On Killing by LtCol Dave Grossman, 2009, Excerpts
For out purposes “maximum range” is
defined as a range at which the killer is unable to perceive his individual
victims without using some form of mechanical assistance – binoculars, radar,
periscope, or remote TV camera. Many a pilot or artilleryman who has destroyed
untold numbers of terrified noncombatants has never felt any need for
repentance or regret.
We will call midrange that range at
which the soldier can see and engage the enemy with rifle fire while still
unable to perceive the extent of the wounds inflicted or the sounds of facial
expressions of the victim when he is hit.
Dragon Seed by Pearl Buck, 1942, Excerpts
[Description of Aerial Bombing]
For now they heard great thunders of
noise and having heard and seen the thing that burst in his neighbor’s field,
Ling Tan knew what was happening. He hid his face not only because he felt his
own end near but because he knew that with every burst some died. His eardrums
swelled and quivered as he listened and his eyeballs swelled and the breath
would not come out of his bosom. He looked at his son and the lad crouched with
his head between his legs and his knees pressed against his ears and his arms
wrapped about himself.
So they endured instant by instant
and the evil passed over their heads at last and went on and after what seemed
like half the day there was silence again until they heard a new noise and now
it was fire.
A few men had buckets and poured out
water, but the flames laughed and leaped at them, and so at last in their
despair the people only stood and gazed into the flames and the fire went on
until it reached a wide new road, and there grumbling and hissing, it died at
last to smoke and then to ashes.
These people poured like a flooding
river out from the city over the countryside. These now were rich and poor
together and they did not know if ever they could go back. Sometimes he felt
more sorry for the rich than the poor because the rich were so helpless and
delicate and knew little of where to find food. All their lives food had been
served to them by others and they did not need to ask where it was found or how
it was made, and the poor did better than the rich in these days, used as they
were to too little always. And best of all those bold poor did who risked their
lives to stay in the city and to go into the emptied houses of the rich and
take what they liked from them.
The
Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski, 1965, Excerpts
I recalled
well the time, in the first days of the war, when a bomb hit a house across the
street from my parents’ home. Our windows were blown out. We were assaulted by
falling walls, the tremor of the shaken earth, the screams of unknown dying
people. As the dust settled, the split house timidly bared its entrails. Limp
human bodies lay tossed over the jagged edges of the broken floors and ceilings
like rags. They were just beginning to soak in the red dye. Tiny particles of
torn paper, plaster, and paint clung to the sticky red rags like hungry flies.
Everything around was still in motion; only the bodies seemed at peace.
Then came
the groans and screams of people pinned down by the falling beams, impaled on
rods and pipes, partially torn and crushed under chunks of walls. Only one old
woman came up from the dark pit. She clutched desperately at bricks and when
her toothless mouth opened to speak she was suddenly unable to utter a sound.
She was half naked and withered breasts hung from her bony chest. When she
reached the end of the crater at the pile of rubble between the pit and the
road, she stood up straight for a moment on the ridge. Then she toppled over
backwards and disappeared behind the debris.
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