ustxtxb_obs_2003_09_12_50_00005-00000_000.pdf

October. We were at gunnery, which is about a month-long exercise. Up until then I had been thinking, kind of questioning things. There’s no religious overtones to anything of this, but I guess the best word would be an “epiphany.” It was a nice, bright sunny Texas day…I was sitting on top of my tank, just looking down at the panels, where we zero the guns. Why am I so stressed out? What is the problem? Just a hundred things going through my head. And why is this guy [the first sergeant] on me so bad? It’s because I’m not being efficient enough for him.What am I trying to be efficient at? I’m trying to be efficient at gunnery, but what is “gunnery” ultimately? Gunnery is training to kill people efficiently. And it just started to build like that. One question led to 10 other questions. What happens when that bullet hits that tank? There’s four people on a standard Russian-style, Soviet tank, or Iraqi tank. Those four people each have a mother and father; possibly they have wives, children, brothers, and sisters. I conservatively estimated that every time I hit that tank or gave the order for my gunner to fire, not only would four people die, but also somewhere in the neighborhood of 180 to 200 people would suffer. They would miss those peoplepeople who weren’t that much different from me. There was probably another guy who was a hot shot tank commander, a 19-year-old gunner, a couple kids in the driver and loader position, who are not that much different from these guys that I care about so much. And who gave me that power to decide if they live or die? I was really taken aback, but I kept it to myself It’s so difficult when you’re sitting around the campfire with all the other warriors after a good day’s hunt to come up and raise your hand and say, “Hey, boss, I feel different. You know, maybe what we did was wrong.” There’s a stigma attached to ita conscientious objector. A lot of people think, “Oh, hippies,” and people carrying signs and spitting on soldiers and things like that. I knew that wasn’t me, but I knew that I was very quickly becoming opposed to war. And opposed to killing. We went through a platoon gunnery exercise. Four tanks up on line, a total of 60 targets presented within a certain amount of time. It was all over within about 15 minutes or so. And that many targets going down in that rapid successionit just really started to drill it home: Look how efficient we are at murdering. They don’t stand a chance against us. They might as well just not show up because if they do, we’re going to kill them. We had an after-action review. The whole platoon was in a small building and we had a video tape of the targetry and so forth. My company commander was doing the debriefing. It was all I could do to not come out and say, “Look how efficiently we murder these people.” I remember him asking me, “Hey, Sergeant Stippich, how do you think we did?” For a split second my first reaction was, “Well, I guess we murdered the hell out of them, didn’t we? Each and every last one, they’re all dead now” I wanted to say that so badly, but it just wasn’t the venue for it. So I said, “I think we did a fine job. We did what we were supposed to do.” And it hurt to say that. y platoon sergeant was very r understanding. He’d been in the first desert war, and was ….decorated for that. I remem ber him one time saying, “I’d give it all back if I just didn’t have to see what I saw over there.” He was very intelligent, very caring, a smart NCO. A few days later I requested to talk to my company commander. We were still out in the field. They wanted to do some more training and we were standing in front of his Humvee. He was a really nice guy. He just put his arm around me, and said, “What’s wrong. You can just go ahead and talk to me. You have something on your mind.” And I told him, “I don’t think I can participate in this. I don’t think that I have what it takes to kill people.” He was understandably a bit taken aback. It was not what he expected me to come talk to him about. I had a reputation as someone who was a very aggressive tank commander, someone who got things done. One of my motivations was that I’d rather do this now, make my decision now, than do it later and actually have people die for it. If I were in combat and decided, “I can’t do this,” it’s too late. From there I went to the First Sergeant. He was not too happy with me, which I didn’t expect him to be. Once I told him I wanted to be a C.O., I wanted to do the proper paperwork, he brought me back and had me go immediately to a JAG [Judge Advocate General] lawyer. Then I went to the continued on page 18 It was a nice bright sunny Texas day. I was sitting on top of my tank, just looking down at the panels, where we zero the guns. Just a hundred things going through my head. What happens when that bullet hits that tank? There’s four people on a tank. Those four people each have a moth er and father; possibly they have wives, children, brothers, and sisters. I conservatively estimated that every time I hit that tank or gave the order for my gunner to fire, not only would four people die, but also somewhere in the neighborhood of 180 to 200 people would suffer. And who gave me that power to decide if they live or die? 9/12/03 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 5