[Dion]

…Many soldiers have told us killing the enemy was one of their most haunting memories. Is that usually the case?

I think it's one of the most powerful pieces for most of the people that I've treated who have been in close combat situations. I had one World War II veteran I remember -- to the day he died he could still describe the face of the man he was about to kill. He was that close, that personal, that he felt like he could read the man's entire life just in his eyes, and he was in a situation where he had no choice but to kill him. I hear this frequently.

I think the loss of faith, both in the safety of the world and the loss of faith in one's own humanity, is threatened when people kill other people, which is what we train them to do in war. I mean, it's how you win the war is you kill people, but you take somebody off the street who spent their whole life learning not to kill other people, not to harm other people and put them in a situation where it's his job to kill somebody else. I've not ever met a person who killed others who was not affected by that.

I was hearing a story from a World War II bomber the other day who talked about being able to see the people fleeing and still feeling that today -- you know, "How could I have done such a thing? Where was my sense of reason?" But we know how they did it. There are a lot of military training techniques which are based on dehumanizing the enemy and making people able to kill. I mean, you don't take somebody out of a Sunday school class and try to win a war with that person. You've got to go through some training in between.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...emes/prep.html