No, you aren't a soldier. But you are someone that has special skills and you did the best you could with them considering the circumstances, which is all anyone can hope to do with whatever abilities they have in life. Can you do better? Honestly, I don't know. All I know is that you can't change what happened, but you can change what you do in the future should anything escalate to those extremes again.
I'd do the whole "Getting drunk isn't the answer" spiel, but even I wouldn't buy that coming from me. So I'm going to try and be a bad influence and actually help. Have you asked any of the local magic users to help with that? If this had happened while I was under the Halloween incident, I would have enchanted something for you, so maybe one of the real ones around here can do it.