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. So I went down there
Speaker 1: to bury him fresh out of high school. He was
Speaker 1: a kid and his dad was about thirty eight, maybe forty.
Speaker 1: He came up to me and said, hey, I try
Speaker 1: to join as soon as I heard it happened. They
Speaker 1: won't let me go over there. They won't let me
Speaker 1: join them too old. And he goes like, hey, can
Speaker 1: you promise if you can get over there, like can
Speaker 1: you can you do something about it? And I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I meanly, like that's all I want to do. So
Speaker 1: then that like became my mission. Is like no matter
Speaker 1: what I was, getting to Afghanistan, Ii'm Elliott Woods. This
Speaker 1: is Third Squad Episode nine, Chasing the War. There's no
Speaker 1: barber pole outside the Straight Ahead Barbershop in Greensburg, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: but inside it's a throwback to the places where I
Speaker 1: got my hair cut as a kid a few hours
Speaker 1: from here. When we were young, there were old school barbershops.
Speaker 1: There were, but like in that mid nineties period, I
Speaker 1: think they like all faded and disappeared and nobody replaced
Speaker 1: them with a long wooden bench where customers wait their
Speaker 1: turn and a jar of combs bathing an ice blue
Speaker 1: barber side. Straight ahead is a convincing replacement. It looks
Speaker 1: like an antique barber chair. Yeah, they're both about a
Speaker 1: years old, probably finished on myself. It's the centerpiece of
Speaker 1: the barbershops. They're like, you have to have an old
Speaker 1: chair like. The owner's name is Jeriic Fry. The first
Speaker 1: time I met him, he was wearing body armor and
Speaker 1: a helmet and getting ready to step out on patrol.
Speaker 1: When sang for I was third squad squad leader. And
Speaker 1: in the past decade he's gone from carrying a him
Speaker 1: forward wielding clippers in his very own barber shop. His
Speaker 1: body armor and helmet are actually on display next to
Speaker 1: a shelf of straight ahead T shirts. As it happens,
Speaker 1: I'm in need of a trimp. So when you look
Speaker 1: at these scant resources of hair that I have on
Speaker 1: top of my head, what are you thinking? What is
Speaker 1: your creative vision for I think you get like pretty
Speaker 1: tight at the bottom, like for a wand maybe even
Speaker 1: like tapered out almost that sounds good. Fry has the
Speaker 1: vintage barber. Look down. He's got a leather apron and
Speaker 1: his own hair styled in a classic part with the waves,
Speaker 1: but he still looks like a marine, square jawed and
Speaker 1: clean shaven, and a little intimidate, which he says actually
Speaker 1: helps put his regular clientele at eats. When I opened
Speaker 1: my shop, I really wanted to draw the correct customers,
Speaker 1: you know. I wanted I wanted the police. I wanted
Speaker 1: the military, one of the good blue collar guys, you know,
Speaker 1: like I wanted the good community in here. It's not
Speaker 1: all about making money. It's you know, it's about the
Speaker 1: people you affect and the the people surround your show with.
Speaker 1: Greensburg is a rust belt city on the east side
Speaker 1: of Pittsburgh with a lot of empty storefronts and a
Speaker 1: few stately old buildings that call back to better times.
Speaker 1: Fry grew up in a smaller town called Irwin, about
Speaker 1: ten miles closer to Pittsburgh. He moved back to the
Speaker 1: area in two thousand and fourteen when he got out
Speaker 1: of the core, and he's glad to be home. Pennsylvania's
Speaker 1: great that people here are great families from here. I
Speaker 1: wanted my boys to be raised here. Ford tells me
Speaker 1: this area was pretty depressed when he was a kid,
Speaker 1: but he says Greensburg has been making a gradual comeback.
Speaker 1: He's proud that his barbershop is one less empty storefront,
Speaker 1: and he loves his work. Your barber is not just
Speaker 1: somebody to cut your hair. He becomes like a party,
Speaker 1: like your family, your friend. You're probably gonna cut your
Speaker 1: hair right before you get married. Uh. And then on
Speaker 1: the flip side of it, you know it's a loved
Speaker 1: one dies You're probably gonna be in here. You know
Speaker 1: you're going to court, You're gonna be in here. So
Speaker 1: I'm with you on like the facts and worst days
Speaker 1: of your life. That's what I like about barbering. And like,
Speaker 1: you can't walk into a barbershop and get a good
Speaker 1: haircut and walk out and not feel better. That's true.
