Back in the day, war generals would fight side by side with their troops on the battlefield. Why does that no longer happen anymore?
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I thought it was interesting when I heard on Behind the Bastards (inb4 a bunch of people sploosh for that podcast) talked about the American rebel army being looked down on for killing Army officers in combat.
Apparently the logic at the time was that you avoided killing officers, because if you happened to lose, without officers there wasn’t anyone to keep the troops in check and prevent or at least minimize raping and pillaging.
So even though it would be advantageous to kill officers to break up command and communication, it was avoided.
But, even more interestingly, but again logically, this did not apply to Naval warfare where officers *were* commonly targeted. Because after a navy battle, there’s not really a countryside to go rape and pillage.
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