“The enemy are savages and despicably evil,” and that his “only regret is that I didn’t kill more.”
While the author of this piece is shocked, shocked, that any soldier who says such a thing was not removed from combat for having psychopathic tendencies*, he *obviously* knows nothing about history.
American soldiers have said almost identical things after witnessing horrible atrocities carried out in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
In Iraq, truly horrific things were done by the “insurgents” the US was fighting. And most of the utterly inhuman, barbaric, savage and despicably evil things they did were done against innocent civilians.
It doesn’t take a whole lot of that before soldiers become utterly contemptuous and hate filled against those who carry out such acts, be they General SS or Iraqi “insurgents”. They are certainly not filled with “the milk of human kindness” towards them. Nor are they particularly inclined to even take them prisoner.
Something even the Geneva Conventions do not require them to do, for non-uniformed terrorists.
I have seen some nasty stuff but this stuff is what the enemy would do to you and yours and by extension others.
I recall in my Division, VN, heavy casualties brought fewer prisoners, payback.