Their great coats, helmeted heads and rifles were as clear as his fingers were numb. Karl opened fire on the advancing enemy. One shot was followed by another, which was followed by another. He heard the screams as one by one they collapsed, fallen into immortality and beyond a threat to him and his men.  

First the company wanted to know. Then the battalion wanted to know. “How large was the enemy?” “Where was the enemy?” “What were the map coordinates?” “Are you still taking fire?” “Hold your position. Under all circumstances, hold your position, don’t move!”

When the mist cleared, under the growing dawn, Karl, his squad, and reinforcements made their way to the scene of the battle, to count the German dead, hoping to find any still breathing and able to provide information about other German positions; numbers, strength, what have you. But what they found were not Germans. What they found was a French woman, old looking well beyond her years as the product of severe malnutrition, and two young girls; perhaps, even likely, her daughters. One whose skull had been half blown away and the gray of brains splattered over her threadbare garments and the snow.

Catherine had reported all this to my mother when my mother inquired about the howls she’d heard late one night. The howls were Karl, caught in a nightmare he was never able to fully dislodge. Until she took ill, Catherine had been able to calm her husband somewhat, when the night riders would bring it all back. But after she died, no one save heavy drink could serve as the balm. He just went down, and down, and down, and he took his daughters with him.

That was the big war, the “good war.” But it’s been a part of every war, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. Explanation is not exoneration. Okay. That’s true enough. But neither the mind nor the spirit are built “Ford-tough.” Take a paperclip. Stretch it out into a wire. Begin bending it. Keep bending it. Don’t stop. Continue to give it just the right dose of stress, for just the right length of time . . . and by all that is holy in this world: do NOT dare beg to know why it broke! Or what your responsibility in the matter was, or what it must thereafter be. 

And know this too: for five years we have been sending our men and women into the scorching matrix, to face protracted, repeated bending and twisting. And we send them back. And we send them back again and again and again. And as this image gains increasing fierceness, ask yourself these additional questions. Would you treat any other creature on earth in such a fashion? If you encountered someone else so mistreating an animal, would you stand by ignoring it, or would you report the cruelty to the authorities?

The article, highlighted below, is what summoned the story of Karl and Sandra back into my thoughts. I’m not the least going to judge the soldiers, though I do harshly judge those who don’t want to weigh their own role in the tragedies. 

G.I. Tells of Ordering Unarmed Iraqi’s Death

By SOLOMON MOORE

CAMP LIBERTY, Iraq — A top Army sniper testified Friday in a military court that he had ordered a subordinate to kill an unarmed Iraqi man who wandered into their hiding position near Iskandariya, then planted an AK-47 rifle near the body to support his false report about the shooting.

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