Speaker 1: Third Squad is a documentary podcast about war. Every episode
Speaker 1: contains strong language and descriptions of violence that may not
Speaker 1: be suitable for all listeners. I do remember when they
Speaker 1: gave us a briefing of like, yeah, we're going to
Speaker 1: sing in and they pulled out the pictures of fires
Speaker 1: of our PV that we were going to and there
Speaker 1: was sucking bullet holes all over the walls, and I
Speaker 1: was like, holy fuck, you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 1: if you ever thought this was a game, it fucking ain't.
Speaker 1: This is life, dude. This is where we're going, and
Speaker 1: there's no there's no backing out. He signed up for
Speaker 1: this ship. Let's go. I'm Elliott Woods. This is Third
Speaker 1: Squad Episode five, Nothing to Lose. Tommy and I are
Speaker 1: in South Dakota now to visit Third Squad veterans Brian
Speaker 1: Shearer and John Bollinger. We drove miles north from Houston
Speaker 1: across Pancake Flat, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska to get here,
Speaker 1: and it was a welcome change of scenery when the
Speaker 1: Black Hills erupted from the horizon just outside a rapid city. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: we were on the interstate, so there were a lot
Speaker 1: of billboards cluttering the view, including a lot of military
Speaker 1: recruiting billboards. There's another one, Marines Fight to Win, a
Speaker 1: billboard that says Marines fight to win in all capital letters.
Speaker 1: It's got a group of Marines on a firing line
Speaker 1: dressed in desert camouflage, looking down the barrel of their rifles.
Speaker 1: There hasn't been a draft since the Vietnam War. Today's
Speaker 1: military is known as the all volunteer Force, which means
Speaker 1: the military has to get people to enlist by choice.
Speaker 1: The easiest people to recruit are teenagers, and the military
Speaker 1: knows just how to lure them in with forty ft
Speaker 1: glossy billboards and commercials that look like video games, like
Speaker 1: this one from the late nineties, where a marine fights
Speaker 1: a dragon with a sword on a bridge made of lasers,
Speaker 1: a trial by fire. It is a wight of passage.
Speaker 1: The marketing is like a precision guided munition aimed directly
Speaker 1: at the most vulnerable part of the adolescent male psyche,
Speaker 1: the part that wants more than anything to become a
Speaker 1: real man. A few the proud the marine, but Brian
Speaker 1: Sheer he didn't need to be sold. He came to
Speaker 1: the recruiter with his mind made up, gung ho and
Speaker 1: ready to see the world beyond South Dakota. I didn't
Speaker 1: have anything to lose, right, you know, like not that
Speaker 1: that's a great way to out and look at look
Speaker 1: at life. But I wasn't married and have kids, like
Speaker 1: I've made a will. I gave my PlayStation to my
Speaker 1: brother like that was. That was like the extent of
Speaker 1: my fucking belongings. You know what I mean. You gotta
Speaker 1: be eighteen years old to sign your life over to
Speaker 1: the Middle Terry, but there's an exception with your parents signature.
Speaker 1: You can join at seventeen. It's like a permission slip
Speaker 1: for the most insane field trip imaginable. That's what Brian
Speaker 1: Shearer did with his parents permission. He committed himself to
Speaker 1: four years in the Marines before he was old enough
Speaker 1: to vote or buy a pack of cigarettes. He shipped
Speaker 1: off to boot camp a week after he graduated from
Speaker 1: high school in two thousand nine. Eventually he wound up
Speaker 1: in third Squad with John Bollinger, training at Camp Pendleton
Speaker 1: and deploying to Sangon in two thousand eleven. Shear grew
Speaker 1: up here in Rapid City. He's six ft tall with
Speaker 1: dark hair, that's almost always under a baseball cap, and
Speaker 1: he wears square toed cowboy boots that make him seem taller.
Speaker 1: When I was growing up, I was in the recruiting
Speaker 1: office all the time. It's been the same in the
Speaker 1: mall forever. And they've got Army and Navy and Air
Speaker 1: Force and all that ship and the Marines are tucked
Speaker 1: like way in the back. I was doing pull ups
Speaker 1: in the Marine recruiting office when I was like eight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you do like X amount of pull ups and you
Speaker 1: get a poster or some ship. I've had all the
Speaker 1: posters of like the dudes and the fucking grass all
Speaker 1: like cam be painted out and you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: just that kind of ship. John Bollinger was an eager
Speaker 1: recruit too. I wasn't really thinking. I just wanted to fight.
Speaker 1: That's what I wanted to do. I mean, plain and simple,
Speaker 1: Like I was joining the Marine Corps because I wanted
Speaker 1: to fight. And I didn't care if I was shocked, stabbed,
Speaker 1: blown up, freaking whatever, you know. I was just like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna fight. I'm gonna fucking do it. Bollinger, whose
Speaker 1: grandfather was a Marine, grew up about three miles away
Speaker 1: from Sheer and Cheyenne, Wyoming. The guys call him Bow.
Speaker 1: He's small and has a scruffy beard and smudged glasses,
Speaker 1: but his baggy clothes hid a chiseled frame. He was
Speaker 1: eighteen when he went to talk to the recruiter, so
Speaker 1: he didn't need to get his parents involved. And I
Speaker 1: signed a contract to be had a army ranger. And
Speaker 1: then see if this is where I sucked up. I
Speaker 1: talked to the Marine Corps recruiter. I was just I
Speaker 1: was actually went over talk ship to him and I
Speaker 1: was talking all this ship and he's like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: you can be in the army, but you know what,
Speaker 1: you have the Marine Corps. And I'm like what And
Speaker 1: he's like a lifetime of pride and I'm like I'm tough,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, I joined the Marine Corps. Like you know,
Speaker 1: you fell for that ship, fell for that ship. Shear
Speaker 1: and Bow are both thirty now. They're both married with
Speaker 1: two sons, and they both live in South Dakota. Shares
Speaker 1: back in his hometown Rapid City, and Bolinger lives about
Speaker 1: forty five minutes away in a smaller town called Spearfish.
Speaker 1: Tommy and I met up with the two of them
Speaker 1: at Bow's house one morning in mid March. The deployment
Speaker 1: brought these guys together like brothers, and for a while,
Speaker 1: after Bou moved to South Dakota, they saw at out
Speaker 1: of each other. They worked on wildland firefighting crews together
Speaker 1: along with another third squad veteran Taylor Moody, But then
Speaker 1: life got in the way. Shear kept the adrenaline up
Speaker 1: by getting a full time job with the Rapid City
Speaker 1: Fire Department. If there is a hell, it's sitting in
Speaker 1: a fucking cubicle. Bo developed a fascination with trees and
Speaker 1: became an apprentice arborist for a company called the tree
Speaker 1: Wise Men. On a day to day basis, I play
Speaker 1: the lorax as Bo and shearers families grew work in.
Speaker 1: Parenting didn't leave much time for socializing, even with old
Speaker 1: buddies from the core. By the time we meet up,
Speaker 1: it's been so long since they've seen each other that
Speaker 1: Bo has to give Sheer a tour of his house,
Speaker 1: which he's lived in for almost three years. Look at
Speaker 1: you moving on up? Yeah, nice man, We'll Congratsude's yeah,
Speaker 1: I can check out the new new crew we go to. Hey,
Speaker 1: now you gotta move. See we're not good friend where
Speaker 1: people left right, we're people with families that can say again.
