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. There's a line that Manny
Speaker 1: Mendoza almost never crosses. He gets close sometimes, but I
Speaker 1: won't say it. Well, you recorded, there's the line. Do
Speaker 1: you want to stop the recorder? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, stop it.
Speaker 1: I'm Elliott Woods. This is Third Squad Episode four, A
Speaker 1: Soldier's Heart. This is on now. So the first thing is,
Speaker 1: let me take you back to sang In for a minute.
Speaker 1: It was two thousand eleven and I was in one
Speaker 1: of those hot mud brick room is where the Marines
Speaker 1: slept at patrol based fires. I was trying to interview
Speaker 1: each of the guys when they had a few minutes
Speaker 1: between patrols and sleeping. All right, go, I am Copra Mendoza.
Speaker 1: Weis Loco Texas. I'm twenty years old. All right, try
Speaker 1: again a little bit louder. Mendoza was shirtless, and unlike
Speaker 1: some of the guys, he hadn't thinned out from the malnutrition.
Speaker 1: I was cutting into his chill time, and he wasn't
Speaker 1: all that excited about it. He was also nervous and
Speaker 1: listening back to the tape, I don't know whether to
Speaker 1: cringe or laugh at my stage directions. I'm Coporate Mendoza,
Speaker 1: Manuel Mendoza, I am corporate Manuel Mendoza. I'm twenty years
Speaker 1: old and from Wedlico, Texas. Mendoza barely looked back when
Speaker 1: he left Westloco to join the Marines. He earned the
Speaker 1: rank of corporal and became a team leader responsible for
Speaker 1: half the squad in one of the most dangerous combat
Speaker 1: zones in all of Afghanistan, and he took his job seriously.
Speaker 1: You gotta be on top of everything. You've gotta be
Speaker 1: thinking about real security, front security, everything. You got to
Speaker 1: be pretty much thinking for your team. He still had
Speaker 1: the wide eyes and bashful charm of a teenager. Everything
Speaker 1: was new and exciting for him, but it was also horrific.
Speaker 1: I wasn't expecting the blood bones dangling everywhere. I wasn't
Speaker 1: expecting that. I was hoping I wouldn't have to see that,
Speaker 1: but I did. Sangin was Mendoza's first deployment, and by
Speaker 1: the time we met, he'd been on the ground for
Speaker 1: four months. He'd already seen more than enough. He decided
Speaker 1: to get out dream scenario like ten years from now,
Speaker 1: just having a home, a family, and a job. I
Speaker 1: guess as that is, that would be considering the American dream. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. I think so too. Now it's March,
Speaker 1: almost ten years have gone by since we talked and
Speaker 1: sang it. Mendoza is back living in Texas, and I'm
Speaker 1: here to find out how his plans shook out. How
Speaker 1: close has he gotten to that American dream? The home,
Speaker 1: the family, the job. That is a lot of cool stuff.
Speaker 1: Do here, we'll go, We'll start over at the engine.
Speaker 1: So Mendoza is a volunteer firefighter. Now, among other things,
Speaker 1: he's on shift tonight. It's about eleven PM and Tommy
Speaker 1: and I are here at the firehouse. He's showing us around.
Speaker 1: The very first thing I do coming in here, number
Speaker 1: one is figure out where your assignment is, because you
Speaker 1: don't actually just come in and just jump on the
Speaker 1: engine like you're good. No, you need an assignment. Tonight,
Speaker 1: Mendoza is on nozzle, the typical new guy job, and
Speaker 1: what that means is that in any case we respond
Speaker 1: to a fire, I would be the first one to
Speaker 1: grab a hose. So you keep your stuff in here
Speaker 1: ready to go. At all times. Usually in the movies
Speaker 1: you might see that they have their stuff outside. No,
Speaker 1: we we get dressed inside. In other words, jump in drive,
Speaker 1: get dressed on the way. That saves like two to
Speaker 1: three minutes. That's plenty of time to help save somebody.
Speaker 1: He's a volunteer, but the gig is demanding. It's at
Speaker 1: least twenty hours a week, and he often has to
Speaker 1: spend the night, which means he has to head straight
Speaker 1: to his other job as a civil engineer in the morning,
Speaker 1: what you might call his real job. So this is
Speaker 1: pretty intense. This is not just like you know something
Speaker 1: you do just because you have some spare time to volunteer.
Speaker 1: This is like a huge learning curve with a ton
Speaker 1: of real responsibility. Yeah you love it. Yeah, learning it's
Speaker 1: sucking awesome, dude, learning its fucking legit. The boyish enthusiasm
Speaker 1: I remember from saying and has not diminished. But do
Speaker 1: you ever take a day off? Yeah? Do you sleep? Yea?
Speaker 1: How often do you sleep? Right now, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: stick to go to sleep at ten, wake up at
Speaker 1: three because Jim, you're gonna get that gym in. It's
Speaker 1: getting close to midnight and we need to let Mendoza crash.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be around for a few days, so we
Speaker 1: make plans to meet up at his place on one
Speaker 1: of his nights off to talk more. But we can't
Speaker 1: leave without seeing the fire truck. This is what every
Speaker 1: little boy's dream is, to stand up top of that ladder.
Speaker 1: Do you want to go up there? Um? Now, you
Speaker 1: can go up there? Sure, Okay, we climb up onto
Speaker 1: the top. Be very careful to watch your head. We're
Speaker 1: probably ten ft off the ground. Crouch beneath the ceiling.
Speaker 1: One of the most important things to know about this
Speaker 1: thing is that little liver right there. Mendoza shows us
Speaker 1: how it works, but after a few minutes he gets
Speaker 1: a little confused. Where was it when we got here?
Speaker 1: I don't remember? He said it was set up for rescue.
