“Unless he is caught up in murderous ecstasy,” Glenn Gray wrote in reflection of his time as a draftee in the U.S. Army during the Second World War, “destroying is easier when done from a little remove.”
In the link between distance and ease of aggression, there’s a direct relationship between empathy, physical proximity of the victim and the resultant difficulty and trauma of the kill, according to Lt. Col. Dave Grossman in his 1995 study “On Killing.”
For Vietnam veteran Eugene “Gene” Marion Simmers, a close proximity to death and the actions he wrought haunted him for more than fifty years.
Simmers was drafted soon after he graduated from Granville High School in Ohio in 1966. Serving as a combat medic with Company A, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, Simmers received a Silver Star for heroism after his unit found itself trapped as it approached a booby-trapped bridge over a rice paddy near Mo Duc, Vietnam.
“Upon hearing the explosion,” according to his Army citation, “Specialist Simmers rushed to the front of the company and came under intense sniper fire from scattered positions in the area. After taking momentary cover, he maneuvered through the hostile fire and administered first aid to those wounded in the explosion.
“Despite enemy fire impacting all around him, he moved throughout the area to aid his fellow soldiers. His courageous actions were directly responsible for saving the lives of his comrades.”
When asked about his memory of the incident in 2014 by a local news outlet, the Newark Advocate, Simmers recalled, “I just knew I had seven guys hit, and I had to do whatever I could to keep them alive.”
“War’s a bitch,” Simmers went on. “I was just doing my job, and they gave me a medal for it.”
However, up until his death on Nov. 28, 2022, it was not the lives of those men he saved that stayed with him, but that of an elderly Vietnamese woman he had killed during the war.
While the circumstances surrounding the woman’s death remain unclear, what is evident is the weight of her death on Simmers’ psyche.
The simple etching on his gravestone is short — but poignant. The burden of decades-long grief and trauma:
In memory of the elderly woman I killed in Vietnam.
Forgive me. I’m so sorry.
Gene Simmers
Claire Barrett is an editor and military history correspondent for Military Times. She is also a World War II researcher with an unparalleled affinity for Sir Winston Churchill and Michigan football.