to work together and want to work productively to achieve organizational goals. In addition to leadership style, motivation is also needed in improving performance. Then performance can also be influenced by the discipline of human resources in the environment. This research was conducted at Company 1 Battalion B Pioneer, where there are still obstacles in improving the performance of its personnel including those related to directive leadership, where there are still Company 1 Battalion B Pioneer personnel aged over 40 years and in rank (Nintara and Tamtama) as well. many senior personnel. So this study aims to analyze the influence of directive leadership style, motivation, and discipline on the performance of Company Personnel 1 Battalion B Pioneer – Brimob Sumbawa. This research is a quantitative research. The sampling technique used by the researcher is a saturated sample, that is, the entire population is used as a sample. Where the number of personnel of Company 1 Battalion B Pioneer – Brimob Sumbawa is 120 personnel. Data collection techniques carried out by researchers by distributing questionnaires. The data were analyzed using a statistical software (statistical software) in the form of a statistical package for social science (SPSS) application. Based on the results of the study, it can be concluded that: 1) The directive leadership style has no effect on the performance of the personnel of Company 1 Battalion B Pioneers – Brimob Sumbawa; 2) Motivation affects the performance of Company 1 Battalion B Pioneer personnel – Brimob Sumbawa; 3) Discipline affects the performance of Company 1 Battalion B Pioneer personnel – Brimob Sumbawa
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2

Panchenko, Anatoliy M. "All Life with a Book. The Librarian of 1st Turkestan Infantry Battalion Lieutenant B. Shaposhnikov." Bibliotekovedenie [Russian Journal of Library Science], no. 1 (February 10, 2010): 80–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.25281/0869-608x-2010-0-1-80-85.

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Article is devoted to the outstanding Soviet military figure, the military historian, the Marshal of Soviet Union B.M.Shaposhnikov (1882—1945). It is told about a role of military collections in a service and cultural-educational life of officers, and also about B.M.Shaposhnikov’s activity as a head of the officer library during service in 1st Turkestan infantry battalion.
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Hodges, Lybeth, and John Miller Morris. "A Private in the Texas Rangers: A. T. Miller of Company B, Frontier Battalion." Journal of Southern History 69, no. 1 (February 1, 2003): 210. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/30039900.

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4

Liles, Debbie. "Texas Ranger John B. Jones and the Frontier Battalion, 1874-1881 by Rick Miller." Southwestern Historical Quarterly 117, no. 2 (2013): 218–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/swh.2013.0092.

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Cabrera Arias, Carlos Arturo, Fabian Steven Garay Rairan, Ingrid Arango Calderón, and Óscar Edilson Gómez Vargas. "Design of a Troubleshooting Digital Test Bench for the Beechcraft King C-90, 200, B200, 300 and 350 Aircraft GCU." Ingeniería 25, no. 3 (October 5, 2020): 393–409. http://dx.doi.org/10.14483/23448393.16903.

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Context: The Colombian Army’s First Aircraft Maintenance Battalion must periodically test the performance of Generator Control Unit (GCU) on its Beechcraft King Air aircraft, which compels the operator to assume uncomfortable and non-ergonomic physical positions. This article proposes the use of a portable digital troubleshooting test bench for these units that facilitates the taking of measurements, the interpretation of the acquired information, and the technical reports. Method: The Integrate, Innovation, Process model (IIP) for the development of aviation technology innovation projects was used to design the test bench. Then, its functional modules were defined, and voltage and impedance measurement devices, an internal report storage system, and the user interface were included. Tests were conducted together with technical operators on the available Beechcraft King C-90, 200, B 200, 300, and 350 series aircraft. Finally, a technical report was elaborated to validate the test bench results. Results: The number of operators required to carry out the tests was reduced from four to one. The digital test bench only requires the connection of measurement harnesses by the operator, so it allows an improvement in ergonomics for the personnel. Using the bench, the review and evaluation time of the GCU was reduced from 120 minutes to 26 minutes, which implies an 86,66% decrease in fuel consumption. Conclusions: By using the digital troubleshooting test bench, the number of operators needed and the checkup and assessment times of the GCU were reduced, which means a decrease in fuel expenses. Its ease of transportation allows aircraft to be checked outside the Maintenance Battalion hangars, but the implementation of a USB port to store the reports should be considered. Acknowledgments: We would like to thank the First Aircraft Maintenance Battalion of the Colombian National Army and the Aviation School for their contribution to the development of the prototype. This project was funded by the National Army of Colombia, Science of Science and Technology, under internal code No. 118315.
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Ryabchenko, A. G., and E. V. Orel. "Military threat in Krasnodar. 1942-1943." Scientific bulletin of the Southern Institute of Management, no. 4 (December 25, 2018): 112–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.31775/2305-3100-2018-4-112-117.

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The Article is devoted to the significant date, the 75th anniversary of the liberation ofKrasnodarfrom the German-fascist invaders. Immediately after the outbreak of war with fascist invaders inKrasnodarstarted to prepare for it. Since the early days, in particular, was organized by the city destroyer battalion. In parallel, the organization of the assault battalions in four inner-city areas,Krasnodar. Was created regiment of militia. Built a defensive perimeter around the city.Krasnodarcity Committee of the CPSU (b), from 07. 07. 1942 informed that the date of completion of the defensive line of the city defense Committee of the city appointed on 10 August 1942 the measures Taken have led to the fact that as a result, on July 20 the construction of the defensive alignment (of the turn) and setting her weapon emplacements, there are 8 thousand people. The route passes through the settlements adjacent to the city. Each local district was assigned areas battery manned by gunners and cadets of theKrasnodarmortar school. Since the beginning of August 1942 for the construction of theKrasnodardefensive bypass (internal and external) daily had uvlekalas to 30 thousand civilians. But unfortunately, despite the measures taken, the city fell. Six months of the occupation had been the most terrible ordeal for the residents of the city, maybe in its history. In the historical memory of our people deposited the traces of the brutal cruelty by the Nazi occupiers. Moreover, the historical memory of the population passed, and the events leading up to the occupation associated with severe logistical difficulty.
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7

Golikov, A. I. "Memories of the medical faculty." Kazan medical journal 75, no. 3 (March 15, 1994): 250–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.17816/kazmj89951.

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In August 1919, I came to Kazan from the wilderness of the Penza province (b. Chembarsky district, now Belinsky district of the Penza region, 50 km from the railway station), because in the spring of that year I applied to Kazan University with a request to enroll me in the mathematical department of physics. For admission to students, it was enough to submit documents on graduation from a secondary educational institution (gymnasium, real school). Not finding myself among those accepted for physical education, I began to look through other lists and to my surprise found myself among those who entered the medical faculty. Turning to the Secretary for Student Affairs (Muravtsev), he received in response: "Next time you will write more legibly." The secretary refused to include me in the list of those enrolled in physical education and said: "You will re-enroll next year." There were no funds for the return trip, nor did I see any sense in it. Having taken a job as a clerk-accountant in the mechanical sub-department of the Road Department of the Kazan Committee of State Structures (Komgosoor), I diligently began to attend lectures both at the physics department and at the medical faculty. In early December, he was mobilized and served as a Red Army soldier in the 5th reserve regiment in the October Barracks of Kazan (student battalion). In 1920, I was seconded to fight the epidemic of typhus, smallpox, cholera and other infections in Yelabuga, Krasnokokshaysky (now Mari El), Menze-liiskiy and other cantons of the Kazan province. At the same time I worked as an employee of the newspaper "Banner of the Revolution", where at that time the editor was V. Bakhmetyev. In the autumn of 1920, together with other students, on the basis of a resolution of the Council of Labor and Defense (SRT), I was reinstated in the 1st year of the medical faculty of KSU.
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Tyagi, Vinod, and Ambika Tyagi. "Byte protecting perfect burst code." Discrete Mathematics, Algorithms and Applications 09, no. 04 (August 2017): 1750051. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/s1793830917500513.

