Poll: Would You Shoot Enemies Helping Their Wounded?

[Casimir_Effect]

In games, all the time. Far Cry 2 does this and I intentionally wound soldiers sometimes to draw their friends out from cover.

In real life I'd let the soldiers take their friend away. An injured soldier is a far greater burden on the enemies forces than a dead one is

 

[Vakz]

The soldiers who are helping their wounded friend, are just soldiers who will continue shooting at you once they have dragged their friend back. If two-three enemy soldiers leave cover to help their friend, and you have the chance to kill them, then do it. It might not be fair by any stretch of the imagination, but since when is war fair?

War isn't nice. It has never been about kindness. I'm not trying to be macho. Fighting is about staying alive, and the enemy is what stands between the now, and getting to go home to your family when the struggle is over.

 

[Frankster]

Are we talking rl or game? Genuinely not sure from OP.

If we are talking rl.... Whilst on 1 hand it is unethical, on the other hand I'd rather not see my side lose because i didn't shoot at their medics whilst they shot at ours.
Guess it will depend purely on the enemy and how honorable they are, if they stoop to sniping medics, then only fair we answer in kind.

 

[kortin]

In a video game, sure. Every guy on the field has to be dead for me to advance in most missions. However in real life, and the unlikely situation that I get drafted (because theres no way in hell i'm voluntarily joining any militar), I wouldn't shoot a medic. Chances are, some guy who got shot in the leg, is not going to be fighting any time soon. So technically speaking, it only takes one bullet to 'kill' or otherwise remove the enemy infantry.

Plus, as said before, shooting a medic bearing the Red Cross symbol is a war crime and you will be punished for it.

 

[Haydyn]

In war, any mercy you show threatens the lives of your side. Sure, it's nice to have some cooperation with the enemy, but at the end of the day they are trying to kill you. I'm not questioning war crimes, but rules are meant to be broken, and at strategic times.

Look back to when Egland and France were fighting over the the New World. Here's the Brits, all lined up perfectly in line formation. And here's the Natives and the French hiding in trees like Ninjas shooting the fuck out of them.

America's army wears camo, as opposed to the majority of history's armies, which almost never used worn equipment for the sake of stealth. I personally would rather wear something more flashy or badass, but you should always take any opportunity to increase your chances of victory.

I wouldn't kill a medic or the wounded. Not all soldiers medics help get back into combat. Statistically speaking, ammo is better off being directed at other soldiers, or the soldiers helping the wounded. I know it seems cruel to treat people with lives and families so harshly, but their objective is to kill people with lives and families.

All this talk about war is killing my buzz. Let's bust of the hippieness.

 

[Jodah]

Regular soldiers dragging a wounded one into cover? Yea, I could do that. They are still combatants even if they aren't shooting at that particular moment. Once they get to cover they will be shooting at me again.

Medics wearing a cross and with little, if any, weaponry? Probably not, they aren't combatants. Even if they fix the wounded soldier neither will likely be shooting at me.

 

[Vern5]

If we're talking about a game then Hell Yes. That's two dead enemies. In fact, that's one dead medic and one dead whatever, the medic being the more important of the two dead guys.

In reality, I'm not sure. Depends upon the reasons behind the battle. If its just scrabbly militia attacking then one severely wounded soldier and a noncombatant aren't worth the effort.

 

[AMAZED]

not to shoot them seems hypocritical, you kill them now but not today. Now if I came across a wounded enemy who was wounded and cannot fight back then you make him a P.O.W.

 

[Vankraken]

I assume this is a poll about killing the wounded in real life and not in a video game situation. For me if somebody is wounded then they are out of action unless they continue to try to fight. Somebody who is wounded is a huge resource burden on the enemy which requires money, supplies, and man power to treat the wounded soldier which is less resources being put into fighting.
In the spirit of humanity people who have surrendered or are out of combat action due to injury should be treated fairly as humans. In most cases the enemy soldier you are fighting is merely a pawn of the government/organization that controls them. Also showing respect towards your enemy may someday save you or a comrade from being shot as they are captured or wounded.

 

[CCountZero]

Would a medic be so quick to break cover to help a downed man if he knew the enemy were deliberately going to aim for his head next?

