1/1/11
Shooting a man in the head isn't at all like they show you on television. For one thing there's an incredible amount of blood. For another thing, it isn't just a clean little hole like a laser – through and through. No, the front hole was mostly hidden by hair but the exit wound left a hole closer to the size of a small plate. And the gore… it was everywhere. The spray was incredible. It got all over my clothes. I must have spent an entire hour washing his brains out of my hair.
I thought it would be quicker than it was. I figured – a bullet to the brain and it's over, right? The poor bastard twitched for almost 10 minutes. The smell was horrific. I'd never seen it up close before. Through the binoculars, I'd seen our snipers pull the trigger on some of them, but they just seemed to collapse, like throwing a switch. One minute they were upright and walking, the next they were on the ground. It's like someone put them to sleep. Up close, it wasn't at all like sleep.
I threw up when we got back to the tent. The other guys actually laughed. Not a lot, but they did. I thought they were laughing because they thought I was weak. Later, one of them would tell me they were laughing because they all threw up their first time, too.
I'll never forget the sound of the weapon, either. I'd fired the M4 a thousand times before, maybe tens of thousands. Hundreds upon hundreds of rounds fired at targets. Paper targets. Clay targets. Wooden targets. Practiced over and over again. At first, the crack of the round leaving the muzzle was startling, then, over time, I got used to it. These days, I didn't even notice it. But this shot was different. It echoed over and over in that small room. So loud, I nearly winced.
But targets didn't prepare me at all for the real thing. That one bullet was so different. It wasn't like shooting a target at all. We were walking through the streets, clearing buildings, making sure no one was occupying any of the upper floors. We were one squad of almost a dozen sweeping the area, making sure the tanks and other troops could come through without having to worry about rocket-propelled grenades or sniper fire. We kicked down a door, and there he was, leaning out the window. One minute he was standing, and then he turned and looked right at me, and then I pulled the trigger. He fell, not in slow motion, but so fast I almost didn't see it.
Before I fired, he had started to say something – we never did find out what it was. The sound just melded into this horrible guttural scream, as if his whole life was exiting his body through this last effort. It made such a mess, his blood and brains all over the inside of the window, the window-frame and the walls on either side. I had no idea that a head held that much blood.
I didn't say much for the rest of the day, but when we got back to our tent, I was shaking. The worst part of the whole thing, despite the mess and the smell and the roar of the rifle – the worst part was, I kind of liked it.
