He was a assault helicopter pilot.
He did not talk about it much.
He shouldn’t have though, maybe.
Once I was drunk, I remember him telling me that he killed between 400-500 militants. Maybe, he was bullcrapping, perhaps I remember incorrectly, or perhaps it is true. However, it is true that he murdered human-beings.
He is not from any of the countries where English is spoken, but he served in a NATO-member military.
I am really curious about killing humans influenced him psychologically.
He has always been a negative person. Perhaps because he killed a lot of men. Perhaps his amygdala does not function in a normal way.
Those who were killed by him were called terrorists by various countries including US and Germany. But they were humans, never the less.
I do not know how I should feel about it. I didn’t feel proud very much. But he was my father tough.
Ask him if/while you have the chance.
It’s your choice how to think of it, but from what you’ve said in a legal sense he did not murder anyone.
I don’t know if English is your first language, but murder means the unlawful killing - killing in military actions (outside of war crimes) is excluded.
I’m not wired to be able to do it, and I’m pretty pacifist, but I recognize that in a war killing is justified.
I had grandparents in WWII who undoubtedly killed people. One operated an anti-aircraft gun on a naval ship in the Pacific.
They both echoed sentiments I’ve heard elsewhere - it’s not that they were out there with the goal to kill other people. Their primary motivation was to protect friends and to do their job. These are things they can certainly be proud of, even if killing other people is an unpleasant consequence of what they did. In fact, without their actions, it’s likely that many more people would eventually have died.
I know my Dad was hardened by world war II, never talked about it but he was much different than his other 9 brothers who didn’t go. Being scared shitless for weeks at a time must be at least as bad as killing someone you consider the enemy.
When I asked my dad if he ever shot anybody in the war, he replied that he didn’t really know, but he sure shot at a lot of them. He was in a field artillery battalion in New Guinea and the Phillipines, blasting into the jungles there, so who knows?
I’ve heard it’s in very bad taste to ask a service member if they’ve ever killed someone. My son did two tours in Iraq. He never said and I never asked.
Edit: He’s hardly ever talked about any of his experiences over there.
your use of verb tense suggests that your father has passed on.
if so, I’m sorry for your loss, If not - consider that your time to spend with him is more important that the job he signed up to do.
It will take time to learn to cope with it - in either sense - and it seems like his job/role while in the military is having an impact on you, and you should probably talk to someone about it to help you work your way thru the process to whatever outcome.
My father served in the infantry in Korea. He was in a mortar squad. I’m sure he lobbed a bazillion shells at the enemy, and probably shot a lot of small arms too. It has never occurred to me to ask him if he knows for sure if he killed anyone. One man in his squad was injured by shrapnel, but the closest call my father had was from friendly fire. He doesn’t shy away from talking about his war experiences, although it’s not something he dwells on. He has done so many other things with his life that that is just one small part of it. His experience in the army was generally positive – it got him out of Idaho, for one thing.
THIS is the most horrible conceit common in humans.
You ARE wired to kill - wars are not fought by some kind of deviant human, they are fought by everyman.
I’m eating and will cut this short.
You are correct. Wars are almost universally horrible to everyone involved. Even the basic conditions tend to be really bad even if you never see true combat.
I don’t hate anyone for being drafted into any war and would have signed up for wars that I viewed as just like WWII if I lived during that time. Let’s not mince words, war is about killing as many people as necessary before the other side kills your allies, you or even your family. Almost nobody likes it and many are truly traumatized by it for life.
Most people that serve in war are support or service person ell. They don’t directly kill anyone but only because of the job they have. Other people that they support like infra try, bomber squadrons and others have a job that requires them to destroy as much enemy infrastructure and human military resources as possible on a given mission. They aren’t evil. It is simply a job and many can barely do it psychologically despite the counter-threats to both themselves and everyone they know.
My grandfather was a navigator on a bomber plane that was shot down over Nazi territory. I have no idea how many people he helped kill but I do know that he flew several heavy bombing missions. Of his crew, he was only one of three that survived ironically because he was hit by flak and lost most of one of his eyes before he bailed out. The other uninjured crew members that bailed out weren’t so lucky. They were executed on the ground after a short ‘trial’ hours later. He got taken to a POW camp where they held him for 18 months. Some German POW camps were fairly good at the beginning of the war but not his while he was there. Food was almost nonexistent and he got down to 90 pounds at 6’3" when the war ended and he was liberated. He was sent back home practically as a barely living corpse with one blind eye and permanent health problems. I loved him and knew him well but he died quite unexpectedly during routine health tests when he was 55 because of old wartime trauma.
