Speaker 1: Third Squad is a podcast about war. All episodes contain
Speaker 1: strong language and graphic descriptions of violence that may not
Speaker 1: be suitable for all listeners. I think we live in hell.
Speaker 1: I think this is how and Il test through how
Speaker 1: to make it to Heaven. And I guess Josh had
Speaker 1: already pood that he's like a great individual. Dutcher and Nick,
Speaker 1: all right, you guys could come up. I'm Elliott Woods.
Speaker 1: This is Third Squad Episode eleven. I think this is hell.
Speaker 1: So where are we gonna go? Now? Do you want
Speaker 1: to cruise the round? Yeah? I want to see the spots.
Speaker 1: I want to see the landmarks of your life. It's
Speaker 1: been a long and winding road from Camp Pendleton's right
Speaker 1: smack on the Pacific Coast to Atlantic City, New Jersey,
Speaker 1: more than eight thousand miles in fact, plus a trip
Speaker 1: to Alaska. Now, Tommy and I are out cruising down
Speaker 1: Atlantic Avenue on a breezy and blue skied Easter Sunday
Speaker 1: with Third Squad veteran Jeffrey Lopez. Right here, He's got
Speaker 1: on shorts and an anime T shirt with slip on
Speaker 1: sandals and socks. He's smaller than I remember with the
Speaker 1: scruffy beard and sleepy eyes. We drive under the arched
Speaker 1: walkway of the Tropicana Casino and into a block that
Speaker 1: looks like it's stumbled into broad daylight after a hard
Speaker 1: night of drinking Delilah's Den the most Beautiful show Girls.
Speaker 1: I had my face up strip clubs too before or after.
Speaker 1: Lopez was born here, the son of a refugee from
Speaker 1: El Salvador, and he grew up with his four brothers
Speaker 1: in Nur City, just down the beach from the casinos
Speaker 1: and the boardwalk of Old Atlantic City. For New Yorkers
Speaker 1: and Philadelphians, Atlantic City is a weekend getaway for gambling
Speaker 1: and shopping, and often enough it's a punchline. This is
Speaker 1: where the Trump Plaza, the former President's spectacular failure of
Speaker 1: a casino, got demolished a little over a month ago
Speaker 1: with three thousand sticks of TNT, leaving a literal money
Speaker 1: pit behind for Lopez. Though this place is home in
Speaker 1: Atlantic Avenue is Memory Lane, have a few janks thing
Speaker 1: to walk right over to head up the slab machines.
Speaker 1: The last couple of decades have not been kind to
Speaker 1: Atlantic City. The Greater Recession hit the casino industry so
Speaker 1: hard that the state actually had to take over the
Speaker 1: city's finances. Then there was Hurricane Sandy in which made
Speaker 1: landfall in Atlantic City and damaged thousands of homes before
Speaker 1: rampaging up the coast. And now there's COVID, which has
Speaker 1: cost about one in three of the area's leisure and
Speaker 1: hospitality workers their jobs. To put it mildly, the boardwalk
Speaker 1: empires on the rocks, but Lopez exudes maximum chill. So
Speaker 1: this is like the main strip on when we were younger.
Speaker 1: We used to come here to get like our haircuts,
Speaker 1: by all our gear, but not a lot of the stories.
Speaker 1: I plowed down and there's a lot of jug selling
Speaker 1: us to the dudes who hang on the corners now
Speaker 1: are not the kind of people you mess with. But
Speaker 1: Lopez says there was a time when he and his
Speaker 1: brothers and their crew from the neighborhood owned this strip,
Speaker 1: and their favorite after school activity was going out looking
Speaker 1: for trouble. So where did the fights happen? Where were
Speaker 1: the brawls? We've had some here up here by the
Speaker 1: barbershop on Dover, on the boardwalk, wherever there was like
Speaker 1: bus stops. We'll just meet people that are like, well,
Speaker 1: we won't be in school and we'll get a call
Speaker 1: from someone like I'm on a bus with these people
Speaker 1: coming us here, and we'll be at the bus not
Speaker 1: waiting for them to get off. What the fun you
Speaker 1: guys coordinated by cell phone? Yeah? We had like the
Speaker 1: brick Nokia is back then. Oh yeah, next till with
Speaker 1: the chir Wipez says the fights weren't gang related. It
Speaker 1: was more like his version of Taylor Moody's Metal and Motion.
Speaker 1: It's a good way to work off surplus teenage testosterone,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't harmless. Were you picking fights with people
Speaker 1: who didn't want anything to do with it, or were
Speaker 1: you always picking fights with people who were looking for
Speaker 1: I used to be a little like bully, an asshole
Speaker 1: to people. I used to talk to everybody make it
Speaker 1: feel bad about themselves. I was, but now I'm like
Speaker 1: the complete opposite. How do you think that happened? How
Speaker 1: do you think that transformation happened? I don't know. Do
Speaker 1: you think it had anything to do with coming back
Speaker 1: from the Marines? Maybe maybe being more grateful for life?
Speaker 1: I question as a boy making others miserables that bring
Speaker 1: like love to the tape, Lopez has a very good
Speaker 1: reason to be grateful for life. He was nearly killed
Speaker 1: in the June twelfth, two thousand eleven mass casualty and
Speaker 1: sang in and he came home with more than a
Speaker 1: changed attitude. This is like a purple heart memorial up here,
Speaker 1: coming up there. It is right there, Purple Heart Combat Wounded,
Speaker 1: dedicated to all men and women wounded in all our wars.
Speaker 1: Did you used to see that when you were a kid? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I never knew a purple heart mat And now
Speaker 1: it means a little more because you're one of the people. Uh,
Speaker 1: you have that metal. We turned into a narrow street
Speaker 1: with houses packed close together on both sides and a
Speaker 1: view of the bay. At the end of the block.
Speaker 1: We pull up in front of a white two story
Speaker 1: with a wide porch that belongs to Lopez's mom, Rosie Bell,
Speaker 1: who we're going to meet later. Lopez has lived in
Speaker 1: this house all of his life, aside from a couple
Speaker 1: of semesters at college and his five years in the corps.
Speaker 1: He shows us around to the backyard, which is cluttered
Speaker 1: with his kids toys, and where there's a shed tucked
Speaker 1: up against the fence. We duck inside this cold Man,
Speaker 1: because your little studio here and a little getaways. But
Speaker 1: Lopez's older brother, Francisco, built this hangout spot in high
Speaker 1: school as a refuge from the chaos inside the house
Speaker 1: home to five brothers, Lopez's mom and stepdad, and their grandmother.
Speaker 1: Lopez inherited the studio when he moved back here after
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps. He's got a deluxe computer set up
Speaker 1: in a futon couch covered by a blanket with cartoon
Speaker 1: faces of hip hop legends, and there's a window into
Speaker 1: a soundproof booth with a microphone where he records the
Speaker 1: raps he writes like this one inspired by his time
Speaker 1: and sang it bandom. Brothers even leaked that you can
Speaker 1: hear more in the hep fires, mud huts and the
Speaker 1: hell Man. This hell Man a beautiful strands of l
Speaker 1: e eds give the place a soothing, subterranean glow. It's
Speaker 1: so comfortable down here. I'm tempted to take a nap,
Speaker 1: but we got some talking to do, so Lopez plops
Speaker 1: into his swivel chair and I take a seat on
Speaker 1: the couch. This is crazy, but you actually look younger. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's because you have hair maybe
Speaker 1: Lopez has a mop of dark curls now, but back
Speaker 1: in Sangin, he wore his hair shaved almost to the skin.
Speaker 1: Just introduce yourself. My name is Jeffrey Lopez on twenty
Speaker 1: two years old from Vannice City, New Jersey, Okay. So
Speaker 1: when I met him in July two th eleven, he
Speaker 1: still had pock marks on his deeply tanned face from
Speaker 1: the shrapne he took on June twelve, including a nickel
Speaker 1: size scab close to the tip of his nose. He
Speaker 1: was pretty mellow back then too. If you couldn't describe
Speaker 1: sanging to some of your friends back home and never
Speaker 1: been here, have no idea what it's like over here,
Speaker 1: what would you tell him? Sangings crazy and it looks
Speaker 1: like a beautiful country. But as far as stepping out
Speaker 1: the wire with all your gears shitty cash, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can see whatever you want to ask, that's about
Speaker 1: it can't really explain to someone you don't want to be.
Speaker 1: Some of the guys in Third Squad had joined the
Speaker 1: Marines to get as far away from where they grew
Speaker 1: up as possible, but Lopez was homesick for his mom's
Speaker 1: busy house and he'd eaten enough m R. E's to
Speaker 1: last a lifetime. I'm just being abound my family, you know,
Speaker 1: just sitting there talking to them. I miss McDonald's, Applebee's,
Speaker 1: All you can Eat crabs and like the face type
Speaker 1: of fe Lopez had gotten some college under his belt
Speaker 1: before he enlisted, and he'd also been stationed in Spain
Speaker 1: for seven months, where he came up with big dreams
Speaker 1: for his post Marine Corps life. When I go back
Speaker 1: to college, like stay studying business probably takes some like
Speaker 1: cooking classes. I already know how to cook, but so
Speaker 1: I could open up my restaurant one day. Is that
Speaker 1: what you want to do out in Spain? In Spain? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I still don't have a name for it, but signing
Speaker 1: with my last name Lopez, I don't know. Do you
Speaker 1: think you can hang with the Spanish on their own cuisine? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And IK Lopez Restaurant never made the leap from dream
Speaker 1: to reality, but he and his mom do have a
Speaker 1: side biss selling her Salvadoran papusas, and Lopez did find
Speaker 1: full time work in the restaurant industry as a waiter
Speaker 1: at the Golden Nugget Casino, where his mom and stepdad
Speaker 1: also Worklipez also has a part time gig at the
Speaker 1: Wawa convenience store down the street. Like some of his
Speaker 1: favorite rappers, he's all about the hustle. Yeah, I work
Speaker 1: a lot, gotta work when you're poor. Do you consider
Speaker 1: yourself poor? Yeah? I mean I would love to just
Speaker 1: get paid from music into that, but you know, my
Speaker 1: kids got to east, so I might have to go
Speaker 1: bust out this nine to five real quick. Lopez has
Speaker 1: two kids, a ten year old son named Jack's who
Speaker 1: was born while he was in Sanging, and a two
Speaker 1: year old daughter named Jace. They're growing up in the
Speaker 1: very same house their dad came home to as a
Speaker 1: new warn, where hustle was built into the family foundation.
Speaker 1: We're probably one of the few Hispanic families in this
Speaker 1: neighborhood at the time that had their own house as
Speaker 1: my mother's house. Lopez's mom and dad got divorced when
Speaker 1: he was a little kid. Rosie Bell eventually started dating
Speaker 1: a man named Nate. They met at the at the buffet,
Speaker 1: the base of a buffet, and they got married quick after.
Speaker 1: They're just hard workers, always been there for us, seeing
Speaker 1: them like get us ready for school and then they'll
Speaker 1: go to work and won't come back till the night.
Speaker 1: My grandma was watching us, so you can see that
Speaker 1: they had so much dedication to grind to make sure
Speaker 1: their their kids were good. In high school, Rosie Bell's
Speaker 1: house became the rally point for Lopez and his brother's
Speaker 1: huge group of friends. We'd get the cops called on
Speaker 1: us around here all the time since because like the
Speaker 1: crowd we would hang but it was mostly like Hispanics
Speaker 1: and blacks. Some people would call the cops on your
Speaker 1: parents and on your family, on us, like just for
Speaker 1: hanging out. Our music too loud. But it changed now
Speaker 1: and all the labors neighbors love me now. It's like
Speaker 1: they forgot about everything. So when you got out of
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps and came back, was it like slipping
Speaker 1: into a comfortable pair of old shoes. You just right back? Yeah,
Speaker 1: music is love has his lifelong passion. He started keeping
Speaker 1: a notebook of poems and lyrics in high school. I
Speaker 1: remember the first song I wrote, I was living. Life
Speaker 1: is hard depending where you're coming from, especially when you're
Speaker 1: a mom with a couple of sons and a couple
Speaker 1: of jobs. But we make it through. At another parting
Speaker 1: less step that comes to it's just two of us,
Speaker 1: but he wants another son and another one. That makes
Speaker 1: four of us. Growing up in the struggle broke as
Speaker 1: fuck might be different, but we still know what's love.
Speaker 1: Give each other's pounds and hugs, throw it up if
Speaker 1: you knew what it was, So us love even though
Speaker 1: there's no clue up above, and don't realize what's happened
Speaker 1: then because your fans make more money than the average man,
Speaker 1: but we bumm me with our pay lists. Temps, hatred, grin.
Speaker 1: Can't trust most studies. Maybe friends look for y'alls? What
Speaker 1: made me sin? So I don't be great? Ship got
Speaker 1: the made me did? Wow? That was cool. That was
Speaker 1: like the first thing I ever wrote. And it's funny
Speaker 1: because I remember that, But anything new that I write down,
Speaker 1: it's hard to memorize, Like I have bad memory. Now,
Speaker 1: what do you think happened to your memory? Probably all
Speaker 1: the explosions. I can remember stuff like from before or
Speaker 1: anything like from that and like till now. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like it could be the smoke into smoke a lot.
Speaker 1: How much do you smoke? Like two grams a day? Maybe,
Speaker 1: Lopez says the weed helps with his war related anxiety
Speaker 1: and PTSD symptoms, but he says he smoked even more
Speaker 1: before he joined the military, until I would get off
Speaker 1: a word, make like fifty bucks and tips and go
Speaker 1: by like an eighth of weed. Smoke at all? Probably yeah, most,
Speaker 1: because there's a few of us, would get battles, We
Speaker 1: go to sleep, do it again the next day. The
Speaker 1: Ganja fest ended when Lopez had to get clean for
Speaker 1: boot camp in Sangin. He snuck a few hits of
Speaker 1: hashish with the Afghan National Army soldiers at peb fires,
Speaker 1: but his pot smoking career didn't begin again in earnest
Speaker 1: until he got out of the core. What do you
Speaker 1: remember about the first time you got high after five years?
Speaker 1: Do you remember having a low tolerance or anything. It
Speaker 1: was a way different high from what I remember in
Speaker 1: high school. It was more like kind of being stuck.
Speaker 1: When I was in high school, it was just like
Speaker 1: giggles and munchy and stuff. You're seeing movies. But then
Speaker 1: all the weed now is just completely different. There's a
Speaker 1: lot more potent. I mean, I could be stuck in
Speaker 1: his chair all day. I'll be productive in his chair,
Speaker 1: like I'll be fighting or something. It doesn't like stop
Speaker 1: me from doing anything. Like I go to work, smoke
Speaker 1: a b lion still performed the same way without it.
Speaker 1: If I smoked even ten percent of a blunt, you'd
Speaker 1: have to take me to the hospital. I have a
Speaker 1: psychotic break, all right, He's gonna take some deep breaths. No,
Speaker 1: you'd have to put me in a straight jacket. I've
Speaker 1: always remembered that Lopez was one of the only guys
Speaker 1: in third Squad who seemed to have a clear motive
Speaker 1: for joining the military, And even though he grew up
Speaker 1: just down the coast from New York City, it had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with September eleven, one of our childhood
Speaker 1: friends he got killed in in Iraq, So I felt like, oh,
Speaker 1: now I had to go and do something about it.
Speaker 1: That's that was my mindsets, like young mind stick. Then
Speaker 1: I asked my mother to like sign the papers for me,
Speaker 1: but she wouldn't let me. I was seventeen, so then
Speaker 1: I had to wait like another year and I want finally,
Speaker 1: most app was a team that I joined. What was
Speaker 1: your friend's name? He was Eric a Eric Plasios And
Speaker 1: that may do you feel like you had to join? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was more like I gotta go avenge or something
Speaker 1: like that. And you see stuff in movies, like somebody's
Speaker 1: brother gets beat up, it's like, all right, we gotta
Speaker 1: go get him now. It's kind of like that. When
Speaker 1: you were growing up. Did a lot of people go
Speaker 1: and join the military. A lot of people did. U,
Speaker 1: My brother did, my younger brother. I had one of
Speaker 1: my cousins all marines. Most of our friends, a lot
Speaker 1: of them are veterans. Lopez was attracted to the military
Speaker 1: for reasons beyond the desire to avenge the death of
Speaker 1: Eric Pelacios in the Rock. In high school, he and
Speaker 1: a bunch of his friends did junior r OTC. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like boy Scouts, but you wear military uniforms
Speaker 1: and learn basic stuff like how to march and how
Speaker 1: do identify the enlisted in officer ranks. The chief that
Speaker 1: was in charge of us, he was real cool. Looking
Speaker 1: at his stack, everything he had that could have been
Speaker 1: part of it. Tell people what a stack is. What
Speaker 1: do you mean A stack is all your ribbons or
Speaker 1: awards from the military. The stack of ribbons and things
Speaker 1: that go on the chest, all those colorful ribbons, the
Speaker 1: cool looking stuff. So that was impressive. To you when
Speaker 1: you were a high school kid. All that shiny stuff,
Speaker 1: I know what it meant. Lopez was only seventeen when
Speaker 1: he first attempted to join the military, but his mom,
Speaker 1: Rosie Bell, absolutely refused to sign the papers for him.
Speaker 1: So Lopez went off to college instead, about two and
Speaker 1: a half hours away near the Poconos, but his heart
Speaker 1: wasn't in it. He came home at the end of
Speaker 1: the school year and never went back. He tried community
Speaker 1: college too, but he didn't like that either. By then,
Speaker 1: Lopez was eighteen, and against his mother's wishes, he made
Speaker 1: a rash decision. I was driving down Ventnor and I
Speaker 1: was just thinking, like, you know, school wasn't for me.
Speaker 1: I knew it from the always hated school. I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm sired of the school. I was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: it's time to finally go, and I just drove straight there.
Speaker 1: I was on a flight A few weeks after, like
Speaker 1: a month later, Just like his former squad leader Jerick Fry,
Speaker 1: Lopez had had an epiphany that carried him straight to
Speaker 1: a Marine Corps recruiting office. This one was nestled in
Speaker 1: a strip mall in a nearby town. What did you
Speaker 1: say to the recruiter, I just want to join, like
Speaker 1: what are my options? And he took me through everything.
Speaker 1: I think I did some pull ups, like the first
Speaker 1: day I was there, probably had when he did like
Speaker 1: two or something, you did the paperwork. I went on
Speaker 1: a run with him and the next thing I know,
Speaker 1: I was on the yellow footprints. Now would I tell
Speaker 1: you you're gonna get all your crap jet up and
Speaker 1: get up my bus? Geno, My yellow flippridge stops done?
Speaker 1: Do you understand the yellow footprints are a hallmark of
Speaker 1: Marine Corps bootcamp. Recruits fresh off the bus have to
Speaker 1: stand on the footprints and shuffle through processing stations, getting
Speaker 1: screamed at by drill instructors and flat brimmed campaign hats
Speaker 1: the whole time. Get off my bus. Lopez hit the
Speaker 1: yellow footprints at Parris Island, South Carolina, in April two.
Speaker 1: Did you feel like joining the Marines was something that
Speaker 1: would make you more of a man at all? Did
Speaker 1: you do you ever feel anything like that? Did you
Speaker 1: feel like you wanted to be like a fighting man?
Speaker 1: Did that part of the recruiting speak to you at all?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I felt like I was a
Speaker 1: man before that as a kid, I've always thought I
Speaker 1: was a man. This is nonsense and a kid's head.
Speaker 1: I'm a man, I'm grown. It did make me mature
Speaker 1: a lot quicker. Lopez signed up to spend his first
Speaker 1: two years as part of the Marine Security Force Regiment,
Speaker 1: the group that Michael Dutcher also served in that protects
Speaker 1: critical US assets around the world like embassies and nuclear weapons,
Speaker 1: but Lopez says he didn't really know what he was
Speaker 1: getting into. When I went to the recruiting station. He
Speaker 1: told me that I would be like on the front
Speaker 1: line where it all went down, like he'll be in
Speaker 1: the red zone this and now I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that sounds so cool. So I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: put me in Security Forces in and then I was
Speaker 1: in freaking Spain on vacation. I was like, this is
Speaker 1: nothing that I asked for. So that was not what
Speaker 1: you thought you were signing up for. The recruiter lied
Speaker 1: to me, asshole. Wait, hold on, a recruiter lied to you. Ye,
Speaker 1: never you would expect that. Yeah, he'll say you're gonna
Speaker 1: be in the ship. I was like, you up. But
Speaker 1: then what happened because eventually things changed and you were
Speaker 1: not in security forces anymore. So what what happened? I
Speaker 1: had the security forces. They asked us what unit we
Speaker 1: wanted to go with, and me and some other guys
Speaker 1: were like, oh, wish unit deploys like the quickest, and
Speaker 1: they're like one five. They send us there. Then Lopezants
Speaker 1: and Marine buddies who were also going to Won five
Speaker 1: took a road trip from Jersey out to California. They
Speaker 1: arrived at Camp Pendleton in October two. I was just ready.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to guard, you know, And what did
Speaker 1: you want to do? What were you what were you
Speaker 1: ready to do? What do you think I wanted to fight?
Speaker 1: Shoot stuff, but not just stuff, shoot bad guys, shoot
Speaker 1: their stuff, their hard and stuff, shoot their hearts, their
Speaker 1: horse and stuff. Why do you think you were so
Speaker 1: eager to go shoot people? You know, their label these terrorists,
Speaker 1: so when people fight them, they're bad guys, you know,
Speaker 1: doing bad stuff. But what what was the bad stuff
Speaker 1: that they were doing in your mind at the time?
Speaker 1: What did you think that they were doing that made
Speaker 1: you want to go shoot them? Person shooting at us?
Speaker 1: That's the best time. I didn't know anything else. I
Speaker 1: don't know why we were there. I didn't know what
Speaker 1: they were defending, um their reason for fighting. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to fight, go to war, just what I've been
Speaker 1: changing to do. Six months after Lopez got to Camp Pendleton,
Speaker 1: his wish came true. He deployed to sang In, where
Speaker 1: he got to shoot at people and get shot at.
Speaker 1: But for the mother, whose wishes he denied, it was
Speaker 1: seven months of NonStop torment. We'll be back after the break, Chile.
Speaker 1: This has red tillie green pepper, onion, garlic, and lots
Speaker 1: of celery. It goes in here with the teas, which
Speaker 1: is hot. Lopez told me about his mom's legendary papusas,
Speaker 1: and I called to set up this visit months ago,
Speaker 1: and now I'm lucky enough to see the magic unfold
Speaker 1: right in your kitchen. Rosa Belt is not only preparing
Speaker 1: her native El Salvador's national dish, she's also kind enough
Speaker 1: to teach me how to make it. And this is right.
Speaker 1: Some means caamiento, which means Marriott's. She's got the slaw already.
Speaker 1: And now we're folding period pork shoulder. We fried beans
Speaker 1: and cheese into the papoosa dough manos and la massa
Speaker 1: in there we used to sell these during the pandemic
Speaker 1: when we weren't working. There were days when we sold
Speaker 1: the thousand alls worth of pupusas at the end of
Speaker 1: Jeffrey is very good at selling. Rose Bell is a machine.
Speaker 1: She's flipping papusas and stuffing new ones at the same time,
Speaker 1: shuttling him into the dining room as soon as they
Speaker 1: come off the griddle. She's got a big family to feed.
Speaker 1: There's her husband, Nate, plus two of Lopez's younger brothers
Speaker 1: who live at home. Then Lopez, his girlfriend and his
Speaker 1: two kids from his previous relationship. Some parents dream of
Speaker 1: the day their kids will fly the nest, but Rose
Speaker 1: Belt loves having as many of her kids as possible
Speaker 1: under one roof, and her grandkids too. They say children
Speaker 1: are loved, but grandchildren are adored. If dabies behave you
Speaker 1: just give them back to their dad. We have had
Speaker 1: eight children in this house, some lived downstairs, other substas.
Speaker 1: They're cassins, but they love its other like siblings. Rosie
Speaker 1: Bell's papoosas are out of this world, Rikissima's. When she
Speaker 1: has some time to chat, we go out to lopez
Speaker 1: A studio where it's quiet. I want to know what
Speaker 1: kind of kid Jeffrey was and what it was like
Speaker 1: to send him off to war. But first I want
Speaker 1: to hear about her journey to the United States. You
Speaker 1: know the Sando legal. I came from a Salvador illegally.
Speaker 1: It took about fifteen days to get here. We traveled
Speaker 1: by bass from l Salvador to Guatemala and onto Mexico.
Speaker 1: Then we got to playing to Tijuana. From there we
Speaker 1: went to a hotel where we stayed for four days.
Speaker 1: Then we arrived in the US. It was Rosie Bell
Speaker 1: carried her infant son, Francisco with her on the trip,
Speaker 1: and she was pregnant with another boy, who she would
Speaker 1: name Jeffrey. She remembers taking a long bus ride from Tijuana,
Speaker 1: then waiting across the river somewhere to get into the
Speaker 1: United States, and briefly passing through Houston on her way
Speaker 1: to Atlantic City, where her mother and brothers were waiting
Speaker 1: for her. They'd saved up to pay for her to
Speaker 1: come and join them, and it wasn't just because they
Speaker 1: missed her well. America argues about President Briggan's plan to
Speaker 1: send a military aide with El Salvador Paradis killing there
Speaker 1: continues to take a daily life. At the time, El
Speaker 1: Salvador was being torn apart by a vicious civil war
Speaker 1: that pitted leftist guerrillas against the military government, whose forces
Speaker 1: were funded, trained, and armed by the United States. That
Speaker 1: President Reagan feels the El Salvador situation is at a
Speaker 1: critical state and he is bound to take all necessary
Speaker 1: makers to ensure the trouble of government for Vails, who
Speaker 1: was part of the same Cold War strategy that compelled
Speaker 1: the US to arm the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviets.
Speaker 1: But the history of US involvement in El Salvador or
Speaker 1: goes back much farther than the Cold War. Ever since
Speaker 1: the turn of the twentieth century, the US had been
Speaker 1: propping up right wing governments in Central America and the
Speaker 1: Caribbean in order to protect corporate interests in the agricultural sector,
Speaker 1: where exploitation was the business model. The autocratic rulers of
Speaker 1: these so called banana republics were typically elites with European heritage,
Speaker 1: ruling over impoverished indigenous and mixed race communities. They met
Speaker 1: demands for reform from peasants and laborers with brutal repression
Speaker 1: and when rebels took up arms against their repressive governments
Speaker 1: under the banner of Marxism in the second half of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. The US through its weight behind the
Speaker 1: effort to crush the uprisings, sending billions in aid, along
Speaker 1: with weapons, military advisors, special forces, air support, and CIA operatives.
Speaker 1: Central America's problems do directly affect the security and the
Speaker 1: well being of our own people. By the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: the region was engulfed in violence. The U S and
Speaker 1: its Central American government proxies called it counterinsurgency, but too
Speaker 1: many people on the ground, like Rosy Bell, it felt
Speaker 1: like state territory. Some seventy thousand civilians were killed in
Speaker 1: El Salvador between nineteen seventy nine, and according to an
Speaker 1: official truth commission convened at the end of the war
Speaker 1: and estimated eight of the victims were murdered by government
Speaker 1: forces and paramilitary death squads, more than a million people
Speaker 1: out of a population of just over five million fled
Speaker 1: the country. Rosy Bell was one of them, and there's
Speaker 1: no telling what might have happened if she'd stayed. For
Speaker 1: most Americans, war is something that happens far away, but
Speaker 1: for Rosy Bell. It was life and it wasn't something
Speaker 1: she'd ever dream of chasing. It was something real. We
Speaker 1: would always hear the fighting between the garrigus and the soldiers.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was really close. We lived near a river
Speaker 1: where there were often classes. You could hear everything, the
Speaker 1: bullets and the bombs that people appeared. They said they
Speaker 1: killed fourteen people. They have to fourteen that on that side,
Speaker 1: that people every day. A couple of years after Rosy
Speaker 1: Bell got to the United States, she was able to
Speaker 1: get protected status through a special program for refugees from
Speaker 1: the Al Salvador crisis, and after marrying Nate, who's from
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico, she was able to get her US citizenship.
Speaker 1: Her story has a mostly happy outcome, but the region
Speaker 1: she fled is still plagued by violence, still forcing people
Speaker 1: in the flag. This latest caravan passing through Mexico, now
Speaker 1: numbering in the thousands, at least seven hundred thousand Central
Speaker 1: American migrants made the dangerous journey to the southern border
Speaker 1: of the United States, fleeing poverty, chronic drought, in a
Speaker 1: new wave of violence that has its origins and yet
Speaker 1: another one of America's forever wars the War on drugs.
Speaker 1: Since the nine nineties, the U S has deported tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of gang members to El Salvador, where they've
Speaker 1: taken root in the ruins left by the civil war
Speaker 1: and grown their ranks to become a seemingly unstoppable force
Speaker 1: of destruction. The same law of unintended consequences that helped
Speaker 1: turn Afghanistan into an opium empire run by war lords
Speaker 1: has turned El Salvador into one of the most dangerous
Speaker 1: countries in the world. At its worst point, the country's
Speaker 1: homicide rates spiked to about one murder per every thousand citizens.
Speaker 1: Rosie Bell fled her home because she wanted her children
Speaker 1: to grow up in a place with no death squads
Speaker 1: or bodies in the streets. She could never have known
Speaker 1: that she would also be saving them from the deadly
Speaker 1: after shocks of the War on Drugs. Not long after
Speaker 1: Roosevelt arrived in New Jersey, she gave birth to her
Speaker 1: second son, Jeffrey. When I only he was a very
Speaker 1: very good boy, very handsome, very intelligent. He always went
Speaker 1: to school and always got good grades. He was very
Speaker 1: very affectionate. It was in Lopez his teenage years that
Speaker 1: he discovered his love of fighting. He told me he
Speaker 1: and his crew went out looking for trouble, but his
Speaker 1: mom doesn't remember it like that. He was a little mischievous,
Speaker 1: but he was good, just he played around. I'm sure
Speaker 1: they fought, but it wasn't because he was a bully.
Speaker 1: They came looking for him one time, about thirty people
Speaker 1: show that right here in front of the house, wanting
Speaker 1: to jump him. Roosevelt might have had rose colored lenses
Speaker 1: about Lopez's fighting problem, which actually got him kicked out
Speaker 1: of high school, but she didn't suffer any illusions about
Speaker 1: the seriousness of real fighting, the kind that involves uniforms,
Speaker 1: guns and killing. She'd worked hard to build a life
Speaker 1: for her family and peace, and she aimed to keep
Speaker 1: it that way. So when Lopez came to ask for
Speaker 1: her permission to join the Marines at seventeen, she said no.
Speaker 1: She actually said she'd sooner break his bones than allow
Speaker 1: him to join the military. She wanted him to get
Speaker 1: an education and a good job, and for a while
Speaker 1: it seemed like he was on that path. But they
Speaker 1: are no college. But then he dropped out of school
Speaker 1: and told me I'm joining the Marines, and he left
Speaker 1: and That's when the torture started for me. I knew
Speaker 1: he was going to go to work, and that's why
Speaker 1: I didn't support him joining. I was angry, especially with
Speaker 1: whoever recruited him. I didn't even want to hear from him.
Speaker 1: I've always thought that words don't lead to anything. I
Speaker 1: don't know why they fight, because it was just the
Speaker 1: same in the Salvador. We were at war there, and
Speaker 1: I really don't know what it sieved. It's governments that
Speaker 1: send this voice off to war to get killed or
Speaker 1: to be damb it psychologically. Rossi Ball was correct in
Speaker 1: her prediction that Lopez would end up going to war,
Speaker 1: but she could never have guessed that he gets sent
Speaker 1: to the most violent place and all of Afghanistan. Wow,
Speaker 1: we'll not get up ensangle. He goes away, and I'm
Speaker 1: left wondering what's going to happen to him. I begged
Speaker 1: God to protect him. For me, every minute that he
Speaker 1: was over there felt like torture because I was always
Speaker 1: waiting to receive bad news. I imagined that he was suffering,
Speaker 1: that maybe he was starving in cold. I imagined everything,
Speaker 1: because everyone knows that in war there are times when
Speaker 1: people do not even have enough to eat because they
Speaker 1: are on the battlefield and maybe they haven't been able
Speaker 1: to get food to them out there. Just like Brian
Speaker 1: Sheer's parents described around the fire pit in Rapid City,
Speaker 1: Rossie Bell would spend Lopez his entire depploment waiting on
Speaker 1: pins and needles for any news. I was always waiting
Speaker 1: by the phone, shouting Jeffrey, running around, always waiting for
Speaker 1: him to call. I used to tell my family be
Speaker 1: ready for his phone, cale, I'm going to work, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't very easy for him to call us. Lopez
Speaker 1: did call, he was sparing with the details about what
Speaker 1: he was going through, and sang in. Consumed by worry
Speaker 1: over all the unknowns, Rossie Bell turned her faith for comfort.
Speaker 1: I'm not one of those religious people who walks into
Speaker 1: the church beating her test. But I do believe in
Speaker 1: our Father. I know that he exists and that whatever
Speaker 1: we ask from our heart, he's there to listen to us.
Speaker 1: She prayed for her son constantly all the time. I
Speaker 1: prayed to God to take care of him, to take
Speaker 1: care of his friends, to bring him home to me alife.
Speaker 1: In October two thousand eleven, Roosevelt flew out to California
Speaker 1: so she could be there at Camp Pendleton when Lopez
Speaker 1: and the rest of the one five survivors got home
Speaker 1: from Sanging Well, Elijah Muff, it was the happiest day
Speaker 1: of my life when I saw my son. When I
Speaker 1: saw him, I said, Oh my God, it's him, It's Jeffrey.
Speaker 1: I ran to him like a crazy person. It was
Speaker 1: the happiest moment of my life to see my son
Speaker 1: again and to know that he was okay. It's been
Speaker 1: almost ten years since that joyous reunion, and even after
Speaker 1: all this time, roose Bell still catches herself sometimes feeling
Speaker 1: the same anxiety she felt while he was away. Whenever
Speaker 1: I think about it, it's like relieving it all over again.
Speaker 1: Do you feel a thing in your stomach like butterflies?
Speaker 1: But I thank God that I have him right here.
Speaker 1: I don't want him to ever leave. I tell him
Speaker 1: that he has to stay with me until the mold.
Speaker 1: I don't want to let him fly, but I know
Speaker 1: he has to some day. I have to accept that.
Speaker 1: Lopez still hasn't shared much about the war with his mom,
Speaker 1: and he never told me about things that happened over there.
Speaker 1: He had quite a few scars on his face, and
Speaker 1: I never noticed because he hid it until one day
Speaker 1: I saw a photo by accident, and then I realized it.
Speaker 1: I think God, that my son is here. The photo
Speaker 1: of Lopez that Rosie Bell saw was from after the
Speaker 1: June twelve attacks. His scars have completely vanished now, and
Speaker 1: while Rosy Bell worries that her son may have invisible wounds,
Speaker 1: she thinks he's managing everything well enough. And as much
Speaker 1: as Lopez likes to think of himself as a fighter,
Speaker 1: he's always been so much more to her. Jeffrey has
Speaker 1: always been a boy with a good height. He's generous
Speaker 1: with his friends. Whoever is his friend is his true friend.
Speaker 1: He sews you who he really is. He's not hypocrite,
Speaker 1: not fake at all, and his family is really important
Speaker 1: to him. He's really sweet. What more can I say?
Speaker 1: And yes, his smoke's weight. I can't stand that anymore.
Speaker 1: I want to take it away from him, but I can't.
Speaker 1: Lopez says the weed helps him deal with his emotions,
Speaker 1: but Rosebell is not so sure. She wishes he lay
Speaker 1: off a bit. As far as she's concerned, it's family
Speaker 1: that keeps Lopez grounded, and as much as he loves
Speaker 1: his blunts. I'm sure he'd agree. Jo familia is. I
Speaker 1: think it's really good have a strong family bond. We
Speaker 1: all have to be there for each other, and he's
Speaker 1: like that. He's always there for me, He's always there
Speaker 1: for everyone. We're pretty tight family. Lopez may not have
Speaker 1: told his mom much about his time and sang In,
Speaker 1: but Rosie Ball didn't need to have the details to
Speaker 1: know that her son had survived something horrific. We'll be
Speaker 1: back after the break. H three years after defying his
Speaker 1: mother's wishes by joining the Marines, Lopez deployed to Sangin.
Speaker 1: The fighting would be intense and he'd get some ribbons
Speaker 1: for his stack, just like the jar otc chief he
Speaker 1: looked up to in high school. But there wouldn't be
Speaker 1: any vengeance for his childhood friend, Eric Pelacio's got killed
Speaker 1: in a rock and no one from Afghanistan had anything
Speaker 1: to do with that. By the time I got to
Speaker 1: sang In, Lopez had a new target for his vengeance.
Speaker 1: The Taliban. Here we are patrol based fires in July
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven. How do you rate them in terms
Speaker 1: of of a fighting force? They fight like fake as gangs.
Speaker 1: Back in the states, like planning i E d s.
Speaker 1: Fucking sugnatas going where we can't see them as hide
Speaker 1: behind stuff. If they were to step up trying to
Speaker 1: fight us like we fight them, they wouldn't stand a chance.
Speaker 1: And what's it like day to day going up against
Speaker 1: that I D threat? I mean it's invisible enemy. It
Speaker 1: sucks uh as no other way around it. I mean
Speaker 1: we gotta find them. We've got to give rid of them.
Speaker 1: So we're out here trying to do that. Wipez had
Speaker 1: grown up fighting his opponents face to face according to
Speaker 1: an unwritten code of teenage honor. But the Taliban weren't
Speaker 1: trying to win a neighborhood street brawl. If they followed
Speaker 1: any rules at all, they were the ancient tenets of
Speaker 1: guerrilla warfare, like this one from the sixth century BC
Speaker 1: Chinese philosopher Son Too. No when to fight and when
Speaker 1: not to fight. Avoid what is strong, and strike at
Speaker 1: what is weak. Know how to deceive the enemy. Appear
Speaker 1: weak when you're strong, and strong when you're weak. Convincing
Speaker 1: your enemy that you're a bunch of cowards while sneaking
Speaker 1: out at night to plant I E D s is
Speaker 1: classic deception. And when those I E d S found
Speaker 1: their targets, the Taliban were nowhere to be seen, Like
Speaker 1: on June twelve, two thousand eleven, when those I E
Speaker 1: d S found Lopez and his squad. You mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: that you said something like that your memory doesn't work
Speaker 1: that well anymore, and you think that it's because of
Speaker 1: the explosions. So tell me about the first explosion that
Speaker 1: you were close to if you can. That was the
Speaker 1: one that McDaniels stepped on the right behind him, a
Speaker 1: few guys behind him before you got killed on June twelfth.
Speaker 1: Joshua McDaniels was third squads combat engineer, especially trained on
Speaker 1: the metal detector and responsible for all the squads sweeping.
Speaker 1: Lopez usually walked behind McDaniels, serving as his eyes and
Speaker 1: ears while McDaniels focused on the ground. They talked a
Speaker 1: lot on patrol and became good friends. He's always seem happy.
Speaker 1: He didn't like take anybody ship. He He's always straightforward
Speaker 1: without anything. We would sit down and lay in the
Speaker 1: wet fields and just he just clowned around, always smoking
Speaker 1: is a Marboro or had his dip in before him.
Speaker 1: I used to hate marbles, then I was smoking song
Speaker 1: with him. Lopez was the closest person to McDaniels when
Speaker 1: he stepped on the I E. D. And seconds after
Speaker 1: the explosion, he was the first person to arrive at
Speaker 1: his side, screaming, yelling in pain. I got out. There
Speaker 1: is just missing his legs. Everything was out and what
Speaker 1: were you gonna do? What was it? What was on
Speaker 1: your mind in terms of what you needed to do
Speaker 1: in that moment, I couldn't do any I was like
Speaker 1: in shock until the next explosion. Then I like snapped
Speaker 1: back into reality. But by the time I already got
Speaker 1: back to it, Doc was already on McDaniel's performing and
Speaker 1: I was talking to him, trying to keep him calm
Speaker 1: while Doc was working on him. Lopez cradled McDaniel's head
Speaker 1: in his hands while Doc four it worked on him.
Speaker 1: He tried to comfort his friend as his life drained away,
Speaker 1: but there was really nothing else he could do. McDaniels
Speaker 1: died on the Metavac helicopter minutes later. Lopez also got
Speaker 1: blown up that day. He got hit by the I E.
Speaker 1: D that killed McDaniels and the one that tore off
Speaker 1: Cody Elliott's leg, along with the shrapnel injuries to his face.
Speaker 1: He suffered a serious tb I, which meant he got
Speaker 1: pulled from the patrol rotation for ten days to recover.
Speaker 1: When Lopez got back into the mix, he picked up
Speaker 1: a new job, sweeping. He told me about it back
Speaker 1: and Sanging. Lately, I've been sweeping. It's been my job,
Speaker 1: and when we first got here, it wasn't as bad.
Speaker 1: But now that all the threads getting like a lot heavier,
Speaker 1: it's kind of starting to suck each day, like going out. Damn,
Speaker 1: I gotta sweep again. But I mean, I'd rather it
Speaker 1: be me than anybody else, So definitely quick to let
Speaker 1: everybody know I'll do it. Why are you quick to
Speaker 1: do it? Why would you rather be you? Because I mean,
Speaker 1: I've lived, I've enjoyed my life, and if I die ship,
Speaker 1: I'm in a more peaceful place than around all this ship,
Speaker 1: so I don't really care. Lopez was twenty two years old.
Speaker 1: He had a family at home that surrounded him with love,
Speaker 1: and by the time I met him, he also had
Speaker 1: a family of his own. He had married his high
Speaker 1: school girlfriend a few months before he left for Sanging,
Speaker 1: and she had given birth to their first fild while
Speaker 1: he was deployed the baby boy, who Lopez had never
Speaker 1: even met. Lopez had everything to live for, and yet
Speaker 1: he often volunteered for the job that had just gotten
Speaker 1: his friend McDaniels killed. And you found some I A
Speaker 1: d s. I found a few. I remember I kicked one.
Speaker 1: I kicked one because I was sweeping and I kept
Speaker 1: getting it hit and I couldn't find anything. So I
Speaker 1: was just I sat there for like five minutes trying
Speaker 1: to look for something. I couldn't find anything, So that
Speaker 1: just like thought, I started kicking around and if I
Speaker 1: just I hit something, I see some like tape around it,
Speaker 1: and I was like ship. So then we all backed
Speaker 1: up and they came and I think they said it
Speaker 1: was like five or ten pounds. It sounded like a
Speaker 1: big explosion. So they came into the control debt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So what did that feel like for you to know
Speaker 1: that you had found one of these I das that
Speaker 1: have been causing so much damage to your platoon? It
Speaker 1: was It was good because it was on the path
Speaker 1: that we always take. We've always taken that thing. But
Speaker 1: then that day just happened to be an idea. There
Speaker 1: were you scared to do this job? Were you worried
Speaker 1: about it. No, not so much. How is that possible.
Speaker 1: It's hard for me to understand how you could not
Speaker 1: be paranoid or anxious. I've never like feared much like anything. Really,
Speaker 1: It's just like like you know what you're getting yourself.
Speaker 1: You already mentally prepare yourself to. Like I've told myself, like,
Speaker 1: all right, this is the day that I die. So
Speaker 1: if I go out there and worst case scenario, I die,
Speaker 1: I mentally prepared myself. Lopez is lack of fear, sometimes
Speaker 1: edged into recklessness, like when he disobeyed that order to
Speaker 1: stay inside the patrol base when he was sidelined because
Speaker 1: of his TB. I I sneake out one time when
Speaker 1: Galvin enough stepped on They stepped on those ideas they
Speaker 1: had nobody to sweep, so I just went out. June
Speaker 1: was the third in the string of mass casualty incidents
Speaker 1: that I've referred to before as the June curse. Seven
Speaker 1: Marines were wounded. First Squads Lance Corporal Eric Galvan lost
Speaker 1: both legs and his right arm. Sergeant Josh Yarborough also
Speaker 1: lost both legs in a finger. With so much chaos
Speaker 1: unfolding outside the walls, of PB fires. Lopez couldn't stand
Speaker 1: to be stuck inside. He was worried about his friends,
Speaker 1: so he geared up, grabbed one of the metal detectors,
Speaker 1: and headed for the gate with everybody else. How do
Speaker 1: you sneak out? I picture the the Marines being a
Speaker 1: pretty tight organization that doesn't allow a lot of sneaking
Speaker 1: of any kind. So how did you when some explosions
Speaker 1: go off, everyone's just getting ready to real quick, and
Speaker 1: you're just going out help somebody who's never been there
Speaker 1: understand why you would want to go out when you
Speaker 1: didn't have to, Like like a lot of people would think.
Speaker 1: I think most people would think if I could get
Speaker 1: out of something like that, I would, So tell me
Speaker 1: what was going through your head? Well, I was pretty
Speaker 1: good at sweeping, so I felt like if I'm there
Speaker 1: in the front leading them, then everyone behind me is
Speaker 1: all right. That's why I felt like I always had
Speaker 1: to sweep, even when when Dutchess was they gave me
Speaker 1: that day off. The day was September eleven. Sergeant Jerick Fry,
Speaker 1: the squad leader, told him to stay put because the
Speaker 1: sweepers were getting exhausted and Lopez needed to rest and
Speaker 1: I'm like, na, I should go out sweeping, and I
Speaker 1: could kind of like begged them. They're like, nah, you're staying.
Speaker 1: I was like, all right, I handled choice, laid down.
Speaker 1: The next thing I hear an explosion. Yeah, that was Dutcher.
Speaker 1: Lopez wasn't there on the scene to witness the frantic
Speaker 1: rush to stop Dutcher from bleeding to death, but he
Speaker 1: was there when everybody got back to the patrol base.
Speaker 1: So what did you guys usually do when somebody got killed.
Speaker 1: I guess everyone just get back to like the only thing,
Speaker 1: there's still stuff there that has to be done. And
Speaker 1: then the next day they would go us like steak
Speaker 1: and lobster. Here's somebody die. Really, that's a longs time
Speaker 1: we seek good food once noting bad happened. Well, Bez
Speaker 1: doesn't know exactly how the surfing turf got to Patrol
Speaker 1: Base fires, but it had undoubtedly come down the same
Speaker 1: multibillion dollar supply chain that ran all the way from
Speaker 1: the Pentagon to the farthest flung outposts of the Forever Wars,
Speaker 1: where troops like Third Squad lived in the dirt and
Speaker 1: ate U g R s and m R e s.
Speaker 1: But somewhere along that chain. At an air base in
Speaker 1: Helmond or maybe Kandahar, near the ammunition depots and the
Speaker 1: jet hangers, there were support troops and private contractors living
Speaker 1: in air conditioned shipping containers who had flushing toilets and
Speaker 1: took showers every day. They were the long tail to
Speaker 1: the combat troops tooth, and most of them never came
Speaker 1: close to the fighting. They eight made to order Mongolian
Speaker 1: stir fry and ice cream, and giant dining facilities where
Speaker 1: there were also lobsters, which could be delivered at a
Speaker 1: moment's notice to marines out in the boondocks who were
Speaker 1: shaken up by the death of their friend. Lopez eight
Speaker 1: his ration of the US government's bounty after Dutcher, but
Speaker 1: it didn't console him, and he was still shaken up
Speaker 1: when he got back to California a few weeks later,
Speaker 1: where he first began to process the nightmare he'd survived.
Speaker 1: Those images would constantly replaying my head. We had no
Speaker 1: control over that, but it would get worse when I
Speaker 1: would drink. So when I first got back, I was
Speaker 1: drinking a lot. What were those images that were coming
Speaker 1: back since the missing lens explosions, the blood and what
Speaker 1: would it be like when it would come back, What
Speaker 1: did it feel like? What did it look like in
Speaker 1: your head? Wasn't like gone fast forward? Or was it
Speaker 1: like a sad moment like thing about now, like I
Speaker 1: just see Josh there on the floor, And would that
Speaker 1: image come to you just out of nowhere or would
Speaker 1: it could you kind of feel it coming on or
Speaker 1: did certain things trigger it or how did it I
Speaker 1: guess the time of the year, like right now, we
Speaker 1: would be in Afghanistan, so I would think that like
Speaker 1: every year, like oh ship today I would be there.
Speaker 1: It sounds like that doesn't happen as much anymore or No.
Speaker 1: When I was so at Callie, my friend introduced me
Speaker 1: to shrooms. So I went on a shroom trip, and
Speaker 1: I would feel like I'm talking to like the friends
Speaker 1: we love, to their spirits, I would feel like, everything's
Speaker 1: will be all right. You know they're good, You're good.
Speaker 1: When they will all meet up, will all be good?
Speaker 1: Their spirits would say that in the trend, I felt
Speaker 1: like I was talking to Josh on that trip, that
Speaker 1: specific trip. Did you see him? No, I felt him.
Speaker 1: It was in the backyard, and it got to the
Speaker 1: point that like I got scared because I thought he
Speaker 1: was like like really, I was like, oh, fund us
Speaker 1: like spirit thing. So then I started like kind of
Speaker 1: like praying because it was just like like a ghost.
Speaker 1: So then everything calmed down. At that moment. It went
Speaker 1: from like the plants moving around, everything just calm, like
Speaker 1: nothing's there. Lopez tells me the feeling of calms dayed
Speaker 1: with him long after that shrim trip. Things got better,
Speaker 1: at least when he was awake. In his dreams, he
Speaker 1: was still fighting. It would be like d Day Warriors.
Speaker 1: Uh that that I didn't even experience, you know, images
Speaker 1: I dream, but I don't remember my dreams. When um,
Speaker 1: I'm smoking, like and it's like it's calm dreams. It's nothing.
Speaker 1: But if I go to sleep in like I don't smoke,
Speaker 1: then that's when I have those dreams. Lopez is a
Speaker 1: firm believer in the power of certain drugs to relieve
Speaker 1: his anxiety, but he's also tried other things like yoga, meditation,
Speaker 1: and decalcifying his pennial, which apparently involves freeing up your
Speaker 1: third eye by cutting out sugar and fluoride, among other things.
Speaker 1: In the end, though, Lopez always comes back to weed.
Speaker 1: Do you think it would be hard if you didn't
Speaker 1: smoke weed all day. That's crazy. What is that without
Speaker 1: this that I would have to rely only secrets on liquor?
Speaker 1: Or you could talk to somebody. I don't want to
Speaker 1: talk like that. But like when I hang out hang
Speaker 1: out with everyone, they're mostly talking and I'm just like
Speaker 1: listening to children. I throw in my few sentences when
Speaker 1: they asked me for my opinion. You never wanted to
Speaker 1: go see uh psychologist or counselor or therapist or anything
Speaker 1: like that. How come I don't think I need to?
Speaker 1: And do you think it's mostly the I guess you
Speaker 1: would call it self medication with the weed that keeps straight?
Speaker 1: Or what do you think my kids? M that's what
Speaker 1: I really need. Wilpez's marriage broke up after he got
Speaker 1: back from Sangin, but he's got a serious girlfriend now
Speaker 1: who lives with him in rosy Bell's house. They're expecting
Speaker 1: a child together, another grand baby for rosy Bell to
Speaker 1: a doore. Wipez swears that the it is still inside him,
Speaker 1: but he's not looking for any fights these days. You
Speaker 1: could almost say he's retired, hung up the gloves. The
Speaker 1: old Lopez is as distant a memory as the yellow
Speaker 1: footprints at Paris Island. He says he's thankful for the
Speaker 1: friends he made in the Marines, but after all these years,
Speaker 1: he's come around to his mother's view of war. Was
Speaker 1: it worth it? I guess not. It's definitely not worth it,
Speaker 1: not lives and limbs being kind of messed up for
Speaker 1: the rest of your life. I think some wars are pointless, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what the reason for us being over there.
Speaker 1: Why do you think we were out there? That's a
Speaker 1: big question, Jeffrey. How much time you got listener, Okay.
Speaker 1: We talked for a while about the history and the
Speaker 1: politics that led up to the Afghanistan search, and about
Speaker 1: how the simple mission to capture or kill have been
Speaker 1: lauden and destroy Al Qaida's camps in the months after
Speaker 1: nine eleven fell paraded catastrophic mission creep, and about how
Speaker 1: President George W. Bush's decision to pretty much abandon Afghanistan
Speaker 1: for a rock in two thousand three helped hasten the
Speaker 1: Taliban's resurgence. And then when Obama came in, he was
Speaker 1: talking to all these generals and military strategists and the
Speaker 1: Secretary of Defense, and they were saying, if we pull
Speaker 1: out of Afghanistan, the Taliban are gonna take over, and
Speaker 1: that's going to be seen as a loss against an
Speaker 1: Islamist force. So we gotta ramp up the fighting. And
Speaker 1: I think the most important question at that time should
Speaker 1: have been, even if we can defeat the Taliban, what
Speaker 1: what do we actually win? Is America's safer? If we're
Speaker 1: gonna go send all these people over there to do
Speaker 1: all this killing and dying, what do we get out
Speaker 1: of it? There's more enemies. You were there, did you
Speaker 1: see anything over there that you wanted? Did you see
Speaker 1: anybody over there who you thought you might run into
Speaker 1: and be afraid of here on the streets of Ventnor
Speaker 1: or Atlantic City. No, it's not hard for me to
Speaker 1: understand the cocktail of teenage emotions and desires that draws
Speaker 1: young men like Lopez to recruiting offices. And I have
Speaker 1: a pretty good idea of what they're looking to get
Speaker 1: from the military. I've been there. But what's America's excuse?
Speaker 1: Why was the country so eager to chase the war
Speaker 1: after nine eleven? What was America looking for? The easiest
Speaker 1: answer is also the most cynical. The military industrial complex
Speaker 1: saw a golden opportunity to make a killing. That may
Speaker 1: be true, but it's too simple, and it lets the
Speaker 1: rest of us off the hook. I think the answer
Speaker 1: is more elemental, and I think the responsibility for the
Speaker 1: damage caused in America's name since nine eleven touches almost
Speaker 1: all of us. The September eleventh attacks shattered America's myth
Speaker 1: of invulnerability and unleashed an overwhelming will to violence among
Speaker 1: average people and the political class. We were humiliated by
Speaker 1: the sudden realization that others could hurt us just like
Speaker 1: we could hurt them. We were angry and afraid, and
Speaker 1: we were willing to do almost anything to make those
Speaker 1: feelings go away, anything except take the time to think
Speaker 1: through our actions. In September two thousand one, when President
Speaker 1: Bush asked Congress for authorization to launch the war on Terror,
Speaker 1: only one congressional representative voted against it. One four House
Speaker 1: members and senators voted to give Bush the money and
Speaker 1: the authority to take America headlong into a war against
Speaker 1: an idea. Bin Laden was a mass murderer and a monster,
Speaker 1: but he seemed to know his son, Sue. He understood
Speaker 1: his enemy, and he laid the perfect trap. Like a
Speaker 1: judo fighter who uses the weight and momentum of his
Speaker 1: opponent against him. By delivering a spectacular blow to America's
Speaker 1: most iconic symbols of power, Bin Laden triggered a violent
Speaker 1: response out of all proportion to the actual threat. That's
Speaker 1: the whole point of terrorism. But the war on Terror
Speaker 1: was not a mere overreaction to that single devastating act.
Speaker 1: It was part of a much bigger pattern, a product
Speaker 1: of broken code deep in America's cultural DNA, a pathological
Speaker 1: faith in our capacity to solve complex problems with brute force,
Speaker 1: ronic overconfidence in our own military superiority, and a fatal
Speaker 1: tendency to underestimate the enemy. I'm pretty sure bin Lauden
Speaker 1: understood all of that too, just like ho Chi men
Speaker 1: did in his day. Been Lauden financed Al Qaeda's Plains
Speaker 1: operation on a shoe string budget of about five thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: or half the cost of a single Tomahawk cruise missile,
Speaker 1: and it was successful Beyond his wildest dreams. America lurched
Speaker 1: into an era of war that generated widespread instability throughout
Speaker 1: the Middle East and Central Asia. The presence of mostly
Speaker 1: Christian invaders in the Muslim world played into ancient narratives
Speaker 1: and fueled viral resistance to American power. As the years
Speaker 1: dragged on, America piled up trillions in war debt and
Speaker 1: thousands of dead and wounded. The wars cost America credibility
Speaker 1: abroad and so division at home. I don't know what
Speaker 1: we ever hoped to win, but what we've lost is agree.
Speaker 1: What's most astonishing to me is that even after US
Speaker 1: leaders had time to cool off and think about just
Speaker 1: how perfectly the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations were playing into
Speaker 1: bin Laden's plans, they still decided to double down with
Speaker 1: the Afghanistan search. I think, for me, the great tragedy
Speaker 1: of it all is that once you set that machine
Speaker 1: in motion, you can't really turn it off. And that's
Speaker 1: what happened as we set that machine in motion in
Speaker 1: Afghanistan in October two thousand one, and it took on
Speaker 1: a life of its own. It's easier to start a
Speaker 1: war than it is to finish one, and nobody wants
Speaker 1: to be the one who's blamed for losing it. And
Speaker 1: I still wonder why we're not more piste off about that. Right.
Speaker 1: There needs to be like some type of like revolt.
Speaker 1: As long as those people whoever they are in control
Speaker 1: and you know, keep paying us peasants with thirty thousand
Speaker 1: a year to serve for them, It's always gonna be
Speaker 1: like that. But you say that you don't, you know,
Speaker 1: you have no regrets, you're not mad about it. I
Speaker 1: mean you gotta be piste off about it, like your
Speaker 1: your brothers are gone. But I'm not gonna let's not
Speaker 1: like that is win my my whole life. Like I'm
Speaker 1: still gonna not get past it because it's always gonna
Speaker 1: be there, but I'm going to figure out how to
Speaker 1: move forward. So part of moving forward for you has
Speaker 1: been making music music, making sure my kids are good,
Speaker 1: teaching them like the best I can, to make sure
Speaker 1: they make wise decisions. Like my son is like, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna being marial like you're not, Like, no way I
Speaker 1: would let you. I'll break your bones before you go.
Speaker 1: Why that's our minds aren't meant to take that much,
Speaker 1: like her, that much damage. So to know my son
Speaker 1: like has to go like through what I go through.
Speaker 1: Who do I want that? Like Several of the other
Speaker 1: Third Squad survivors and countless veterans of Wars across time,
Speaker 1: Lopez has struggled with guilt over the deaths of his friends.
Speaker 1: For a long time, he blamed himself for not doing
Speaker 1: enough to save McDaniels, and he felt like he should
Speaker 1: have been the one sweeping on the day that Dutcher died.
Speaker 1: But over the years he's slowly come to accept that
Speaker 1: none of it was his fault. What's written for us, like,
Speaker 1: that's our path if it is meant to happen, that
Speaker 1: you can't escape death. When God calls for you, that's it.
Speaker 1: It could have been me if that was my day
Speaker 1: to go. Sometimes God just calls on you early. Where
Speaker 1: do you think God was in Afghanistan during the bad stuff?
Speaker 1: How do you factor your faith in God or your
Speaker 1: idea of God into what was happening over there, what
Speaker 1: happened to you and your friends. It's like testing us
Speaker 1: kind of. So he's pushing us to see see how
Speaker 1: far we could be pushed until we're like, I've had
Speaker 1: it with life. I think we live in hell. I
Speaker 1: think this is how and our test through how to
Speaker 1: make it to heaven. And I guess Josh had already
Speaker 1: pooed that. He's like a great individual. Dutcher and Nick
Speaker 1: and he's like, all right, you guys could come out
Speaker 1: so but I didn't start thinking like that so like
Speaker 1: a few years ago. M Yeah, it's never ending. Take
Speaker 1: your time. Yeah, probably the first few people in a
Speaker 1: in a while, and they've seen me cry. Well, if
Speaker 1: it makes you feel any better, I'd say there's about
Speaker 1: eight or nine people who have been the first people
Speaker 1: to see me crying a long time over the last
Speaker 1: couple of weeks. So it sounds good, though you Gott's
Speaker 1: not calling on me anytime soon. I think he wants
Speaker 1: to test me a little more. I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: stuck here for a while. This is a tricky beat production.
Speaker 1: Lopez may not like to talk about his private pain,
Speaker 1: but he's working through it in his own way with
Speaker 1: his music. It's all chaos. It's pray ours sound pretty
Speaker 1: fraw and take it to the graveyard. We all pray,
Speaker 1: but we'll see no good society? Is she feel like
Speaker 1: I'm the only wolf? The time that we all unite
Speaker 1: every state, every race, whether black or your way, everything
Speaker 1: in between. That you know what I mean, He's out
Speaker 1: here men to be king za queen. I think it's
Speaker 1: time that we all unite every state, every race where
Speaker 1: they're black or your white, everything in between. You you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. We just out here, meant to
Speaker 1: be James Za Queens. The following morning, we say goodbye
Speaker 1: to Lopez in the driveway of Rosie Bell's house. After
Speaker 1: dozens of hours of conversations, there are no more third
Speaker 1: Squad survivors on the itinerary, and I want to take
Speaker 1: a moment before we get back on the highway to
Speaker 1: let that sink in. So we drive a few blocks
Speaker 1: in park next to a bridge d over a wide canal.
Speaker 1: While I'm standing there looking out on the water, a
Speaker 1: group of rowers comes gliding under the bridge and bright
Speaker 1: colored shells. They look like high school kids. Their oars
Speaker 1: dip under the surface, pulling them past vacant summer homes
Speaker 1: and empty docks. I take a deep breath and savor
Speaker 1: the quiet and the feeling of the salty air on
Speaker 1: my skin. Maybe Lopez is right, maybe this is hell,
Speaker 1: But to me, it seems more like some kind of
Speaker 1: purgatory where we're all just walking in circles trying to
Speaker 1: get unstuck. For my entire life, America has been trapped
Speaker 1: in an endless cycle of wars with unclear objectives, often
Speaker 1: cloaked in secrecy, and always fought in other people's countries.
Speaker 1: It's sometimes America funds and arms proxies like the Afghan
Speaker 1: Mujahadeen and the Salvadoran military to commit violence on our behalf,
Speaker 1: and sometimes we send our own to do the killing
Speaker 1: and dying, Young troops like Lopez and the Marines of
Speaker 1: Third Squad, who have little understanding of the big picture
Speaker 1: and no firm commitment to anything beyond their own survival,
Speaker 1: but who shoulder the bulk of the country's pain and
Speaker 1: moral injury in the aftermath. Young kids like me. I
Speaker 1: want nothing more than for this cycle to end, but
Speaker 1: I'm starting to lose hope that it ever will. It's
Speaker 1: hard to even know when or where the Forever Wars began,
Speaker 1: but I don't think they really started on nine eleven.
Speaker 1: The War on Terror is only the latest chapter in
Speaker 1: a saga of U s imperialism that stretches back through
Speaker 1: Central America, Vietnam, the Philippines, the Indian Wars, and beyond.
Speaker 1: And I don't think that saga is over just because
Speaker 1: we've closed the door on Afghanistan. America still has ongoing
Speaker 1: counter terrorism missions and dozens of countries around the world,
Speaker 1: from Yemen and Syria to the Philippines, Somalia and Mali.
Speaker 1: These endless wars since nine eleven have cost an estimated
Speaker 1: eight trillion dollars and have directly caused nearly one million deaths.
Speaker 1: I think what that money could have done for the
Speaker 1: living in Atlantic City or Deer River or any of
Speaker 1: the broke down small towns and rust belt cities that
Speaker 1: passed through over the past few weeks. And what did
Speaker 1: all that money and all that death by the US did.
Speaker 1: Finally tracked down and killed bin Laden, But the wars
Speaker 1: have failed to accomplish the impossible objective laid out by
Speaker 1: President Bush before the US Congress in September two thoe.
Speaker 1: Our war on Terra begins with Alcata, but it does
Speaker 1: not end there. It will not end until every terrorist
Speaker 1: group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.
Speaker 1: According to the State Department's official list, there are more
Speaker 1: than five times as many Islamic terror organizations around the
Speaker 1: globe today as there were twenty years ago. When planes
Speaker 1: crashed into skyscrapers on a perfect blue sky day like
Speaker 1: this one, just over the horizon from where I'm standing
Speaker 1: right now. The ocean breeze sends ripples across the reflected sky.
Speaker 1: I watched the rowers glide silently out of sight. They're
Speaker 1: slick trails, linger on the surface for a moment, then
Speaker 1: disappear into the chop. If there's one thing I've learned
Speaker 1: on this trip and in all the years since I
Speaker 1: first came home from war, it's that you have to
Speaker 1: cherish these subtle and fleeting moments of peace, because maybe
Speaker 1: that's all there will ever be. This journey isn't over yet.
Speaker 1: Several months ago, I wrote to Michael Dutcher's mother, Teresa,
Speaker 1: to ask if she'd be willing to talk to me
Speaker 1: about Michael's life and how losing him has affected her family.
Speaker 1: She was hesitant at first, but we talked on the
Speaker 1: phone and she eventually agreed. Now we're making our final
Speaker 1: approach to Asheville, North Carolina, where Teresa still lives in
Speaker 1: the house where she raised Michael. I've had a lot
Speaker 1: of time to think over these thousands of miles and
Speaker 1: hundreds of hours behind the wheel, about what it'll be
Speaker 1: like to finally meet Teresa, and about the gravity of
Speaker 1: what I'm asking of her. There's no doubt in my
Speaker 1: mind that this will be the most difficult conversation of
Speaker 1: all ten days. It's all I had left. And we
Speaker 1: told him, never volunteer, no matter what you do, never volunteer.
Speaker 1: And what did he do? He volunteered. Third Squad odd
Speaker 1: is written and produced by Elliott Woods, Tommy Andres, and
Speaker 1: Maria Byrne. It's an Airloo Media production distributed by iHeart Media.
Speaker 1: Had a lot upon my mentor depending on no one,
Speaker 1: not a body, to wrest all the memories we made
Speaker 1: in deserts all over, all our medals left, all our
Speaker 1: brethren whose funding. Support for Third Squad comes from the
Speaker 1: National Endowment for the Humanities in collaboration with the Center
Speaker 1: for War in Society at San Diego State University. If
Speaker 1: you're interested in supporting our work with a financial contribution,
Speaker 1: please visit the donate page a Third squad dot com,
Speaker 1: where you'll also find photographs from Sangin and from our
Speaker 1: road trip. Original music for Third Squad by Mondo Boys.
Speaker 1: Additional music in this episode by Jeffrey Lopez. Voiceover for
Speaker 1: Rosy Bell by Espedanza Eski bab editing and sound designed
Speaker 1: by John Ward. Fact checking by Ben Kalin Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Scott Carrier, Marianne Andre, Ted Jenoways, Benjamin Bush, Carrie Gracie,
Speaker 1: Kevin Connolly, Lena Ferguson, and Brown University's Costs of War Project.
Speaker 1: If you've got a minute, please leave us a rating
Speaker 1: in your preferred podcast app. It'll help other people find
Speaker 1: the show. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter
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