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Byte correcting perfect codes are developed to correct burst errors within bytes. If a code is byte correcting code and we say that the code is [Formula: see text]-burst correcting, meaning that it corrects a single burst of length [Formula: see text] or less within a byte. A byte correcting code is such that if [Formula: see text]; [Formula: see text] denote the set of syndromes obtained from the [Formula: see text]th-byte of the parity check matrix [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]; [Formula: see text] denote the set of syndromes obtained from the [Formula: see text]th-byte of the parity check matrix [Formula: see text] then [Formula: see text]. In an [Formula: see text] code, if there are [Formula: see text] bytes of size [Formula: see text], then [Formula: see text]. Byte correcting codes are preferred where information stored in all bytes are equally important. But there are cases where some parts of the message are more important than other parts of the message, for example, if we have to transmit a message on a border location “ Shift Battalion (Bn) from Location A to Location B” then, we will focus more on the information shift, location [Formula: see text] and location [Formula: see text] i.e., bytes containing these information will be more important than others. In this situation, it is needed that during transmission these bytes should have no possibility of error. In other words, these bytes should be protected absolutely against any error. Keeping this in mind, we study burst error correcting capabilities of byte oriented codes in terms of byte protection level of each byte. If there is a byte error pattern of length [Formula: see text] in the transmission then all those bytes of the received pattern will be decoded correctly whose burst protection level is [Formula: see text] or more even though the code word may be decoded wrongly. Taking the code length [Formula: see text] to be divided into [Formula: see text] bytes with burst protection level of the [Formula: see text]th-byte as [Formula: see text]; [Formula: see text]; [Formula: see text], we construct linear codes that we call byte protecting burst (BPB) codes and investigate their byte protecting capabilities in this paper.
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9

Mielnik, Marcin. "M. KALBARCZYK, PEASANT BATALIONS IN GARWOLIŃSKI CUNTRY IN THE YEARS 1940 - 1944." International Journal of New Economics and Social Sciences 6, no. 2 (December 22, 2017): 0. http://dx.doi.org/10.5604/01.3001.0010.7652.

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Book M. Kalwarczyk Peasant Battalions in Garwoliński County in 1940-1944 is an interesting publication based on archival sources, relationships and Explains veterans B.CH. The work Consists of three chapters. The first Re-lates to the history of the district Garwolin Interwar period, the second shows B.CH Garwolin Circumstances crea-tions B. Ch., while the third section presents the most interesting stories of military action
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10

Pushkin, Ihar. "NATIONAL PERCULIARITIES OF COLLABORATIONISM IN BERLARUS DURING THE WAR OF 1941-1945." Almanac of Ukrainian Studies, no. 23 (2018): 98–106. http://dx.doi.org/10.17721/2520-2626/2018.23.16.

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The article deals with the national cultural policy of the invaders on the territory of modern Belarus and various forms of co-operation of the population against the invaders. It may be noted the following forms of cooperation of the part of the population with the occupiers. The political collaboration – those who worked in local administrative bodies created by the invaders or with their help (elders, burgomasters, Judenraths, etc.), public organizations, were auxiliary employees of the German occupation organs. Military collaboration: a) local police, law enforcement, auxiliary security police units, railway battalions, “eastern” battalions, Cossack formations, agents of the Abwer, SD, GUF, police, auxiliary construction and other parts; b) local self-defense (BКS, BSA), the formation of the Polish army (АК) and the Ukrainian OUN-UPA, who collaborated with the Germans, members of the defensive military settlements, the Russian Cossack military units, Kaminsky army. The economic (economic) collaboration included the heads and employees of economic bodies, enterprises and organizations that functioned during the war years, working directly or indirectly for the occupiers. During the occupation, there were differences in the situation of national groups in different parts of Belarus. The most active in some regions of the country were Belarusians and Russians, while others were Poles and Ukrainians. The Tatars showed the least activity. It is concluded that the composition of the different groups of collaborators in Belarus were representatives of various nationalities and ethnic groups.
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11

Browder, G. C. "Hitler's Police Battalions: Enforcing Racial War in the East, Edward B. Westermann (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005), xv + 329 pp., $34.95." Holocaust and Genocide Studies 20, no. 3 (January 1, 2006): 500–502. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/hgs/dcl023.

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12

Shepherd, Ben. "Review: Edward B. Westermann, Hitler’s Police Battalions: Enforcing Racial War in the East, University Press of Kansas: Lawrence, KS, 2005; 329 pp., 20 illus.; 9780700613717, $34.95 (hbk)." European History Quarterly 39, no. 4 (September 25, 2009): 733–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/02656914090390040744.

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13

Плеханов, А. А., and В. К. Герасимов. "ЭССЕНЦИАЛИСТСКАЯ ПАРАДИГМА НАЦИОНАЛИЗМА И БУДУЩЕЕ ДОНБАССА В МЕМУАРАХ БОЙЦОВ УКРАИНСКИХ ДОБРОВОЛЬЧЕСКИХ БАТАЛЬОНОВ." Вестник антропологии (Herald of Anthropology), no. 3 (October 1, 2021): 88–104. http://dx.doi.org/10.33876/2311-0546/2021-3/88-104.

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В статье исследуются репрезентации продолжающегося военного конфликта на востоке Украины, представленные в литературных произведениях за авторством ветеранов украинских парамилитарных формирований. Поднимается проблема трансляции радикальных националистических взглядов через литературу, построенную на травматическом военном опыте ветеранов АТО/ООС. В частности, изучается воображаемый образ украинской (этно)нации и государственности. Исходя из теоретических установок Б. Розенвейн, авторы предлагают рассматривать представителей представляемой ими группы как специфическое «эмоциональное сообщество», а создаваемую ими литературу как пространство воспроизводства не только современной версии «казацкого мифа», но и праворадикального нарратива «национализирующего национализма». Будущее русскоязычных жителей Донбасса в исследуемом корпусе литературы представляется в диапазоне от тотальной украинизации и этноязыковой дискриминации до физического уничтожения или выселения за пределы Украины. Эта позиция, с одной стороны, проистекает из опыта коммуникации с населением в зоне конфликта, с другой – оказывается обусловлена уже существовавшем представлением о Донбассе как о «больном» регионе страны, населённом внутриукраинскими «Другими». Таким образом, в данном парамилитарном дискурсе территория Донбасса и его население оказываются ставкой в игре с нулевой суммой. The article examines the representations of the ongoing military conflict in the east of Ukraine in literary works created by the veterans of Ukrainian paramilitary formations. The problem of radical nationalist views’ representation through literature based on the traumatic military experience of the ATO/JFO veterans is in the spotlight. The volunteer battalions members' perceptions of themselves and Donbass, its inhabitants, and its future are analyzed. Based on the theoretical framework of B. Rosenwein, authors propose to view representatives of this group as a specific "emotional community" while the literature written by them should be seen as a space for reproducing not only the modern version of the "Cossack myth" but also the far-right narrative of "nationalizing nationalism”. In the studied corpus, Donbass Russian-speaking inhabitants’ future is presented in the range from total Ukrainization and ethnolinguistic discrimination to mass killings or deportations outside of the state borders. On the one hand, this position stems from the combatants' experience of communication with the population in the conflict zone and, on the other hand, is conditioned by the already existing perception of Donbas as a "sick" region of Ukraine, populated by intra-Ukrainian "Others". Thus in Ukrainian paramilitary discourse, Donbass territory and population are viewed as a bet in a zero-sum game.
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Heini, Nicole, Roger Stephan, and Sophia Johler. "Toxin genes and cytotoxicity levels detected in Bacillus cereus isolates collected from cooked food products delivered by Swiss Army catering facilities." Italian Journal of Food Safety 7, no. 2 (July 3, 2018). http://dx.doi.org/10.4081/ijfs.2018.7323.

