"it bothers me that it didn't bother you" --anonymous

First, about anonymous comments. I think the ability to post comments anonymously is the best thing about the whole blogging thing. What I'm after, in the end, is the whole spectrum of humanity, and nothing tells people more of who you are than your anonymous self, like those personal aspects that come out when you surf the web anonymously. Ultimately, people are pornographers, sadists, saints, deathly lonely, vulnerable, the whole spectrum is out there. It's horrifying, fascinating, redeeming, depending on that true, distilled, anonymous self.

But we're also self-righteous, certainly more so than when we have a name and are in company we know. The point of my reportage is to be honest first. I'm going to re-frame the context of my one combat homicide: I thought I was going to die. Enemy 82-mm mortars (bombs that get launched out of a tube and fall from the sky throwing deathly hot, jagged shards of steel about the size of coins) were falling nearby, and they were being "walked" towards my position, meaning the enemy fighters with the tube where the bombs were being launched were adjusting it based on direct observation. So they were landing closer and closer and soon they would be coming down on top of us. That's when I saw the man with the binoculars. After we cut him down, the mortars stopped.

I'm supposed to stay up at night for that? At least I'm not one of those guys who claims that it is a big game. I'm certainly not saying I enjoyed having to kill. I'm just reporting on my feelings about it. Guilt didn't--hasn't--entered the equation. My apologies to people out there who feel I should write some sort of sentimental poem about "the man I killed," and how we'd be drinking beer together had there not been a war or whatever. I'm not Henry James. I'm a mere mortal.