Speaker 1: Sheer was Third Squads designated marksman or d M. He
Speaker 1: carried a special M sixteen rifle with the suppressor and
Speaker 1: scope called a Mark twelve, designed to take out enemies
Speaker 1: at long range. He grew up shooting and hunting and
Speaker 1: wanted to become a d M even before he joined
Speaker 1: the Core. I joined to fucking stacked bodies, Like I
Speaker 1: knew what I wanted to do. Not in a crazy way,
Speaker 1: like does that make sense to like, not in a
Speaker 1: psycho way of saying that, but like that was my
Speaker 1: perception of what the military was, and that was what
Speaker 1: I could do. Bo was Third Squads radio operator. It
Speaker 1: was his job to call in medevac helicopters whenever Third
Speaker 1: Squad Marines were critically wounded. It was also his job
Speaker 1: to call in fire support like air strikes and mortars
Speaker 1: whenever they got in trouble. It's like, hey, fires were
Speaker 1: in a gunfight. This is where I'm at. The enemies
Speaker 1: this far out in this direction or next to this building.
Speaker 1: Fucking get a gut on target, you know, like we
Speaker 1: need it now and there are different roles. Bow and
Speaker 1: Shearer developed unique perspectives on the war and on the killing.
Speaker 1: Sharer learned what the enemy looked like through a high
Speaker 1: powered scope. Bo learned to imagine the battlefield from the sky,
Speaker 1: broken into grid squares and dotted with rooftops, he could
Speaker 1: make entire buildings disappear along with the people in them.
Speaker 1: They performed these tasks in a fixed area of operations,
Speaker 1: or a O. That's the term used to describe the
Speaker 1: patch of ground that the peb Fires Marines were responsible
Speaker 1: for where almost all of Third squads missions took place.
Speaker 1: Even for someone like me who's been there, picturing the
Speaker 1: peb Fires AO is kind of tricky, and I want
Speaker 1: to get a clear sense of the scale and the
Speaker 1: important landmarks. So after we eat some breakfasts with Bose
Speaker 1: sons and his wife Hannah, I asked sharing Bow to
Speaker 1: draw maps for me. I can already tell that my
Speaker 1: maps like ship, I'm already drawn too big. Shears makes
Speaker 1: it in some blue for the river. You gotta get
Speaker 1: that river, dude. They don't draw the canals and the
Speaker 1: Mississippi and ship and blue. I'm gonna get lost. Third
Speaker 1: Squad had nicknames for the canals that splintered off from
Speaker 1: the Helmand River. They called the largest one. The Mississippi
Speaker 1: is a big main canal split off here I'll drive
Speaker 1: it was about waste on bowse map. The Helmon River
Speaker 1: dips down from the top right corner, which would be
Speaker 1: the northeast, and then it turns back up to the
Speaker 1: top left corner in a gentle curve. The Mississippi splits
Speaker 1: off from the Helmont and snakes down the middle of
Speaker 1: the page, dividing the AO and half. They also had
Speaker 1: nicknames for the fields, the clusters of houses, and the
Speaker 1: other terrain features in the a O ten years out
Speaker 1: from sang In. Those nicknames roll off sheer and bows
Speaker 1: tongues as if they were there yesterday, PM Parkway. That
Speaker 1: was fucking him our village. Come down to the six
Speaker 1: eleven up. Here's code is a near the bottom center
Speaker 1: bow draws a few little blocks surrounded by a big square.
Speaker 1: I'm doing shrink down fires, not to scale Bard of memory.
Speaker 1: This is patrol based fires. Bow draws the guard posts
Speaker 1: on each corner and a squiggly lined around all of
Speaker 1: it to mark the concertina wire on the outer perimeter.
Speaker 1: I think you had a pretty good map. I think
Speaker 1: you got a pretty good map. Looking at Bow's map,
Speaker 1: I'm blown away by how small the peb Fires AO
Speaker 1: appears mile and a half. I was I was going
Speaker 1: to go a little bit further than that. I bet
Speaker 1: it was the direction from fires. Yea roughly click is
Speaker 1: military jargon for a kilometer just shy of two thirds
Speaker 1: of a mile, so that means the AO was less
Speaker 1: than two miles across. I walked farther than that with
Speaker 1: my dog most days. It's crazy to think that such
Speaker 1: a small and sparsely populated area could generate so much bloodshed.
Speaker 1: And PP Fires wasn't an island unto itself. It was
Speaker 1: part of an archipelago of outposts up and down the
Speaker 1: Helmond River, each with its own a O, patrolled by
Speaker 1: a similar group of young marines and resetting every night
Speaker 1: with a new crop of I E. D S and
Speaker 1: Taliban fighters. But both says a lot of the time
Speaker 1: the pp Fires AO could seem pretty boring. Oh no,
Speaker 1: we just like mosy like seriously, that was what we did.
Speaker 1: Was just mosey around the AO, mosey and occasionally get
Speaker 1: into full blown gunfights. Mission was to conduct coin counterinsurgent operations,
Speaker 1: so that would be talking to people, getting information, this
Speaker 1: kind of thing. But our secondary mission, I would say
Speaker 1: to that, or even primary after we started getting hit
Speaker 1: was is to locate, close with and destroy the enemy.
Speaker 1: Every once in a while, they'd bring a marine from
Speaker 1: Psychological Operations who would blast music from allowed speaker to
Speaker 1: piss off the Taliban. Yeah, you're just playing like Britney
Speaker 1: Spears and Taylor Swift Hey fucking hated Taylor Swift Man.
Speaker 1: It's just patrol until you got into contact basically, and
Speaker 1: then find it out until it ended, and then walk
Speaker 1: home or go find more contacts. Uh. Well, it depended
Speaker 1: depending on where we were at for AMMO and where
Speaker 1: we were at in the a O and where we
Speaker 1: were at in the day. So if they break contact
Speaker 1: for lunchtime and we've still got you know, our AMMO,
Speaker 1: we're not going to go home. We're gonna go try
Speaker 1: and find a spot, set up an ambush and wait
Speaker 1: for him to come back out from their lunch. Because
Speaker 1: that's something the Taliban does, is like they stopped for lunch.
Speaker 1: They're like, You're like, oh man, it's fun out of
Speaker 1: his gunfight with you. But I am famished. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: gotta go prey and eat some bread. Can we meet
Speaker 1: up in an hour? Both starts drawing again, using a
Speaker 1: number two pencil to mark tree lines that the Taliban
Speaker 1: used to hide their movements and set up ambushes. They
Speaker 1: also use them for cover when planting I e. D s,
Speaker 1: like the ones that caused the mass casualties in June.
