11Apr/1238
Whites of Their Eyes
by Jeff
Image text: Don't fire until you see through the fragile facade to the human being within.
"Don't Fire Until You See The Whites of Their Eyes" is a famous order given (most famously) at the Battle of Bunker Hill during the American Revolution. It is not clear who exactly gave the order and where it originated. The Americans were low on ammunition and needed to save all of their bullets until the British were close enough that it would have the most effect. That range was famously when you could see the whites of their eyes.
This comic takes that order and goes to some place very sexual, which has nothing to do with the battle.
April 11th, 2012
I think the main point of this comic is to remember to humanize the person you are about to shoot. The enemy is more than a target or a character in a video game, but is actually a fellow human being, with hopes, fears, dreams… But let’s not forget at that moment his hopes, fears, and dreams are the same as yours: “I hope I kill him first!” “I scared he’ll shoot me!” “I dream of victory on the field of battle!”
April 12th, 2012
I should note that real soldiers are specifically trained NOT to humanize the people they are about to kill, specifically so they don’t get distracted.
April 12th, 2012
…which is why the ‘humanist’ joke in the comic works, by the way.
The comic is using simple sensory language that would/should/oughta appeal to any human being. Look closer at each of the four frames: each offers different and equally rich way of using your senses to observe the existence of another human being: sight, smell, taste, touch, (but unfortunately there’s no sign of the use of hearing, e.g. of their voic–oh there you go, ‘BLAM BLAM’). All of which can be considered precursors to the actual perceiving of the inner ‘fragile’ being within).
In short, the human connection. That, or the commander was distracted by the presence of the lady-soldier, as some would guess, or perhaps more likely, his faraway lover was visiting his imagination sphere despite the battle scenery, and therefore ruining his command-making ability. ^^
April 12th, 2012
pardon the unopened parenthesis
April 12th, 2012
ahh… pardon another self-replying, but i kinda missed the ‘fragile’ part big time.
“Don’t fire until you see through the fragile facade to the human being within.”
First, it’s actually the facade which is mentioned as ‘fragile’ and not the human being within, and I guess that makes RM awesomer because he seems to understand just how awesome the human being within is. And secondly, I just realized that the line makes for one of the awesomest quotes ever. Put in context, it’s that beautiful.
April 13th, 2012
My thoughts exactly. Humanizing them beforehand might lead to diplomacy that avoids the battle, and humanizing them afterward can lead to some beautifully poignant poetry; but evolution would strongly select against those who humanize their opponents in the heat of battle, I think.
April 14th, 2012
I’d go a step further: soldiers are trained to dehumanize their “targets” in order to be able to kill them. Even the language that is used emphasizes this.
April 11th, 2012
The Times publishes a regular Q&A column, often about the origin of sayings and phrases.
A recent question was about the saying “Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes”? Some answers have been published, but one today seems to put the origin back 32 years from the accepted version. I thought it worth while passing on. The text come directly from the newspaper, and I thus acknowledge its source.
“Further to your previous correspondence (Q&A, December 30), which attributes the saying to the American General William Prescott, at the Battle of Bunker Hill ill 1775, this phrase is actually recorded some 32 years earlier.
At Dettingen, Flanders, on June 27, 1743, Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Andrew Agnew of Lochnaw (5th Baronet) gave to the men or his regiment, the 21st of Foot, an order from which this saying is derived. A man of spirit even for the times, he had earlier in the day replied to a brigade order that “the scoundrels will never have the impudence to attack the Scots Fusiliers”, but they did.
Formed in square, the Scots Fusiliers held a steady fire rolling along their lines and kept off the advancing French infantry.
Sir Andrew, a resourceful and experienced officer, had in training practised a novel battle drill with the men in his square, should they be attacked by cavalry.
At last, the opportunity to spring this trap appeared when the square was attacked by enemy cuirassiers. Instead of employing the orthodox tactic of seeing them off by standing firm and taking the charge on muskets and pikes, Sir Andrew gave orders that, as the cavalry approached the front line, the two centre companies should divide from the centre and fall back from the outer markers. This novel approach allowed the cavalry to charge through a lane with the Fusiliers facing inwards. At this point Sir Andrew gave the command:
“Dinna fire till ye can see the whites of their e’ en . . . if ye dinna kill them they’ll kill you.” The French, as they rode through this lane of soldiers, were subjected to a withering crossfire and destroyed.
Later in the day King George II, who commanded the Army but was a little out of his depth, rode up and said: “So, Sir Andrew, I hear the cuirassiers rode through your regiment today.”
“Ou, ay, yer Majestee,” was the reply “but they didna get oot again.”
This account is extracted from an article in the Journal of the Royal Highland Fusiliers Volume 24, No 2 (Winter 2000) and written by Sir Andrew’s descendant, Major Sir Crispin Agnew of Lochnaw, Bt.
Dr J. R. Donald. Glasgow”
(http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/18/messages/305.html)
April 11th, 2012
I believe it is also true that when the British forfeited in addition to land they also ceded our country three military phrases (forever denouncing their British origin). This one was one of the ones our forefathers selected. I don’t recall the other two. [citation needed]
April 11th, 2012
It is far earlier than that. Swedish caroleans had standing orders to only shoot when they saw the white. These tactics were thoroughly drilled in by the start of the Great Nordic War in 1700.
April 12th, 2012
I would not be surprised if that quote would be sourced even earlier.
The effective range was quite low, as was the rate of fire. I think the Prussian army was drilled to shoot, reload and aim again in not much more than 30s. During that time, horsemen could easily take several 100m worth of distance, which meant that by shooting to early, not only ammo would be wasted. It also meant that the next time the gun would be ready, the horseman could already be up close.