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Heated food is known to be often contaminated with B. cereus, leading to cases of diarrhoeal or emetic diseases. Battalion kitchens or army catering facilities present a food safety risk, as temperature abuse and long storage time can result in serious public health problems affecting a high number of served people. In contrast to civil catering facilities, no microbiological monitoring systems are currently implemented in Swiss military kitchens. In this study toxin gene profiles and cytotoxicity levels of 21 isolates of B. cereus originating from six different food categories were determined. Nearly all isolates (95%) harbored the nhe gene, whereas no hbl could be detected. Seven isolates displayed the cytK2 gene and one cereulide-producer was isolated out of vegetables. While most isolates displayed low cytotoxicity, highly cytotoxic strains were detected, with three isolates even exceeding the cytotoxicity level of the reference strain for high-level toxin production, underpinning that cytotoxicity cannot be deduced only from presence or absence of toxin genes. These findings further underline the importance of rapid cooling of foods or maintenance over 65°C before serving. This is especially important in mass catering facilities, such as military kitchens, in which food is often prepared a long time in advance.
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Segal, David, Yonatan Ilibman Arzi, Maxim Bez, Matan Cohen, Jacob Rotschield, Noam Fink, and Erez Karp. "Promoting Compliance to COVID-19 Vaccination in Military Units." Military Medicine, May 7, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/milmed/usab183.

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ABSTRACT Background On December 27th, 2020, the Israeli Defense Forces initiated a mass COVID-19 vaccination campaign aiming to vaccinate its personnel. This population upheld specific characteristics in terms of age and sex, lack of significant comorbidities, and a general scarcity of risk factors for sustaining a severe COVID-19 illness. We present the measures taken to increase vaccination compliance, and the vaccination rate that followed these actions. Our secondary goal was to compare between vaccination rates in frontline battalions and highly essential military units (group A) and rear administration and support military units (group B). Methods This was a retrospective review that included 70 military units that were composed of 18,719 individuals of both sexes, mostly free of significant comorbidities. We divided the challenges of maximizing vaccination rates into two main categories: vaccine compliance (including communication and information) and logistical challenges. We compared the vaccination rates in groups A and B using a multivariable linear regression model. A P-value of .05 was considered significant. Results The mean age in 70 military units was 22.77 ± 1.35 (range 18-50) years, 71.13% males. A total of 726 (3.88%) individuals have been found positive for SARS-CoV-2 between March 1st, 2020 and February 18th, 2021. On February 18th, 2021, 54 days after the vaccination campaign was launched, 15,871 (84.79%) of the study population have been vaccinated by the first dose of Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, expressing an 88.21% compliance rate (excluding recovered COVID-19 cases who were not prioritized to be vaccinated at this stage). Vaccination compliance in military units from group A was found to be higher when compared to group B (P < .001), leading to a 90.02% of group A population being either previously SARS-CoV-2 positive or COVID-19 vaccinated. Conclusions A designated army campaign led by a multidisciplinary team could rapidly achieve a high COVID-19 vaccination rate. The information presented can serve organizations worldwide with similar characteristics that plan a mass COVID-19 vaccination campaign.
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Murphy, Ffion, and Richard Nile. "The Many Transformations of Albert Facey." M/C Journal 19, no. 4 (August 31, 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1132.

