On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society

by Dave Grossman

Killing is the worst thing that one man can do to another man…it’s the last thing that should happen anywhere. —Israeli lieutenant I reproached myself as a destroyer. An indescribable uneasiness came over me, I felt almost like a criminal. —Napoleonic-era British soldier This was the first time I had killed anybody and when things quieted down I went and looked at a German I knew I had shot. I remember thinking that he looked old enough to have a family and I felt very sorry. —British World War I veteran after his first kill It didn’t hit me all that much then, but when I think of it now—I slaughtered those people. I murdered them. —German World War II veteran And I froze, ’cos it was a boy, I would say between the ages of twelve and fourteen. When he turned at me and looked, all of a sudden he turned his whole body and pointed his automatic weapon at me, I just opened up, fired the whole twenty rounds right at the kid, and he just laid there. I dropped my weapon and cried. —U.S. Special Forces officer and Vietnam veteran I fired again and somehow got him in the head. There was so much blood…I vomited, until the rest of the boys came up. —Israeli Six-Day War veteran So this new Peugeot comes towards us, and we shoot. And there was a family there—three children. And I cried, but I couldn’t take the chance…. Children, father, mother. All the family was killed, but we couldn’t take the chance. —Israeli Lebanon Incursion veteran