Okay, seems like the majority want to hear. So here you go:
More from my Time in Service.
It was my first permanent Duty Station. January 1971, Vietnam was still doing it thing - adding names to the Wall, and sending folks home with parts of their bodies left behind, and broken hearts galore. I was safe in Germany, with all of my buddies from AIT at Tigerland ...every single one of them, but me, sent to Nam. I was the lucky one.
And like a lot of foolish young men, all of 18 years old, I thought I wanted to go to War. Yep. I was trained and ready. And wanted, in some weird way, to prove myself. I had delusions of grandeur ...and just knew I would come home with a slew of medals. Of course, all of this was just in my mind. I had no experience. None.
But bunches of the guys in my Unit did have experience. Some even had Purple hearts, but stayed in the Service. I ate up all the stories they wanted to tell. And when I heard that one of the Senior Sergeants had done several tours in Nam, and had several medals for Valor...well, I wanted to know what it was like.
I pestered him every chance I could to ask him what it was like, how did he feel, and what did he learn. And I asked this question. ...and yes, I am ashamed of it. It is the reason I held back posting this. But I was eighteen, gung ho, and chomping at the bit to prove myself. I was, in short, a selfish careless, unaware idiot.
The question that nobody should ever ask:
"Sarge what is it like to kill someone?'
And I didn't ask him that just once. I wanted to know how many he killed, how he did it, and what techniques should I learn ...so I could do it too. (I told you this wasn't going to be easy for me to write.I am not proud of the young me.)
One day...he was sitting at a table, drinking a beer. Alone.
I sat across from him, and asked him point blank:
"What's it like to kill someone?"
He was six foot five, two hundred thirty pounds of pure rangy Texas rancher.
He set his beer down, picked up a fork...and before I knew what was going on he had flung himself over that table. Each move controlled and precise.
He flattened me to the floor, one knee pressed into my solar plexus, emptying me of air, at the same time, his free hand was crushing my neck - the fork, well he shoved that up my nostril ...I could almost feel the tines touching the bottom of my eyeball. He had several ways to hurt me...and he did them all at once. I couldn't scream, I couldn't move, and I was about to die from a fork to the brain.
He gave me a few moments for the fear to build as blood and snot poured out of my nose, and my neck swelled shut.
And then he leaned in close...and whispered without any emotion.
"You want to know what it is like to kill someone? How's it feel? In a moment you will be dead. Your Mom will never see you again. You will never taste her cooking. She will cry herself to sleep at night knowing her baby is never coming home. That girl you are so proud of? The little beauty you are going to marry next year...yeah, she won't ever see you again. And there won't be any warm goodbyes, you will be dead. DEAD. Those children you were going to have? They won't be born. Those family reunions with the good stories and the softball games. Never going to happen. You will be forever 18 years old...and dead. I will have to live with having done that to you, your family, your Mom, and that pretty little girl in that Wallet. They will all move on- and you, you little bastard will be a brief note in a small town Newspaper and be forgotten before it even turns yellow. And I will drink a beer and forget you."

He got up off of me. They took me to the infirmary. I got a few days profile. No charges were filed. None needed. I had learned my lesson. A few days later, when my neck went down enough to talk, and the scab in my nose healed up, I went up to him and apologized. I told him I was an idiot...and thanked him for the lesson.
He gave me a sideways glance.
"You knew you were wrong. I give you that. But if you want me to call you "soldier" you are going to have to earn that. Now get out of my sight."

And I did.