Hearted Youtube comments on Ryan McBeth (@RyanMcBethProgramming) channel.
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Your story reminds me of a one story, I heard from a Vietnam war vet, a Marine, I interviewed for a paper I wrote in high school:
This Marine's deployment ran from late '65 through to the early months of '67, and ended just prior to the Tet offensive. In the second half of his deployment his squad was tasked with night patrols outside the wire of their FOB. These were primarily recon missions, so silence was key to their security in the jungle. One night they are moving through the jungle in a file formation and the second or third Marine in the formation, start crying and yelling inexplicably. The others try to silence him, and finally the Marine I interviewed punches him out and carries his off. The squad relocates over a half-a-mile away, and goes to ground. Later the squad asked the Marine why he was yelling and crying in the middle of their patrol. He told them: 'Oh I stepped on a land-mine, I thought, I was gonna die.' Later it was revealed that the 'land-mine' was in fact, a paint can lid... The moral of the story is what would have happened if it wasn't a paint can lid!
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In engineering there’s a similar concept to Noncivilian Cutoff Value, that helps to compare and dictate how much of a project’s budget can be vs should be spent to create an appreciable increase in the safety of a design (eg, a vehicle or building). Beneath a certain threshold of safety, the project is considered impossible; above it, there is a cost per life association that tends to be formed with some uniqueness per project to help calculate how much of the project’s funds should go to increases in safety. So safety gets measured, safety increase cost estimated, death toll under extra-“reasonable” conditions approximated and multiplied by the project’s value per life, and then loss of life expense compared to safety increase expense to see if the increase is considered valuable enough to pay for. “Reasonable” conditions are also defined on a per-project basis.
This method is a lot more complicated than I’ve done it justice, and is similarly utterly sober. No life has a dollar value, but that’s also not how economies work, just like no civilian life really has an “eliminated enemy” value, and that’s also just not how armed conflict works.
The fact that both military theory and engineering standards and practices have both landed on this solution of measuring the unmeasurable is declarative of the necessity and simultaneous solution-less nature of the tasks at hand. Engineers (should) do their absolute best to avoid wrongful death, and then it sometimes happens anyway. And militaries need to do the maximum possible to avoid civilian death… and then sometimes killing 10 saves thousands. And sometimes you kill 10 and can’t even be certain yet whether thousands will be saved. Or in this case, sometimes you can be sure.
Small wonder people look to God for help.
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I needed this today, SFC Macbeth. My ptsd has been kicking my ass for the last few months again. I thought I had it beat, but it came back with a vengeance. Similar story, “You can’t beat me, Drill Sergeant! Never give up, Never quit!” I forgot that. Used to say that to myself when the shit got deep, like today. I hope I instilled that in my soldiers. Anyway, I’m calling 988, 1, now. Thanks, battle!
SSG yayamamasami, U.S.A. (Ret)
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