Matt's Place

Found this today via Boing Boing - another interesting site to visit. It’s a piece from a freelance journalist currently on assignment for NBC, Kevin Sites, on the effect of War on those of our troops in the front lines. The site, Kevin Sites Blog , is his own ” Dispatches from a life in conflict.”

Derek Ellyson says his memories have already hardened, fixed in his mind. “You never forget the faces. I can describe to you every dead person I’ve seen out here. What their faces looked like, the position they were laying in.”

Sorokin agrees, “War brings a lot of ugly things, you see a lot of ugly things you see other people dead and sometimes when you see somebody dead you see the face of death–the way the guy died. It could be an enemy it could be an ally it doesn’t matter.”

Yet living with those images of death is part of the job–the same one that requires them to pull the trigger. Before going to war soldiers have always had to ask themselves if they’d be willing to die for their cause. But there is a second part to that question which for some, is more difficult to answer: would they kill for it?

For most if not all in the 3rd Platoon–the question is already moot.