Speaker 1: You can definitely walk out of a barbershop with a
Speaker 1: bad haircut and not feel better, though, I just feel defeated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that was one of the things that drove
Speaker 1: me to be a barber, is that when I was
Speaker 1: in the Marine Corps, you know, I'm getting a haircut
Speaker 1: every single week for nine years, and there were so
Speaker 1: many disappointing haircuts and like I just never understood it, Like,
Speaker 1: how how is this your job and you're so bad
Speaker 1: at it? Like, and I was like, I know I
Speaker 1: can do better than It's like, I can provide a
Speaker 1: better service than this. Yeah. After a year of COVID
Speaker 1: buzz cuts at home, Fries managed to make me look
Speaker 1: like a respectable citizen again. That looks great. I feel
Speaker 1: like a new man, for I was twenty four years
Speaker 1: old when we first met him. Sang In one of
Speaker 1: the oldest guys in the squad. He was reserved on me,
Speaker 1: but I picked up on his determination to do better,
Speaker 1: to constantly learn and improve for the benefit of the
Speaker 1: younger Marines, and as far as he was concerned, their
Speaker 1: lives were in his hands. Here we are back at
Speaker 1: patrol base Fires. What's it like to be a squad
Speaker 1: leader and have responsibility for these guys they're under You
Speaker 1: don't ever control the Billit of squad leader carries a
Speaker 1: lot of weight. Not only in charge of thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars of equipment and ammunition, but you're in
Speaker 1: charge of ten of the marines. Lives depend on how
Speaker 1: hard you are on them and how strict you make
Speaker 1: them follow and abide by rules and tactics. Even when
Speaker 1: you get tired and lazy and the patrols keep dragging on,
Speaker 1: you have to keep their head in the game. And
Speaker 1: if you don't, if one of them lose their lives,
Speaker 1: it falls on your shoulders. For I didn't start the
Speaker 1: deployment with Third Squad. He came as a combat replacement
Speaker 1: after the original squad leader, Sergeant Andrew Mottelski, got blown
Speaker 1: up on June twelve, two th eleven. The platoon lost
Speaker 1: almost all of its senior leaders to the mass casualties
Speaker 1: in June, so when Fry arrived in July, the younger
Speaker 1: Marines were still reeling. Boosting their morale and keeping their
Speaker 1: heads in the game was a matter of life and death.
Speaker 1: If one person in the squad's week, the squad will fail.
Speaker 1: So everybody has to pull their own weight. Everybody has
Speaker 1: to know their job, the job below them, the job
Speaker 1: above them. It's more like a family that everybody works
Speaker 1: together real well. Everybody gets along real well, and if
Speaker 1: you don't, you fail, And failure is not an option
Speaker 1: out here because people won't go home. That It was
Speaker 1: the end of July two thousand eleven when we were talking.
Speaker 1: Third squad had a little more than two months to
Speaker 1: go before the end of the deployment. So what do
Speaker 1: you hope would be the end state for your squads accomplishments?
Speaker 1: And in October what you hope that you guys can
Speaker 1: get accomplished by that if you keep up phone, men, phone.
Speaker 1: The only thing I really care about is getting these
Speaker 1: guys home and getting home with all our limbs. Anything
Speaker 1: other than that just a plus yea. In the relative
Speaker 1: quiet of the vacant tattoo shop he shares the building with,
Speaker 1: Fry tells me about his life before the Marine Corps,
Speaker 1: growing up in a working class p A family. His
Speaker 1: mom worked in the food industry and his dad worked
Speaker 1: and still works at a company that manufactures granite countertops.
Speaker 1: I called the Pennsylvania grind here in West Pennsylvania. Like
Speaker 1: these blue collar guys, they're just getting this grind and
Speaker 1: it's like good enough. They're never really happy, but like
Speaker 1: they're just they're doing enough, they're paying their bills, and
Speaker 1: they just grind away for these employers that just take
Speaker 1: advantage of them. But fr I wasn't thinking about any
Speaker 1: of that as a kid. I grew up and my
Speaker 1: family always knew I was going to go to the
Speaker 1: military of some sort. It's like my parents joker about
Speaker 1: that all the time. Like I'd be building bombs and
Speaker 1: weapons in the basement, and like I always had like
Speaker 1: g I Jo's and would set him up in these
Speaker 1: big elaborate battles, and always watched war movies and like
Speaker 1: my whole life. But like I didn't know that I
Speaker 1: was going to military. They did, though Fry's destiny didn't
Speaker 1: become clear to him until his senior year of high school.
Speaker 1: I was sitting on my back porch of my house.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about what I was gonna do with
Speaker 1: my life. And I didn't want to go to college.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to get in that blue collar grind
Speaker 1: and just worked till I was dead. And I like
Speaker 1: had an epiphany. I just said, well, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: join the Marine Corps. He was seventeen years old. My
Speaker 1: mind was made. I just wanted to go shoot weapons.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what that meant, but that's all I said.
Speaker 1: After high school for I went to Paris Island, South
Speaker 1: Carolina for bootcamp. It was June two THI and even
Speaker 1: though President George Bush had declared mission accomplished in Iraq
Speaker 1: two years earlier. In the Battle of Iraq, the United
Speaker 1: States and our allies have prevailed. An outbreak of vicious
Speaker 1: sectarian fighting was derailing plans for an easy excident. The
Speaker 1: Almani Army, loyal to the Shiite Claret Mark Potter outsider,
Speaker 1: was responsible from much of the violence outside Falluja and Ramadi.
Speaker 1: The whole time through boot camp, all they kept telling us,
Speaker 1: the guys that signed up for infantry, they kept pull
Speaker 1: once aside and they're like, Hey, you're going to war,
Speaker 1: Like there's no question, there's no Within a year you
Speaker 1: will be in Iraq, which, like is what I wanted,
Speaker 1: you know, That's what I was looking for. When Fry
Speaker 1: finished recruit training and got to his unit at Camp Lajeune,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, he was surrounded by Marines who were fresh
Speaker 1: home from the two thousand four Battle of Felujah. The
Speaker 1: US and Iraqi forces launched a major offensive event Falloja Today,
Speaker 1: which was already notorious in the core for some of
Speaker 1: the worst urban warfare since the Battle of Way City
Speaker 1: in the Vietnam War. So some five thousand US Marines
Speaker 1: and soldiers stage the ground assault, and even though Fry
Speaker 1: got hazed by Felujha Vets, who were obviously struggling with
Speaker 1: what they'd experienced. He still looked up to him. He
Speaker 1: still wanted a piece of the action, and he prepared
Speaker 1: for it with laser focus. I've really cared about my job,
Speaker 1: and I studied it, you know. I would study machine
Speaker 1: guns and tactics and everything constantly. I just tried to
Speaker 1: make myself the best I could possibly be to help
Speaker 1: the Marines around me. Fry was what's known in the
Speaker 1: military as a hard charger. Nothing in his life came
Speaker 1: anywhere close to his devotion to the core, not even
Speaker 1: his wife, Kristen, who he married when he was only eighteen.
