http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/international/worldspecial/27AMBU.html The wounded Iraqi, whose life was ebbing away outside an American field hospital, had been shot during the firefight Tuesday night with American troops. It was a small-caliber bullet, most likely from a pistol, fired at close range. Iraqi prisoners taken after the battle said their officers had been firing at them, pushing them into battle. "The officers threatened to shoot us unless we fought," said a wounded Iraqi from his bed in the American field hospital here. "They took out their guns and pointed them and told us to fight." As the American medics patched up the wounds of three other Iraqi soldiers, they said there was little they could do for the one who had been shot in the head. Much of his skull had come apart, and the medics labeled him "expectant," which meant he was expected to die. They gave him morphine, wrapped him in a green blanket and put him on a stretcher outside their tent. "We think he was shot by his own," Dr. Wade Wilde, a Marine surgeon, said. "If he had been hit by an M-16, it would have taken his whole head off. It seems like it was an Iraqi gun." As Dr. Wilde spoke, his eyes drifted to the Iraqi soldier, still clinging to life, on the stretcher. "We've tried to make him as comfortable as possible," he said, "and let the wound run its course." This poor guy have been fired upon from both ends. Fight or die. And we thought the draft was bad....
That sucks. Remind me again how some soldiers were convinced to charge from their trenches in WW1, or stop running away in the US civil war?