Trouble with that is, then the Medics turn into Soldiers, which means more people will be spraying lead at you.

In conventional warfare, a wounded soldier who needs to be saved is a VERY good thing, as it takes a lot of manpower to get him off the front lines.

Sure, he might live after that, but you won't see him shooting back at you for a good while.

Part of the reason why nobody caused too much of a fuss when controlled-expansion (Hollow Point) rounds were outlawed for use in warfare, was that the non-expanding Full Metal Jacket round was more effective in conventional warfare, as per studies conducted about WW2, amongst others.

Of course, in modern day fighting, against an enemy who doesn't wear any real body armour and who isn't all that concerned with saving their downed friends, it's coming back to bite us in the ass, but that's a whole other story.

 

[Polaris19]

A soldier that is incipacitated is no longer a threat. Unless the medic (or wounded) decide to shoot at me, they aren't worth my trouble.

 

[joshuaayt]

Well, that depends. Why am I fighting?
Am I an invader? Am I fighting against an enemy like the Communists, to prevent a scenario that one domino theory thing that had no grounding in reality, or is it a genuine threat to the world?

...No. I wouldn't anyway. The soldiers I'm fighting are likely in the same boat as myself- unwilling combatants, fighting a war larger than they. I might well shoot them to protect myself- and even that is a maybe, because I have no reason to believe that I am emotionally stable enough to handle such an act without breaking down and crying- but the second they stop actually posing a current threat to me, they are no longer my enemies. Orders can get fucked.

 

[Danpascooch]

I'm not talking about Gears of War where soldiers just tap the wounded guy and they're in, or downing a guy and using him as bait. I'm talking about, in the heat of the moment, 2-3 enemy soldiers hauling some wounded soldier out of your gunsights. Or 2 unprotected enemies (with medic red crosses) carrying a wounded guy in a stretcher. I'm not sure if any game has this feature, besides the up and coming Battlefield 3 (and even then it's only person dragging the guy).

Tbh, I would probably hesitate, especially if I heard the wounded guy screaming.

[sub]Edit[/sub] Poll is a bit glitchy...

[sub]Edit2[/sub] I'm not talking about in real life, just in video games.

Don't say just in videogames! That takes the entire interesting moral quandary and destroys it!

In a videogame: FUCK YES

In real life: If it was an enemy leader, yes, if the people helping him were combatants, not medics, yes. But if they're just unarmed (maybe a sidearm) medics who are helping a grunt, no, godspeed medics!

 

[Pummet]

Always, dudes just gonna come back and try to kill you :/

 

[razelas]

I'm not talking about Gears of War where soldiers just tap the wounded guy and they're in, or downing a guy and using him as bait. I'm talking about, in the heat of the moment, 2-3 enemy soldiers hauling some wounded soldier out of your gunsights. Or 2 unprotected enemies (with medic red crosses) carrying a wounded guy in a stretcher. I'm not sure if any game has this feature, besides the up and coming Battlefield 3 (and even then it's only person dragging the guy).

Tbh, I would probably hesitate, especially if I heard the wounded guy screaming.

[sub]Edit[/sub] Poll is a bit glitchy...

[sub]Edit2[/sub] I'm not talking about in real life, just in video games.

Don't say just in videogames! That takes the entire interesting moral quandary and destroys it!

In a videogame: FUCK YES

In real life: If it was an enemy leader, yes, if the people helping him were combatants, not medics, yes. But if they're just unarmed (maybe a sidearm) medics who are helping a grunt, no, godspeed medics!

You see, that's one of the things I want to know: do people still act according to their morals in video games as they would in real life?

 

[TacticalAssassin1]

The NVA and the VC both didn't always target medics. They would purposely wound soldiers, rather than kill them, and allow them to be extracted since they knew that wounded soldiers took more resources to remove from the battlefield and treat.
Thought that's would be interesting. It's funny cause I remember reading that the Vietnamese were very good shots and most of the wounded were shot in the head. Oh yeah, that was in the book 'we were soldiers once... And young' and was about a fairly vicious firefight where both sides just went there to fuck each other up as much as possible. And so that would be the reason why they shot them in the head.
Sorry for all the rambling