Speaker 1: He flips the lever back and forth a couple of times. God, damn,
Speaker 1: can't you remember anymore? What is this? Did I break
Speaker 1: the fire truck? We're gonna this part? I just don't remember.
Speaker 1: Remember me to YouTube it now. I can use reasoning here.
Speaker 1: I just use YouTube YouTube rescue setting for scannon setting there.
Speaker 1: When we finally meet up with Mendoza at his apartment,
Speaker 1: he's watching Training Day, the Denzel Washington film for maybe
Speaker 1: the hundredth time. King Kong ain't got on me. He
Speaker 1: lives in a tidy, one bedroom in a suburban complex
Speaker 1: about a half hour north of Houston. The decorations are sparse.
Speaker 1: He's got a poster near the kitchen of retired Marine
Speaker 1: General Jim Mattis in the style of a religious icon,
Speaker 1: complete with a halo and a grenade. Underneath, there's a
Speaker 1: little shelf where I noticed a copy of I Am Malala,
Speaker 1: and there's a knee high stack of engineering textbooks piled
Speaker 1: by a small computer desk. Back in sang In, Mendoza
Speaker 1: told me he wanted to go to college, and he
Speaker 1: followed through on that plan. He earned a degree in
Speaker 1: civil engineering from Texas A and M in two thousand nineteen.
Speaker 1: Then he moved here to the Woodlands for a job
Speaker 1: with the construction firm. In less than two years, he's
Speaker 1: already worked his way up to manager. He tells me.
Speaker 1: He even bought a house, just not for himself, for
Speaker 1: his mom back in the Rio Grand Valley where he
Speaker 1: grew up. I was born in Weslico, Texas, which is
Speaker 1: deep deep south Texas. The very very south spout the
Speaker 1: stone toss away from Mexico. Um he was born, I
Speaker 1: didn't like it. He's the youngest of six with four
Speaker 1: sisters and a brother. His parents are from Mexico. They
Speaker 1: came to the US for work before Mendoza was born.
Speaker 1: They always went job to job. I was working in
Speaker 1: general labor. Everybody had to pitch in, even the little kids.
Speaker 1: I got my first job when I was like, We
Speaker 1: found a job for me out in the field because
Speaker 1: they couldn't work the factories because I was too long,
Speaker 1: and they had like laws or whatever, child labor laws. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of one of the major advancements of the twentieth century. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I heard us. Yeah. Anyway, So I was working out
Speaker 1: in the fields where you know that nobody ever came
Speaker 1: to inspect. Every summer, the entire family went north to
Speaker 1: pick cherries. Where up north all the way from West Dakota, Michigan.
Speaker 1: That's basically all the way from the Mexican border to
Speaker 1: the Canadian border almost pretty much. Man, So there was
Speaker 1: work up there. The pay was good and even though
Speaker 1: it was seasonal, still provided some decent monitor income for
Speaker 1: the summer times. So you all went up there as
Speaker 1: a family, Yeah, in your family car or how did
Speaker 1: you get up there? Yeah, big old trucks that used
Speaker 1: to buy up north. Whatever was a good deal and
Speaker 1: whatever could hold all of us. One of the coolest
Speaker 1: ones was this big old brown band that we had.
Speaker 1: I think it was. Yeah, it was a big old
Speaker 1: brown band. We had a table in the back. We
Speaker 1: could all kind of just laid down. We would all
Speaker 1: just kind of enjoy the day or two day trip
Speaker 1: up to Michigan. They lived in migrant housing provided by
Speaker 1: the owners of the fruit farms. They were usually out
Speaker 1: in the field, kind of just out of the way. Um,
Speaker 1: kind of hidden because you know, a lot of us
Speaker 1: were a lot of them were illegals. A lot of
Speaker 1: the workers were illegal or undocumented whatever. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: they were kind of we were kind of in secluded
Speaker 1: areas in the farmers fields. It's pretty much a shed
Speaker 1: with sometimes with the running water in electricity other time
Speaker 1: it's not not that um. I think the worst one
Speaker 1: we dated and had a head and out house, like
Speaker 1: no no running water, just ship house in the back
Speaker 1: out in the orchards. Mendoza usually got the little kid jobs.
Speaker 1: Remember I had a tennis racket. I would scoop up
Speaker 1: all the bad ch Harris running behind this tractor, this
Speaker 1: equipped piece of equimage. That's pretty cool. So then did
Speaker 1: you get to keep the money that you made for
Speaker 1: that or did you family all pull the money together
Speaker 1: and use it to live for the rest of the year.
Speaker 1: That was for clothes, uh, for me, for my clothes
Speaker 1: for end whatever I needed for the coming school year.
Speaker 1: He has fond memories of this time in his life,
Speaker 1: the long road trips, the people he got to meet,
Speaker 1: and especially the sense that he was helping his family
Speaker 1: get by. But there was a cost for him that
Speaker 1: didn't help out with my education at all. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you that because you would come in sometimes a month
Speaker 1: or too late to school in the fall. The super
Speaker 1: student who showed us around the firehouse and excelled at
Speaker 1: college wasn't always so hungry for education. I hate school.
Speaker 1: I just buys died it. Didn't like it, and in
Speaker 1: my head always had that mentality of I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: on the military. If he ever had any doubts, he
Speaker 1: says they vanished one autumn day in two thousand one.
Speaker 1: I knew right away that I want to join the military.
Speaker 1: At nine eleven, was ten years old. Yeah, that's when
Speaker 1: I absolutely you I was going to join. This isn't
Speaker 1: the first time I've heard this story. We play Mendoza
Speaker 1: some of our interview from Sangin joined the Marine Corps
Speaker 1: because I'll never forget September eleven. I'll never forget the
Speaker 1: what happened in New York, and I'll never forget um
Speaker 1: people never heard people that died. I love my country.
