Memorial Day Musings

Today is a solemn day to remember those that have worn a uniform before me. We in the Corps today share bonds with the warriors of the past: bonds of duty, fraternity, and sacrifice.

To take up the profession of arms in a civilized society is to knowingly abandon many of the benefits of that society. I sleep in mud, I breathe dust, I train until I sweat and bleed, I seek out people that wish to kill me. I do these things because there are those that hate and envy our civilization, and wish to destroy it to serve purposes of their own. Those are the people that I call my enemies. I am a sheepdog, protecting the flock from those that would kill and loot and maim. By preference, I will drive the wolves from the fold; if they harm not my flock, I care not what they do. But if they will not be driven, I will kill them, without hate or passion, but because it must be done.

Combat drives many men to hate; this I know, from talking to those that have felt their humanity riven by the strain. The pull of the trigger brings a savage joy, a lust to kill the foe. Under control, that lets civilized men to that which is forbidden, to kill their fellow man. Without control, that way leads to madness and barbarity. Haditha in Iraq. MARSOCOM in Afghanistan. To kill those that are not your foes, for the joy it brings. The power. The godlike control over life itself.

Most of your know I have fought. I haven't talked about it much. But I have killed. I have extended my will, and ended the existence of another thinking being.

When I killed, it was always dispassionate. I obtain correct sight alignment, correct sight picture, I squeeze the trigger slowly and gently. The rifle jumps, the bullet hits or does not, I pick another target, I do it again. There is blood in the dirt and sand in the wind and smoke in my nose and sweat on my brow, and I feel nothing. I am an empty vessel. I do what I have trained to do, like a machine, without hesitation. I do not say 'without thought', because I am thinking: I think of tactics, of windage, of cover, of what needs to be done. I aim at nothing more than shadows on the wall. They move, they make noise, they shoot at me, they cry out and fall, but they are nothing.

My humanity has not been drowned under a red tide of rage, like many others I have known. My humanity has eroded under the ice of a glacier of purpose, the icy calm determination to do what I will. I killed and felt nothing. Does that make me better than those who hated their victims? Does it make me worse? I sleep well at night. But once in a while, I wonder at what I've done. And I pain myself, knowing that I am willing to do it again.

I do not believe in heaven. I do not believe in hell. I enjoy life, but I do not fear death, for I shall not miss life after it has ended, even as I did not eagerly await life before I was conceived. And so the lives that I have ended, are over, and the universe moves on. Their families miss them, and I regret that I was the agency for their ending; but it is my honor that I strike down only those that threaten that which I have sworn to defend. Those that choose to threaten my flock, doom themselves by that choice.

Essays like this are what come from too much time to ponder. I'll return to the regularly scheduled travelogue shortly.

Posted by: Boviate at 08:57 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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