I told myself later, it's because of the guys. They depend on me. If I were to pop a cap into my forehead, I'd probably get replaced by some dumbhead right out of basic training. I could live with being responsible for my own death, but not my crew's. See, don't I sound noble? Not that I'd have to live with it. It sounded better than 'I chickened out'. But in reality, what I thought was that I was just too much of a fucking weasel to blow myself away. Instead, I'd continue on, poisoning the world and the people I loved with my own brand of sickness. By that time I hated myself so thoroughly that anything I did seemed wrong.
It's not like I really wanted to kill that guy anyway. Hell, he was on fire, and running across the field of view of 14 enemy tanks. He was going to die, no matter what I did. But I was really fucking eager to do it.
S.L.A. Marshall, probably the most influential military historian of the last century and chronicler of, among other things, the forces in Europe in World War II, wrote that as few as one-fifth of soldiers in wartime ever actually fire at the enemy. The rest simply fire in the general direction of the enemy, like a pre-industrial army refusing to actually aim - or firing deliberately low or high. In World War I, whole units established informal cease fires with their opposite numbers in the trenches, and had to be provoked by their own commanders into firing a shot.
It would seem that, despite all our beliefs to the contrary, there is a native reluctance to kill. Despite all the horror and bloodshed of our century, and the many proceeding it, the natural state of humanity is generally to leave each other alone.
I don't know if the more efficient training methods of modern-day basic training have been effective in overcoming that reluctance. I suspect so - the emphasis on training by rote, and doing the same tasks a thousand times until they become second nature, is designed to take away the human aspect of combat. When you ride an Abrams tank into combat, it's not so different from going downrange during gunnery, after all, except that you are scared out of your god damned mind, and the targets move around and shoot back. Not that the Iraqis ever had a chance to do much of that.
The question at hand is: why am I part of the one-fifth who actually pull the trigger? Am I defective or sociopath? Why the hell did I pull the trigger and shoot some guy in the back when I didn't even have to?
Maybe the idiots of the world should stop asking, "What was it like to kill somebody?" and start asking, "Why?"
***
When people ask the damn question, they always have one of two looks in their eyes.
The first look is pity. Those are the people who look at you, concern in their eyes, as they listen to the story. They're the ones who say, "Boy am I glad I never enlisted: I'd never be able to kill someone."
Idiots. Of course you could, it's so fucking easy to kill you wouldn't believe. All you have to do is do what you are told.
Besides, unless you were out protesting against the war, you pulled the goddamn trigger, too. We all did, including those who are too uninterested or tuned out to vote. You mean you didn't vote? You're a killer, too. Welcome to democracy.
I can live with those folks, the ones who are concerned and questioning and just don't know enough to mind their own damn business.
It's the other ones who worry me. The other look some people get, when they ask the question, is one of eager interest. "So what was it like, huh? Huh? How did it feel?"
The look is one of lust: vicarious lust, they want to know what its like. These are the folks who most often say, "I would have joined the Army, but the dog ate my AFSVAB test," or "I almost enlisted in the Navy Seals, but I broke my big toe," and they just freaking piss me off.
It's the same impulse that drives some of the violent movies and games, I think, and I'll be the first to admit that I too, like my share of violent entertainment. Why? Are we the Romans? Will the next step in reality TV be a two thousand year step backwards? The ultimate in reality TV will be an American infantry platoon in combat, and guess what folks, its not that far out a concept. It wouldn't be out of character. I finally realized that the reason few Americans were concerned about the impact of sanctions in Iraq (much less the impact of bombs) is because to them, it just wasn't real. Except for the eldest among us, few Americans have any conception of what real suffering means. To us, real suffering is having to wait three hours while our SUV gets fixed up, or suffering a thirty minute power outage. September 11 was a terrible anomaly, a shock and a tragedy to be sure, but familiar to the rest of the world. It was such a shock to us precisely because we largely lead sheltered, privileged lives.
