A question for our enlisted.

[quickdodge®]

why?

It's not an easy thing to live with. I have never been in the military, but I can give what I think is the (partial) case in why someone wouldn't talk about taking another person's life:

Simply put...consciousness. (US) Soldiers go wherever and are forced into combat and end up killing people. They may go out and throw on their "gung-ho" face and and air out a war cry, but I can guarantee you that most of that is just hype. Just build up psyche. Like a football game, they get their adrenaline pumping so that they can go out there. That's some of these guys need to perform such a task. And the ones that go out whooping it up thinking to themselves "I'm killin' a motherfucker" thinking they really want to? I bet, although they know they are doing their job or whatever, but I bet they wished they didn't have to in the end. So I think it really plays on their minds and they'd rather forget about it.

But they can't. There is no way you can get the thought that you took another life out of your mind. No matter how much you DON'T even talk about it.

My grandfather has nightmares almost nightly from all his WWII goings on. He was in South Africa. He landed a boat in Normandy on D-Day. He didn't kill one person. And he still wakes up dripping with sweat almost nightly. I can't imagine what a dude/dudette goes through that DID kill another. Enemy or not. Later, QD.

[DirtyMechanic]

It's not an easy thing to live with. I have never been in the military, but I can give what I think is the (partial) case in why someone wouldn't talk about taking another person's life:

Simply put...consciousness. (US) Soldiers go wherever and are forced into combat and end up killing people. They may go out and throw on their "gung-ho" face and and air out a war cry, but I can guarantee you that most of that is just hype. Just build up psyche. Like a football game, they get their adrenaline pumping so that they can go out there. That's some of these guys need to perform such a task. And the ones that go out whooping it up thinking to themselves "I'm killin' a motherfucker" thinking they really want to? I bet, although they know they are doing their job or whatever, but I bet they wished they didn't have to in the end. So I think it really plays on their minds and they'd rather forget about it.

But they can't. There is no way you can get the thought that you took another life out of your mind. No matter how much you DON'T even talk about it.

My grandfather has nightmares almost nightly from all his WWII goings on. He was in South Africa. He landed a boat in Normandy on D-Day. He didn't kill one person. And he still wakes up dripping with sweat almost nightly. I can't imagine what a dude/dudette goes through that DID kill another. Enemy or not. Later, QD.

i believe to sum everything that was said up... it called being human.