Would you stay and fight for America ?

[727Sky]

Unfortunately those who are not interested in war will have a rude awakening when they finally realize war is interested in everything and everyone.

I always wanted to ask you (directly) about killing.  Do pilots wrack up scores the way us Legs do?  I know you guys paint pictures of the other guy's airplanes near the noses of your birds ... sometimes pictures of bombs ... but do you ever (try to) account for the actual numbers? Divvy it up so-to-speak? I would give you the benefit of the doubt, as a gentlemen, that you don't. But, I've always been curious.

I don't know why or when I started thinking about this.  It was a long time ago out in some forgotten shithole.  Teams I was with ... we were surgeons ... and the dr.'s notes we posted were always great in detail.  I remember an epiphany during a BDA we were assigned to as a secondary.  No idea what was in the sky, but we wound up having to estimate the body-count, the stench and the absolute carnage made it impossible to do otherwise.

Pilots and artillerymen.  Scariest numbers for sure.

I was always a push the button (same as pull a trigger IMO) and watch them disappear in a red mist kinda guy. Usually because I was commander of a crewed bird I would just tell someone else to pull the trigger on a M-60, mini-gun or a 50 cal..... unless you count finding a company or battalion size unit and calling in a nice spread of B-52s with their 750 pound bombs all my killing was done by extension.. Closest to god I have ever been was feeling those 750 pounders going off. The bad guys on the ground who survived figured they had enough of war and wanted to go home to their Mothers. Those missions were done by triangulating and fixing a location down to 250 meters which was close enough for a B-52 strike. The mission sucked from our seats but uncle sugar thought we were something special.

I am lucky Snarl as I never hated.. I was just doing a job where I either did it right or suffered some severe consequences.  

So no I never had an AR/M-14 or a pistol in my hands and pulled the trigger to off someone. I always planned on keeping one round in my pistol for myself as the bad guys were just as brain washed mean as we were and not very nice to prisoners or wounded combatants. I always figured if they want to kill me then like in the western movies it was always the quick or the dead; the quick lived to fight another day while the dead are just a memory and out of the game of life.