Was it an accident? Did it happen in a war? How did it make you feel then? How do you feel about it now? Would you care to elaborate on the circumstances?
I am particularly interested in the stories of soldiers who have killed and how they dealt with it. Did you feel guilt? Did you think about what their family was like or if they had children? How did other people react to you telling them their story?
Sorry this is just a collection of questions. I was just really hoping there would be some people here who were kind enough to share their stores. I am certainly not looking to pass judgment on anyone. Accidents happen. If it comes down to you and someone else you have every right to choose you.
If you are really interested in how Soldiers feel about killing, I suggest you read a couple of books. Most of the questions you pose are addressed in these books.
Thanks! I will definitely check those out. I figured with such a small sampling of people here the odds of there actually being someone here were pretty slim, but advice like this is perfect too. I appreciate it.
Not a problem. You do have to remember that this is a public forum, and some people may not be comfortable about posting about people they have killed. Read the books and you will see why.
I can’t find it now, but a long time ago there was a thread in which a doper replied about the person who attacked and killed some people in his house, and shot him in an attempt to finish him off, too. IIRC, the doper was able to get away and grab his own gun and shoot at the criminal, killing him. It was pretty intense, and I wish I could find the discussion and show you again. From what I remember, there was no remorse about it.
Ah yes, I remember starting that thread. Very very interesting stuff, that post definately stands out but there were other good stories too.
I have come very close to killing two people, I have also survived someone’s attempt to kill me. Going though both I can say that the former was a much scarier experience.
Closest I ever came was one time many years ago when I went to stay at a boarding house near a new job. The rent was $75 a week (that’s how long ago it was) and the manager was not in that day. His elderly mother was running the desk for him, and I gave the money to her and went to pick up a load of my stuff from the old apartment. When I returned about an hour later, I saw an ambulance out front, and one of her little hand-knitted booties (the kind with the pom-pom on top) lying in the street.
Apparently, some evil guy knew that I would be paying my deposit that day, and murdered her with a hammer. For my $75. I felt really, really weird about that. Just awful. She was really sweet. And the bootie was the saddest and grimmest thing I ever saw.
Something like this is much too personal to be discussed in a public forum. There are tons of books and websites out there detailing the emotions of those who have killed.
A fellow I work with was at fault in an automobile accident that killed several people but left him pretty intact.
He’s talked about it. He felt so bad about it for years that his own quality of life plummeted. Then he decided that as long as he had a life, he should be doing something worthwhile with it, and more or less picked himself up by his bootstraps and got going. He seems to be living a pretty useful existence now, doing right by pretty much everybody he sees.
It’s a sad story, but much better than it might have been.
Then, another fellow I used to work with told me about his own somewhat similar situation. He fell asleep at the wheel, crossed into oncoming lanes and hit a van hard enough to kill the entire family inside. He had been drinking and was trying to stay up much too long, though he says he was not really drunk, just tired.
This guy is a world-class jackass, maybe the most obnoxious and annoying person I can think of.
I have not killed anyone, but have seen my fair share of death. I’ve had people die in my hands. I’ve saved a few of them, but I’ve lost a hell of a lot more. Although their deaths are not my fault, I still carry the weight of their losses, especially for some of them.
From the first time I did CPR, I was 17, in the back of a firetruck going a gazillion miles an hour to the hospital on a 7 month old, to the last time I did CPR which was about…a month ago…
My strength for being a Firefighter/Paramedic comes from the fact I care too much for my patients. My weakness is exactly the same.
So to answer your question simply, I feel like shit. Still.
I can’t find it, but there was a similar thread years ago. The only real response was someone who’d killed someone in a car accident; he said it had been witnessed by a cop who agreed that the dead guy was entirely at fault, but he still seemed pretty shaken up by it.
Indirectly, and several years after the fact, yes I did.
During a football game my sophomore year in high school. It happened incredibly quickly - I was carrying the ball and cut back against the flow of tacklers. A smaller player on the other team was running alongside me when I made my cut. My cut put him squarely in my path, he lowered his helmet, I lowered mine and I ran him over. He didn’t get up. He spent a few months in the hospital then several more in rehab with a broken neck. It was really just a fluke thing, no intent on either part to hurt anyone.
He ended up as a quadriplegic, with some brain trauma that caused personality changes. About ten years ago I ran into someone who went to the same high school as the other guy did. I asked her, hey, did you know a guy named so and so…? She said oh yeah, she knew him pretty well. Sometime in his 30’s, the guy developed kidney problems brought on by drug abuse. He wasn’t strong enough to fight the kidneys and the secondary infections and died rather quickly.
After I told her about the injury, and that I was the other player, she got really quiet and said, that it was that incident that changed him. He used to be the all-american football star with the big GPA. After he got hurt, he changed, started drinking, got thrown out of school, started abusing drugs. She said it was like he became a whole new person, mad at the world and angry at anyone and everyone.