Germans are wary of military deployments at the best of times. But there is little doubt that Germany's contribution to the NATO force in Afghanistan, which has prompted great controversy in Berlin, is forcing the country to face its own discomfort about participating, once again, in war.For that, indisputably, is what the Afghan mission now is - even for German troops who thought they were very much 'peacekeepers', out of the country's southern conflict zones. Well, they may not have wanted to go to the battle, but such is the deterioration of the security situation that the battle has evidently come to them.
Last week, a convoy of military vehicles outside the town where Germany has its local Afghan HQ, Kunduz, was hit by an IED, killing a German soldier and wounding three more.
On Sunday another German convoy got the same treatment. Yesterday a suicide bomber blew himself up near German soldiers, killing only himself and a civilian. Such is the routine. No one in Germany, where many question whether the country should even have armed forces, can dispute that its soldiers are now very much in a fight.
But a fourth incident, which took place on Friday, sandwiched between the two IED convoy attacks, and which caused no German casualties, may have an even bigger impact on German attitudes to men and women in uniform than the deaths and injuries to the brave boys from the Bundeswehr.
It happened routinely, as so many of these incidents seem to. A minibus, en route from a wedding, filled with civilians failed to stop at a checkpoint. Maybe it couldn't stop - quickly - maybe the brakes were old. Maybe there was confusion over hand signals between soldiers and driver.
Whatever the cause, the NATO soldiers at the checkpoint, no doubt fearing a car bomb attack, fired on the bus. A woman and two children were killed, more civilians injured.
The problem for Berlin is that this checkpoint wasn't in Helmand or outside Baghdad. These weren't US or British soldiers, the checkpoint was south of Kunduz, and it was German troops who fired the fatal bullets.
Long opposed to the war in Iraq, and squeamish about existence of their own military, it would be natural for German critics to point to this as a nadir. Not only, they might say, are German troops back in action, but they are back in action fighting a war in which they are targeted as occupiers, and end up killing the civilians they are meant to protect. Just like the Americans! In Iraq!!! What could be worse?
And indeed, some Germans, have voiced these fears.
Gregor Gysi, a leader of the post-communist Left Party, said Germany now risked falling into a "dirty war".
But, in an encouraging sign of a refreshing realism and hard-headedness over military matters in Germany, his voice was in the minority.
Instead, there was sympathy for the victims and compassion for the young soldiers who made a deadly mistake.
"One is tempted to follow the shame and the shock with a drastic reaction, but calls to withdraw the troops or shift the focus onto training Afghan forces are too easy," noted one editorial back home in Berlin. "After this tragedy, the issue is not just the military and blame, but the military and protection. The outcome must be that more is done, not less. This is about
supporting the soldiers, not hindering them with hypocritical moral debates."
The timing of these incidents is crucial, for the German government will decide in early October whether to prolong it tour of duty of its more than 3000 servicemen and women in Afghanistan. It will also consider whether to enlarge the commitment to 4500 soldiers.
Lumbered with their history, it might be easier for modern Germans to bury their heads in the sand and call the troops home. True, German soldiers are discovering the "dirty" sides to war, both in taking casualties and inflicting them. But as a modern global power, Germany cannot shirk the reality of its NATO commitments. And encouragingly, despite the grim recent toll in Afghanistan, it shows no sign of doing so.