Speaker 1: Fry was a Marine infantryman, and he had a single obsession.
Speaker 1: I was looking for war. I was looking for the fight.
Speaker 1: I wanted to connectic fight, not knowing exactly what that meant,
Speaker 1: but I wanted it. But Fry kept missing the war.
Speaker 1: In two thousand six, he participated in the evacuation of
Speaker 1: nearly fifteen thousand Americans from Lebanon during the war between
Speaker 1: Israel and Hezbollah from a U. S. Navy ship off
Speaker 1: the coast. He heard the gunfire on shore and watched
Speaker 1: Israeli jets zip across the sky and entire buildings turned
Speaker 1: into mushroom clouds. But there was no combat role for
Speaker 1: the Marines, and the experience left Fried Jones ng even
Speaker 1: more for the real war, the one just across the
Speaker 1: Syrian desert in a rock, where other Camp Lejun Marines
Speaker 1: were taking part in a bloody campaign to retake a
Speaker 1: town called Ramadi from al Qaida linked insurgents. This vated
Speaker 1: city has become the operational center of al Qaida and
Speaker 1: the symbolic heart of the Iraqi insurgency. Fried did end
Speaker 1: up getting deployed to Ramadi a year later, but by
Speaker 1: the time he got there the fire storm had already passed.
Speaker 1: There was a few like little firefights, little pop shots,
Speaker 1: some ideas found, but for the most part it was
Speaker 1: very calm. I lifted a lot of weights and ate
Speaker 1: a lot of food, and patrol a lot and stood
Speaker 1: a lot of posts. But we weren't out there getting
Speaker 1: in firefights, which is what I was looking for. Being
Speaker 1: young and dumb, for I signed up to fight the dragon.
Speaker 1: He wasn't interested in the hearts and minds counterinsurgency stuff.
Speaker 1: So when the Ramadi hitch was over. He volunteered for
Speaker 1: another Rock deployment, hoping this time he'd get his chance.
Speaker 1: But when he got to his new base outside Felujah
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine, the Dragon was sound asleep. We
Speaker 1: were doing nothing but like humanitarian missions and some policing,
Speaker 1: but mainly we had turned over the forces to Iraqi forces.
Speaker 1: We were there just to support them at that point,
Speaker 1: which was basically a huge letdown for all of us.
Speaker 1: You know, we went over there and it was kind
Speaker 1: of a waste of time. You know. The thing that
Speaker 1: I had been chasing and heard about and read stories
Speaker 1: and trained for, I wasn't able to do. Over the
Speaker 1: course of five years in the Marines, Fry had spent
Speaker 1: a combined fourteen months in a war zone where death
Speaker 1: lurked everywhere, but he never got deep in the ship,
Speaker 1: and he felt cheated, like a professional athlete stuck on
Speaker 1: the sidelines. For I was at the top of his game,
Speaker 1: hitting every benchmark of success in the Marines. He made
Speaker 1: sergeant in less than four years, a rare feet in
Speaker 1: the core. A sergeant in the Marine Corps is like
Speaker 1: a god, like those are the guys you look up to,
Speaker 1: like the new guys coming in like you don't even
Speaker 1: talk to a sergeant, you don't even look at them wrong.
Speaker 1: Sergeants serve as squad leaders in the Marine Corps, and
Speaker 1: for I wanted to lead a squad in the thick
Speaker 1: of combat in the worst way. But it didn't look
Speaker 1: like he'd get another chance in a rock where the
Speaker 1: American withdrawal was already underway. Obama's Afghanistan Surge, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, was just ramping up. And when fr I
Speaker 1: found out that the third Battalion, fifth Marines was slotted
Speaker 1: for a deployment to sang In, he saw one more chance.
Speaker 1: He requested and received a transfer from Campbell June out
Speaker 1: to Camp Pendleton, and almost as soon as he got there,
Speaker 1: he began tryouts for three fives elite sniper platoon. They
Speaker 1: told us to get our packs and the way they
Speaker 1: run the hooy to the top of the hill. Had
Speaker 1: about ninety pounds in my back and I stepped in
Speaker 1: a waddy like a runoff, and I hyper extended my
Speaker 1: right knee and blew out my A C L, L
Speaker 1: C L and both meniscus with one fatal swoop. The
Speaker 1: injury was severe enough that Fry had to be pulled
Speaker 1: from the line. So when three five shipped out for
Speaker 1: Sangon in the autumn of two thousand ten, for I
Speaker 1: wasn't with them. And initially it was I mean, it
Speaker 1: was all anger, and it was like I was just
Speaker 1: missing it, like I missed something, like I like, like
Speaker 1: I said, I was chasing it and chasing and chasing,
Speaker 1: and it was there. I was there, and then I
Speaker 1: got hurt and couldn't do what I wanted to do,
Speaker 1: you know what, like I thought I wanted to do
Speaker 1: in my heart. While he was injured, Fry had helped
Speaker 1: train young three five marines. Now they were in harm's way,
Speaker 1: and the bad news started rolling in almost immediately they
Speaker 1: deploy and I go in for surgery. I'm laying in
Speaker 1: a hospital bed and my buddy Maloney, he came in
Speaker 1: and he tells me that one of my marines was
Speaker 1: the first to die in Afghanistan, Lancecople Sparks, was shot
Speaker 1: and killed. He was one of my marines from my
Speaker 1: machine gun squad that I was in charge of. And
Speaker 1: that just crushed me because I'm laying there in a bed, helpless,
Speaker 1: and I felt like I should have been there like
Speaker 1: there that in my mind there was no question if
Speaker 1: I should have been there. The fact that he couldn't
Speaker 1: do anything to help the three five Marines and sang
Speaker 1: In tormented fry. But there was something he could do
Speaker 1: for the families of the dead back home. So as
Speaker 1: soon as I was able to like bearweight at all,
Speaker 1: I started doing funerals. Because three five suffered so many casually,
Speaker 1: they were really getting beat up for I volunteered for
Speaker 1: the her Guard, the small detachment that escorts marines remains
Speaker 1: back to their families. I thought that if it's the
Speaker 1: only thing I can do, is barry take these guys home,
Speaker 1: take them to their family, and put them in the
Speaker 1: ground and give them the respect that I could. You know,
Speaker 1: that was my responsibility that I had to do. That.
