Battlefield obedience is a poor test of an army’s real discipline

Evidence

This chapter opened with an account of death, of how officers and soldiers attempted to confront it, and of how the authorities avoided dealing with it in a manner that could be remotely described as respectful to the dead. It attempted to explain how the soldiers in the Pasha’s army were able to confront the fatal dangers of the battlefield with such success but, admittedly, was unable to offer any explanation other than to argue that years of training might have had their impact on how the soldier behaved in battle: obeying orders issued from commanders he did not know, orders that were heard from afar and carrying, if executed, the close possibility of his own death. It was argued, however, that this is not a good criterion to measure how well disciplined the soldiers were: under stress soldiers might, indeed, behave in the manner in which the authorities attempted to train them. To see how well disciplined soldiers were we have to look at them in more relaxed times and to follow their lives as much as possible not on the fields of pitched battles, but in the relative security of the camps. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1178

Categorization

• QUESTION: Methodological question: can camp behavior actually be a cleaner measure of discipline, or is it confounded by the same training effects?