Mercenaries

A colleague called them mercenaries.

Ex-soldiers who finished their service and went into private security — to her, just mercenaries. I stopped her and told her that was ignorant.

What is a man to do when he finishes a twenty-plus-year career as a professional soldier? If all your life you wanted to be the best — a true commando, risen to the most elite level — because you wanted to test your mettle and because deep down you knew you were made for it, then one day it’s over.

You spend years training for war. You dedicate your life to giving it for your country. You are a professional — like any lawyer, doctor, or engineer — except your specialty is warfare and everything it takes to wage it. Some stand at the tip of the spear. A professional killer for your country. A master of combat arms.

Then you do your twenty years, or more, and one day you retire. You become a civilian.

If that was your profession, and it’s all you know — it’s pretty fucking hard to let go. There is no turning it off.

Plenty of veterans transition into other things. Nothing wrong with that. And nothing wrong with continuing what you did, for a better salary, for your family. Some take other jobs. Some stay in the private sector. Some go and give training.

Warfare is a fine profession. Polite society treats it with disdain, and everyone wants peace — but the fucking reality is the old adage: if you want peace, prepare for war.

To be human is to live as a species that keeps returning to war. To fight. To take lives. We sit in polite society as if this weren’t one of the most familiar acts in our history.

It’s the same as another old adage:

Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times.

Hopf wrote that — a novelist, distilling something old. Hardship recedes. Prosperity grows. The generations that follow lose contact with the sacrifice that bought the good times. They go soft. And soft sets the stage for the next hard times.

The horrors make us compassionate. Then we forget. And the cycle starts again — always, somewhere.

We like to think we’re evolved. We’re not. We’re just as barbaric — better tools, that’s all. Killing is killing. Being human is being human.

And worst of all, we’re ungrateful. Most of modern society never has to go to war unless war comes to the doorstep — and only because others choose to go into harm’s way so the rest don’t have to. We owe them thanks. In the end, it comes one way or another. We can’t help ourselves.

So I told my colleague to think harder before she judges a professional warfighter. The doctor and the soldier both do humane work. One preserves life. The other takes it. Both are human.