Hidden Enemies

[ ... ] I noticed the sun was getting closer to setting when RPGs and rockets started hitting the rooftop. We had to fall back inside and downstairs. All of us were in the hallway [ ... ] There we waited. It's hard to say how much time went by before we start-ed hearing them all around us. At first we hoped it was friendly, but it was definitely Arabic.

Starr was killed by a sniper on May 30, 2005, while on patrol in Ramadi, walking point. He was 22.

Smith
April 26, Fallujah

Try not to kill somebody at night. It is difficult to grasp the experience at night. Tank commanders have a thick layer of technology, and often other soldiers, between them and their targets at all times but after sunset, acquiring, engaging and destroying targets (i.e. people, vehicles, buildings, livestock, what have you) takes on the feel of a video game.

Hosing down person-shaped, gritty green blobs scampering around in the gunner's sight does not really allow for full appreciation of the impact of the act of ending the life of another human being. Add another layer of separation by ordering someone else to actually perform the act. In the end, I felt and feel nothing. Not a damned thing.

I was not sure what I expected to feel, much less what I wanted to feel. This is one of the questions about myself I hoped to answer by joining the Army. I am really not satisfied with the answer I found. How can I even appreciate the humanity of the person I had killed if all I ever saw was a green mass lying in the grass? I gave the fire command, the gunner lased then engaged with [the] coax[ial gun] and the target disintegrated.