Speaker 1: I'm a patriot straight up like your Mexican. I love
Speaker 1: I love America because we had a lot of great
Speaker 1: things in our country, and I like to I feel
Speaker 1: like I have I have a depth at depth that
Speaker 1: try to speak in a little bit louder the voice,
Speaker 1: not like shouting, whispering this somewhere in the middle of
Speaker 1: just a strong, strong I feel like I got a
Speaker 1: debt to the United States because I have such a
Speaker 1: great life back home. I out my family, I got
Speaker 1: I had a good education. Now, so I felt like
Speaker 1: I needed to pay that dead you you busted out
Speaker 1: laughing when you heard I got a good education. You
Speaker 1: had like a full belly laugh. So why is that
Speaker 1: because it contradicted what I just said? Yeah, so why
Speaker 1: do you think you told me that? Back then, why
Speaker 1: do you think you said you had a good education
Speaker 1: back then? I don't know any better, And I think
Speaker 1: subconsciously what I was thinking was that compared to the
Speaker 1: Afghan kids, that's what I had, Yeah, a great education.
Speaker 1: Mendoza worked three jobs in high school. He steered clear
Speaker 1: of the drugs and the gangs that he says we're everywhere,
Speaker 1: and he kept his grades up enough to stay on
Speaker 1: the football team and graduate. All I was worried about
Speaker 1: was finishing up so I can, yeah, go ahead and
Speaker 1: get the hell out of here, out of the valley
Speaker 1: and go fight boredom and testosterone curiosity about the big
Speaker 1: wide world. Roman took ideals about the greatest adventure of
Speaker 1: them all. War. It's a powerful cocktail for a small
Speaker 1: town boy, and it leads often enough to the military.
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of other roads to adventure.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of other ways to get the
Speaker 1: hell out. What I want to know is why Mendoza
Speaker 1: was so eager to fight. What did that feeling in
Speaker 1: like in your body, this desire to fight? What did
Speaker 1: that feel like? I guess it wasn't a feeling. I
Speaker 1: guess my just my imagination just took me places with
Speaker 1: what I could do and what I wanted to do,
Speaker 1: because I had no really, no real way of feeling
Speaker 1: what combat might be like. His imagination was fueled by
Speaker 1: war movies, video games, and books about battles. Seventh grade,
Speaker 1: the first book I ever read like actual. It wasn't
Speaker 1: a Goose Bones book, it wasn't um some Captain Underpants whatever.
Speaker 1: It was a legit novel, and it was A Soldier
Speaker 1: His Heart. The books about a fifteen year old boy
Speaker 1: named Charlie who lies about his age so he can
Speaker 1: enlist and fight in the American Civil War. When he
Speaker 1: comes home from the war, he's walking with a cane
Speaker 1: and pissing blood, and he's tortured by the horrors he witnessed.
Speaker 1: He has what we now call PTSD, but back then
Speaker 1: it was sometimes called soldier's heart. In the final scene,
Speaker 1: Charlie sits down by a river to have a picnic.
Speaker 1: He takes out some bread and cheese, a chunk of
Speaker 1: roast beef, some coffee, and a pistol. It's not clear
Speaker 1: whether Charlie kills himself, but it's definitely not a happy ending.
Speaker 1: It may sound strange that someone would read that story
Speaker 1: and want to go to war. But Mendoza did, So
Speaker 1: what year did you? And listen to the Marines? Okay,
Speaker 1: so you really are what they call a surge baby. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The surge babies are a generation of military recruits who
Speaker 1: joined during the surges in Rock and Afghanistan, when tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of extra troops were deployed to try to
Speaker 1: turn the wars around. The Iraq Surge began in two
Speaker 1: thousand seven and was ordered by President George Bush. If
Speaker 1: we increase our support at this crucial moment and help
Speaker 1: the Iraqis break the current cycle of violence, we can
Speaker 1: hasten the day our troops begin coming home. The Afghanistan
Speaker 1: Surge began in about two thousand ten and was ordered
Speaker 1: by President Barack Obama. These are the resources that we
Speaker 1: need to seize the initiative while building the Afghan capacity
Speaker 1: that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces
Speaker 1: out of Afghanistan. Most of Third Squad were surge babies.
Speaker 1: For Mendoza, becoming a Marine changed his entire sense of identity.
Speaker 1: You said, and this really stuck out to me at
Speaker 1: the time. You said, I love my country even though
Speaker 1: I'm Mexican, And I remember thinking, why did he feel
Speaker 1: like he had to make that clarification, probably because of that,
Speaker 1: the whole migrant thing. Growing up, my mom said, you're Mexican.
Speaker 1: She used to get mad at us for speaking English
Speaker 1: in the house. Um so, so it was weird learning English.
Speaker 1: That's probably why my my English is a little bit
Speaker 1: off at times, even though you you told me to
Speaker 1: speak louder. It's sometimes I get confused within this word.
Speaker 1: So now it was actually abusing bilingual kid. Who is
Speaker 1: you know? Great? Now I feel really great about myself.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Um No, so growing up it was like
Speaker 1: not your Mexican, like you have cactus on your forehead.
Speaker 1: But at that time, do you think that you felt American?
