The air crackled, sizzled, and smoked with gunfire and rockets hellbent for American soldiers. A platoon of 82nd Airborne troops had just been ambushed outside Fallujah and had taken several casualties. As my team and I came closer to the scene just minutes later, a sniper team in the area came on the radio with a warning.
“There’s a group of thirty to forty men in the middle of the road about a mile away with guns and RPGs,” he told us. It was the ambush team. My vehicle and two tanks raced towards the area.
When we arrived on scene, all of the men scattered in vehicles. One truck pulled out and blocked the road so that we could not pursue. Shots rang out from the tank, warning the truck to move. With that, the truck recklessly sped towards the tank.
The tank commander fired a few shots into the cab killing the driver; the truck rolled to a stop and four men burst out and took off running. The tank commander shot them all.
Afterwards, I had to secure the area and clear the bodies of any weapons. That’s when I saw him… one of the men who had tried to escape on foot and had been shot. We tried applying first aid but it was pretty obvious that he was not going to make it.
That whole night stands out to me as a paradox. We shot them and then tried to save them. My emotions went from rage over the fact that they had killed some of our soldiers to compassion and sadness. Here is a man about to enter the gates of hell, I thought as I watched him die. It was pretty rough, and I will never forget it for the rest of my life.
It really brought home the greater significance to taking a life. I realized that whether I liked it or not these terrorists needed Jesus just as much as my soldiers did. And no matter what uniform a person dies in be it dress uniform or tattered robes if they do not know Christ as their savior, their eternal fate is the same.
Lord, give me a heart for people’s souls.
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23)