Speaker 1: Part of his duty was pulling guard beside the caskets
Speaker 1: during wakes and funerals. So the entire time that the
Speaker 1: service was open and the people were allowed in, we
Speaker 1: had a marine standing at the head of the casket.
Speaker 1: Then we were in full dress blues the whole time,
Speaker 1: and they stood there completely motionless. It would be like
Speaker 1: an hour. We'd replace them, and we'd do a replacement.
Speaker 1: Ceremonies you walk up and you slow salute, and then
Speaker 1: you take his place, you take charge of the post.
Speaker 1: As you're there, you can't talk, you can't do anything.
Speaker 1: People are crying on you, they're thanking you, they're you know,
Speaker 1: they're asking you questions, and you can't really talk. You
Speaker 1: gotta You're just there as a statue. Whenever they weren't
Speaker 1: on casket guard frying, the other Marines did their best
Speaker 1: to comfort the families. So we're going and meeting their
Speaker 1: families and meeting their kids, and meeting their wives and
Speaker 1: their fathers and and and they're asking you these questions.
Speaker 1: And you don't necessarily know the Marines that you're burying,
Speaker 1: but you know who they are. You know, all Marines,
Speaker 1: and especially anybody that gave their life for their country
Speaker 1: willingly mainly for their brothers. They deserve that respect. And
Speaker 1: it was it was very, very difficult because all I
Speaker 1: wanted to do and my power was be over there.
Speaker 1: Friday had five funerals in a matter of a few months.
Speaker 1: It wasn't combat, but being so close to so much
Speaker 1: anguish was viscerating. It was the hardest time in my
Speaker 1: life as far as mentally goes. I really got into
Speaker 1: drinking heavily. I mean I was probably almost drinking a
Speaker 1: fifth night just to sleep. The funeral that really gutted
Speaker 1: him was for a three five marine from Texas who
Speaker 1: was killed by a sniper and sang it on December six,
Speaker 1: two ten. His name was Private first Class Colton Rusk.
Speaker 1: So I went down there to bury him, fresh out
Speaker 1: of ice school. He was a kid and his dad
Speaker 1: was about thirty eight maybe forty, And he came up
Speaker 1: to me and said, hey, I tried to join as
Speaker 1: soon as I heard it happened. They won't let me
Speaker 1: go over there. They won't let me join them too old.
Speaker 1: And he goes like, hey, can you promise if you
Speaker 1: can get over there, like can you can you do
Speaker 1: something about it? And I was like yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: like that's all I want to do. So then that
Speaker 1: like became my mission. Was like, no matter what, I
Speaker 1: was getting to Afghanistan, we'll be back after the break.
Speaker 1: So when PFC Rusk's dad said can you go over
Speaker 1: and do something about this? Were you thinking I'm going
Speaker 1: to go over there and get revenge or were you
Speaker 1: more thinking I'm gonna go over there so that the
Speaker 1: next PFC Rusk comes home. I mean initially, like all
Speaker 1: that reaction, it all starts out as anger, you know,
Speaker 1: like when you see people die that you know some
Speaker 1: asshole shot him for whatever reason or blew them up.
Speaker 1: It's anger at first, but then when it settles in,
Speaker 1: like your right mind comes around, it's that you want
Speaker 1: to bring people home for I was desperate get deployed
Speaker 1: to sang In as a combat replacement, one of the
Speaker 1: Marines who would be sent over to fill in for
Speaker 1: three fives wounded and dead. There was a problem though,
Speaker 1: because of his knee surgery. He'd actually been put into
Speaker 1: the pipeline for medical separation. He was a broken weapon,
Speaker 1: and the courts didn't want him anymore. But marines are
Speaker 1: trained to adapt and overcome, and that's exactly what Fried did.
Speaker 1: It was before the Marine Corps switched to digital, and
Speaker 1: when you switch units, you get your medical record and
Speaker 1: you have to take it to that next medical facility.
Speaker 1: So when I took my paperwork to the next medical
Speaker 1: facility for the next unit, I pulled all of my
Speaker 1: surgery paperwork out of it and then turned it back in.
Speaker 1: So as far as anybody was concerned, I was full duty.
