My father piloted a Lancaster bomber out of Great Britain during ww2. One of the many talks we had about the war involved photos of the kids, some probably not even yet in their teens, that the nazis stuffed into uniforms late in the conflict.

I asked him if he would have killed them had he encountered any face to face, and without hesitation he answered that yes, of course he would. They would have been trying to kill him, and it would have been his job, his duty and his right to kill them first.

My father really wasn't a "gung-ho, let's wipe 'em out" type of person. The end of the war was, for him, the end of a nightmare. But he was prepared to do what it took to win that war.

He was always able to hide pretty well the scars he bore from those days. I don't think he ever had nightmares or flashbacks or anything like that, but I do beleive that he was a sadder person than he would have been had he never been faced with such death and destruction.