Speaker 1: So where where was the attack on the ninth? O'Brien
Speaker 1: was here? Here? This was O'Brien. Bow points to a
Speaker 1: spot just to the left of Peb Fires where he's
Speaker 1: drawn a tree line next to a small canal. That's
Speaker 1: where he found that the little chunk of O'Brien's leg,
Speaker 1: because it was in the canal they were on that
Speaker 1: they were on that canal just outside the perimeter of
Speaker 1: peb Fires. Bow marks three bridges across three canals. I
Speaker 1: remember waiting across those canals, but I never set foot
Speaker 1: on the bridges. No one did after June twelve, when
Speaker 1: Joshua McDaniels was blown in half after crossing the last
Speaker 1: of them, the first in a chain of explosions that day.
Speaker 1: Are we going to put all the down just? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Do you? I mean everybody got hit that day, Rich
Speaker 1: and Lopez fucking just start making excess, dude, it was
Speaker 1: every I mean, Roman was here. The paper around the
Speaker 1: bridges fills up with shears red exes, Leone Clemens, Taylor
Speaker 1: casualties of the four I E. D S that went
Speaker 1: off on June twelve. Frankie stepped on one single. I
Speaker 1: list the names of the wounded off to the side
Speaker 1: under the date of each attack to try to make
Speaker 1: an accurate record. Gonna run out of run out of
Speaker 1: room on that paper there, but Shearers running out of
Speaker 1: paper to his ex is also marked the Marines who
Speaker 1: suffered traumatic brain injuries that day. Did you get a
Speaker 1: TV at that? Yeah? I got, I got me. That
Speaker 1: was Alonso and me. You got to hit that day too,
Speaker 1: didn't you, Yeah, Brian Sheer basically everybody, basically pretty much
Speaker 1: everybody that was a bad day. Right there. When Sharon
Speaker 1: Bow finished tallying the dead and wounded, they're seventeen names
Speaker 1: on the June twelfth list. Then they started talking about June.
Speaker 1: Sheer starts making a new group of exs next to
Speaker 1: an area shaded green and labeled good Field six more names.
Speaker 1: Each one of these exes marks a friend and after
Speaker 1: those three days in June, the war became personal. Everybody
Speaker 1: was the enemy, and therefore I want to destroy my
Speaker 1: enemy because I want to stay alive. I want to
Speaker 1: kill everybody. Sharing bo, tell me the higher ups relax
Speaker 1: the rules of engagement or r o ees basically how
Speaker 1: much force they were allowed to use whenever they got
Speaker 1: into a fight. Okay, so are r o e s.
Speaker 1: We're fucking terrible when we first got there. Tell people
Speaker 1: what our rules of engagement are? Rules of engagement A
Speaker 1: terrible pretty much. If we weren't getting shot, we couldn't
Speaker 1: do ship. So we were getting ambushed a lot. We
Speaker 1: were getting a lot of I D s and everything
Speaker 1: like that. And after after June, it kind of became
Speaker 1: like the Wild West, because you know, I take shitty
Speaker 1: things to change things. After the twelve and and the nine,
Speaker 1: there were no r o e s. The r o
Speaker 1: e s were two. Our discretion and hurting people do
Speaker 1: hurtful ship. And hurtful ship is what we did, what
Speaker 1: we really did. We'll be back after the brink. Good morning,
Speaker 1: Good morning man, I got you some donuts, you got
Speaker 1: chocolate and like some ways for speed Crean style. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: I met up with Bow and Sheer together, but I
Speaker 1: also spent time with each of them alone. Today I'm
Speaker 1: hanging out with Sheer. We're both hunters, so I asked
Speaker 1: him if we can go out together one morning before dawn.
Speaker 1: He picks me up in his well worn Nissan Frontier
Speaker 1: and we drive up into the Black Hills. So just
Speaker 1: give me a quick couple sentences of rundown of what
Speaker 1: we're gonna do this morning. Well, if the fucking weather
Speaker 1: would have been right, we were gonna be driving through
Speaker 1: some fresh snow looking for cat tracks and then setting
Speaker 1: up and doing some stands and haunting some mountain lions.
Speaker 1: But it's sucking dry. There's a nicy crust on top
Speaker 1: of the last patches of snow, so we're probably scaring
Speaker 1: every animal within earshot into the next county. Goddamn almost
Speaker 1: sapience Locker Around the last time Shear and I went hiking,
Speaker 1: he was also dressed in camo and carrying a rifle
Speaker 1: with a big scope. Dude, I love being out here
Speaker 1: and getting behind behind a gun. You know, it just
Speaker 1: feels good. DoD never mind you at all or connect
Speaker 1: to at all too p in the Marine Corps or
Speaker 1: being in Afghanistan in any way does it feel familiar
Speaker 1: at all? You know, it's like really weird, like but
Speaker 1: people like stack rocks um for fun or some ship.
Speaker 1: I don't know. But sometimes you'll be walking in there,
Speaker 1: all the woods and you just see like stack rocks,
Speaker 1: like like what they used to do over you fucking singing,
Speaker 1: and you're like, Jesus, fun drives, Why why did they
Speaker 1: stack rocks and sang it? Well? That because that was
Speaker 1: like an indication to them where they're e d s
Speaker 1: or an indication of like the locals and themselves are like, hey,
Speaker 1: this area has how you d s in it. It
Speaker 1: turns out Afghanistans never very far away. Hunting predators like
Speaker 1: mountain lions is a whole different game than hunting prey
Speaker 1: animals like deer and elk that are all flighting, no fighting.
Speaker 1: Because I do love on cats though, because you're not
Speaker 1: you're not top dog, you know what I mean. Like,
Speaker 1: so coming out by yourself and hunting something that could
Speaker 1: just as easily on you, I love it. I love it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Shearer tries to call in a mountain line with an
Speaker 1: electronic call that sounds like a porcupine, kind of like
Speaker 1: blasting Taylor Swift to lure in the Taliban, but he
Speaker 1: doesn't find any takers, so he packs up his gear
Speaker 1: and we hiked back down to the truck. Is this
Speaker 1: your high school? Is high score here, Stevens. I got
Speaker 1: into a lot of trouble here back in Rapid City.
Speaker 1: Shear gives us a tour of his hometown. Um, kind
Speaker 1: of the main man artery through town. Actually our our
Speaker 1: downtown fire station. Is that one right there? You can
Speaker 1: see the training tower kind of great or the tans
Speaker 1: are right Yeah, that's where I was, um all last year.
Speaker 1: Oh is this a dirt track? Yeah, this is dirt tracks.
Speaker 1: So I saw it back there on the corner, right
Speaker 1: right on the right there near the fire station. He
Speaker 1: pointed out that there's a vet center there too that
Speaker 1: says Readjustment and Counseling Services. I don't know, never kind
Speaker 1: anywhere near that place. I don't do anything like that,
Speaker 1: and I never have. I had to. I had a
Speaker 1: really good transition out, man. Um, there's just the whole
Speaker 1: sit around in a circle and fucking kumbayah like it
Speaker 1: just you know, it works for some people, man, it
Speaker 1: really does. But I find that everyone just deals with
Speaker 1: their own ship, their own way. Like my way of
Speaker 1: dealing with stuff is not to like talk about it.
Speaker 1: Shear's house is tucked at the end of a quiet street.
Speaker 1: His wife, Courtney, is at work when we show up,
Speaker 1: but his mom's here, very nice to meet you. She's
Speaker 1: going to keep an eye on six year old Bow
Speaker 1: and three year old Rent while we visit with Bryant's.
