Sniper

The story the muscular sweating guy sitting in my passenger seat told me was so incredible I suspected he was a pathological liar. It was the Vietnam era and I was a travelling salesman
driving somewhere in the vicinity of Kansas City when I picked him up hitchhiking. He said
he was a sniper for the US military serving in Vietnam. He explained his duty was to shoot
the enemy at long distances --a sniper. He said as a sniper he was treated as an untouchable
king at his camp. He had anything he wanted to eat, drink and all of the women visitors he
could handle. He indicated his appetitie for female visitors was enormous.
  I could smell his body odor which was strong like an animal's. He said snipers were
selected because of their metabolic rates. He claimed his respiratory rate and heart rhythm
were far above normal. He said that in civilian life which he was now entering --he had
served his term of duty --he would be forbidden to own a firearm due to the bloodthirst?-
not his choice of words -- that his profession had created. One of the precautions for this
killing addiction was that he and other snipers were forbiden to count the number of "kills"
they had made. It seemed to me that in the next breath he was claiming 156 kills.
   "But if you were not allowed to count, how do you know you killed that many,I asked.
   His answer: "Since they were all head shots, I assume they were kills."
   As he left I felt as if I was rleasing an animal into the jungle of urban life in America.
   I never heard from him of course, never knew his name, but have read of many violent
domestic incidents in which the perpetrator is identified as "a fromer shiper."
   I have not seen the popular movie American Sniper but everything I have heard rings
true to the story that hitchiker told me 50 years ago.