However, I don’t hate his German interment camp guards for doing that to him. They didn’t have any choice just like he didn’t. I also don’t hate today’s Germans in general for past war crimes (the Japanese were much more brutal and inhumane to POW’s but people seem to forget that).
In summary, he had a job that you may not approve of but it is still just a job. Some jobs involve killing other people directly or indirectly especially in times of war and there is nothing unusual about it. War has been a common feature of all of human history.
I think it would be harder to be a commando or in special forces where your job is to sneak up and put a knife in some guards back while you cover their mouth. I mean your actually touching a human who is probably some poor sap who’s tired, hungry, and wants out of this war as much as you do but is stuck on guard duty.
Remember that the killings were a part of his life, and not yours.
Your father probably just felt obligated to tell you of his military past in case you heard it from others or had any questions. But if he only mentioned it once, then he probably didn’t intend to put any burden on you. Sounds like he left it up to you to decide what you want to do with the info.
So if it disturbs you a great deal, then put it out of your mind. Again, the killings were a part of his life, and not yours. File it away under “Shit happens.”
On the other hand if you want to hear more and he’s still around to talk to you, then ask questions. Ask him to point out on a map where he fought; ask him what kind of aircraft, what life was like at the airbase. He brought up the subject, so he can’t object if you ask questions.
In any case, it’s up to you. Do whatever works for you. Don’t let it mess up your head.
I meant to add:
It sounds like your father was involved in Close Air Support. If you want to investigate on your own, Wikipedia has an in-depth article on the topic. Also, you can google lots of material on the subject. Close Air Support is actually quite a fascinating subject. It has evolved quite a bit over the years.
So that would be another avenue for handling the info about your father: Do some reading up on Close Air Support, and then you’ll be more informed and can decide at that point if you want to discuss it further with your father.
That’s perhaps a distinction between hardware and software. The capacity is there in anyone: but most of us are socialised against putting it into effect, which is why most armed forces don’t just invite people into the armouries to choose their weapon and let them get on with it. Most people have to be trained to adapt their inhibitions so that they can rediscover and apply their innate aggression - BUT under the right (from the military point of view) controls. Personally I’d find it inconceivable of myself: but after training, in combat and under attack - who knows?
I think there are different types of killers. There are those that want to kill and choose jobs like infantry because they want to kill and they enjoy it, or some think they will anyway and then find out they don’t. Then there are people that can kill but don’t take pleasure in it and learn to dehumanize the enemy and compartmentalize inside their head what they are doing and they are able to function emotionally.
And then there are people that don’t want to but are forced to do it and can’t take the emotional burden and suffer things like PTSD and are fundamentally different, broken people afterwards.
There was a good book on the topic about killing in the military I’m sure somebody knows the name I just feel too lazy to look it up right now. I believe it talks about things like soldiers that would fire their weapons and basically miss on purpose and talks about how the military teaches you to dehumanize the enemy.
Still though if you’ve had to kill hundreds of people, especially up close and personal, it’s gotta do something to your mindset, you might just start seeing all people as bags of meat, walking corpses or something I don’t know, it must really numb your empathy for the living.
This is how soldiers do it. During war we dehumanize the enemy. Towelheads, sand niggers, gook, nip, kraut, and other horrible things. The target isn’t the tank crew; the target is the tank. Most of us would go insane with the realization; many of us do have long-lasting psychological issues as a result.
According to one ex-infantryman I know, it’s not lack of empathy, so much as fear of being attacked. To him, the human race consisted of two types of people: known friends, and strangers who might suddenly pull out a weapon and start shooting.
Among my acquaintances, artillerymen and bomber pilots tend to talk more about the big picture. “If we attack, we will kill this many people. If we don’t attack, the enemy will kill more people.”
Yet, the minute the war is over we make them friends. Humans are strange.
It is strange, but a similar thing happens in many schoolyard fights, two boys build tension to a point where violence ensues, and then after the fight they are friends again.