![]() ![]() While regiments were still “reckoned” in terms of “bayonets” in 1914, differences between soldiers emerged as weapons became more diverse, especially with the rise of artillery and aviation. For example, the French Daguet division sent to Kuwait in 1991 recruited its 12,000 soldiers from the professional army. It is also possible to distinguish between career soldiers and personnel recruited in times of war, including those conscripted for military service where this existed, along with enlistees and reservists. The notion of combatants is related to a collective identity that includes a plethora of categories based, among many other criteria, on age, rank (officers and non-commissioned officers from the ranks or a military academy), as well as the type of war being waged. The related historiography initially focused on the conviction of engagement by exploring the issue of consent/constraint, and then turned to the daily and material life of soldiers. ![]() Being a combatant thus involves confronting violence and fear, as well as sociability and time on leave. Combatants are consequently those who “wage war.” All wars-whether world wars, civil wars, wars of decolonization, or wars of coalition-ultimately come down to individuals killing or being killed, for human are the ones “who make up reality” in combat, as pointed out by the Second Empire Colonel Ardant du Picq, in the second half of the nineteenth century. These actors of war can be regular or irregular, as the civilians who take up arms in cases of invasion-irregular soldiers and resistance members-had their right to armed force recognized: faced with the diversification of conflicts during the twentieth century, the law of war (jus in bello) accepted the legality of irregular troops. A combatant is someone who is given the right to fight. ![]()
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