Day in the Life of a Tankman 4

I am not well.

Psych evaluations are usually laughable. As long as you can shoot straight, they don't care if you talk to a mannequin as if it's your wife or have a bottle of urine as a copilot.

I am told I have developed a new level of crazy. I am told that tying the surviving pilots of tanks to mine, smearing them with gasoline, and riding into battle with a flaming tank of screaming death is starting to unnerve my companions.

Wither pleaded with me to get help. The man who spends his spare time poisoning enemy orphanages thinks I've gone mad.

I am told that screaming my new religion of hatred over my tank's loudspeaker is being used by the enemy to justify their actions as we are all bloodthirsty, homicidal maniacs who enjoy spraying gunfire into refugee camps. To be far, a lot of the veterans are. But they don't want me to advertise it.

I am told that using captives as "silencers" for my tank's cannon is both ineffective in it's intended purpose and is requiring the use of far more lubricant than the camp can reasonably acquire.

I am told bringing along a five gallon jug of water just to have enough urine to piss on all the dead enemy soldiers is going too far. The "soccer match display" I set up with dead bodies and a severed head caused the camp shrink, who has only discharged people when they lose the will to kill, to look at me with genuine fear and ask what the hell was wrong with me.

Where exactly do you go when the local pyromaniac who helped you kill four million people thinks you've completely lost any semblance of humanity?

I told the shrink that again and again, from the hellish days of boot camp where our now dead drill sergeant killed a rookie just to make a nihilist point to right here, where compassion got you and your allies killed, I have learned that the laws of humanity and morality have no place here.

And then he brings up me wearing an enemy general's skin as a raincoat and I realize my argument for intimidation is just not going to hold any water.

I'm... just not sure what they want me to do.

At the beginning I tried to be professional, conserve ammo, minimize collateral damage, but that wasn't enough for r&d. The only time I started getting some props for my performance was when I earned my nickname by leveling everything on the battle field.

The ultimatum was thus- if I don't tone down the crazy they'll execute me as a war criminal.

I want this war over. I want the enemy so afraid of us that they will stop fighting.

But now, as Hellfire won't sit with me at lunch and Wither asks me for the third time if I'm taking these new meds that are supposed to limit the murder instincts, I wonder.

Oh God.

They see me as a monster. Something that must be put down. And there are people willing to die one after the other to make sure that the world they leave behind doesn't have to deal with me.

 

uhh.......... ok.................