What do you say when people ask if you killed anyone?
This question is almost inevitable when civilians find out you’re a war veteran. How do you explain that feeling to someone who never fought in a war?
“I know it’s not right to do this, but I have to. If I focused on it for one minute, I would lose my mind. So I didn’t.“
Most people, even many veterans, will never know what it’s like to kill another human being, especially in combat. A video series, On Killing, produced by Cut.com, asked six war veterans of various eras and countries the difficult questions about killing in warfare.
“I didn’t give a f*ck who he was. I was trying to keep me alive.”
“One minute you have somebody walking along and the next it’s just a lump of flesh.“
Six war veterans discuss their experiences in the series. This includes Lonnie, an infantryman during the Vietnam War:
