Even hellfire can serve as a source of illumination, if handled properly.
One of the first things they do in MedCorps training is to weed out the squeamish ones by showing off the works, that is, the complete and utter wreckage the human body can be reduced to by enemy action, without killing it outright. All of it in real-life (if nameless) case recordings, life-sized, true-color, in all its screaming (actually a good sign, airways still workable), whimpering or moaning, gory glory.
After some two dozen, you are either out of the door, heaving, or you have gotten used to it. The color red, in all its shades, becomes an abstract concept after enough repetition.
Which is the point where the major in charge of the lecture brings out what I have later heard referred to as 'the barbecue man'. Third degree burns on most that's left of him – triple amputations, twice above the knee and halfway down the left humerus – heavy damage to the lungs and upper airways, due to inhalation of some superheated gas, internal organs damaged due to massive amounts of heat applied to the outside of the body cavity …A couple of cracked ribs, corresponding to an unchecked fall, barely blip on the radar. If pushed to that most terrible of first aid measures, triage, I would have thrown him straight onto the pile of Too Bad.
But that's not the worst part of it. The amputations are too clean (all major blood vessels carefully cauterized), the burns too extensive (for something that's still breathing) to be anything but deliberate. Even the handful of guys who tried to prove their toughness by cracking jokes about all the previous cases, are silenced by this.
"Just one, sir," one of them says, when the major asks if there are any questions. "What sort of monster does that to a man without putting him out of his misery afterwards?"
The major looks down his hooked nose, gravely, before responding. "A Jedi," he says, finally.
Puff, there go the last of my childhood illusions about the heroes of the Clone Wars. Should I ever have the honor to meet Darth Vader, I'll have to shake his hand – metaphorically speaking, of course – for his ceaseless efforts to put an end to those fiends.
"Sir, how long did the patient survive, after this?" another voice asks, cutting through the angry murmurs that erupted all over the lecture room.
"Fourteen years and counting," the major replies, shocking the entire room into silence, once more.