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In the last months of his life, 86-year-old Albert Facey became a best-selling author and revered cultural figure following the publication of his autobiography, A Fortunate Life. Released on Anzac Day 1981, it was praised for its “plain, unembellished, utterly sincere and un-self-pitying account of the privations of childhood and youth” (Semmler) and “extremely powerful description of Gallipoli” (Dutton 16). Within weeks, critic Nancy Keesing declared it an “Enduring Classic.” Within six months, it was announced as the winner of two prestigious non-fiction awards, with judges acknowledging Facey’s “extraordinary memory” and “ability to describe scenes and characters with great precision” (“NBC” 4). A Fortunate Life also transformed the fortunes of its publisher. Founded in 1976 as an independent, not-for-profit publishing house, Fremantle Arts Centre Press (FACP) might have been expected, given the Australian average, to survive for just a few years. Former managing editor Ray Coffey attributes the Press’s ongoing viability, in no small measure, to Facey’s success (King 29). Along with Wendy Jenkins, Coffey edited Facey’s manuscript through to publication; only five months after its release, with demand outstripping the capabilities, FACP licensed Penguin to take over the book’s production and distribution. Adaptations soon followed. In 1984, Kerry Packer’s PBL launched a prospectus for a mini-series, which raised a record $6.3 million (PBL 7–8). Aired in 1986 with a high-rating documentary called The Facey Phenomenon, the series became the most watched television event of the year (Lucas). Syndication of chapters to national and regional newspapers, stage and radio productions, audio- and e-books, abridged editions for young readers, and inclusion on secondary school curricula extended the range and influence of Facey’s life writing. Recently, an option was taken out for a new television series (Fraser).A hundred reprints and two million readers on from initial publication, A Fortunate Life continues to rate among the most appreciated Australian books of all time. Commenting on a reader survey in 2012, writer and critic Marieke Hardy enthused, “I really loved it [. . .] I felt like I was seeing a part of my country and my country’s history through a very human voice . . .” (First Tuesday Book Club). Registering a transformed reading, Hardy’s reference to Australian “history” is unproblematically juxtaposed with amused delight in an autobiography that invents and embellishes: not believing “half” of what Facey wrote, she insists he was foremost a yarn spinner. While the work’s status as a witness account has become less authoritative over time, it seems appreciation of the author’s imagination and literary skill has increased (Williamson). A Fortunate Life has been read more commonly as an uncomplicated, first-hand account, such that editor Wendy Jenkins felt it necessary to refute as an “utter mirage” that memoir is “transferred to the page by an act of perfect dictation.” Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson argue of life narratives that some “autobiographical claims [. . .] can be verified or discounted by recourse to documentation outside the text. But autobiographical truth is a different matter” (16). With increased access to archives, especially digitised personnel records, historians have asserted that key elements of Facey’s autobiography are incorrect or “fabricated” (Roberts), including his enlistment in 1914 and participation in the Gallipoli Landing on 25 April 1915. We have researched various sources relevant to Facey’s early years and war service, including hard-copy medical and repatriation records released in 2012, and find A Fortunate Life in a range of ways deviates from “documentation outside of the text,” revealing intriguing, layered storytelling. We agree with Smith and Watson that “autobiographical acts” are “anything but simple or transparent” (63). As “symbolic interactions in the world,” they are “culturally and historically specific” and “engaged in an argument about identity” (63). Inevitably, they are also “fractured by the play of meaning” (63). Our approach, therefore, includes textual analysis of Facey’s drafts alongside the published narrative and his medical records. We do not privilege institutional records as impartial but rather interpret them in terms of their hierarchies and organisation of knowledge. This leads us to speculate on alternative readings of A Fortunate Life as an illness narrative that variously resists and subscribes to dominant cultural plots, tropes, and attitudes. Facey set about writing in earnest in the 1970s and generated (at least) three handwritten drafts, along with a typescript based on the third draft. FACP produced its own working copy from the typescript. Our comparison of the drafts offers insights into the production of Facey’s final text and the otherwise “hidden” roles of editors as transformers and enablers (Munro 1). The notion that a working man with basic literacy could produce a highly readable book in part explains Facey’s enduring appeal. His grandson and literary executor, John Rose, observed in early interviews that Facey was a “natural storyteller” who had related details of his life at every opportunity over a period of more than six decades (McLeod). Jenkins points out that Facey belonged to a vivid oral culture within which he “told and retold stories to himself and others,” so that they eventually “rubbed down into the lines and shapes that would so memorably underpin the extended memoir that became A Fortunate Life.” A mystique was thereby established that “time” was Albert Facey’s “first editor” (Jenkins). The publisher expressly aimed to retain Facey’s voice, content, and meaning, though editing included much correcting of grammar and punctuation, eradication of internal inconsistencies and anomalies, and structural reorganisation into six sections and 68 chapters. We find across Facey’s drafts a broadly similar chronology detailing childhood abandonment, life-threatening incidents, youthful resourcefulness, physical prowess, and participation in the Gallipoli Landing. However, there are also shifts and changed details, including varying descriptions of childhood abuse at a place called Cave Rock; the introduction of (incompatible accounts of) interstate boxing tours in drafts two and three which replace shearing activities in Draft One; divergent tales of Facey as a world-standard athlete, league footballer, expert marksman, and powerful swimmer; and changing stories of enlistment and war service (see Murphy and Nile, “Wounded”; “Naked”).Jenkins edited those sections concerned with childhood and youth, while Coffey attended to Facey’s war and post-war life. Drawing on C.E.W. Bean’s official war history, Coffey introduced specificity to the draft’s otherwise vague descriptions of battle and amended errors, such as Facey’s claim to have witnessed Lord Kitchener on the beach at Gallipoli. Importantly, Coffey suggested the now famous title, “A Fortunate Life,” and encouraged the author to alter the ending. When asked to suggest a title, Facey offered “Cave Rock” (Interview)—the site of his violent abuse and humiliation as a boy. Draft One concluded with Facey’s repatriation from the war and marriage in 1916 (106); Draft Two with a brief account of continuing post-war illness and ultimate defeat: “My war injuries caught up with me again” (107). The submitted typescript concludes: “I have often thought that going to War has caused my life to be wasted” (Typescript 206). This ending differs dramatically from the redemptive vision of the published narrative: “I have lived a very good life, it has been very rich and full. I have been very fortunate and I am thrilled by it when I look back” (412).In The Wounded Storyteller, Arthur Frank argues that literary markets exist for stories of “narrative wreckage” (196) that are redeemed by reconciliation, resistance, recovery, or rehabilitation, which is precisely the shape of Facey’s published life story and a source of its popularity. Musing on his post-war experiences in A Fortunate Life, Facey focuses on his ability to transform the material world around him: “I liked the challenge of building up a place from nothing and making a success where another fellow had failed” (409). If Facey’s challenge was building up something from nothing, something he could set to work on and improve, his life-writing might reasonably be regarded as a part of this broader project and desire for transformation, so that editorial interventions helped him realise this purpose. Facey’s narrative was produced within a specific