Speaker 1: I mean because again, like, what's what's interesting about that
Speaker 1: is that in that clip that and when that up
Speaker 1: that we played, you're talking about how powerful of an
Speaker 1: impression nine eleven made on you. You're saying, I love
Speaker 1: my country even though I'm a Mexican, but you clearly
Speaker 1: felt that that attack as an American. Tell me a
Speaker 1: little bit about what it was like to have that
Speaker 1: split identity and how that identity has grown or changed
Speaker 1: over the years since then. I want to say that
Speaker 1: once I joined the Marine Corps. It was like, no,
Speaker 1: it was just you're you're. You've chosen your identity there,
Speaker 1: like you're you are American now. Teenage Mendoza didn't hesitate
Speaker 1: to claim that hundred percent American identity anymore than he
Speaker 1: hesitated to leave West Loco in the dust. But for
Speaker 1: his mom, his departure was a heavy blow. He tried
Speaker 1: to soften it the way boys often do by lying,
Speaker 1: and it is sound really fucked up, because I didn't
Speaker 1: want to make her worried, so I told her I
Speaker 1: was an electrician, I was in the Marine Corps. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I didn't tell her I was infantry until, oh, the
Speaker 1: night before I left. That's a big lie. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's my moment, man, I just I don't want to
Speaker 1: fucking put so much stress on her. He came clean
Speaker 1: while he was home in Westlico on leave from Camp Pendleton.
Speaker 1: He'd already been in the Marines for two years now.
Speaker 1: His battalion was gearing up for the Sangin deployment. That
Speaker 1: was at night. Uh, my flight was at like two
Speaker 1: in the morning or something like that or some ridiculous hour.
Speaker 1: But it was dark. I remember the only light in
Speaker 1: the house was on was the kitchen. I told him, oh,
Speaker 1: it's time to go. I mean just one. It's here
Speaker 1: to take me to my sisters, here to take me
Speaker 1: to the airport. And that's when I told him. I
Speaker 1: was like, Mom, so I'm not actually electrician, and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll be on my way to Afghanistan within the next week.
Speaker 1: She's like, I am me who, Like why, why? Why
Speaker 1: did you do this? My dad he had just suffered
Speaker 1: a stroke, and I remember, oh, god, man, I remember
Speaker 1: him standing outside the front porch, the light on and
Speaker 1: the shadows like we're casting over his face, like he
Speaker 1: couldn't see his full face, but you could just see
Speaker 1: the figure of his face and his glasses and he
Speaker 1: had a cane. His left side was just hanging, you
Speaker 1: could barely hold himself up. And he was just standing
Speaker 1: as best he could to look at me, look at
Speaker 1: the car, see as I was going away. And I
Speaker 1: know my mom was crying in the kitchen. I can't
Speaker 1: that that image doesn't escape me as my dad as
Speaker 1: I'm driving away, looking back. So my dad watches me
Speaker 1: go away. We'll be back after the break. Not long
Speaker 1: after Mendoza told his family the truth, he deployed to
Speaker 1: Afghanistan with Third Squad. When we sat down to talk
Speaker 1: one on one at patrol based fires back in two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, it was obvious he took his team leader
Speaker 1: responsibilities very seriously. He was putting a ton of pressure
Speaker 1: on himself. I love my Marines. Those are my boys.
Speaker 1: They got a lot of things going for them, and
Speaker 1: I just don't want anything to happen to them. I
Speaker 1: want to keep them as safe as I possibly can.
Speaker 1: And what I'd like to consider the most probably one
Speaker 1: of the most dangerous place on Earth. When Third Squad
Speaker 1: went out on patrol, the guys walked in single file
Speaker 1: with a marine at the front sweeping for I. E. D. S.
Speaker 1: As a team leader, Mendoza didn't want to leave anything
Speaker 1: to chance, so we walked behind the sweeper on every
Speaker 1: patrol if he could. It's the position the Third Squad
Speaker 1: Marines called point. Another thing I noticed is that you've
Speaker 1: been up front a lot. Tell me about why you
Speaker 1: like to be upfront in the sweeper. You gotta lead
Speaker 1: by example, and I like to tell my sweeper where
Speaker 1: to go because he's a pretty good he's a good sweeper,
Speaker 1: But like sometimes you know, the complacency starts to kick in,
Speaker 1: and they like to take the easy routes. I like
Speaker 1: to go the hard way. I like to go all
Speaker 1: the way around because that's where we're at least likely
Speaker 1: to get hit by anything, run into anything. It's kind
Speaker 1: of reckless. But I like to be up front because
Speaker 1: I found the second one through. Most likely I'll be
Speaker 1: the one to step on a pressure plate and nobody
Speaker 1: else behind me, I'll step on one. When I interviewed
Speaker 1: him in sangin June twelve was fresh on Mendoza's mind,
Speaker 1: the worst day of my life. That was definitely a
Speaker 1: reality check. That was the first day my whole team
Speaker 1: was in front of me, and that was literally the
Speaker 1: first day they were ever in front of me. And
Speaker 1: the one day that I let them walk in front
Speaker 1: of me is the one day that we run into
Speaker 1: an I D. That was the day of third Squad's
Speaker 1: mass casualty when they ran into a cluster of I E.
Speaker 1: D S just outside of patrol based fires, the day
Speaker 1: that Joshua McDaniels died. But you must know that you
Speaker 1: didn't hate that idea because you weren't up in front
Speaker 1: for me. If I would have been up front and
Speaker 1: somebody else wouldn't have got wouldn't be missing legs right now,
Speaker 1: somebody else might be alive. I trade places with him anytime.
Speaker 1: With O'Brien or mc daniels, I trade places with him anytime.
Speaker 1: Here in Mendoza's apartment, photos of McDaniels, O'Brien, and Dutcher
Speaker 1: looked down at us from a shelf in the corner.
Speaker 1: So who have you talked to? About? You know? Back
Speaker 1: in saying and I asked every one of you guys,
Speaker 1: I said, what are you gonna tell your friends and
Speaker 1: family when you come home? And I didn't say, you know,
Speaker 1: who are you going to talk to? But now I'd
Speaker 1: like to know who? Who have you learned that you
Speaker 1: can open up to? And when you do find someone
Speaker 1: who you think you can open up to, what what
Speaker 1: do you talk about? And go through basically levels? I
Speaker 1: guess a vetting process, if you will, for each person.