This all became less of an issue with advancing technology: higher rate of fire and range. Horses did not get much faster.
April 12th, 2012
Actually, that saying was first recorded (not in English) on a stone tablet circa 5500 BC where a clan leader was trying to conserve was apparently trying to conserve the rocks they used when fighting (seems the right weight and shape were hard to come by for those tribes not near the riverways).
April 11th, 2012
I had a feeling that the comic also intends to highlight the thoughts against war. The inner Human, that holds a regret of killing an unknown…
April 11th, 2012
Frames 2 and beyond appear much like the text from romance novels (not that I would personally know
).
April 11th, 2012
I think it is a commentary about women in the military, hat guy is distracted.
April 11th, 2012
What would suport your thesis is if frame 3 was signaling that the bearded guy was also smitten by the soldier girl (heh, soldier girl). I interpreted frame 3 as the two soldiers looking at each other in confusion, which would mean that the hat guy was just distracted in general, and not by the girl in particular.
It’s hard to tell context if the characters don’t have eyes.
April 12th, 2012
I think everyone is over-thinking this (as usual). It’s just a classic XKCD extrapolation.
Notice how it progresses. Smelling hair isn’t all that sexual and could still just indicate proximity almost fitting with the first frame. Then it just keeps going farther and farther.
Also, the alt text often diverges completely from the humor theme of the strip as it does here. I don’t think it was intended that they be connected.
April 13th, 2012
I was thinking the same. It is a classic joke, during a talk about something unrelated grab a few sentences out of context and diverge the talk into something sexual, stimulating, ecstatic and erotic, like young girls on a foreign beach, playing in the sand, with eachother and thems… Eh.. *cough* but were was I?
April 11th, 2012
I don’t understand the “ups” part of “the sweetness of their ups.” Help, please?
April 11th, 2012
LOL. It’s “lips.” Don’t worry. At first I was wondering why he got sweet packages from UPS myself.
April 11th, 2012
I believe it’s supposed to be “Lips”, but the “L” and the “I” got too close together to look like “U”.
April 11th, 2012
Keming — er, bad kerning.
April 17th, 2012
Pretty bad considering this: http://xkcd.com/1015/
April 11th, 2012
Reminds me (sort of) of the knife scene in Saving Private Ryan.
April 11th, 2012
I came here today to find out what UPS means. Only now, at the end, do I understand.
April 11th, 2012
It’s written to emulate the style of bad Revolutionary War slash fan-fiction.
Fan-fiction describes short stories written by amateur authors, wherein fans of a popular TV/movie/book series (especially science fiction series) use the world and characters created by that series as a backdrop for their own stories. Rather than developing their own world and characters, the authors can jump immediately into writing their own plots. The practice is very popular among nerdy teenage girls.
SLASH fan-fiction is a subclass of fan-fiction where the stories are about romantic (often sexual) pairings between two characters (which are almost always both male). A story description will read “x/y fanfic” where x and y are the characters and the “slash” represents the bond between the two characters. A very popular subject is Kirk/Spock from the Star Trek series.
Again, the practice is almost entirely devoted to sexually-repressed nerdy teenage girls.
April 11th, 2012
From Wikipedia’s entry on the topic:
Slash has a different sensibility than gay fiction, probably due to the fact that most slash fiction writers are female and in a closed community that shares their tastes, which makes most stories in the genre centered into emotional relationships, even as sex is very prominent.
April 12th, 2012
Actually, it isn’t.
Depending on the fandom (because, yes there are more teen fangirls in anime/manga fandoms than in book or movie fandoms) most fanfiction authors are women between 30 and 50.
April 12th, 2012
Also from the Wikipedia entry:
“Demographics
While slash fandom includes all genders and all varieties of sexual preferences and educational statuses, according to what little demographic information is available, most of slash fandom is made up of heterosexual women with college degrees.”
April 12th, 2012
Is the third person a woman, or a dude with long blonde hair? While there appear to have been a very small number of women who served as soldiers in the American Revolutionary War, they were always disguised as men and their gender was not disclosed to their fellow soldiers. I’ve not heard of any women serving openly as women at that time.
April 12th, 2012
I had similar thoughts. I cannot tell why, but s/he looks quite female to me. Maybe because I am used to that Megan figure, or maybe because female hair actually grows differently: the hair line is quite different, and that might or might not have implications on the entire hairstyle, which I might or might not notice unconsciously.
On the other hand, we always assume Cueball to be male, although there are quite some women with really short hair in the real world.
April 12th, 2012
hmm, yes, not enough information in the torso.
April 12th, 2012
A lot of men back then had long hair…
April 12th, 2012
Come to think of it, to me it does look more like a boy than a woman.
April 13th, 2012
*ahem* perhaps the “shooting” is part of the sexual reference? I mean:
guy: let me see the white of your eyes
girl: yes
guy: your hair smell so good
girl: hmmm… yes
guy: your lips taste so sweet
girl: hmmm… yes
guy: I can feel the heat of your skin against mine. Can you feel I’m trembling as you…
guy’s brain: Maybe we should just start shooting
guy’s other brain: right, yes!
… duck and cover… sorry
April 13th, 2012
My sentiment is that this is about love, really. In the typical sub conscious way. It’s about hurting another person. Okay, maybe it’s equally physical to emotionally.
Shoot=hurt
The reason I’m saying this is because I just read today’s comic, and immediately thought “huh, two feel blue comics in a row” even though I couldn’t remember Wednesday’s.
Oh, and, image-text is the main clue.
April 15th, 2012
Make love, not war
April 16th, 2012
Sometimes I think very obvious comics like this one don’t require an explanation at all… I’d rather see some older, more complicated once that haven’t been featured.