Speaker 1: Looks like the boys have been kind of hard on
Speaker 1: the floors. Okay, so I the house is in the
Speaker 1: midst of a major remodel. So the place is totally gutted,
Speaker 1: torn down to the studs. In some parts big remodel,
Speaker 1: there was a big like load bearing wall. Here you
Speaker 1: can actually actually see you can see where the wall was.
Speaker 1: There's lots of light from a big picture window that
Speaker 1: looks out on the Black Hills to the west, where
Speaker 1: Black Elk Peak towers over the horizon. That's the highest
Speaker 1: point east of the rockies. Next to the window, there's
Speaker 1: a wide table that's spilling over with Courtney's impressive plant collection.
Speaker 1: Let me Shears Pride enjoys his garage, which he calls
Speaker 1: his shop. This is where he hangs trophies from his
Speaker 1: hunts and where he's rebuilding an old muscle car. So
Speaker 1: this is a seventy eight Camaro and it's I don't
Speaker 1: know what, six different colors, and I love it and
Speaker 1: I love it for that because it looks like ship.
Speaker 1: The Camaro is almost ready for the dirt track down
Speaker 1: the street where he plans to race it his old
Speaker 1: hunting trout. It's parked in here too. I love it.
Speaker 1: This is my girl. I think I actually got it
Speaker 1: after we were right after we got back. I think
Speaker 1: this is what some of my deployment money went to,
Speaker 1: what little of it there was. The truck's got a
Speaker 1: special license plate with a purple heart metal on one
Speaker 1: side and the words combat wounded tell us about the
Speaker 1: license plate. So I'm not I'm not that I don't
Speaker 1: like like the recognition of like, oh I got a
Speaker 1: purple heart plate, that's who I am. You know that's
Speaker 1: not what it is. Um. This truck costs like seventy
Speaker 1: bucks to register, and that ship's like fifteen. So it
Speaker 1: really it really came down to that. You just sit
Speaker 1: comfortably and I'll adjust to you. Down in Sharer's basement,
Speaker 1: we pop a couple of bush lights and sit down
Speaker 1: to talk about Sangin and what he's been up to
Speaker 1: for the last decade. Kick your feet up, Tommy Ques
Speaker 1: up some clips from the first time I interviewed shere
Speaker 1: back at Pepe Fires when he was twenty years old.
Speaker 1: What do you think about the Taliban in terms of
Speaker 1: them as fighters and what they're trying to do? The
Speaker 1: Taliban or cowards um they hide among the population and
Speaker 1: they use innocent civilians as pretty much shields and buffers
Speaker 1: so that we can't get to them. They know are
Speaker 1: are we'se. They know what we can and can't do,
Speaker 1: and they use that to their advantage and our disadvantage.
Speaker 1: And they're just their cowards. Are they as more sophisticated
Speaker 1: than you thought they would be. They're good at what
Speaker 1: they do. They know how to emplace their ideas, they
Speaker 1: know how to attack from multiple positions, and they're really
Speaker 1: able to maneuver on you, but mainly because they can
Speaker 1: blended him with the populace and they, I mean, they've
Speaker 1: been fighting forever, so wouldn't it's nothing you wouldn't expect.
Speaker 1: I sound like a kid in that in that recording. Man,
Speaker 1: don't I sound like you were a kid? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: guess I was. Shearer has all grown up now, he's
Speaker 1: thirty years old, with the wife and children, a good
Speaker 1: job in a home of his own. He's come a
Speaker 1: long way from the kid who had to get his
Speaker 1: parents permission to join the Marines. So when you signed
Speaker 1: your enlistment paperwork, we were already in the midst of
Speaker 1: two wars, we were already interacting, we were already in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: What did you think the possibilities were for you getting deployed?
Speaker 1: Of course I knew we were in wars at the time.
Speaker 1: I mean as much as like any high school kid
Speaker 1: really and knows and like cares, you know, But I
Speaker 1: knew the possibility was there. The possibility became an inevitability
Speaker 1: almost as soon as Sheer finished recruit training and got
Speaker 1: to his new unit. I do remember when they gave
Speaker 1: us a briefing of like, yeah, we're going to sing
Speaker 1: in and they pulled out the pictures of fires of
Speaker 1: our PV that we were going to and there was
Speaker 1: sucking bullet holes all over the walls, and I was like,
Speaker 1: holy fuck, you know what I mean, Like, if you
Speaker 1: ever thought this was a game, it fucking ain't. This
Speaker 1: is this is life, dude, This is where we're going,
Speaker 1: and there's no backing out. You signed up for this ship,
Speaker 1: let's go. I guess that's That's kind of funny thing, though,
Speaker 1: is like did you really sign up for that? Like
Speaker 1: you signed up to be willing to go fight, but
Speaker 1: you didn't necessarily sign up to be willing to go
Speaker 1: to Sangin. Like none of us could have found sang
Speaker 1: In or Helman Province on a map when we were
Speaker 1: nineteen or eighteen until the orders came and the briefings came. So,
Speaker 1: I guess one of the things I'm trying to understand
Speaker 1: in all of this is like that mentality of the
Speaker 1: recruit versus the mentality of someone who's actually got the
Speaker 1: orders to go, Like walk me through the process of
Speaker 1: like you thinking through who's the enemy? Where are we going?
Speaker 1: What's it going to be? Like what is this war
Speaker 1: we're in? Etcetera. Yeah, I mean, so I I have
Speaker 1: a very small scope of understanding of like the political
Speaker 1: motivations and ship of war. Right Like I'm just a grunt,
Speaker 1: Like I go where the funk I'm told big picture
Speaker 1: ship is beyond even what I give a funk about.
Speaker 1: To be completely honest with you, the thought of going
Speaker 1: over there was I knew what I signed up for,
Speaker 1: man and I and it was coming to fruition. You know,
Speaker 1: in life, you make fucking decisions and then they have results.
Speaker 1: And that was my decision that I've knew and I
Speaker 1: wanted to do my entire life, and the results were coming,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I'm not trying to sound
Speaker 1: like something like fucking gung ho cowboy or anything like that,
Speaker 1: but I just I was just like, all right, when
Speaker 1: you're a soldier or a marine at war, narrowing the
Speaker 1: focus isn't just normal. It can be necessary for survival.
Speaker 1: Worrying about the politics can be a fatal distraction from
Speaker 1: the mission. But for Third Squad, there was a very
Speaker 1: good reason to wonder about the big picture. It came
Speaker 1: on May second, two thousand eleven, in the form of
Speaker 1: a late night announcement from the White House about a
Speaker 1: special Operations raid in Pakistan. Good evening tonight, I can
Speaker 1: report to the American people and to the world, but
Speaker 1: the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama
Speaker 1: bin Laden, the leader of al Qaida. Back in the US,
Speaker 1: people poured out in the streets to celebrate the Laden's death,
Speaker 1: but third Squad's response was much different. I think we
Speaker 1: would like come off of a night patrol or some ship.
