Review of On Combat
Review by Ed Lovette for Combat Handguns magazine

Warrior: Those who are willing to sacrifice themselves to defend others, those who move towards the sound of the guns, and those who continue in the face of adversity to do what needs to be done (taken from On Combat).

On Combat is the latest and, in my opinion, the best of Lt. Col. Dave Grossman’s books. Many of you know Lt. Col. Grossman through his “Bulletproof Mind” presentations and/or his previous work On Killing, which was nominated for a Pullitzer Prize. But what will set this book apart from anything else you may have read on the subject is its sheer, raw power. There are three factors that combine to make this work so powerful.

The first is its honesty and simplicity. On Combat is “focused toward empowering warriors to participate in the toxic, corrosive, destructive environment of combat.” (While we’re doing definitions this is probably not a bad one for Warrior Science which you’ll see shortly). It takes a highly complex life experience and explains it in plain English. As with a military field manual, it is a user friendly guide written by Generals for use by Privates.

Secondly, in addition to simplicity and honesty, this book is made powerful through the use of superb anecdotes, both police and military. My special favorites are “Knights and Paladins” and “You’re Not a Policeman Until You Taste Them”. To call these war stories does not do them justice since not a shot is fired in either of them. But they serve as unique examples of why On Combat is destined to become the bible for police trainers and police training. It is a much needed book that finally brings it all together for the instructor, the student, the veteran cop and the seasoned soldier.

And third, are the contributions made by Loren Christensen, the co-author of the book and a well-known authority on police use-of-force issues. His police experience combined with Grossman’s military experience, plus the shared interest and expertise they both have in Warrior Science, makes On Combat rock. Their words fairly leap off the page often grabbing your mind but just as frequently touching your heart. This is NOT the book to open if you are looking for something to help you sleep. In fact, I found that it helped to read it in small bites, put it down, chew thoroughly, swallow, digest and then take another bite. You will find more useful information here on one page than most books pack into a chapter. And you’ll find that they can clearly say in a chapter what many entire books struggle and fail to.

Take for example a quote used early-on in the book. “Dear God, where do we get such men? What loving God has provided, that each generation, afresh, there should arise new giants in the land. Were we to go but a single generation without such men we should surely be both damned and doomed.” Chew on that one for a while! Especially when you consider it in context with what is going on around us today.

Since this is a life experience book, I suspect that the more you’ve lived, the more you’ll be able to relate to what you read here. Here are just a few of the many things the authors discuss that I found useful. I guess it was about 10 years or so ago that Bruce Siddle began to teach us all about survival stress, the early Warrior Science. Today we are discussing how to train through survival stress. “The fundamental concept is that prior success under stressful conditions acclimatizes you to similar situations and promotes future successes.” Through carefully designed scenarios and the use of Simunitions the student gains “combat experience” which will allow him to more effectively handle the real deal.

Next on my list was the discussion regarding the loss of near vision as a result of survival stress. This is a bad thing because if you lose your near vision in a gunfight you lose your front sight. Point shooting is one method of “training through” this problem. But it gets worse. The authors ask us to consider the simple act of dialing the phone when your near vision is gone. Now the problem comes into your home. All of us tell our children and spouses to dial 9-1-1 if they need help quickly. But it is one thing to discuss it at the dinner table and quite another matter altogether to be able to see and punch the right buttons during a critical incident. Grossman and Christensen suggest that you practice this with your family. And they remind us if you’re using a cell phone don’t forget to hit “Send”.

The next topic that really grabbed me was their discussion of the “do-loop”. Under the survival stress influence we fixate on the tactic we are doing and fail to consider other possibilities. We have more pressing matters to consider… like staying alive. The authors suggest this may be one explanation for the “spray and pray” syndrome. Innovative agencies with aggressive force-on-force training programs are learning that their officers tend to fire fewer shots but with much greater accuracy after taking part in this training. “Sims” scenarios are helping them to train through the “spray and pray” response.

FYI- as I read this it dawned on me that the do-loop was a much better explanation than the one I had been using (for which read made up) to explain why we see so few on-purpose head shots, or pelvic shots for that matter, in actual shootings. We’ve been teaching these as failure-to-stop drills for years but the influence of the do-loop keeps us from considering them when the fight is on.

Another favorite of mine was the section dealing with skill and will. It tells us that we need three things to survive in armed combat: the weapon, the skill and the will to kill. Interestingly, the section discusses instances of students having trouble using their weapons in training scenarios. Grossman tells us in another chapter that during WWII studies have shown that only 15-20% of the troops in combat actually fired their weapons. Again, as I read this, something else clicked in.

As frequent readers of this column know, I am a serious student of all things OSS, and have been consumed by this passion for the last 20 or so years. As I read this section I suddenly realized that OSS operatives apparently experienced no such problems due in large part, I suspect, to the highly advanced (for the times) and relevant close combat training they received from Fairbairn and Applegate. Further, they seemed to experience no hesitation when it came to killing at extreme close quarters. To a man they appeared to be able to instantly turn on the will and the skill to efficiently and lethally apply unarmed techniques, a pocket knife, a rock, the handgun as a club, or the firearm as intended (usually a handgun). More food for thought.

And last but certainly not least in importance was the authors’ section on Combat Breathing. As with the rest of the book, it offers something useful and practical designed to be applied by the street cop and the combat soldier at the pointy end of the spear. It has a number of applications, is easy to use, doesn’t cost anything and doesn’t weigh anything.

I wish I’d had this book 30 years ago. A lot of this stuff I saw over the years but couldn’t explain (for which you may also read, didn’t understand, but I was still the guy standing in front of the class). Two quick examples come to mind. One was a popular police training film produced by Motorola entitled, “What’s a Cop”. The film was an attempt way back then to explain to recruits at the academy what they were getting themselves into. The film concluded by saying, “There’s only one way to find out.” While there’s still an awful lot of truth in that statement, On Combat comes closer to shedding light on the subject than anything else I’ve ever read.

Second was a line from one of Joe Wambaugh’s early novels which showed remarkable insight into the Warrior Science issues. I no longer have my copy of the book and neither does our local library, but this is pretty close. “The bullet dangers of police work are highly overrated. However the emotional dangers make it one of the most hazardous jobs on earth.” Even today, probably not a bad lead-in to On Combat. HOOAH!!