Germany’s Vexing Debate: What Makes a Military Veteran?
BERLIN—Just three weeks after the German military sent him to Afghanistan, Alex found himself in the middle of a deadly 10-hour standoff with Taliban fighters near the northern city of Kunduz.
He recalls an enemy fighter firing a rocket-propelled grenade straight at him, only for it to whiz past his head, missing him by just a few feet. As the battle intensified, he began thinking about which of his own weapons he would use to kill himself if the Taliban broke through German defenses and tried to take him prisoner.
Alex, who asked that his last name not be used, survived what would soon become known across Germany as the Good Friday battle, one of the fiercest fights for German troops in Afghanistan. The Taliban ambush days before Easter in 2010 took the lives of three German soldiers and badly injured several more, prompting the country’s defense minister to break a political taboo and use the word war to describe the Afghan conflict for the first time.
Now 35, his arms and chest adorned with tattoos that attest to his life as a soldier, Alex is still haunted by the memories of his deployment. Yet one of the