Speaker 1: That never happened. Three five came home while Fry was
Speaker 1: healing up and getting back in shape. Over their seven
Speaker 1: months tour and sang In, the battalion had lost twenty
Speaker 1: five marines a hundred and eighty four more were wounded,
Speaker 1: with thirty four of them losing at least one limb.
Speaker 1: Now was one fives turning the meat grinder. Stuck back
Speaker 1: at Camp Pendleton in the late spring of two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: for I read one fives classified combat action reports from
Speaker 1: Sangon with a mix of horror and frustration, like the
Speaker 1: ones about a six day stretch of catastrophic I E.
Speaker 1: D strikes in June two thousand eleven that robbed the
Speaker 1: patrol based fires Marines of their squad leaders and their
Speaker 1: platoon sergeant, leaving them with almost no experienced leadership at
Speaker 1: the squad level. As soon as I saw that, I
Speaker 1: knew I had to go. There wasn't an option. I
Speaker 1: didn't care if I had to sneak on a plane
Speaker 1: to go over there by land ticket. I was going
Speaker 1: there to help them. For I made a bold move.
Speaker 1: He took his request directly to the most senior enlisted
Speaker 1: man out of the nearly five thousand strong Fifth Marine regiment,
Speaker 1: a pretty much unheard of leap in the chain of command.
Speaker 1: But Fry had met the sergeant major at Rusk's funeral
Speaker 1: and he was pretty sure he made a good impression.
Speaker 1: He was like, Starring, Fry, you're a good marine. You know,
Speaker 1: we want more of you around. If you ever need
Speaker 1: anything from me, don't hesitate to ask. And I noted
Speaker 1: that and kept that in my pocket. And when this
Speaker 1: came up, I said, that's the only guy I can
Speaker 1: go to if somebody can get you there, like he
Speaker 1: can just call the order right there, and you're going
Speaker 1: to go. So I went to the regimental office and
Speaker 1: walked upstairs to his office, and he technically had an
Speaker 1: open door policy, which like they all technically do, but
Speaker 1: you don't ever go in a starry major's office. Sergeant
Speaker 1: majors are scary. This one, Regimental Sergeant Major Ernest ho Pe,
Speaker 1: was six ft three and looked like he could rip
Speaker 1: a phone book in half. And I go in and
Speaker 1: he remembered me, and I told him that. I said, hey,
Speaker 1: starry Major, I know this is happening to this company,
Speaker 1: to this tune. Yeah, you need to send me over there.
Speaker 1: And he said, starting, Fry are you sure, I said absolutely,
Speaker 1: And he said you're ready? Is all your order, like
Speaker 1: everything ready for you to go? Can you leave? And
Speaker 1: I said yes? And five days later I was on
Speaker 1: plane in to Afghanistan, to the worst place in the world.
Speaker 1: On one of his stopovers and route to sangon For,
Speaker 1: I picked up a carton of Marlboro reds and a
Speaker 1: couple of logs of Copenhagen. He didn't use tobacco himself,
Speaker 1: but he figured it would soften his landing with the
Speaker 1: lost boys of patrol based fires. It's like gold, So
Speaker 1: I brought it for the Marines because, like I knew
Speaker 1: that they would appreciate that. It's like a welcoming peace
Speaker 1: treaty gift. After a few days base hopping from California
Speaker 1: to sangon For, I hitched a ride on a gun
Speaker 1: truck out to peb Fires in early July two thou eleven.
Speaker 1: He barely stepped inside the wire when the platoon commander
Speaker 1: told him to gear up. Tenner Polton goes, hey, you're
Speaker 1: gonna go with that squad. Do you need an Emma
Speaker 1: or anything? I was like yes, So I like he
Speaker 1: loaded me up with him. I got a full combat
Speaker 1: load and I. They briefed me very quickly, and I
Speaker 1: stepped right off on patrol immediately. I mean under a week.
Speaker 1: I was patrolling and saying and from being in America,
Speaker 1: which is insane. The squad Fries stepped out with was
Speaker 1: third squad. He was their new leader, but on that
Speaker 1: first patrol he was just along for the ride. Michael
Speaker 1: Minor had been filling in a squad leader since Mattelski
Speaker 1: got hit on June twelve, and Minor was still in
Speaker 1: charge for one last patrol, Corporal Minors leading it, and
Speaker 1: I'm I remember stepping out of the wire and I
Speaker 1: had read all the after actions, and I had known
Speaker 1: what they had gone through. And We're walking in a
Speaker 1: single file line with the metal detector on the front,
Speaker 1: which is nothing that I've experienced before. And that moment
Speaker 1: I accepted that I wasn't going to make it out
Speaker 1: of there except on a helicopter or in a body bag.
Speaker 1: I had to put my thoughts in my safety aside
Speaker 1: right then, because I knew that was the only option
Speaker 1: to be successful. If I didn't just have to accept
Speaker 1: the danger in order to do his job. He had
Speaker 1: to bury his own fear for the sake of ten
Speaker 1: Marines in a Navy corpman he just met whose lives
Speaker 1: were now entrusted to him. You can't be afraid as
Speaker 1: a leader. You can't show fear. You have to be
Speaker 1: that strong, steady rock, and I wanted to be that
Speaker 1: for those guys. So the acceptance of the fact that
Speaker 1: I'm gonna lose a leg for my life or both
Speaker 1: was almost relieving. It's not a fear anymore. It's almost
Speaker 1: a power. Back at fires after that first patrol, Fry
Speaker 1: took stock of the platoon he'd read about in those
Speaker 1: combat action reports. Back at Camp Pendleton, all the Marines
Speaker 1: were just beaten down. I mean they've just been beat up.
