katamari Damassi wrote:ianfc wrote:War Stories
My Grandfather told me he was in both wars, age up age down. He was a Rat of Tobruk but never spoke about the horrors and I never questioned. Though he did tell me about the live shows in Egypt etc where women would couple with horses etc. I was very young and perhaps he was a dirty old cunt. I believed him and loved him.
My father was a marine in the Solomon Islands. He used to have a stack of photos that he took during breaks in combat. Many were pretty gruesome- a lot of guys posing with severed Japanese heads, others just depicting island life for soldiers and natives. I can't locate them, and his mind is confused and I can't get a straight answer out of his as to what he did with them. To be honest, even when his mind was sharp it was always difficult to get a straight answer from him about anything-remember my post here about how no one in the family is even sure what his actual first name is? I think these pics are important and I'm worried that he's disposed of them.
When I was very young, and didn't know better, I asked my dad if he'd killed anyone in korea. He said he had, three times, all by hand. He'd been in G2, and scouting in places he oughtn't have been, and as the only non-NK for miles, guns were not a great option. The ways he used were pretty bloody, but it took me a while to realize what some of that had meant. In one case, it meant, most likely, that he'd had to walk, carefully, miles with someone else's blood and brains all over him.
Realizing that, and being old enough to really understand what being a POW interrogator was, and what that must have done to him, I gained, if not appreciation, a lot more understanding for why he was the way he was, and maybe he wasn't trying to be an asshole when he'd interrogate me about my day at school, but that he wasn't really good at asking questions any other way.
On the other hand, it meant I learned a loooooot about mind games at a young age, which has been mightly helpful in life.
I don't think you can kill someone, regardless of how, without it altering you.