Speaker 1: And I remember we were walking in front of this
Speaker 1: building and a command that had gone off. Somebody had
Speaker 1: commanded debt an I E D that they had found
Speaker 1: somewhere in the AO. That means marines were safely detonating
Speaker 1: an I E D. They discovered. And I remember the
Speaker 1: cloud vividly looked like a fucking middle finger, like in
Speaker 1: the sky. Dude, like a middle finger in the sky.
Speaker 1: So I'm looking at this cloud that had just gone off,
Speaker 1: and uh, We're walking in front of this compound and
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, hey, by the way, Osama bin Laden
Speaker 1: got killed, and I was just like, oh cool, can
Speaker 1: we go home? Like no, It's like, well, I didn't figger,
Speaker 1: and I don't care. There's some history here that will
Speaker 1: help you understand shares nonplused reaction to the death of
Speaker 1: America's number one target in the War on Terror. Osama
Speaker 1: Bin Laden was the reason the US invaded Afghanistan in
Speaker 1: the first place, but his death didn't really change anything
Speaker 1: for the Marines on the ground and Sangin because by
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, the war that most troops were fighting
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan didn't really have anything to do with Bin
Speaker 1: Laden or al Qaeda, and it hadn't for a long time,
Speaker 1: at least not directly been. Laden wasn't even from Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: and he hadn't been there since two thousand one, when
Speaker 1: the US invasion Force and it's Afghan militia allies chased
Speaker 1: him and most of his Al Qaeda fighters across the
Speaker 1: border into Pakistan. In the face of today's new threat,
Speaker 1: the only way to pursue peace is to pursue those
Speaker 1: who threatened it. We did not ask for this mission,
Speaker 1: but we will fulfill it. Then, Laden was from Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 1: like fifteen of the nineteen September eleventh hijackers, and he
Speaker 1: was only in Afghanistan before nine eleven because he really
Speaker 1: had nowhere else to go. He was being hunted by
Speaker 1: intelligence agencies all over the world after masterminding terrorist attacks
Speaker 1: in the nineteen nineties, including a pair of bombings of
Speaker 1: American embassies in two bombs exploded almost simultaneously today at
Speaker 1: the U s embassies in the East African nations of
Speaker 1: Kenya and Tanzania. At the time, Afghanistan was ruled by
Speaker 1: the Taliban, a brutal Islamist movement that came to power
Speaker 1: in ninety six at the tail end of a vicious
Speaker 1: civil war. Afghanistan's new rulers are called the Taliban, and
Speaker 1: they begun to enforce a strict Islamic social code. Of
Speaker 1: these are Afghanistan's new soldiers of God, praying, they say,
Speaker 1: for piece of stability in a country that's known only
Speaker 1: conflict for nearly two decades. Then Lunden's terrorist activities didn't
Speaker 1: bother the Taliban. They welcomed him when no one else would.
Speaker 1: That's the short version of how bin Laden wound up
Speaker 1: planning the nine eleven attacks from Afghanistan, and it's why
Speaker 1: President Bush said he decided to attack Afghanistan on October seventh,
Speaker 1: two thousand one, to kill or capture Bin Laden and
Speaker 1: as many Al Qaeda fighters as possible. On my orders,
Speaker 1: the United States military has begun strikes against Al Qaeda
Speaker 1: terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan. Overthrowing the Taliban regime was not the objective
Speaker 1: of the US invasion that followed, but the Bush administration
Speaker 1: came up empty handed in the hunt for bin Laden
Speaker 1: and wanted to show that it could avenge nine eleven.
Speaker 1: The Taliban were low hanging fruit state and nablers of
Speaker 1: terrorism who were perfect Islamist targets of opportunity. So the
Speaker 1: US helped Afghan militias drive the Taliban from power. It
Speaker 1: only took about two months. By the middle of December
Speaker 1: two thousand one, the Taliban had all but vanished for
Speaker 1: most of the country. The people of Cobble have been
Speaker 1: liberated from a biggot fit regime. Look could look someone
Speaker 1: up for anything, from criticizing its authority to failing to
Speaker 1: grow a long enough bit. Needless to say, gratifying to
Speaker 1: see the Taliban fleeing and the people of Afghanistan getting
Speaker 1: their country back. The Taliban's defeat was an illusion. They
Speaker 1: faded into the countryside and slipped across the border, but
Speaker 1: they started to regroup just as the Bush administration turned
Speaker 1: its focus to a rock. By two thousand nine, when
Speaker 1: I first traveled to Afghanistan, the Taliban were several years
Speaker 1: into a comeback that caught the Americans and their allies
Speaker 1: completely off guard. And to make matters worse, Afghanistan's own
Speaker 1: ragtag security forces were barely capable of protecting President Hamid
Speaker 1: Karzai and Kabul let alone, taking the fight to the
Speaker 1: Taliban and the hinter lands. Faced with the prospect of
Speaker 1: Afghanistan's collapse, which could mean the return of the Taliban
Speaker 1: and the return of Al Qaeda training camps, a new
Speaker 1: commander in chief, President Barack Obama, decided to order the
Speaker 1: Afghanistan Search. Without a new strategy and decisive action, our
Speaker 1: military commanders warned that we could face a resurgent Al
Speaker 1: Qaida and a Taliban taking over large parts of Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: For this reason and one of the most difficult decisions
Speaker 1: that I've made as president, I ordered an additional thirty
Speaker 1: thousand American troops into Afghanistan. Now it was Obama's war,
Speaker 1: and it was almost like a totally different war than
Speaker 1: the one George Bush launched against al Qaeda back in
Speaker 1: two thousand one. As far as Third Squad was concerned,
Speaker 1: their war was all about the Taliban. So when bin
Speaker 1: Laden got killed, it was just another headline from a
Speaker 1: far away world. They all kind of lead Osama bin
Speaker 1: Lodging is dead, killed by US Navy seals at his
Speaker 1: hideout in Pakistan. Was killed by a shot to the head,
Speaker 1: another to the chest. The world is safer, it was
Speaker 1: a better place because of the death of Osama bin Laden.
Speaker 1: Bin Laden has been dead for a decade. When Shear
Speaker 1: and I are talking at his home in Rapid City,
Speaker 1: now Joe Biden's in the White House, and he says
Speaker 1: he's going to finish what Trump started when he negotiated
Speaker 1: a peace deal with the Taliban and pledged to withdraw
Speaker 1: American troops from Afghanistan. At this point, Biden still hasn't
Speaker 1: announced the final withdrawal date, but everybody knows it's coming,
Speaker 1: and a lot of veterans are starting to ask tough
Speaker 1: questions about what they did in the war. Others like Shearer,
Speaker 1: are content to leave it all in the past, like
Speaker 1: big picture, you just a guys on the ground, Like
Speaker 1: I didn't give a fuck, you know what I mean. Like,
Speaker 1: if I'm gonna be honest, I didn't give a funk
Speaker 1: why we were there. We were there because we were
Speaker 1: disrupting the enemy movement of you know, heroin and guns
Speaker 1: and ship down into Like I don't know, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like we were just there for each other.
Speaker 1: You know. I don't like to look at it as
Speaker 1: like a going blindly without question because that's not what
Speaker 1: it is. But it's like that's where the governments sending me.
