Want to Experience Combat?

You don’t know what you’re asking.

Image: Pinterest

I can understand why some “cherries” (new recruits) want to see combat. All their lives they’ve seen films and TV shows that glorify warriors and combat without depicting the gut-wrenching fear, blood, and horror. It wasn’t really real.

Combat doesn’t become really real until you’re smeared with your comrade’s blood- after you’ve struggled to get him evacuated, all the while knowing he’ll likely die anyway.

It doesn’t become really real until you’ve seen a friend screaming at the sight of his entrails laying out on his lap.

It doesn’t become really real until you’ve seen the distant stare of the dead.

Fresh soldiers don’t really want to experience combat, they just think they do.

Previously published on Quora, edited for Medium.