Speaker 1: And then we got to meet a certain criteria for
Speaker 1: me when it comes to talking, the depth of conversation
Speaker 1: in which we're having. I think one of my favorite
Speaker 1: tests is you're holding a conversation, the other person gets distracted,
Speaker 1: they come back, and then you change the subject and
Speaker 1: if they flow with a new subject, they're just like
Speaker 1: and then I'm just like, oh, okay, you don't care
Speaker 1: what I was saying just now before you get distracted
Speaker 1: by the butterfly. So okay. Yeah, then so you actually
Speaker 1: do that with new friends, love interests, family, who who? Who?
Speaker 1: Have you applied that test too? That's pretty ingenious. Everybody really,
Speaker 1: Hardly anyone passes the test. He tells me about one
Speaker 1: particular failure. I got to that point, like in the relationship,
Speaker 1: like we started dating and I was gonna open up
Speaker 1: to her, and I had a picture of mc daniels
Speaker 1: in my glove compartment, and um, she so happened to
Speaker 1: go into my glove compartment for some reason, one reason
Speaker 1: or another. She opened up my glove compartment, saw McDaniels
Speaker 1: a picture there. She looks at it. She's like, oh,
Speaker 1: who's this, Like, oh, that's mc daniels. Uh, just one
Speaker 1: of the guys that we actually lost. She oh, that's depressing,
Speaker 1: throws it back in there, slams the fucking thing clothes.
Speaker 1: It's like a ship. All right, what we're done? You know?
Speaker 1: She filed the test. Man Even if he manages to
Speaker 1: find someone who passes the initial test, he's still not
Speaker 1: in the clear. It sucks because you find the next
Speaker 1: ye you're like fuck yeah, like oh dude, like let's
Speaker 1: hang out again. But then it just kind of that's
Speaker 1: where it ends. So right when it gets good, it dies.
Speaker 1: Why does it die? Because I mean, man, I want
Speaker 1: to talk more, and I get excited and yeah and
Speaker 1: then and and yeah, and I just jumped the gun.
Speaker 1: I'm free. Yeah, you feel like you frea come out. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, romantically sucks nowadays, it just comes off as desperate,
Speaker 1: like oh, like I'm I'm excited that I can talk
Speaker 1: to you this way. But that's they're mm, they're desperate. Yeah, God,
Speaker 1: but you're not like desperate to get in bed with someone.
Speaker 1: You're desperate to find someone you can actually be yourself
Speaker 1: with and actually be real with. I mean, that's not
Speaker 1: that's not like when we talk about men being desperate
Speaker 1: or women being desperate, we're usually talking about a sexual
Speaker 1: thing or like someone who just badly needs, like like
Speaker 1: a needy person. But your desperation is actually like for
Speaker 1: the kind of connection that makes a relationship where having
Speaker 1: got either eager to have a meaningful conversation. So that's
Speaker 1: what I'm thirsty for Have you talked to therapists at
Speaker 1: all over the years? Do I need a professional, just
Speaker 1: somebody who cares. What is it that you want to
Speaker 1: talk about? If somebody would be willing to listen, gotcher McDaniels.
Speaker 1: I mean, let's let's let's talk about it if you
Speaker 1: if we can. And also before we do this, I
Speaker 1: just want to make sure that I tell you and
Speaker 1: that you know that you have the wheel. If things
Speaker 1: get too intense, we can take a break. If you
Speaker 1: really don't want to talk about something that's totally your call,
Speaker 1: I am maybe going to push you a little bit
Speaker 1: too to explore some difficult territory, because that's what people
Speaker 1: need to hear. That's what makes this so important. But
Speaker 1: you know, if ever things are are going into a
Speaker 1: place that you think would be unsafe for you and
Speaker 1: not good for you, then tell me and and we'll
Speaker 1: we'll hit the brakes. Okay, it's not easy to watch
Speaker 1: Mendoza struggling with this. He's clenching his fists and taking
Speaker 1: shallow breaths. I'm gonna be extremely vulnerable here. Uh, let's
Speaker 1: that's what I foresee. I'm trying to prepare for that
Speaker 1: and right now kind of feeling it in my heart.
Speaker 1: And what's really affecting it is the fact that it
Speaker 1: will be on record and people will know. And that's
Speaker 1: not something I generally share. I don't really share it
Speaker 1: with anybody. So, dude, talking about those moments is reliving them.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's just me. I don't like to consider myself being,
Speaker 1: you know, better than somebody at anything. But when I
Speaker 1: think I'm pretty good at his empathy, feeling, feeling perspectives,
Speaker 1: feeling others emotions. Um, that also translates to memories being
Speaker 1: pretty vivid. So whenever I share that, mhm hm, you
Speaker 1: just feel everything, you really love everything, fill it all again,
Speaker 1: the smell, the sounds, the taste, first things you saw,
Speaker 1: last things you saw, and then the in between. Sometimes
Speaker 1: that are just flashes and the natural responses to cry.
Speaker 1: And I du so right now we're kind of reliving
Speaker 1: some of them in my head. Mendoza takes a few
Speaker 1: seconds to compose himself. The one that that's really scarring
Speaker 1: is O'Brien. We had just gone back from patrol, but
Speaker 1: I just remember I was sick and I was just
Speaker 1: just shipping like they're not tomorrow, and I was. I
Speaker 1: was in the restroom just shipping water and I hear
Speaker 1: the explosion when a couple of seconds later see the
Speaker 1: squad run and then Matelski asked me like, hey, are
Speaker 1: you good to go? Like I look him in the eyes,
Speaker 1: like I got my pants down, I'm shipping right now. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not good. It's like okay when they take without me,
Speaker 1: third squad rushes out of the compound gates to help,
Speaker 1: but it was too late. Nicholas O'Brien had been killed
Speaker 1: by an i EB and third squad came back and
Speaker 1: up we got called back out to secure the site.
Speaker 1: It's told security overnight and in the morning pick up
Speaker 1: whatever we could of Nick. That is got to be
Speaker 1: the most depressing, one of the most depressing times in
Speaker 1: my life because as soon as the sun comes up
Speaker 1: and we're out there looking for pieces, and we found
Speaker 1: him everywhere, all over the place in the ditch, the ease,
Speaker 1: like right at eye level, when you start looking higher,
Speaker 1: start seeing pieces of boot, pieces of trousers, piece of
Speaker 1: meat flesh. So we looked for what kept looking for, Well,
Speaker 1: we can find trash bags, black trash bags, picking this stuff,
Speaker 1: picking them up. We had gloves on. It doesn't help.
Speaker 1: It didn't help. The smell, it didn't help with you
Speaker 1: can still feel it, still feel it, still feel the
Speaker 1: chunks h After a certain point, we just gave up.
Speaker 1: We're like, no, we're done, We're done. We're done looking
Speaker 1: for this. We shouldn't be out there doing that. We
Speaker 1: but it's gotta be us. It should be us. It
Speaker 1: feels wrong to talk about this. What what feels wrong
Speaker 1: about it? It feels disrespectful to the parents. Didn't they
Speaker 1: starts my squad mates of a tune. It doesn't. It's
Speaker 1: really hard because getting the empathy. I'm starting to feel
Speaker 1: what they might they might think once they hear about this,
Speaker 1: and I care about what they think. I care, I
Speaker 1: care about them. I understand Mendoza's concerns. I also worried
Speaker 1: that describing the ugliest moments of these marines lives, including
Speaker 1: the moments of their violent deaths, could be disrespectful or profane,
Speaker 1: like an invasion of the privacy of the dead and
Speaker 1: of their family's grief. Just so you know, we contacted
Speaker 1: the families of the deceased Marines to let them know
Speaker 1: what was going to be in this podcast. Unfortunately, it
Speaker 1: comes down to this. If we want to show you
Speaker 1: the reality of war, we can't shield you from the
Speaker 1: most horrific moments. And for Mendoza, those moments remain just
Speaker 1: as vivid now as they were. Then. What does it
Speaker 1: feel like in your body when the flash has come back?
Speaker 1: Like I'm there? The best way described is every motion
Speaker 1: that you've ever felt, Just try to put that into
Speaker 1: one feeling like you're feeling all of that at the
Speaker 1: same time, if you can recall them. But one time
Speaker 1: you knew that you were in love, or the most
Speaker 1: scaredy you've ever been in your entire life, the most
Speaker 1: apprehensive you've ever been in your entire life, the most
Speaker 1: tired you've ever been in your entire life, all of that.
Speaker 1: Condense it down and feel it all at the same time.
Speaker 1: That's what I feel. And then doubt or you start
Speaker 1: wondering what you could have done different that what if?
Speaker 1: Now you start thinking why are you alive? Why am
Speaker 1: I alive? Mhm h m hm, And that leads that
Speaker 1: leads to other doors. So when that doubt creeps in
Speaker 1: and that set of what ifs comes up, what's the
Speaker 1: big what if? For you? This one big what if?
Speaker 1: We'll never shared this with a few people. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't think I can do it. I won't say
Speaker 1: it while you're recorded. There's the line, do you want
Speaker 1: to stop the recorder? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, stop it. M h,
Speaker 1: We'll be back after the break. M While the recorders off,
Speaker 1: I tell Mendoza why I decided to return to the
Speaker 1: story of Third Squad after a decade. I tell him
Speaker 1: I think we've done a poor job of talking about
Speaker 1: the war since nine eleven, and to me, the silence
Speaker 1: seems dangerous. We sit quietly for a few minutes, and
Speaker 1: then Mendoza says, okay, let's talk. Hey. I want to
Speaker 1: thank you for being willing to talk to us about
Speaker 1: any of this. I think that this requires a kind
Speaker 1: of courage that's actually harder to find and more rare
Speaker 1: than the kind of courage that you need to step
Speaker 1: into a minefield or go rush toward a firefight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty hard. It's a very hard thing to do
Speaker 1: for me. It's hard emotionally. It's hard to thinking about
Speaker 1: we just squad will say what they'll think of you?
Speaker 1: Will they change? Well, if it does, there's still a
Speaker 1: nothing I want to do for for my guys. So
Speaker 1: maybe even if they hate me for this, I'll still
Speaker 1: love them. He takes a few deep breaths, then he
Speaker 1: tells me about the day Dutcher died. So we overworked
Speaker 1: our sweepers to the point where they were exhausted. So
Speaker 1: when you're exhausted you and it's dressed. It's only so
Speaker 1: much he could take, so they needed rest, and so
Speaker 1: other people started sweeping m dutch Are. Being the guy
Speaker 1: that he was, it was happy to do it, even
Speaker 1: though and it was the most dangerous spot. It was
Speaker 1: almost guaranteed. It wasn't necessarily a matter of if it
Speaker 1: was more when when you would find that I d
Speaker 1: and be unlucky enough to have set it off. But
Speaker 1: he stepped up anyways, because he was just the most
Speaker 1: selfless guy to ever walk this earth my eyes, at
Speaker 1: least in our eyes. So I was always up front
Speaker 1: and I was choosing the routes that we would take.
Speaker 1: At this stage in the deployment, Mendoza usually walked point
Speaker 1: behind the sweeper. That job often fell on another third
Speaker 1: squad member, Jeffrey Lopez. We didn't always agree on the
Speaker 1: routes that we were going to take. But we didn't agree,
Speaker 1: we found and in between, I didn't argue. We just
Speaker 1: show something that we're both happy with. It wasn't so
Speaker 1: smooth when Mendoza worked with Dutcher. He and Dutcher were
Speaker 1: good friends, but they've been on a couple of patrols
Speaker 1: together as point and sweeper, and it hadn't gone entirely well.
Speaker 1: We kind of argued a little bit on which route
Speaker 1: to take, and so he was kind of mad at me.
Speaker 1: That was the mood between the two of them when
Speaker 1: they stepped out and patrol that day. I was running
Speaker 1: point and he was at the very front with the
Speaker 1: middle detector, and uh. We had a crossed a couple
Speaker 1: of canals, and then after we had crossed, we passed
Speaker 1: some trees and behind these trees was this old, abandoned
Speaker 1: compound and then I see a farmer. They're farming goats,
Speaker 1: and all I'm like, okay, you weren't there yesterday, but
Speaker 1: now you're farming. That should have been the first red flag.
Speaker 1: That's it's like almost an immediate tell, like the student
Speaker 1: is probably up to no good. So that's how that
Speaker 1: your head. Dutcher, Let's go over there and talk to
Speaker 1: this guy. It's like, okay, we entered this guy's field.
Speaker 1: I started arguing with them because I tell him like, hey,
Speaker 1: what you doing here? He's like, oh, farming. I was like,
Speaker 1: that's bullshit. What are you doing here? It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm farming. I was like, where the Taliban it. He's like,
Speaker 1: Nista the other band, there's no Taliban here all right?
Speaker 1: Where the bombs? That? Where the A D S? A
Speaker 1: pull much up to day. He's like, Nista, Nishta, there's
Speaker 1: no bombs here. I was like, bullshit, there's sucking. There's
Speaker 1: probably some A D S right there. Where are they?
Speaker 1: He's like, no, there's no bombs here. I was like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: then walk us right through there. He's like no, there's
Speaker 1: there's probably bombs there. It's like, okay, you fucking piece
Speaker 1: of ship. Mendoza had just caught him lying, and he
Speaker 1: says this should have been another red flag. He ordered
Speaker 1: the man to lead the squad through the field. He's
Speaker 1: like no. I was like, no, you're walking him through
Speaker 1: and sold Dutcher, Hey, that'tcher, follow this guy. He's gonna
Speaker 1: walk us through this area right here. That when we're
Speaker 1: making him walk through these A D rets like where
Speaker 1: we suspect there to be a a d S because
Speaker 1: he says there's none, but then he says there is.
Speaker 1: We're walking him through that and we start following this
Speaker 1: dude starts off right in front of us, right in
Speaker 1: front of Dutch Air. Now he starts walking faster and
Speaker 1: we're right behind him, and then he speeds up to
Speaker 1: the point where we start kind of playing catch up,
Speaker 1: kept following him. The most the obvious, fucking tell last
Speaker 1: red flag it should have been when he jumped over
Speaker 1: a fucking berm. It's a little it's a little area
Speaker 1: next to a wall. He steps over it very carefully.
Speaker 1: Dutcher follows, and that's the last thing I remember, rather
Speaker 1: than dust. I'm looking at Dutcher. He's running in front
Speaker 1: of me, and then the whole world turns brown and
Speaker 1: then black. The next thing I know when I got
Speaker 1: my hand on his on his flak and I'm pulling
Speaker 1: him out of this crater and he's just covered in dust.
Speaker 1: His leg is destroyed, it's got a hole on his pelvis,
Speaker 1: tinant hole, and everything's brown except for that whole what's
Speaker 1: black and it turns red bright red. Hm hm mmmm
Speaker 1: just a matter of seconds. Let's start working on him
Speaker 1: pressure on that wound, started playing tourni kids. I felt
Speaker 1: like an eternity before the medic got there. We start
Speaker 1: working on him, working, working, working, just putting it together
Speaker 1: as best we can, working on we know he's in pain, NICs,
Speaker 1: to try and look him in the eye, to talk
Speaker 1: to him as he always doing. M h m. Everything
Speaker 1: we could do, we're doing. M y okay, start telling
Speaker 1: me you're gonna make it. It's gonna be fine. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be fine. He's gonna be fine. I don't know how.
Speaker 1: We've just pull the picture of his mom and his
Speaker 1: brother and Rachel exolutely. Don't you're looking at the picture.
Speaker 1: That's a little what you're gonna make you man, You're
Speaker 1: gonna get home to him. We're fine, You'll be fine,
Speaker 1: You'll be fine. M hm. Scream at him, screaming his name.
Speaker 1: Just stay with stay with us, man, just stay with me.
Speaker 1: Dutch helicopter finally arrives. Let him up on the helicopter.
Speaker 1: We had a pulse, so we're like, we got him.
Speaker 1: He's gay, he's going home. We got him, hold his
Speaker 1: hand and told him by duchy, I love you, and
Speaker 1: then fly away. It was only after the bird took
Speaker 1: off that Mendoza realized he was wounded too. He took
Speaker 1: shrapnel to his leg and arm, and he was disoriented
Speaker 1: and felt like throwing up. The squad was worried enough
Speaker 1: that they wanted to medivac him, but Mendoza refused and
Speaker 1: on the way back get radio traffic. Dutcher's status has changed.