zeitgeist, which historian Joy Damousi notes was signalled by publication in 1974 of Bill Gammage’s influential, multiply-reprinted study of front-line soldiers, The Broken Years, which drew on the letters and diaries of a thousand Great War veterans, and also the release in 1981 of Peter Weir’s film Gallipoli, for which Gammage was the historical advisor. The story of Australia’s war now conceptualised fallen soldiers as “innocent victims” (Damousi 101), while survivors were left to “compose” memories consistent with their sacrifice (Thomson 237–54). Viewing Facey’s drafts reminds us that life narratives are works of imagination, that the past is not fixed and memory is created in the present. Facey’s autobiographical efforts and those of his publisher to improve the work’s intelligibility and relevance together constitute an attempt to “objectify the self—to present it as a knowable object—through a narrative that re-structures [. . .] the self as history and conclusions” (Foster 10). Yet, such histories almost invariably leave “a crucial gap” or “censored chapter.” Dennis Foster argues that conceiving of narration as confession, rather than expression, “allows us to see the pathos of the simultaneous pursuit and evasion of meaning” (10); we believe a significant lacuna in Facey’s life writing is intimated by its various transformations.In a defining episode, A Fortunate Life proposes that Facey was taken from Gallipoli on 19 August 1915 due to wounding that day from a shell blast that caused sandbags to fall on him, crush his leg, and hurt him “badly inside,” and a bullet to the shoulder (348). The typescript, however, includes an additional but narratively irreconcilable date of 28 June for the same wounding. The later date, 19 August, was settled on for publication despite the author’s compelling claim for the earlier one: “I had been blown up by a shell and some 7 or 8 sandbags had fallen on top of me, the day was the 28th of June 1915, how I remembered this date, it was the day my brother Roy had been killed by a shell burst.” He adds: “I was very ill for about six weeks after the incident but never reported it to our Battalion doctor because I was afraid he would send me away” (Typescript 205). This account accords with Facey’s first draft and his medical records but is inconsistent with other parts of the typescript that depict an uninjured Facey taking a leading role in fierce fighting throughout July and August. It appears, furthermore, that Facey was not badly wounded at any time. His war service record indicates that he was removed from Gallipoli due to “heart troubles” (Repatriation), which he also claims in his first draft. Facey’s editors did not have ready access to military files in Canberra, while medical files were not released until 2012. There existed, therefore, virtually no opportunity to corroborate the author’s version of events, while the official war history and the records of the State Library of Western Australia, which were consulted, contain no reference to Facey or his war service (Interview). As a consequence, the editors were almost entirely dependent on narrative logic and clarifications by an author whose eyesight and memory had deteriorated to such an extent he was unable to read his amended text. A Fortunate Life depicts men with “nerve sickness” who were not permitted to “stay at the Front because they would be upsetting to the others, especially those who were inclined that way themselves” (350). By cross referencing the draft manuscripts against medical records, we can now perceive that Facey was regarded as one of those nerve cases. According to Facey’s published account, his wounds “baffled” doctors in Egypt and Fremantle (353). His medical records reveal that in September 1915, while hospitalised in Egypt, his “palpitations” were diagnosed as “Tachycardia” triggered by war-induced neuroses that began on 28 June. This suggests that Facey endured seven weeks in the field in this condition, with the implication being that his debility worsened, resulting in his hospitalisation. A diagnosis of “debility,” “nerves,” and “strain” placed Facey in a medical category of “Special Invalids” (Butler 541). Major A.W. Campbell noted in the Medical Journal of Australia in 1916 that the war was creating “many cases of little understood nervous and mental affections, not only where a definite wound has been received, but in many cases where nothing of the sort appears” (323). Enlisted doctors were either physicians or surgeons and sometimes both. None had any experience of trauma on the scale of the First World War. In 1915, Campbell was one of only two Australian doctors with any pre-war experience of “mental diseases” (Lindstrom 30). On staff at the Australian Base Hospital at Heliopolis throughout the Gallipoli campaign, he claimed that at times nerve cases “almost monopolised” the wards under his charge (319). Bearing out Facey’s description, Campbell also reported that affected men “received no sympathy” and, as “carriers of psychic contagion,” were treated as a “source of danger” to themselves and others (323). Credentialed by royal colleges in London and coming under British command, Australian medical teams followed the practice of classifying men presenting “nervous or mental symptoms” as “battle casualties” only if they had also been wounded by “enemy action” (Loughran 106). By contrast, functional disability, with no accompanying physical wounds, was treated as unmanly and a “hysterical” reaction to the pressures of war. Mental debility was something to be feared in the trenches and diagnosis almost invariably invoked charges of predisposition or malingering (Tyquin 148–49). This shifted responsibility (and blame) from the war to the individual. Even as late as the 1950s, medical notes referred to Facey’s condition as being “constitutional” (Repatriation).Facey’s narrative demonstrates awareness of how harshly sufferers were treated. We believe that he defended himself against this with stories of physical injury that his doctors never fully accepted and that he may have experienced conversion disorder, where irreconcilable experience finds somatic expression. His medical diagnosis in 1915 and later life writing establish a causal link with the explosion and his partial burial on 28 June, consistent with opinion at the time that linked concussive blasts with destabilisation of the nervous system (Eager 422). Facey was also badly shaken by exposure to the violence and abjection of war, including hand-to-hand combat and retrieving for burial shattered and often decomposed bodies, and, in particular, by the death of his brother Roy, whose body was blown to pieces on 28 June. (A second brother, Joseph, was killed by multiple bayonet wounds while Facey was convalescing in Egypt.) Such experiences cast a different light on Facey’s observation of men suffering nerves on board the hospital ship: “I have seen men doze off into a light sleep and suddenly jump up shouting, ‘Here they come! Quick! Thousands of them. We’re doomed!’” (350). Facey had escaped the danger of death by explosion or bayonet but at a cost, and the war haunted him for the rest of his days. On disembarkation at Fremantle on 20 November 1915, he was admitted to hospital where he remained on and off for several months. Forty-one other sick and wounded disembarked with him (HMAT). Around one third, experiencing nerve-related illness, had been sent home for rest; while none returned to the war, some of the physically wounded did (War Service Records). During this time, Facey continued to present with “frequent attacks of palpitation and giddiness,” was often “short winded,” and had “heart trouble” (Repatriation). He was discharged from the army in June 1916 but, his drafts suggest, his war never really ended. He began a new life as a wounded Anzac. His dependent and often fractious relationship with the Repatriation Department ended only with his death 66 years later. Historian Marina Larsson persuasively argues that repatriated sick and wounded servicemen from the First World War represented a displaced presence at home. Many led liminal lives of “disenfranchised grief” (80). Stephen Garton observes a distinctive Australian use of repatriation to describe “all policies involved in returning, discharging, pensioning, assisting and training returned men and women, and continuing to assist them throughout their lives” (74). Its primary definition invokes coming home but to repatriate also implies banishment from a place that is not home, so that Facey was in this sense expelled from Gallipoli and, by extension, excluded from the myth of Anzac. Unlike his two brothers, he would not join history as one of the glorious