People kill other people in war. Most people understand this, but have no understanding how such an event affects the surviving combatants. Luke Devine knows what it’s like: October 12, 2004, just four days after he turned twenty-two, he ended a human life.

He was on a combat deployment to Iraq with the Marine Corps, in the town of Rasheed. He was taking part in a presence patrol at night, and tensions were high across the board due to a recent escalation of violence in the area.

“I could hear a vehicle coming from behind us at a high rate of speed, ” Devine said. “The last conscious thought I remember having was, ‘Boy I hope that guy sees us and slows down, because everybody’s kind of nervous.'”

The vehicle didn’t slow down though, and proceeded to attempt to run over several of Devine’s fellow Marines. Devine’s recounting of the event is a surreal one of confusion, fear and survival. He narrowly dodged the truck by jumping into a ditch, and when he came up out of the ditch to engage the driver of the vehicle with his weapon, he thought, “Oh my God, is this really happening?”

After the dust settled, Devine said his first thoughts after the incident were, “I just remember being happy that I was alive and wasn’t hurt.” One other Marine wasn’t as lucky, and was shot in the face during the altercation.

The impact to Devine was evident shortly after, upon returning to the base. When asked by his superiors, who he had known for years, what had happened, he didn’t recognize them.

“I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t think of their names. I could not remember who they were. I knew something had happened, but I could not pinpoint quite exactly what they were talking about, and I tried to explain what had happened, but I couldn’t, because I didn’t really remember,” Devine said. “I almost think I was in shock.”

What makes Devine’s story unique is that a few days later his squad was tasked out to talk to the family of the Iraqi man whose life was ended. Devine said the deceased man’s children looked “hurt, scared, and confused. It felt to me like I had caused that, like I had taken some part of these boys’ life away from them.”

Devine struggles with it even now, over five years after the event took place. “I think about this incident probably everyday, but I can never make up my mind as to whether it bothers me, or how I feel about it. It’s hard to explain,” he said.

That is what the wars overseas are: putting young men in positions where they must engage their fellow man in mortal combat in order to survive. The victors must then deal with the emotional aftermath the rest of their lives.

When so few civilians understand what soldiers are going through, this healing process is made to be so much harder. Every time someone rudely asks, “Did you kill anyone?” it shows how little the average person really knows about what happened. How the media has turned something that is a tragedy into something that is flippantly asked about at bars and restaurants.

Devine has put a lot of thought into how he feels about what he did. He has pondered it, and run over it again and again in his mind. I think he put it best when he said:

“I’m sorry that that guy had to die, and that those boys had to grow up with no dad, but I’m not sorry that I killed him. You have to do what you have to do to survive. What’s right is what makes you and your friends come home, and what’s wrong is anything else.”

If only our culture would put as much thought into these things as Devine has. If only we could stop for second, as a whole, and ponder what we are doing to ourselves, to our own humanity, when we violently conclude the life another human being. We need to ask ourselves, “Is it worth it? Are we there for the right reasons?”

I have a hard time thinking it’s worth it, when most people can’t explain why we’re in Iraq in Afghanistan, or what our goals are over there. I support the troops 110 percent, and it kills me inside to know how thoughtless our culture is being in their use, and how little we think about their personal struggles after the fact.