American Veteran

(aircraft engine roaring) -

Man On Radio

We'll offset left, and then turn right. (mumbled radio commands) When you actually have to call in a strike, your adrenaline runs, you're hyper focused on what you're doing, you want to make sure you got the angle right, you want to make sure that you're taking as little collateral damage as you possibly can. Is that easy? No, it's not easy. Yes, it's graphic. And yes, you do see the effects of what you do. My first shot, I stepped out of the box and threw up, 'cause I realized the impact of what I had done. And, you know, the whole rest of your life, you think, "Did I do it the way I was supposed to? Did I get the shot off quick enough to save the guys that I was trying to protect? Did I do the job that I was supposed to do?" I don't think there's any way that you can ever prepare a person to kill someone. (gun cocking)

One of the snipers' sayings is

"Without warning, without remorse." (gun fires) But that remorse part is kind of where it gets iffy. I don't know how you're not supposed to have remorse after, watching a guy standing one minute and then, nothing left in him the next minute. I felt remorse for it. Not remorse in, you know, for killing a bad guy, just taking a life in general. You know, you grow up 18 years of your life and you're taught one thing. To abruptly end that, you know, it played on my emotion a little bit. The first time I shot somebody in Korea, he was walking on the ridgeline and I had a clear shot at him. And I fired. And it was almost like slow motion. There was a God awful silence. And that was my first encounter. I don't know if I ever recovered from it.