dead; his name would appear on no roll of honour. Return home is not equivalent to restoration of his prior state and identity, for baggage from the other place perpetually weighs. Furthermore, failure to regain health and independence strains hospitality and gratitude for the soldier’s service to King and country. This might be exacerbated where there is no evident or visible injury, creating suspicion of resistance, cowardice, or malingering. Over 26 assessments between 1916 and 1958, when Facey was granted a full war pension, the Repatriation Department observed him as a “neuropathic personality” exhibiting “paroxysmal tachycardia” and “neurocirculatory asthenia.” In 1954, doctors wrote, “We consider the condition is a real handicap and hindrance to his getting employment.” They noted that after “attacks,” Facey had a “busted depressed feeling,” but continued to find “no underlying myocardial disease” (Repatriation) and no validity in Facey’s claims that he had been seriously physically wounded in the war (though A Fortunate Life suggests a happier outcome, where an independent medical panel finally locates the cause of his ongoing illness—rupture of his spleen in the war—which results in an increased war pension). Facey’s condition was, at times, a source of frustration for the doctors and, we suspect, disappointment and shame to him, though this appeared to reduce on both sides when the Repatriation Department began easing proof of disability from the 1950s (Thomson 287), and the Department of Veteran’s Affairs was created in 1976. This had the effect of shifting public and media scrutiny back onto a system that had until then deprived some “innocent victims of the compensation that was their due” (Garton 249). Such changes anticipated the introduction of Post-Traumatic Shock Disorder (PTSD) to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1980. Revisions to the DSM established a “genealogy of trauma” and “panic disorders” (100, 33), so that diagnoses such as “neuropathic personality” (Echterling, Field, and Stewart 192) and “soldier’s heart,” that is, disorders considered “neurotic,” were “retrospectively reinterpreted” as a form of PTSD. However, Alberti points out that, despite such developments, war-related trauma continues to be contested (80). We propose that Albert Facey spent his adult life troubled by a sense of regret and failure because of his removal from Gallipoli and that he attempted to compensate through storytelling, which included his being an original Anzac and seriously wounded in action. By writing, Facey could shore up his rectitude, work ethic, and sense of loyalty to other servicemen, which became necessary, we believe, because repatriation doctors (and probably others) had doubted him. In 1927 and again in 1933, an examining doctor concluded: “The existence of a disability depends entirely on his own unsupported statements” (Repatriation). We argue that Facey’s Gallipoli experiences transformed his life. By his own account, he enlisted for war as a physically robust and supremely athletic young man and returned nine months later to life-long anxiety and ill-health. Publication transformed him into a national sage, earning him, in his final months, the credibility, empathy, and affirmation he had long sought. Exploring different accounts of Facey, in the shape of his drafts and institutional records, gives rise to new interpretations. In this context, we believe it is time for a new edition of A Fortunate Life that recognises it as a complex testimonial narrative and theorises Facey’s deployment of national legends and motifs in relation to his “wounded storytelling” as well as to shifting cultural and medical conceptualisations and treatments of shame and trauma. ReferencesAlberti, Fay Bound. Matters of the Heart: History, Medicine, and Emotions. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010. Butler, A.G. Official History of the Australian Medical Services 1814-1918: Vol I Gallipoli, Palestine and New Guinea. Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1930.Campbell, A.W. “Remarks on Some Neuroses and Psychoses in War.” Medical Journal of Australia 15 April (1916): 319–23.Damousi, Joy. “Why Do We Get So Emotional about Anzac.” What’s Wrong with Anzac. Ed. Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds. Sydney: UNSWP, 2015. 94–109.Dutton, Geoffrey. “Fremantle Arts Centre Press Publicity.” Australian Book Review May (1981): 16.Eager, R. “War Neuroses Occurring in Cases with a Definitive History of Shell Shock.” British Medical Journal 13 Apr. 1918): 422–25.Echterling, L.G., Thomas A. Field, and Anne L. Stewart. “Evolution of PTSD in the DSM.” Future Directions in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Prevention, Diagnosis, and Treatment. Ed. Marilyn P. Safir and Helene S. Wallach. New York: Springer, 2015. 189–212.Facey, A.B. A Fortunate Life. 1981. Ringwood: Penguin, 2005.———. Drafts 1–3. University of Western Australia, Special Collections.———. Transcript. University of Western Australia, Special Collections.First Tuesday Book Club. ABC Splash. 4 Dec. 2012. <http://splash.abc.net.au/home#!/media/1454096/http&>.Foster, Dennis. Confession and Complicity in Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987.Frank, Arthur. The Wounded Storyteller. London: U of Chicago P, 1995.Fraser, Jane. “CEO Says.” Fremantle Press. 7 July 2015. <https://www.fremantlepress.com.au/c/news/3747-ceo-says-9>.Garton, Stephen. The Cost of War: Australians Return. Melbourne: Oxford UP, 1994.HMAT Aeneas. “Report of Passengers for the Port of Fremantle from Ports Beyond the Commonwealth.” 20 Nov. 1915. <http://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=9870708&S=1>.“Interview with Ray Coffey.” Personal interview. 6 May 2016. Follow-up correspondence. 12 May 2016.Jenkins, Wendy. “Tales from the Backlist: A Fortunate Life Turns 30.” Fremantle Press, 14 April 2011. <https://www.fremantlepress.com.au/c/bookclubs/574-tales-from-the-backlist-a-fortunate-life-turns-30>.Keesing, Nancy. ‘An Enduring Classic.’ Australian Book Review (May 1981). FACP Press Clippings. Fremantle. n. pag.King, Noel. “‘I Can’t Go On … I’ll Go On’: Interview with Ray Coffey, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 22 Dec. 2004; 24 May 2006.” Westerly 51 (2006): 31–54.Larsson, Marina. “A Disenfranchised Grief: Post War Death and Memorialisation in Australia after the First World War.” Australian Historical Studies 40.1 (2009): 79–95.Lindstrom, Richard. “The Australian Experience of Psychological Casualties in War: 1915-1939.” PhD dissertation. Victoria University, Feb. 1997.Loughran, Tracey. “Shell Shock, Trauma, and the First World War: The Making of a Diagnosis and its Histories.” Journal of the History of Medical and Allied Sciences 67.1 (2012): 99–119.Lucas, Anne. “Curator’s Notes.” A Fortunate Life. Australian Screen. <http://aso.gov.au/titles/tv/a-fortunate-life/notes/>.McLeod, Steve. “My Fortunate Life with Grandad.” Western Magazine Dec. (1983): 8.Munro, Craig. Under Cover: Adventures in the Art of Editing. Brunswick: Scribe, 2015.Murphy, Ffion, and Richard Nile. “The Naked Anzac: Exposure and Concealment in A.B. Facey’s A Fortunate Life.” Southerly 75.3 (2015): 219–37.———. “Wounded Storyteller: Revisiting Albert Facey’s Fortunate Life.” Westerly 60.2 (2015): 87–100.“NBC Book Awards.” Australian Book Review Oct. (1981): 1–4.PBL. Prospectus: A Fortunate Life, the Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Bloke. 1–8.Repatriation Records. Albert Facey. National Archives of Australia.Roberts, Chris. “Turkish Machine Guns at the Landing.” Wartime: Official Magazine of the Australian War Memorial 50 (2010). <https://www.awm.gov.au/wartime/50/roberts_machinegun/>.Semmler, Clement. “The Way We Were before the Good Life.” Courier Mail 10 Oct. 1981. FACP Press Clippings. Fremantle. n. pag.Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. 2001. 2nd ed. U of Minnesota P, 2010.Thomson, Alistair. Anzac Memories: Living with the Legend. 1994. 2nd ed. Melbourne: Monash UP, 2013. Tyquin, Michael. Gallipoli, the Medical War: The Australian Army Services in the Dardanelles Campaign of 1915. Kensington: UNSWP, 1993.War Service Records. National Archives of Australia. <http://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/NameSearch/Interface/NameSearchForm.aspx>.Williamson, Geordie. “A Fortunate Life.” Copyright Agency. <http://readingaustralia.com.au/essays/a-fortunate-life/>.
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Brandt, Marisa Renee. "Cyborg Agency and Individual Trauma: What Ender's Game Teaches Us about Killing in the Age of Drone Warfare." M/C Journal 16, no. 6 (November 6, 2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.718.

