A SAD STORY ABOUT THE PRESSURES on a young soldier standing sentry in the night.

"I don't think anyone understands how it gets when you have to stare in your zone for so long," Dresel, 24, of Stamford, Conn., said later. "There came a point where I thought, 'What's that over on the left?' 'What's that over on the right?'"

They were the kind of questions that many GIs would face in a war of blurry battle lines, where the priority of preserving American lives bumped up against civilians caught in the crossfire.

After more than an hour, a figure moved toward Dresel on the sidewalk. He fired a warning shot, and through his scope he made out what looked like an old man.

"I fired off another warning shot. I yelled 'halt,' 'stop,' 'kif,' everything I could think of. Even the tank gave a warning shot," he said. "Finally, I was like, well, I've got to take this guy out."

Dresel said he fired 15 shots. When daylight broke, he was ordered to examine the body.

"All I'm thinking is, I hope this guy has a grenade, or some kind of kit wrapped to him, so I'm not just an old-man killer," he said.

When he got there, he found none of that.

"There wasn't nothing on him," Dresel said, lowering his voice. "I just killed an old guy, who was probably drunk or something."

Fellow soldiers assured Dresel there was nothing else he could have done. He isn't convinced.

"Even now I feel bad," he said. "I did do my job. But you always wonder: If I could go back ..."

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