Conflict

Well, one afternoon a week and a Saturday morning a month were spent on the range at the local Army Post.  Add an afternoon with a “program counselor” and we got to see quite a bit of the Army way of life.

On month 18 of this regime, the counselor had to literally run out of the office due to a situation down the hall.  It took me about 30 seconds to decide I wanted to see what he had in a thick file concerning me.  I was to be appalled.

The first page was a recommendation that I be put into a “special group” because I “completely lacked any sense of conscience, remorse or morality”.  

Those words still haunt me to this day.  I felt I was a very sensitive person, I cared deeply for some people – like my girlfriend and I definitely knew right from wrong.  But, I was German and he was mistaking the cultural concepts of duty and honor for the attributes he was seeking.  I kept looking further through the folder.

I found out we had been participating in an advanced sniper program to train personnel, prior to being drafted, so that snipers could be deployed more rapidly.  I can not say I had ever given any thought to the question of the value of human life, but as a 17 year old, I knew really did not want to kill anyone.  I grew up with the results of WWI all around me - war was not a concept – it was very real to me, as were the costs in human flesh.  Disgusted, I read further.

Recommendations were given as to how best to deploy me, what to use as triggers on me, which culture groups I would be most effective against and suggested targets to assess me for positive, neutral or negative reactions to.  And here was the name of someone I knew – as a possible target. 

He deserved to die, make NO mistake there, he was wanted by numerous countries for crimes against humanity; but I had known him before he became infamous.  Maybe I could have been tricked into killing a stranger given sufficient provocation, but someone I had talked with, someone whose father I knew, someone with a young family – No, I could not do that!  Even if I did live in fear of what he was capable of…..

I got up and walked out the door, never to return.