The logistics of mass murder

You meet some interesting people over here, and not just amongst the soldiers. One of the civilians I know used to have a job in the capitol city that involved going from little patrol base to little patrol base fixing things. This was in 2006-2007 when things were rather active. He got from base to base by hitching rides. If a group of vehicles were going from base A to base B, he would get a ride. If the ride involved raiding a house before going to base B, they didn't drop him off first. He went along. He said being the target of mortar and rocket fire that lands close enough to punch holes in your quarters sucks.

Another guy I met worked here around 2003-04 excavating and documenting mass graves of people murdered by the government of the late dictator. They did this in order to gather evidence to be used in the prosecution of the "great" man. He said there are graves all over the country, hundreds of them, maybe more.

The ones he worked on were in the south of the country, some of people who lived there, some of people who were transported there from the far north. The sites consisted of about 15 mass graves in a cluster. Each grave held about 125 people. 125 because that is how many a bus could hold when people were crammed in at gunpoint. A bulldozer would dig a trench a blade wide and somewhat longer than a revetment for a tank. They would drive the bus to the edge, force the people into the pit and shoot them. Then the dozer would bury them and on to the next pit and busload. Very workmen like.

The guy I know said if the victims were locals, a few weeks after the killings their relatives would come and dig them up and take them for a proper burial. The fingers and toes had rotted off by that point so those parts remained at the site of the killings. That is how the investigators were able to determine how many victims there were at those places. They counted the fingers and toes.

The people from the north didn't have anybody to come get them. Whole bodies were still there to be counted. He said they didn't completely excavate every grave at each site. They would thoroughly document one or two at each site. Then they would carefully dig at every other grave until they reached a layer of bodies or personal effects. The killers would collect the belongings of the victims and bury them in trench similar to the ones that contained dead people. Using this procedure the investigators were able to determine approximately how many were murdered at each location.

When he was telling me this he added that he prided himself on not letting anything get to him; except for this. They opened a grave and found the bodies of two old people, a man and a woman, each with a small child in its arms and their backs turned to the edge of the pit; over these bodies were the bodies of other small children. It looked like two grandparents trying to protect the grandchildren as best they could and other grandchildren looking to them for protection. Imagine that scene, old people and children herded off the bus into a pit. The old people know what will happen and the children are terrified. The men with the guns move to the edge, look down and point the rifles. The grandparents take what children they can in their arms to give some small comfort and turn their backs to the killers. The other children crowd in on the grandparents because that is where they have been safe before. A few seconds of shooting then nothing. He said that got to him.

He worked in the lab part of time documenting the conditions of individual bodies. One he worked on was a man who was sort of curled up. As he processed the body he discovered a body of a small child in the mans arms. This was the old man described above.

So boys and girls, that is what happens in some of the lands beyond the sea. Be not mistaken though, that beast doesn't live only in the hearts of men from across the oceans, it lives in many of us. There is a difference though, we try hard to keep it caged, others don't.