Speaker 1: Obviously we're needed here, so we're gonna go do our
Speaker 1: job here, whatever we can do on our level to
Speaker 1: make the bigger picture work. Um Now, what that big
Speaker 1: picture ultimately ends up being is out of my fucking
Speaker 1: pay grade, you know what I mean? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: this is this is the ship that has been keeping
Speaker 1: me awake at night for a really fucking long time. Now,
Speaker 1: that willingness to serve, literally, that willingness to die or
Speaker 1: to kill to protect your country, to serve your country,
Speaker 1: is something really really powerful and really important. And for me,
Speaker 1: where I get frustrated is the idea that maybe people
Speaker 1: would take that willingness for granted and use it for
Speaker 1: reasons that weren't good. I don't know. I don't like
Speaker 1: to let ship like that like keep me awake and stuff.
Speaker 1: Who gives a funk about the large scale ship we're
Speaker 1: pv fires. You know, it's really easy for me to
Speaker 1: understand why we went into Afghanistan. That's where the attacks
Speaker 1: were planned on nine eleven, That's where Bin Laden was,
Speaker 1: That's where the training camps were. That makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense. It always has made sense. I think it
Speaker 1: makes sense to pretty much everybody. By the time you
Speaker 1: guys got there, it was almost like a totally different war.
Speaker 1: And so for a long time, I've been trying to
Speaker 1: understand how do we get from that point hunting and
Speaker 1: killing bin Laden to the point where there's a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people in the country. A hundred thousand just people
Speaker 1: in un American uniform, not including all the other foreign forces,
Speaker 1: plus all the contractors and all that stuff. And I
Speaker 1: guess like, at the end of the day, it's a
Speaker 1: civilian led military. It's politicians who send people to war.
Speaker 1: It's not their battalion commanders or division commanders. It's people
Speaker 1: who are voted into office. And I feel like the
Speaker 1: decision to send people to die should be a decision
Speaker 1: that's made with extreme care and concern. So, like I said,
Speaker 1: I feel like it's been my job to connect those
Speaker 1: two experiences, the front line experience and the big picture experience.
Speaker 1: But I don't fault people like you at all for
Speaker 1: saying I just want this to be behind me. I
Speaker 1: don't want to think about all that ship. No, I
Speaker 1: mean I appreciate that, and I mean, I think that
Speaker 1: people should have to answer for like, why the funk
Speaker 1: are we still doing this? You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Because you know it ain't these motherfucker's kids that are
Speaker 1: out there on the front lines and now they're fucking
Speaker 1: on their yachts and ship. Sure, maybe untroubled by the
Speaker 1: messy politics that mired the U. S and Afghanistan, but
Speaker 1: to be fair, he's equally uninterested in the Aliban's reasons
Speaker 1: for fighting. I asked you back then, what do you
Speaker 1: think that Taliban are fighting for? All of you basically
Speaker 1: said drugs and something like that, And is that still
Speaker 1: your opinion? Do you still think that's what they were
Speaker 1: fighting for? To be honest, I don't even care. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean not to like dodge your question, but like,
Speaker 1: I don't care what they're fighting for. Really, they're wrong,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. What if they were fighting because there
Speaker 1: were marines there? Like what if it was that simple?
Speaker 1: Like an Afghan read don basically, like what if they
Speaker 1: were fighting just because we were there? That's what I
Speaker 1: always asked myself. Would they still have been fighting if
Speaker 1: we weren't there? I mean, the only reason that we
Speaker 1: were fighting in that spot is because that's where we
Speaker 1: ended up. I mean, they'd still be doing their fucking
Speaker 1: jihad ship in the country. We just happened to be
Speaker 1: dooking it out and saying because that's where we were at,
Speaker 1: they'd be fighting their fucking war wherever it was. The
Speaker 1: Taliban had reasons to fight foreign troops that went beyond
Speaker 1: jihad or holy war in their own minds. They've been
Speaker 1: the rightful rulers of Afghanistan for five years, and they
Speaker 1: never accepted the government that the US and NATO helped
Speaker 1: installed by force in Kabul, which was led by some
Speaker 1: of their most bitter enemies from the Afghan Civil War.
Speaker 1: Hellman Province, where Sangin is, was the epicenter of the
Speaker 1: Afghan opium poppy industry, which generated billions for the Taliban's
Speaker 1: war chest. So it makes sense to me that they
Speaker 1: were willing to fight to the last man to hold
Speaker 1: onto it. It also makes sense that foreign troops who
Speaker 1: were sent there fought for their own lives with everything
Speaker 1: they had. What makes a lot less sense is how
Speaker 1: foreign troops wound up in places like sang In in
Speaker 1: the first place, and why they stayed for so long
Speaker 1: at such an extraordinary cost. Why a seemingly clear mission
Speaker 1: to capture or kill Bin Laden morphed into a two
Speaker 1: trillion dollar nation building fit and an all out war
Speaker 1: against the Taliban, who, terrible as they were, never attacked
Speaker 1: the US. That's why I have a hard time justifying
Speaker 1: the killing and the dying and the bigger picture. But
Speaker 1: that's just me. Share takes a different view. I don't
Speaker 1: even see him as people. I really don't, the Taliban
Speaker 1: or Afghan Taliban. The Taliban, No, no, no, man, There's
Speaker 1: there's some Afghans that, dude. Afghans are just in a
Speaker 1: hard spot. They're just in a hard fucking spot. Man.
Speaker 1: But if Taliban is shooting out of a house, like
Speaker 1: the house is coming down, fucking house, gotta go right.
Speaker 1: Like I'm a big hunter, you know. And I'm not
Speaker 1: saying this to sound like any sort of you know,
Speaker 1: badass or like just I don't care, but like I've
Speaker 1: shot prairie dogs, like prairie dogs, like fucking ground rats
Speaker 1: that I've felt worse about shooting. I don't give a fuck.
Speaker 1: There's that there's that old like, oh, what do you
Speaker 1: feel when he kills somebody or re coil like that joke.
Speaker 1: You've heard that joke. I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 1: how you can just like disconnect like that, Like you
Speaker 1: would think that act of killing a person is a
Speaker 1: big deal, but it's it's not. I don't care. We'll
Speaker 1: be back after the break. Hm. I don't know how
Speaker 1: many people share killed in Afghanistan, and I don't really
Speaker 1: care to know. What I do know is that a
Speaker 1: few years before Third Squad got to Sangin, I was
Speaker 1: carrying a loaded rifle in a rock, and I was
Speaker 1: ready and willing to kill anyone who threatened me and
Speaker 1: my friends. I feel lucky that I never had to
Speaker 1: pull the trigger, but I have no idea how i'd
Speaker 1: feel now if I had taken a life. You never
Speaker 1: know until you do. Some people take the killing hard,
Speaker 1: even when they have to do it to save their
Speaker 1: own life. Others are able to kill without regret in
Speaker 1: the right setting, like in a war in a place
Speaker 1: like Sangin, and as terrifying as it may sound, both
Speaker 1: reactions are normal. The ways people live with the moral
Speaker 1: quandaries and trauma of war are as varied as the survivors.