Speaker 1: At that point, you can just tell morale is low.
Speaker 1: I mean, they didn't have their squad leaders. You know,
Speaker 1: their squad leaders were hit and gone. And that's that's
Speaker 1: their sergeant. You know, that's the person they relied upon,
Speaker 1: and he's gone now. So what were the first days
Speaker 1: like with them? Did you feel like they were looking
Speaker 1: at you like, what's this guy gonna be? Like? Who
Speaker 1: is this guy? It's like a new person joining a family,
Speaker 1: you know, like if you entered somebody else's family and
Speaker 1: you're like, hey, I'm here for me. It was very heavy,
Speaker 1: like I didn't take it as a light situation. This
Speaker 1: was a heavy thing. Entering it correctly, those guys in
Speaker 1: that specific situation, I couldn't really understand where they were at.
Speaker 1: I didn't know how they felt. By the time Fry
Speaker 1: got there in July two thousand eleven, half the guys
Speaker 1: in third Squad had already suffered at least one TB
Speaker 1: I Shearon Lopez still had abrasions on their faces from blasts.
Speaker 1: Rich Bolski was just back from two weeks in the
Speaker 1: hospital after being nearly killed by shrapnel. They'd all heard
Speaker 1: McDaniels screaming, and they'd all combed through the grass trying
Speaker 1: to recover O'Brien. The guys might not have said it
Speaker 1: out loud, but they were scared. They were also burning
Speaker 1: for revenge, an emotional state that can lead to reckless
Speaker 1: decisions with fatal consequences. Fry could have come in like
Speaker 1: a hammer, playing the hard ass, but he knew what
Speaker 1: the squad really needed was a cool head. I showed
Speaker 1: him I was. I was there to just help them
Speaker 1: and that the only thing that mattered to me was
Speaker 1: their safety. He also knew that he would probably never
Speaker 1: fully belong. They did the work up together, you know,
Speaker 1: they suffered losses together, and before I got there. You know,
Speaker 1: the struggle brings people closer. They accepted me as much
Speaker 1: as I think you could possibly do that in that situation.
Speaker 1: After six years in the core, Fry was finally where
Speaker 1: he wanted to be, exactly where he was needed most.
Speaker 1: Every time I and something, I talked to him. If
Speaker 1: they told me on a patrol that they didn't like something,
Speaker 1: you know, if a guy got a bad feeling, you
Speaker 1: know that intuition, I followed it. I trusted him fully.
Speaker 1: I didn't demand respect of them, but I earned it,
Speaker 1: and then they gave it to me. He was back
Speaker 1: to encounterinsurgency again, but there was lots of lead whizzing around.
Speaker 1: The Taliban would often shoot at the Marines to try
Speaker 1: to hurt him towards I E. B s. The typical
Speaker 1: response to contact was to maneuver to close with and
Speaker 1: destroy the enemy, but maneuvering could mean funneling the squad
Speaker 1: right into an I E. D trap, So whenever third
Speaker 1: squad got shot at, Fry directed him to drop in
Speaker 1: place and unload everything they had in the direction the
Speaker 1: fire was coming from. We received fire a few times
Speaker 1: and just overwhelmed them with firepower, because that's my concept
Speaker 1: of warfare. So our squad had stopped being attacked for
Speaker 1: the most point, I believed because of our posture. On
Speaker 1: a day to day basis, the squad's mission was mine
Speaker 1: numbingly repetitive walk around advertising their presence to the Taliban
Speaker 1: while trying not to step on I e. D. S.
Speaker 1: But there was a larger official objective, even if most
Speaker 1: of the guys in third Squad had never heard it explained.
Speaker 1: The backstory goes deep into the Cold War, and it
Speaker 1: adds a whole another dimension to the concept of the
Speaker 1: Forever War. It's important because it offers a specific answer
Speaker 1: to that big, nasty question, what was it all for.
Speaker 1: The history is a little too complicated to get into
Speaker 1: right here, but if you're interested, stick around after the
Speaker 1: credits for a more detailed explanation. What you need to
Speaker 1: know now is that at the time of the surge,
Speaker 1: the U. S. State Department and top military brass believed
Speaker 1: that delivering more electricity to southern Afghanist dan would strike
Speaker 1: a devastating counterinsurgency blow to the Taliban. The lynchpin of
Speaker 1: this untested idea was the rehabilitation of a hydroelectric power
Speaker 1: station twenty miles upriver from Sangon at the Kajockey Dam,
Speaker 1: which was itself a relic of one of the most
Speaker 1: expensive and tragically misguided nation building efforts in American history.
