I'm going to avoid naming time and date with this post due to the nature of the content. Take it as you will.

I was lucky enough to avoid much harm during my stay in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan. I was part of the Danish ISAF coalition contribution to the peacekeeping cause and served in Helmand for a total of six months. I was part of a specialist fire team and that meant that I was really only dragged out of our quarters when HQ was expecting resistance.

One day we were called out to an Afghani village which reportedly had insurgents hiding out and seeing as our intel suggested that we would be engaging opposing forces, I was ordered along on mission. As we approached we were greeted by civilian families evacuating the area. That is a tell-tale sign that there are insurgents about, as they would have scouted our approach for civilians to evacuate in such numbers.

Not too surprisingly we were fired upon as we inched towards the village. Luckily it was just small arms and after finding cover, we exchanged fire with the insurgents. Our little skirmish didn't last particularly long, the assault team destroyed half of a building with a grenade and whatever was left of the insurgents fled the area.

As we cleared the village, we found a live insurgent in the rubble. He was dazed and bleeding, but in a state where he would be easy to recover and bring back to HQ. His hands were in the air and he was talking to us in his native language, I can only assume he was surrendering. One of the privates pulled his sidearm and put a bullet through his head.

Many people will be disgusted by this kind of action, but with the DRA having suffered the casualties that it had suffered at the time, none of the soldiers present felt bed for the insurgent. Or at least they didn't speak up. Some people might call me a barbarian, but at the time I didn't feel much remorse for the guy. It's something that crosses my mind a lot these days.