Speaker 1: Even back in Sangin, when Sheer was only twenty he
Speaker 1: already had a sense that he'd come out more or
Speaker 1: less all right. Do you think that the full weight
Speaker 1: of everything that you've seen an experience over here has
Speaker 1: said in yet, I don't know what it's like when
Speaker 1: you come back from combat. I had no idea, So
Speaker 1: I think I think everything. I think. I'll be good.
Speaker 1: I'll be I'll be okay when we get back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you just kind of accept it and move
Speaker 1: on getting to know Sar again here in Rapid City.
Speaker 1: It seems like his predictions were accurate. I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm pretty fortunate in the respect that I don't get flashbacks,
Speaker 1: like nightmares or anything like that. I would almost go
Speaker 1: as far as to say, I'm like pretty on I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna say leaving it behind. That wouldn't be the
Speaker 1: right thing to say, but like, I don't dwell on it,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I have so much in
Speaker 1: my life right now that is so much good. That
Speaker 1: was a chapter of my life, and I am on
Speaker 1: new chapters. That makes sense. Not that you can't go
Speaker 1: back in the book, not that you can't flip some
Speaker 1: pages back and reread some ship. And it's not like
Speaker 1: you forgot it, not at all. You could never forget
Speaker 1: it if I tried, dude, like I could possibly. In
Speaker 1: my mind right now, I can picture like every rock
Speaker 1: and stick and bush and tree and building in that ao,
Speaker 1: like I can remember every fucking detail. The details of
Speaker 1: September eleven, the day Dutcher died, are especially sharp. So
Speaker 1: we sharees memory of their friendship and of how it
Speaker 1: felt to lose him. Dutch Man, he was he was
Speaker 1: just a fucking goof dude. Like the dude was just
Speaker 1: a goof bomb. Oh man, he was a good guy
Speaker 1: man like he like almost he was like so so
Speaker 1: good that he didn't belong there, like like I don't
Speaker 1: even know how he ended up in the infantry anyways.
Speaker 1: I think what affected me most about Dutch I mean,
Speaker 1: aside from losing a brother obviously, was we were so
Speaker 1: fucking close, dude, We were so close to making it out,
Speaker 1: and uh we kind of had a good run there
Speaker 1: where nobody got hit. And then just like sudden like that,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Another dust cloud, another deafening crack,
Speaker 1: another friend on the ground bleeding out. Sure had a
Speaker 1: trauma bag full of medical supplies he wanted to rush
Speaker 1: in to help Dutcher. But Mendoza in. Another squad member,
Speaker 1: David Ortega, got there first, along with the corman who
Speaker 1: replaced Doc for it. I wanted to go in so bad,
Speaker 1: but I knew that I couldn't because if there if
Speaker 1: something else went off, I was it right, Like if
Speaker 1: if another I D goes off, I'm all that there
Speaker 1: is as far as I mean, everybody has like tourniquets
Speaker 1: and ship. But like I had the next trauma bag,
Speaker 1: and I just remember feeling like so helpless sitting at
Speaker 1: that wall watching them all in the courtyard, and then
Speaker 1: they pulled him out and we were still working on
Speaker 1: them in this field waiting for the Kasa back. Yeah. Man,
Speaker 1: we were just dumping our bags of ship, trying to
Speaker 1: stuff him and just pretty much just trying to patch
Speaker 1: up anything we anything we could with turn of kids
Speaker 1: and quick Cloud and all that kind of ship. And
Speaker 1: I thought he was gonna be good. I thought, if
Speaker 1: there was anybody, I thought that he was going to
Speaker 1: be the one that I was able to make it
Speaker 1: out of that based on the injuries that he had
Speaker 1: been just based on the injuries, like he wasn't like
Speaker 1: an immediate ampute or anything like that. It was like
Speaker 1: all internal, so it wasn't as visual as what a
Speaker 1: lot of the other ones were to the same effective trauma.
Speaker 1: And man, we dumped our ship, like just working on him,
Speaker 1: and and then it just wasn't wasn't enough. I guess
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes later we got a hero. Fuck man.
Speaker 1: We were like sitting there and I was like, fuck
Speaker 1: fuck yeah. The gruesome things Sheer witnessed and survived and
Speaker 1: sang and disturbed his sleep for a while after he
Speaker 1: came home. When I got back, I had like the
Speaker 1: nightmares and like a real it was like a movie
Speaker 1: reel of like fucked up shit. You know, It's like
Speaker 1: fucked up scene after fucked up scene after fucked up scene.
Speaker 1: Courtney used to call it like PTS sleep. You know,
Speaker 1: I'd be like fucking cussing and fighting and ship in
Speaker 1: my sleep. But man, it's yeah. And I don't know
Speaker 1: when that went away, but it did. These days, Sheer
Speaker 1: sleeps fine. The nightmares are gone. Bits of debris that
Speaker 1: embedded in his skin from the June twelfth explosions still
Speaker 1: work their way out from time to time, but there's
Speaker 1: no trace of the abrasions that he says made it
Speaker 1: look like someone to a sandblaster to the side of
Speaker 1: his face. Aside from hearing loss and an annoying ringing
Speaker 1: in his right ear called tindis, he says he's healed
Speaker 1: from the war. He's busy with his life back home,
Speaker 1: not stuck in Sangin. We got a lot of people
Speaker 1: that depend on me, people upstairs right now that that
Speaker 1: depends on me to be there. And I got a
Speaker 1: lot of things going for me that I can't just
Speaker 1: I can't be stuck, you know, trying to watch my
Speaker 1: kids grow up, not watch a bunch of fucked up
Speaker 1: ship that I've seen ten years ago. My conversations with
Speaker 1: four IT and Mendoza about Survivors Guild are still burning
Speaker 1: in my mind. While we're talking, I tell Sheer about
Speaker 1: Mendoza's extreme feelings of responsibility for Dutcher's death. He literally said,
Speaker 1: I killed Dutcher. No, that's that is not correct. You
Speaker 1: know who killed Dutcher was the fucking Taliban. To hear
Speaker 1: him say that like that, it it breaks my heart, man,
Speaker 1: because nobody should have that riding on him. Sheer says
Speaker 1: he's found peace by thinking about what the guys who
Speaker 1: died would want for the living if it had been
Speaker 1: me and I could come back and see that someone
Speaker 1: was like struggling with that, I'd be like, dude, just
Speaker 1: it's all good. Live your life, dude. Be good, be
Speaker 1: a good person, raise a good family, make it worth it,
Speaker 1: but don't dwell on it. I did it for you, man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did it because I love you. You know, don't
Speaker 1: let it ruin your life. Later that night, we go
Speaker 1: to shears dad's house on the outskirts of Rapid City
Speaker 1: for a family get together. His parents split up when
Speaker 1: he was six years old, but they've remained such good
Speaker 1: friends that they still hang out together with their new spouses.
Speaker 1: Said that it's taco night and the gang's all here,
Speaker 1: his mom and dad, both of his stepparents, his brother Jason,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of aunts, uncles, cousins, and high school friends.