Speaker 1: He's gone from critical two heroes status. Ducher had died
Speaker 1: on the bird. He left behind his twin brother Tim,
Speaker 1: his fiance Rachel, and his mom Teresa. That's it, man,
Speaker 1: that's my word. If so, what's the what if? M
Speaker 1: If I would have shot the dude right then and
Speaker 1: there after every single fucking red flag, it's four times
Speaker 1: I should have killed him. What if I had just
Speaker 1: told Dutcher, I don't follow this guy, or Dutcher stop,
Speaker 1: Or if I hadn't been there, if I had when
Speaker 1: somebody else take point. There's plenty of what ifs, man,
Speaker 1: so many different ways that could have gone, but he
Speaker 1: went the wrong way. Those what ifs rattled around Mendoze
Speaker 1: his head after he got back to the States and
Speaker 1: through the rest of his time in the Marines. When
Speaker 1: he took the uniform off for the last time the
Speaker 1: what followed him to college. He was living the dream
Speaker 1: that he described me and sang in, but he felt
Speaker 1: painfully out of place outside the embrace of his marine family.
Speaker 1: The what ifs began to torture him. It was after
Speaker 1: that point I accepted that it was me. I did it.
Speaker 1: Mendoza didn't just take responsibility for Dutcher's death. He became
Speaker 1: convinced that he killed Dutcher. It was like my first
Speaker 1: year in college pretty much, and nobody got me. Man.
Speaker 1: That transition was hard, you know, going to school, being
Speaker 1: in the classroom. The classroom just felt totally totally alien
Speaker 1: to me. And so I was drinking a lot. I
Speaker 1: drink a lot, smoke a lot. And when night, you know,
Speaker 1: I just felt like I gave up, or actually I
Speaker 1: did give up. It was like, let's just put it
Speaker 1: all the way now, let's just put it all away.
Speaker 1: I remember I went outside because I don't want to
Speaker 1: make a mess inside the inside the apartment and my bread.
Speaker 1: But for some reason, I just called Fry with his
Speaker 1: pistol in his hand, Mendoza called his old squad leader. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: He answered the phone to like four in the morning.
Speaker 1: He was in Pittsburgh. Yeah, I told him I was
Speaker 1: feeling and it was all my fault that I did it,
Speaker 1: and he put the blame on himself and he said, no,
Speaker 1: I was a squad leader, I was the sergeant. I
Speaker 1: was in charge of that patrol. And yes, that got
Speaker 1: to me. It got to me. It made me. I
Speaker 1: realized that there are people who care because I was
Speaker 1: feeling the burden and here is Jared putting the burden
Speaker 1: on himself and it wasn't even him, but here he
Speaker 1: is trying to take that responsibility because he cares and
Speaker 1: he was listening. He actually listened. At the most crucial moment,
Speaker 1: Fry passed the test and Mendoza says that phone call
Speaker 1: saved his life. Do you still have the Brenna good?
Speaker 1: Have o'clock now? Oh my god, it's going on one
Speaker 1: am and Mendoza has to work in the morning. He's
Speaker 1: going to skip the gym, which means he might sleep
Speaker 1: until five. Do you think that you work at the
Speaker 1: fire station and you hustle, hustle, hustle, and try to
Speaker 1: do so much because you're trying to not so much
Speaker 1: payback in debts to society, but you're trying to make
Speaker 1: up for for these feelings of guilt that you have.
Speaker 1: Do you think there's a connection between those two things. Possibly,
Speaker 1: I haven't thought about it. I've thought about it like that.
Speaker 1: It seems there's a good chance. There's a chance that
Speaker 1: might be. It seems like you don't really let yourself
Speaker 1: slow down too much. Mhm. As we're packing up, Mendoza
Speaker 1: shows me something else he keeps on his shelf next
Speaker 1: to the photos of his dead friends. You've got three soldiers,
Speaker 1: three toy soldiers, green armament that you get into the
Speaker 1: giant bag. My mom gave him to me. She gave
Speaker 1: me just three, one for O'Brien, one for McDaniels, and
Speaker 1: one for Dutcher, one for each of the empty spaces
Speaker 1: in his soldier's heart. One of them's on watch, one
Speaker 1: was ready for attack, the other one is just standing by.
Speaker 1: So the idea is that they're all looking over, they're
Speaker 1: watching me, they're protecting. I'm not judging, We're just there.
Speaker 1: I'm just here to make sure that the I don't
Speaker 1: let him that next time. On third Squad, I joined
Speaker 1: to fucking stacked bodies, not in a crazy way, like
Speaker 1: does that make sense to like, not in a psycho
Speaker 1: way of saying that I don't even see him as people.
Speaker 1: I really don't the Taliban or African Talban. I've shot
Speaker 1: prairie dogs, like prairie dogs, like fucking ground rats that
Speaker 1: I've felt worse about shooting. I don't give a fuck.
Speaker 1: It's one two o'clock in the morning, my phone rings,
Speaker 1: it's it's Brian, and we're talking and everything's good. Then
Speaker 1: just all of a sudden, I hear it shoo shoo
Speaker 1: that that that that that look. I gotta go click.
Speaker 1: Third Squad is written and produced by Elliot Woods, Tommy Andres,
Speaker 1: and Maria Byrne. It's an Heirloom Media production distributed by
Speaker 1: iHeart Media funding support from the National Endowment for the
Speaker 1: Humanities in collaboration with the Center for Warren Society at
Speaker 1: San Diego State University. Original music by Mondo Boys, editing
Speaker 1: and sound designed by John Ward. Fact checking by Ben Kalin.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Scott Carrier, Marianne Andre, Ted Jenaway's, Caitlin Ash,
Speaker 1: Carrie Gracie, Kevin Connolly, and Lena Ferguson. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to see my photographs from Sangin and from our road trip,
Speaker 1: please visit Third squad dot com. You can find me
Speaker 1: on Instagram and Twitter at Elliott Woods. Before we go.
Speaker 1: If you're having thoughts about suicide or self harm, please
Speaker 1: don't wait to get help. Call the National Suicide Prevention
Speaker 1: Lifeline to talk to someone now one hundred to seven three,
Speaker 1: eight to five five