Speaker 1: But there was a huge problem. The supply road to
Speaker 1: the dam went through some of the most ambush and
Speaker 1: i e. D. Plague terrain in the country, including Sangon,
Speaker 1: which meant that convoys carrying workers and construction materials were
Speaker 1: under constant threat of attack. Clearing that road and keeping
Speaker 1: it open would be one of the core missions of
Speaker 1: the Surge Marines in the Helmond River Valley, even if
Speaker 1: they were only dimly aware of the end game. More
Speaker 1: electricity and more jobs in southern Afghanistan. In the most
Speaker 1: narrow terms, that's what it was all for. All of
Speaker 1: this was above fries pay grade. He saw the war
Speaker 1: through a gun sight, and as as he could tell,
Speaker 1: the pep fires Marines seemed to be beating back the
Speaker 1: Taliban in their sector of the quagmire. That summer, there
Speaker 1: were fewer firefights and the squad spent more time visiting
Speaker 1: with locals. But even when it was quiet, for I says,
Speaker 1: the AO was nowhere near secure. You had to go
Speaker 1: out there with the mindset of I might get in
Speaker 1: a firefight, or I might sit down and have to
Speaker 1: drink tea with this person while somebody's watching me might
Speaker 1: be setting an I d up. On the way home,
Speaker 1: they often stopped to talk with the family who lived
Speaker 1: almost within sight of pep fires. There were usually a
Speaker 1: bunch of kids who would run out and ask for
Speaker 1: candy and snacks from the guys, but when the squad
Speaker 1: approached on one particular day in late July, the kids
Speaker 1: were nowhere to be seen. One of them is hiding
Speaker 1: behind the corner and he's going no, no, no, no no,
Speaker 1: and he's like like waving his hand and we're like
Speaker 1: what you know, what's going on? And he's like and
Speaker 1: wouldn't say anything. He was just shaking his head and
Speaker 1: he said like boom boom. We were like, oh, like,
Speaker 1: we walked down this road every day. They put an
Speaker 1: idea on it, so we slowed down, slowed our patrol down,
Speaker 1: start pushing. We had our engineer with Robinson with us
Speaker 1: at the time, so he slows down. We start sweeping
Speaker 1: real slow. We have our guard up, you know, we
Speaker 1: have our weapons up. We're looking all around. I set
Speaker 1: up little secure postures around us, and he finds three
Speaker 1: I D s in the middle of the road. The
Speaker 1: kids saved us, you know, that building, that relationship, building
Speaker 1: that trust with the kids. Just just little stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: saved us that day. Somebody would have hit that you
Speaker 1: might want to go down. I happened to be out
Speaker 1: with Third Squad that day, brig So I was there
Speaker 1: when the Explosive Ordinance Disposal team came out and safely
Speaker 1: detonated the I E D. Oh my god, God, damn.
Speaker 1: I'm glad I didn't go off. I took a picture
Speaker 1: of one of the pressure plates that the e O
Speaker 1: D guys dug up. Two thin strips of what looked
Speaker 1: like balsa would tape together with a slim gap between
Speaker 1: them and a wire sticking out one side. A low
Speaker 1: tech weapon used to devastating effect against the most high
Speaker 1: tech military in the world. Third Squad had already seen
Speaker 1: what the Taliban bombmakers could do before Fry arrived, but
Speaker 1: he would have his chance to witness it too. First
Speaker 1: with Matthew for it and then with Michael Dutcher September,
Speaker 1: we stepped out. It's a normal patrol, just like every
Speaker 1: other day that we do. We had a patrol route
Speaker 1: to go over the river and we're going to like
Speaker 1: the other side of day. We would get civilians to
Speaker 1: lead us through areas that we kind of avoided because
Speaker 1: there were I D stray there before. People didn't go
Speaker 1: there banning buildings. We would avoid those situations unless we
Speaker 1: had a civilian to lead us because all the civilians
Speaker 1: in the area knew where all the bombs were, whether
Speaker 1: they told us or not, they knew where the bombs said.
Speaker 1: So we went across and there was a sheep herder,
Speaker 1: and so we asked the sheep herder to lead us
Speaker 1: behind this building. This is the story Manning Mendoza told
Speaker 1: me In Texas. Michael Dutcher was at the front of
Speaker 1: the patrol, so he was walking behind this guy and
Speaker 1: usually when they walked, we wouldn't really sweep much. We
Speaker 1: would sweep, but like they would usually walk fast, so
Speaker 1: it was kind of quick, hasty sweeping. And then me
Speaker 1: dozes right behind him with this weapon protecting them and
Speaker 1: marking the ground. So we go behind the building and
Speaker 1: they go out of sight because I was about halfway
Speaker 1: back on the patrol, and then the strike one off.
Speaker 1: Everybody froze, you know, because everybody just stops when that happens,
Speaker 1: because if you start moving, there's always secondary and tertiary
Speaker 1: I d s. So they did the correct thing, you know,
Speaker 1: stop look around, So we're looking for somebody to start
Speaker 1: shooting at us. Now. At this point, Bow immediately starts
Speaker 1: spinning up air because he knows somebody got hit by
Speaker 1: any I d I just ran. I didn't care for
Speaker 1: my life at that time, Honestly, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: make sure that I could get to them, possibly see
Speaker 1: what happened, start treating the situation, provide safety for the
Speaker 1: guys that got hit, because I didn't want them to
Speaker 1: get shot at as they were down or trying to
Speaker 1: work on them. I was providing cover holding Dudger's hand.
Speaker 1: Um he was somewhat coherent at the time. I saw
Speaker 1: that it was a like for mooral bleed in his pelvis,
Speaker 1: which is I mean, anybody in the medical field knows
Speaker 1: that that's that's it, even if he was in a
Speaker 1: hospital when that happened. I mean, you bleed out a
Speaker 1: minute Mendoza did a great job. He I mean, he
Speaker 1: was packing the wound, he was applying pressure, really addressing
Speaker 1: the casualty. You know, he was doing fantastic like and
Speaker 1: he wasn't even aware that was all muscle memory he was.
Speaker 1: He was not even there. He was in that blast
Speaker 1: with Dutcher. He must have been steps behind him. Both
Speaker 1: leaded the field behind us. They created an LZ. We
Speaker 1: got Dutch out to the l Z before they were
Speaker 1: you know, ten minutes away in the air. We got
Speaker 1: a call over the radio that he had passed. Take
Speaker 1: me back to the the way that you were feeling
Speaker 1: at that time, having made it so close to getting
Speaker 1: the guys out of there, and then you you're in
Speaker 1: that scene where you realize that the worst thing has happened.
