The most challenging and traumatic part of a soldier’s job
Soldiers kill. It goes with the job, and they do it on our behalf.
However, even the soldiers themselves tend to overlook this element of their employment, which can be quite distressing for them psychologically, according to the BBC.
This most difficult and traumatic aspect of a soldier’s work is frequently completely disregarded.
What is it like to kill someone in a conflict?
John Chesire, US Navy F-4 Phantom II pilot during the Vietnam War, recalls on Quora;
‘For me, not good. However, I never lost any sleep over it. Killing is what we did. It was war. And war is hell.
‘I flew 197 combat missions in both South and North Vietnam. Performing close air support for our US troops and South Vietnam troops, I obviously killed an untold number of the enemy. But I fortunately never knew how many or who they were.
‘Then one day while working with a Forward Air Controller (FAC) near the DMZ, we caught a large number of North Vietnamese Regular Army guys out in the open. I attacked, dropping 6 MK-82 bombs. Although I was flying too high to exactly see the results, the FAC was ecstatic with my results, describing in somewhat gory detail what I had wrought.
The body count
‘The next day I received message traffic confirming that I had 112 NVA “killed by air” (KBA). It was the first time I had ever received an actual body count, and I was briefly somewhat affected by that. I asked to never be notified of actual body counts again, although I obviously killed many over the ensuing months. But I never knew how many. It must have been a large number.
‘Once in a great while, I do think about that mission and the many others and wonder a bit. But it never really bothered me to any degree. It was my job and I did it well, just as those trying to kill me did theirs, too.’
Noteworthy this reminds the Intel officer in Flight of the Intruder informing Grafton of his body count and Grafton refusing to listen to it.
A claim confirmed by Chesire himself;
‘Not surprising. While I don’t remember that exact reference, the author – Stephen Coonts – and I were contemporaries and shared many of the same circumstances and experiences.’
Photo by U.S. Navy