Speaker 1: So we got suffered Hershey's smares and rhesus smores. I
Speaker 1: remember Sheer telling me a patrol based fires that when
Speaker 1: he was in high school he couldn't wait to get
Speaker 1: out of Rapid City. But now I can see why
Speaker 1: you couldn't wait to get back home after four years
Speaker 1: in the Marines. He has an incredible support network of
Speaker 1: family and friends here, and I have to imagine that
Speaker 1: it helps smooth his transition to civilian life. We take
Speaker 1: our tacos out to what shares Dad Darren refers to
Speaker 1: as his bitch and fire pit. That's where Darren and
Speaker 1: Lori share His mom tell us about what it was
Speaker 1: like to send Brian off to war. Um, it was
Speaker 1: just the worst ten months of my life. LORI was
Speaker 1: there at three am on March two thousand eleven to
Speaker 1: wave goodbye to Brian as he climbed on a bus
Speaker 1: at Camp Pendleton and rolled out with the squad for
Speaker 1: the flight to sang In. It was Brian's twentieth birthday.
Speaker 1: Brian only got to call home about once a month,
Speaker 1: and only for a few minutes. Laurie remembers being in
Speaker 1: a work meeting one day when her cell phone rang.
Speaker 1: But I got I jumped up, saw that it was
Speaker 1: coming from oh eight, you know, through Hawaii, and and
Speaker 1: I just burst into tears and ran out and got
Speaker 1: into my my office and I was bawling my eyes out.
Speaker 1: And so Brian calls back about ten minutes later, and
Speaker 1: he goes, Mom, what do you crying? By said, I
Speaker 1: missed her call. I just missed her call. Those phone
Speaker 1: calls were a lifeline to his parents. Said, you call
Speaker 1: any and every chance you get, no matter what time
Speaker 1: it is. So he did. It's one two o'clock in
Speaker 1: the morning. My phone rings, of course, sounds asleep. Wake up,
Speaker 1: get excited. There's only one person calling you at that
Speaker 1: time of night. So I sat up on the side
Speaker 1: of the bed and uh, it's it's Brian, and we're
Speaker 1: talking and everything's good. Then just all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I hear it shoo shoo that that that that I
Speaker 1: gotta go click, Damn, that's it. So I'm sitting there
Speaker 1: and you know, feet on the floor in my underwear
Speaker 1: side of the bed. Can I cuss her? So I
Speaker 1: stand up, you know, throw the phone down and start screaming,
Speaker 1: you motherfucker's you know, yelling of my wife. Get me
Speaker 1: on a plane to Afghanistan. I'm killing every motherfucker in
Speaker 1: that country. They're trying to kill my kid. Since you
Speaker 1: couldn't do that, what was the next best thing? You know,
Speaker 1: how did you? I walked about sixteen miles inside the house,
Speaker 1: laps loops, coffee just spun up, spun out. You're so helpless. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm held, your son is home. Me too, me too. Tommy,
Speaker 1: who's also a dad, can clearly relate to this conversation.
Speaker 1: I would imagine just that whole deployment was white knuckled
Speaker 1: for you, right as a dad, I mean that that moment,
Speaker 1: those moments especially harrowing. But I'm sure you never really
Speaker 1: were able to relax all that much. Right, it was no,
Speaker 1: it was God. I hate to even admit some weakness here,
Speaker 1: but every every guy's tough until he's not. But I
Speaker 1: was at work. I think life's good, and uh, I'm
Speaker 1: standing at the counter talking to a customer and I
Speaker 1: got tears rolling down my cheeks and he's like, what's
Speaker 1: wrong with you? Like, what are you talking about? He's like,
Speaker 1: why are you crying? I said what? And I reach
Speaker 1: up and touch my cheek. I got tears just rolling
Speaker 1: down my cheeks. Had no idea, Yeah, no idea, And
Speaker 1: so called called my wife and said, you need to
Speaker 1: make me an appointment with somebody. I said, because I'm
Speaker 1: talking to a man about heavy equipment and I'm crying.
Speaker 1: This ship's weighing on me. Darren did end up seeing
Speaker 1: a therapist to help with his anxiety, but he says
Speaker 1: it was hell right up until the end. The day
Speaker 1: he called from Maine, he calls, He's like, I'm in
Speaker 1: the States. I was good instantly that moment on until
Speaker 1: right now, I've been good. Like I said, every every
Speaker 1: guy likes to think he's tough, but man, that emotional
Speaker 1: roller ulster, I just didn't even know. Brian has stayed
Speaker 1: quiet during most of this conversation. Now, being a dad, like,
Speaker 1: I can't even imagine not knowing, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: like not knowing what's going on. It's got to be
Speaker 1: fucking excruciating. Man. Just like his parents. Brian Shearer has
Speaker 1: two sons now. His oldest, Bow is about the same
Speaker 1: age Brian was when he was doing pull ups in
Speaker 1: the marine recruiter's office, trying to win one of those
Speaker 1: posters of the dudes with the Cambo painted faces. Soon
Speaker 1: enough it could be Bo asking Brian for permission to enlist.
Speaker 1: Shearer had never heard the story of how that phone
Speaker 1: call from Afghanistan sent his dad into a tailspin, and
Speaker 1: I could tell it really moved him to hear Darren
Speaker 1: described the feeling helplessness when he couldn't do anything to
Speaker 1: protect him. Maybe now he can understand his parents fear
Speaker 1: and love in a way that he couldn't when he
Speaker 1: was a twenty year old marine and sang in with
Speaker 1: nothing to lose but a PlayStation. Fear and love for
Speaker 1: a son whose dreams of going to war became his
Speaker 1: parents nightmare, a boy who could have been snuffed out
Speaker 1: with a single well aimed shot. Next time on Third Squad,
Speaker 1: we had back over to Spearfish to visit with Third
Speaker 1: Squad radio operator John Bollinger and his wife Hannah. I
Speaker 1: never came back, you know, none of us came back.
Speaker 1: John Bollinger went to the war in Afghanistan, but that's
Speaker 1: not who came back from the war in Afghanistan. Physically.
Speaker 1: He was home. I don't think it was really until
Speaker 1: you know, second week being back. Mhmm. Woke up in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night getting choked. No matter how
Speaker 1: much good or how much of a difference you try
Speaker 1: and make, you are still a killer. You can't undo that.
Speaker 1: Third Squad is written and produced by Elliott Woods, Tommy
Speaker 1: Andre sam Maria Burned. It's an Heirloom Media production and
Speaker 1: distributed by iHeart Media, funding support from the National Endowment
Speaker 1: for the Humanities. In collaboration with the Center for Warren
Speaker 1: Society at San Diego State University. Original music by Mondo Boys,
Speaker 1: editing and sound designed by John Ward. Fact checking by
Speaker 1: Ben Kalin. Special thanks to Scott Carrier, Maryanne Andre, Ted Jenaway's,
Speaker 1: Benjamin Bush, Caitlin esh Carrie Gracie, Kevin Connolly, and Lena Ferguson.
Speaker 1: If you want to see the map of the PB
Speaker 1: fires ao that Sheer in Bollinger Drew, check out the
Speaker 1: episode five page on Third squad dot com, where you
Speaker 1: also find pictures of Brian Shear from two thousand eleven
Speaker 1: and two thousand twenty one. If you got a minute,
Speaker 1: please leave us a rating in your preferred podcast app.
Speaker 1: It'll help other people find the show. You can find
Speaker 1: me on Instagram and Twitter at Elliott Woods.