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Abstract:
During the War on Terror, the United States military has been conducting an increasing number of foreign campaigns by remote control using drones—also called unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs)—to extend the reach of military power and augment the technical precision of targeted strikes while minimizing bodily risk to American combatants. Stationed on bases throughout the southwest, operators fly weaponized drones over the Middle East. Viewing the battle zone through a computer screen that presents them with imagery captured from a drone-mounted camera, these combatants participate in war from a safe distance via an interface that resembles a video game. Increasingly, this participation takes the form of targeted killing. Despite their relative physical safety, in 2008 reports began mounting that like boots-on-the-ground combatants, many drone operators seek the services of chaplains or other mental health professionals to deal with the emotional toll of their work (Associated Press; Schachtman). Questions about the nature of the stress or trauma that drone operators experience have become a trope in news coverage of drone warfare (see Bumiller; Bowden; Saleton; Axe). This was exemplified in May 2013, when former Air Force drone pilot Brandon Bryant became a public figure after speaking to National Public Radio about his remorse for participating in targeted killing strikes and his subsequent struggle with post-traumatic stress (PTS) (Greene and McEvers). Stories like Bryant’s express American culture’s struggle to understand the role screen-mediated, remotely controlled killing plays in shifting the location of combatants’s sense of moral agency. That is, their sense of their ability to act based on their own understanding of right and wrong. Historically, one of the primary ways that psychiatry has conceptualized combat trauma has been as combatants’s psychological response losing their sense of moral agency on the battlefield (Lifton).This articleuses the popular science fiction novel Ender's Game as an analytic lens through which to examine the ways that screen-mediated warfare may result in combat trauma by investigating the ways in which it may compromise moral agency. The goal of this analysis is not to describe the present state of drone operators’s experience (see Asaro), but rather to compare and contrast contemporary public discourses on the psychological impact of screen-mediated war with the way it is represented in one of the most influential science fiction novels of all times (The book won the Nebula Award in 1985, the Hugo Award in 1986, and appears on both the Modern Library 100 Best Novels and American Library Association’s “100 Best Books for Teens” lists). In so doing, the paper aims to counter prevalent modes of critical analysis of screen-mediated war that cannot account for drone operators’s trauma. For decades, critics of postmodern warfare have denounced how fighting from inside tanks, the cockpits of planes, or at office desks has removed combatants from the experiences of risk and endangerment that historically characterized war (see Gray; Levidow & Robins). They suggest that screen-mediation enables not only physical but also cognitive and emotional distance from the violence of war-fighting by circumscribing it in a “magic circle.” Virtual worlds scholars adopted the term “magic circle” from cultural historian Johan Huizinga, who described it as the membrane that separates the time and space of game-play from those of real life (Salen and Zimmerman). While military scholars have long recognized that only 2% of soldiers can kill without hesitation (Grossman), critics of “video game wars” suggest that screen-mediation puts war in a magic circle, thereby creating cyborg human-machine assemblages capable of killing in cold blood. In other words, these critics argue that screen-mediated war distributes agency between humans and machines in such a way that human combatants do not feel morally responsible for killing. In contrast, Ender’s Game suggests that even when militaries utilize video game aesthetics to create weapons control interfaces, screen-mediation alone ultimately cannot blur the line between war and play and thereby psychically shield cyborg soldiers from combat trauma.Orson Scott Card’s 1985 novel Ender’s Game—and the 2013 film adaptation—tells the story of a young boy at an elite military academy. Set several decades after a terrible war between humans and an alien race called the buggers, the novel follows the life of a boy named Ender. At age 6, recruiters take Andrew “Ender” Wiggin from his family to begin military training. He excels in all areas and eventually enters officer training. There he encounters a new video game-like simulator in which he commands space ship battalions against increasingly complex configurations of bugger ships. At the novel’s climax, Ender's mentor, war hero Mazer Rackham, brings him to a room crowded with high-ranking military personnel in order to take his final test on the simulator. In order to win Ender opts to launch a massive bomb, nicknamed “Little Doctor”, at the bugger home world. The image on his screen of a ball of space dust where once sat the enemy planet is met by victory cheers. Mazer then informs Ender that since he began officer training, he has been remotely controlling real ships. The video game war was, "Real. Not a game" (Card 297); Ender has exterminated the bugger species. But rather than join the celebration, Ender is devastated to learn he has committed "xenocide." Screen-mediation, the novel shows, can enable people to commit acts that they would otherwise find heinous.US military advisors have used the story to set an agenda for research and development in augmented media. For example, Dr. Michael Macedonia, Chief Technology Officer of the Army Office for Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation told a reporter for the New York Times that Ender's Game "has had a lot of influence on our thinking" about how to use video game-like technologies in military operations (Harmon; Silberman; Mead). Many recent programs to develop and study video game-like military training simulators have been directly inspired by the book and its promise of being able to turn even a six-year-old into a competent combatant through well-structured human-computer interaction (Mead). However, it would appear that the novel’s moral regarding the psychological impact of actual screen-mediated combat did not dissuade military investment in drone warfare. The Air Force began using drones for surveillance during the Gulf War, but during the Global War on Terror they began to be equipped with weapons. By 2010, the US military operated over 7,000 drones, including over 200 weapons-ready Predator and Reaper drones. It now invests upwards of three-billion dollars a year into the drone program (Zucchino). While there are significant differences between contemporary drone warfare and the plot of Ender's Game—including the fact that Ender is a child, that he alone commands a fleet, that he thinks he is playing a game, and that, except for a single weapon of mass destruction, he and his enemies are equally well equipped—for this analysis, I will focus on their most important similarities: both Ender and actual drone operators work on teams for long shifts using video game-like technology to remotely control vehicles in aerial combat against an enemy. After he uses the Little Doctor, Mazer and Graff, Ender's long-time training supervisors, first work to circumvent his guilt by reframing his actions as heroic. “You're a hero, Ender. They've seen what you did, you and the others. I don't think there's a government on Earth that hasn't voted you their highest metal.” “I killed them all, didn't I?” Ender asked. “All who?” asked Graff. “The buggers? That was the idea.” Mazer leaned in close. “That's what the war was for.” “All their queens. So I killed all their children, all of everything.” “They decided that when they attacked us. It wasn't your fault. It's what had to happen.” Ender grabbed Mazer's uniform and hung onto it, pulling him down so they were face to face. “I didn't want to kill them all. I didn't want to kill anybody! I'm not a killer! […] but you made me do it, you tricked me into it!” He was crying. He was out of control. (Card 297–8)The novel up to this point has led us to believe that Ender at the very least understands that what he does in the game will be asked of him in real life. But his traumatic response to learning the truth reveals that he was in the magic circle. When he thinks he is playing a game, succeeding is a matter of ego: he wants to be the best, to live up to the expectations of his trainers that he is humanity’s last hope. When the magic circle is broken, Ender reconsiders his decision to use the Little Doctor. Tactics he could justify to win the game, reframed as real military tactics, threaten his sense of himself as a moral agent. Being told he is a hero provides no solace.Card wrote the novel during the Cold War, when computers were coming to play an increasingly large role in military operations. Historians of military technology have shown that during this time human behavior began to be defined in machine-like, functionalist terms by scientists working on cybernetic systems (see Edwards; Galison; Orr). Human skills were defined as components of large technological systems, such as tanks and anti-aircraft weaponry: a human skill was treated as functionally the same as a machine one. The only issue of importance was how all the components could work together in order to meet strategic goals—a cybernetic problem. The reasons that Mazer and Graff have for lying to Ender suggest that the author believed that as a form of technical augmentation, screen-mediation can be used to evacuate individual moral agency and submit human will to the command of the larger cybernetic system. Issues of displaced agency in the military cyborg assemblage are apparent in the following quote, in which Mazer compares Ender himself to the bomb he used to destroy the bugger home world: “You had to be a weapon, Ender. Like a gun, like the Little Doctor, functioning perfectly but not knowing what you were aimed at. We aimed you. We're responsible. If there was something wrong, we did it” (298). Questions of distributed agency have also surfaced in the drone debates. Government and military leaders have attempted to depersonalize drone warfare by assuring the American public that the list of targets is meticulously researched: