The first sergeant stepped between us before anyone threw a punch. The colonel left, we finished our meal and returned through quiet streets to the stadium. Instead of chewing me out, General Klimp signed the papers awarding me a Navy-Marine Corps Commendation Medal for my work that day.

The Army colonel had been wrong to believe that snipers, who are specially trained for years not to let emotion get in the way of the job, do not have human responses. We just don’t let anyone see them.

It was later that evening when my body, exhausted from the lack of sleep and the exertions of the day, told me it was time to be alone. I found a shadowy storage room deep beneath the stadium, sat on a wooden crate, and allowed myself a private, two-minute nervous breakdown. During combat, I never doubt what I am doing, but it does get to me later, and I shook like a leaf as I sat there and reviewed the carnage I had caused that day.

There had been a lot of shooting out there, but I carried the big gun, and I had put holes in tanks, technicals, armored vehicles, and people. I was credited with eight confirmed kills and probably got more than that, but numbers never matter. I remembered each target vividly, seeing them again just as I had with my scope when I blew away their last moment of life. These regular little sessions with myself are as close as I come to thinking of the enemy as individual human beings who might have families and dreams and identities of their own. Today, they were trying to kill Americans, so I had no choice but to do my job before they could do theirs.

I was not wallowing in some trough of melancholy or depression, for these moments are merely chances to let my brain catch up with what my trigger finger has been doing. After a few minutes, the shaking subsided, and with my self-examination done, I got my shit together and went back to work.