Experience during the Katrina Hurricane - Essay Example

One particular occasion was a moral eye-opener for me. I had carried out my duties almost automatically up to that point since I was enrolled with the ROTC mainly from the point of view of funding my college education rather than any burning desire to serve in the Army. However, on this particular occasion, it was cold and windy and as my partner – my supervisor on this occasion - and I combed through alleys, we came across an old man who was being held at gunpoint by a young male. We soon discovered that the point of dispute was an oilskin bag that the old man carried which was bulging with dollar notes. The young male was demanding that the bag be handed over. My superior officer intervened and ordered the young man to step back, but it turned out he had a gun and tried to shoot him. In the ensuing conflict, my superior officer shot the young man and killed him.

The old man was effusive in his gratitude and rose, clutching the bag to his chest. That’s when I received a shock. My superior urged me to kill the old man so we could snatch the money and divide it among us. He had exhausted his bullets on the young man and therefore ordered me to do it. I flatly refused, since it was my duty to rescue the victims, not shoot them because of sudden, overpowering greed, which had overcome my superior officer.

This was the first time I deliberately disobeyed an order and it led to a hands-on battle between my supervisor and myself with him trying to grab my gun from me. I yelled at the old man to run away and suffered a severe beating from my officer which left me half dead. I later brought charges against my superior officer before a military tribunal.
I became a man that day when I had to truly face up to what my values were in a situation where I could have possibly escaped and gotten away with killing the old man and dividing the loot with my supervising officer. However, the fact that it was ethically and morally wrong to steal the property of another was one consideration that restrained me. 

In my view, taking a life unnecessarily was something untenable. We as soldiers are often at the firing end of a gun and duty-bound to obey orders, however, shooting an enemy during a war situation was different from shooting a civilian in a situation where we were supposed to assist.  In a war situation, I believe discipline and obedience are of the utmost importance because it is only then that the goals of war strategy can be successfully achieved. It is the unity of purpose that is important in achieving war objectives and I believe that soldiers should unfailingly obey their superior officers. However in the situation, I found myself, obeying my superior officer would have meant an ethical violation, it would have been an unacceptable taking of life. I believe in such situations, soldiers may be justified in refusing to obey orders.

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