drones kill those who we need killed. Drone warfare, media theorist Peter Asaro argues, has “created new and complex forms of human-machine subjectivity” that cannot be understood by considering the agency of the technology alone because it is distributed between humans and machines (25). While our leaders’s decisions about who to kill are central to this new cyborg subjectivity, the operators who fire the weapons nevertheless experience at least a retrospective sense of agency. As phenomenologist John Protevi notes, in the wake of wars fought by modern military networks, many veterans diagnosed with PTS still express guilt and personal responsibility for the outcomes of their participation in killing (Protevi). Mazer and Graff explain that the two qualities that make Ender such a good weapon also create an imperative to lie to him: his compassion and his innocence. For his trainers, compassion means a capacity to truly think like others, friend or foe, and understand their motivations. Graff explains that while his trainers recognized Ender's compassion as an invaluable tool, they also recognized that it would preclude his willingness to kill.It had to be a trick or you couldn't have done it. It's the bind we were in. We had to have a commander with so much empathy that he would think like the buggers, understand them and anticipate them. So much compassion that he could win the love of his underlings and work with them like a perfect machine, as perfect as the buggers. But somebody with that much compassion could never be the killer we needed. Could never go into battle willing to win at all costs. If you knew, you couldn't do it. If you were the kind of person who would do it even if you knew, you could never have understood the buggers well enough. (298)In learning that the game was real, Ender learns that he was not merely coming to understand a programmed simulation of bugger behavior, but their actual psychology. Therefore, his compassion has not only helped him understand the buggers’ military strategy, but also to identify with them.Like Ender, drone operators spend weeks or months following their targets, getting to know them and their routines from a God’s eye perspective. They both also watch the repercussions of their missions on screen. Unlike fighter pilots who drop bombs and fly away, drone operators use high-resolution cameras and fly much closer to the ground both when flying and assessing the results of their strikes. As one drone operator interviewed by the Los Angeles Times explained, "When I flew the B-52, it was at 30,000 to 40,000 feet, and you don't even see the bombs falling … Here, you're a lot closer to the actual fight, or that's the way it seems" (Zucchino). Brookings Institute scholar Peter Singer has argued that in this way screen mediation actually enables a more intimate experience of violence for drone operators than airplane pilots (Singer).The second reason Ender’s trainers give for lying is that they need someone not only compassionate, but also innocent of the horrors of war. The war veteran Mazer explains: “And it had to be a child, Ender,” said Mazer. “You were faster than me. Better than me. I was too old and cautious. Any decent person who knows what warfare is can never go into battle with a whole heart. But you didn't know. We made sure you didn't know" (298). When Ender discovers what he has done, he loses not only his innocence but his sense of himself as a moral agent. After such a trauma, his heart is no longer whole.Actual drone operators are, of course, not kept in a magic circle, innocent of the repercussions of their actions. Nor do they otherwise feel as though they are playing, as several have publicly stated. Instead, they report finding drone work tedious, and some even play video games for fun (Asaro). However, Air Force recruitment advertising makes clear analogies between the skills they desire and those of video game play (Brown). Though the first generations of drone operators were pulled from the ranks of flight pilots, in 2009 the Air Force began training them from the ground. Many drone operators, then, enter the role having no other military service and may come into it believing, on some level, that their work will be play.Recent military studies of drone operators have raised doubts about whether drone operators really experience high rates of trauma, suggesting that the stresses they experience are seated instead in occupational issues like long shifts (Ouma, Chappelle, and Salinas; Chappelle, Psy, and Salinas). But several critics of these studies have pointed out that there is a taboo against speaking about feelings of regret and trauma in the military in general and among drone operators in particular. A PTS diagnosis can end a military career; given the Air Force’s career-focused recruiting emphasis, it makes sense that few would come forward (Dao). Therefore, it is still important to take drone operator PTS seriously and try to understand how screen-mediation augments their experience of killing.While critics worry that warfare mediated by a screen and joystick leads to a “‘Playstation’ mentality towards killing” (Alston 25), Ender's Game presents a theory of remote-control war wherein this technological redistribution of the act of killing does not, in itself, create emotional distance or evacuate the killer’s sense of moral agency. In order to kill, Ender must be distanced from reality as well. While drone operators do not work shielded by the magic circle—and therefore do not experience the trauma of its dissolution—every day when they leave the cyborg assemblage of their work stations and rejoin their families they still have to confront themselves as individual moral agents and bear their responsibility for ending lives. In both these scenarios, a human agent’s combat trauma serves to remind us that even when their bodies are physically safe, war is hell for those who fight. This paper has illustrated how a science fiction story can be used as an analytic lens for thinking through contemporary discourses about human-technology relationships. However, the US military is currently investing in drones that are increasingly autonomous from human operators. This redistribution of agency may reduce incidence of PTS among operators by decreasing their role in, and therefore sense of moral responsibility for, killing (Axe). Reducing mental illness may seem to be a worthwhile goal, but in a world wherein militaries distribute the agency for killing to machines in order to reduce the burden on humans, societies will have to confront the fact that combatants’s trauma cannot be a compass by which to measure the morality of wars. Too often in the US media, the primary stories that Americans are told about the violence of their country’s wars are those of their own combatants—not only about their deaths and physical injuries, but their suicide and PTS. To understand war in such a world, we will need new, post-humanist stories where the cyborg assemblage and not the individual is held accountable for killing and morality is measured in lives taken, not rates of mental illness. ReferencesAlston, Phillip. “Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, Addendum: Study on Targeted Killings.” United Nations Human Rights Council (2010). Asaro, Peter M. “The Labor of Surveillance and Bureaucratized Killing: New Subjectivities of Military Drone Operators”. Social Semiotics 23.2 (2013): 196-22. Associated Press. “Predator Pilots Suffering War Stress.” Military.com 2008. Axe, David. “How to Prevent Drone Pilot PTSD: Blame the ’Bot.” Wired June 2012.Bowden, Mark. “The Killing Machines: How to Think about Drones.” The Atlantic Sep. 2013.Brown, Melissa T. Enlisting Masculinity: The Construction of Gender in US Military Recruiting Advertising during the All-Volunteer Force. London: Oxford University Press, 2012. Bumiller, Elisabeth. “Air Force Drone Operators Report High Levels of Stress.” New York Times 18 Dec. 2011: n. pag. Card, Orson Scott. Ender’s Game. Tom Doherty Associates, Inc., 1985. Chappelle, Wayne, D. Psy, and Amber Salinas. “Psychological Health Screening of Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) Operators and Supporting Units.” Paper presented at the Symposium on Mental Health and Well-Being across the Military Spectrum, Bergen, Norway, 12 April 2011: 1–12. Dao, James. “Drone Pilots Are Found to Get Stress Disorders Much as Those in Combat Do.” New York Times 22 Feb. 2013: n. pag. Edwards, Paul N. The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997.Galison, Peter. “The Ontology of the Enemy: Norbert Wiener and the Cybernetic Vision.” Critical Inquiry 21.1 (1994): 228.Gray, Chris Hables “Posthuman Soldiers in Postmodern War.” Body & Society 9.4 (2003): 215–226. 27 Nov. 2010.Greene, David, and Kelly McEvers. “Former Air Force Pilot Has Cautionary Tales about Drones.” National Public Radio 10 May 2013.Grossman, David. On Killing. Revised. Boston: Back Bay Books, 2009. Harmon, Amy. “More than Just a Game, But How Close to Reality?” New York Times 3 Apr. 2003: n. pag. Levidow, Les, and Robins. Cyborg Worlds: The Military Information Society. London: Free Association Books, 1989. Lifton, Robert Jay. Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans: Neither Victims nor Executioners. New York: Random House, 1973. Mead, Corey. War Play: Video Games and the Future of Armed Conflict. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. Orr, Jackie. Panic Diaries: A Genealogy of Panic Disorder. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.Ouma, J.A., W.L. Chappelle, and A. Salinas. Facets of Occupational Burnout among US Air Force Active Duty and National Guard/Reserve MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper Operators. Air Force Research Labs Technical Report AFRL-SA-WP-TR-2011-0003. Wright-Patterson AFB, OH: Air Force Research Laboratory. 2011.Protevi, John. “Affect, Agency and Responsibility: The Act of Killing in the Age of Cyborgs.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 7.3 (2008): 405–413. Salen, Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. Saleton, William. “Ghosts in the Machine: Do Remote-Control War Pilots Get Combat Stress?” Slate.com Aug. 2008. Schachtman, Nathan. “Shrinks Help Drone Pilots Cope with Robo-Violence.” Wired Aug. 2008.Silberman, Steve. “The War Room.” Wired Sep. 2004: 1–5.Singer, P.W. Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Penguin Press, 2009. Zucchino, David. “Drone Pilots Have Front-Row Seat on War, from Half a World Away.” Los Angeles Times 21 Feb. 2010: n. pag.
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