[GZG] [GZG Fiction] All Grown Up

Our Boys, All Grown Up

New Guardian Times, Margaritifer Sector, September 2nd 2196

While the Arda Campaign goes on unabated, I thought a more personal note might
set the scene for what is to come over the next few months. For those who have
friends or loved ones on the Line, I guess you wonder if you'd sense any
change in them should you finally get a live vid post rather than a flat
letter. As some one who has been to and from the frontline of human operation
over the last couple of years I would say yes, quite definitely.

The first and most vivid change that would strike you is the casual and
work-a-day manner in which they now talk about killing. This is a
transition that most veterans in long ground wars make, but the psychological
transition seems to have been quicker and more complete thanks to the alien
nature of the foe. With the various forms that humans now come in, with and
without major gene and cybernetic
enhancement, there was some question as to whether in a face-to-face
confrontation humanity would see Krak any different to other sentients.
Practically though there has been relatively little resistance in the switch
from the normal belief that sentience is sacrosanct to the professional
outlook of killing is a craft without moral obstacle. In large part this seems
to have been facilitated by the media reporting of the bloody transmissions
from the captured colony worlds and the gory aftermath of battles to date. The
mutilated corpses and apparent lack of respect for the human dead amongst the
Krak making it all to easy to see them as monsters in appearance and nature.

What has struck me the most is that I am coming to share this new attitude.
There are many reports of generations of previous reporters
and non-combatants not sharing this transition, of the act of causing
another's death remaining taboo for them. I share no such qualm. I think
it is because the Krak makes no distinction regarding non-combatants; my
life is not only peripherally, but directly in danger so I have come to think
of killing in personal terms. It's not so much that you're fighting for your
people, your species, it's that you're fighting for your life. Your blood
comes up, and ending that enemy in whatever way works best becomes a
profession as sensible as farming, teaching or writing.

Killing individually or in vast numbers is almost a secondary consideration.
It comes down to wanting to see the alien horror overrun, silenced, mangled,
butchered, exterminated. It is no longer the terrible, if almost academic,
desire for the war to be over that all those far from the front line share. On
the Line everyone, combatant or not, wants it over by the physical process of
destroying as many Krak as it takes to end it, even if that's every last one
of the murdering brutes. This is a state of being at war that those who are
not on the Line can not achieve no matter how hard they work at it. Nothing
can make one into a complete soldier, a veteran soldier, except hard fought
battle experience.

Nevertheless it has taken more than a year of living on the Line and now of
being thigh deep in the Arda campaign, with its wholesale death and vile
destruction, for me to realise to my core how real and how awful this war is.
It is also somewhat disconcerting to see what this does to one's emotions,
making some crust over when it comes to the tangibles of war. For instance, I
still find a lump forming in my throat and a tightness in my gut whenever I
look on a row of fresh graves. Yet I can look on as many mutilated bodies
without flinching.

As the campaign winds into full swing more and more replacement units come
into action. Not all excel immediately, admirably their commanders not only
admit it they don't try to alibi it. This is because while the troops are
green the commanders aren't; they are not worried as they know there is no
lack of bravery, only a lack of experience. They all
know these troops will rise to meet the challenge, do better next time -
except for those poor souls for whom there will not be a next time.

I spoke to one of the high-up NAC officer's this morning. One of those
aristocratic leaders whose family has been educated at Eton for centuries and
commanding troops for over a thousand years. A quiet fifty something, with an
easy but constrained smile, greying blonde hair almost silver at the temples
and flint hard blue eyes. He had been over the ground taken in the opening
days of the offensive, had found our dead lying in vehicles, amongst anything
that could pass for cover, in scrapes and hastily constructed positions, their
dead hands still grasping their weapons in firing positions. He repeatedly
remarked, in a hushed, but admiring and proud tone "Brave, so bloody brave.
Couldn't ask more. Couldn't ask more"