December 11, 2006

Yesterday I almost did a horrible thing. I am not sure how I got on the roof. When the shooting starts, instinct and training take over. All I know was that I was on the third level of the building looking into a sunlit street. Through my rifle scope I scanned the big red door in the yellow wall that was three blocks to the north. I had seen one of the shooters run through it and now I could see a head peering up the street at us.

The door was three blocks away. The .50 cal continued booming on my right as the Marines returned fire up the street. Then everything went deadly still. There was the head again, just a brief flurry of movement before he ducked back in. I could hear my breathing and felt the cold trigger against my finger. The sky was so blue and deep that I was distracted for a moment as I tried to hold my aim on the door. Pigeons flew by me out over the city and landed on the roof of a blue domed mosque.

The middle of a firefight is often surreal as life continues to march on around and over the struggle. I felt guilty for marring a beautiful moment with violence. I felt bad for the raid we had just conducted, for having broken through doors and sent women screaming and humiliated men to the floor.

I felt guilty for pointing a rifle down a sunny street. But the RPG roaring up the street at us had not been imagination. Lt Krissoff really had died the other day. We really did find bad guys in that house, even if they did have wives and children. They really did plant IEDs and cut off heads. And now I really could see that head sticking out the door at us again. I struggled to hold the weapon up and I leaned against the wall a bit. I tried to keep in the shadow because I know the roofs have snipers on them.

There is the head again. I tell myself that if I see a weapon I am going to shoot. Troops are in contact, the enemy has attacked and I am not going to hesitate. I looked through my scope with the laser dot pointed right at the door. When he comes out to get a shot I will kill him.

Then the door burst open and a small young boy walked out into the street filling up my rifle scope. I was going to shoot, I would have shot and nobody told me not to shoot. No voice, no feeling, nothing at all. I almost killed a child. The street soon filled with people as they anticipated the fighting to be over. We popped smoke, ran out the doors with our prisoners and took off.

May God protect the innocent from me. I am so glad that He lives and understands it all because I don't. What I do know is that I trust Him implicitly. I love Him and I follow him everyday.