He says he can pinpoint the root of his problems back to an incident in Basra in the first month of the Iraq invasion, seven years ago. "We were told to hit and clear an enemy building," says Dale. "The tanks opened up on the building and we went in, firing, throwing grenades in every room. We thought there was no one firing back because of the weight of fire. But when we got in there, it wasn't an enemy building, it was just a normal family. There were about seven of them in total. Dead children lying all over the floor." It was 27 March, 2003, his 33rd birthday.
As platoon sergeant he had to clear the casualties: "I really struggled hard with it. We were always told that we had to go in gently, not to injure any civilians. Me and the corporal got together afterwards and we knew what we'd done was wrong. But you tried not to talk about it."
My conclusion is that this victim of the Iraq debacle still doesn't understand his own part in it. Full story here.
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