combat. Booth and Gimbel found that when men entered the Army, those with lower testosterone levels often got administrative and support jobs, perhaps because they had slightly more education. For the soldiers who went to Vietnam and served in the field, the situation was different, because many of the qualities associated with testosterone are desirable in combat. In the study, each soldier answered "never," "rarely," "sometimes," "often," or ''very often" to each of twelve questions about the extent of his combat experience. Included were questions about receiving enemy fire, encountering mines or booby traps, being ambushed, firing at the enemy, seeing Americans or Vietnamese killed, and killing Vietnamese.
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Responses to the twelve items were averaged to give an overall combat exposure score. Figure 6.1 shows the number of men who on average either answered "never" or gave answers in the range from "never to rarely," "rarely to sometimes," "sometimes to often," or "often to very often." The results indicate higher scores among high-testosterone soldiers. These data were collected twenty years after the men served in Vietnam, so it is unlikely that the war experience caused the testosterone differences. Booth and Gimbel concluded that high-testosterone men tended to have more combat exposure than their low-testosterone comrades because their commanders sensed that they would be good fighters and assigned them to combat positions.
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Findings from the Vietnam veterans data show that testosterone levels are positively correlated with violent behavior and sexual activity. High-testosterone soldiers were better in combat,
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and as mentioned in Chapter 4, they had more sexual partners than did other soldiers. Lt. Col. John Paul Vann, a Korean War hero, although not a subject in the Vietnam study, exemplified its findings. Vann was a soldier's soldier,
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and he embodied the characteristics associated with high testosterone levels. He was a small, strong, fearless, persistent, and inexhaustible maverick who had an aptitude for heroism and sexual excess.
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In 1950, the North Koreans had the American 35th Infantry Regiment under heavy attack, surrounded and cut off from reinforcements and supplies. The men were trapped in an area too small for conventional airdrops. The twenty-six-year-old, 125-pound Lieutenant Vann convinced the general to assign him a few slow, low-flying L-5 observation planes to drop supplies to the surrounded men, a mission so dan-
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