Speaker 1: You know. At the time, I couldn't get tunnel vision
Speaker 1: on the fact that Dutcher was hit because my responsibilities
Speaker 1: to the other ten guys in the patrol um. It's
Speaker 1: very easy to get sucked in. I was trying to
Speaker 1: keep everything under control, you know, and the worst possible
Speaker 1: situation that you could be in. I was trying to
Speaker 1: keep everything handled. That's all my focus was. I knew
Speaker 1: it was going to happen. You know, the possibility of
Speaker 1: that happened was very very high. I just didn't know when,
Speaker 1: and I reacted as I should. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: think that I could have reacted any differently, any better.
Speaker 1: Could have definitely went worse. But luckily didn't tell me
Speaker 1: about the hours after the I D strike and getting
Speaker 1: the patrol back to the patrol base and how the
Speaker 1: rest of that day played out. You know, it really
Speaker 1: got heavy then, because now I can grasp the situation.
Speaker 1: I'm in my safety of my patrol best. I can
Speaker 1: now think about what was just going on. It got
Speaker 1: very heavy. It was very hard, and I allowed myself
Speaker 1: to mourn momentarily, but then I had to then immediately
Speaker 1: forget about it, push it aside, and get detail oriented
Speaker 1: again because we still have thirty more days or whatever
Speaker 1: it was to go, and I still have all these
Speaker 1: other marines that I'm accountable for. So we had like
Speaker 1: move on with the mission because you don't have an option.
Speaker 1: At that funeral in Texas, when Fry told Colton Rusk's
Speaker 1: dad that he would get to Afghanis stand come hell
Speaker 1: or high water, and when he went to the Sergeant
Speaker 1: major to plead for a spot as a combat replacement.
Speaker 1: He had one overriding objective. I was a senior sergeant.
Speaker 1: I had multiple deployments under my boat. I was very experienced,
Speaker 1: So I felt this mass responsibility to help take these
Speaker 1: junior marines and bring them home. That mission ultimately proved impossible,
Speaker 1: just as it had for Sergeant Andrew Mattelski, the squad leader,
Speaker 1: Fry replaced and for just about everyone with a leadership
Speaker 1: position in the battalion. By the time one five came
Speaker 1: home in October two thousand eleven, seventeen of their marines
Speaker 1: had been killed and a hundred had been wounded. Watching
Speaker 1: one of his own marines bleed out and being constant
Speaker 1: he forced to imagine his own death transformed Fry. So
Speaker 1: you were talking about how accepting that you might die
Speaker 1: or get severely wounded changed you permanently, that you can't
Speaker 1: undo that. What do you think about that now, all
Speaker 1: these years later, looking back on that. I mean, it
Speaker 1: altered my entire life. That experience, that acceptance, that understanding
Speaker 1: and being okay looking back on that now spiritually, that
Speaker 1: is like accepting God without saying it. It really steers
Speaker 1: my life and guides my life to push myself constantly,
Speaker 1: push myself because I'm experiencing this life that I didn't
Speaker 1: think that I should. I didn't think that I was
Speaker 1: going to be here. So in things that I do,
Speaker 1: I push myself harder, I try harder. I do whatever
Speaker 1: I can because every day is a gift as far
Speaker 1: as I'm concerned. So I have to use that. You know,
Speaker 1: I can't. I can't settle to be mediocre. We'll be
Speaker 1: back after the break. After sanging, Fry says he didn't
Speaker 1: feel like he needed to chase the war anymore. I
Speaker 1: did satisfy that hunger going to singing, that that that
Speaker 1: missing piece that I had, I did. I did quench
Speaker 1: that it was. It was a lot more than I
Speaker 1: thought it was going to be when I got there.
Speaker 1: I'll say that you have an idea of what you
Speaker 1: think that you're getting into, and then there's that reality
Speaker 1: of what you actually get into, and the reality was
Speaker 1: much greater than than what you thought it was. Facing
Speaker 1: that reality with Dutcher's death was enough for Fry. He
Speaker 1: didn't want to do it again. His wife was also
Speaker 1: expecting their first child, a boy who they would name Jack.
Speaker 1: The thought of potentially being killed on another deployment and
Speaker 1: leaving his baby fatherless was unbearable. So when Fry I
Speaker 1: saw an opportunity to get out of the deployment rotation
Speaker 1: by serving as an instructor at the Infantry Officer of
Speaker 1: Course in Quantico, Virginia, he took it. Two years later,
Speaker 1: he decided to get out of the core altogether. It
Speaker 1: wasn't easy for Fry to become just another civilian. In fact,
Speaker 1: the come doown was more like a crapsh. I was
Speaker 1: something in the Marine Corps. I was like the marine.
Speaker 1: I was a badass. I was perfect at my job.
Speaker 1: I've never met anybody better at my job than me.
Speaker 1: Never And to accept that, like that was a different life,
Speaker 1: you know, that was that was something that I did.
Speaker 1: I won't ever do that again. Like I was the
Speaker 1: coolest that I'll ever be when I was like twenty six.
Speaker 1: For I was accustomed to getting respect and admiration from
Speaker 1: other Marines, including the officers he trained at Quantico, But
Speaker 1: that change the moment he decided to get out. It
Speaker 1: was like he was a cult member, being shunned for
Speaker 1: his decision to return to society. As soon as they
Speaker 1: found out that like I was getting out, decided papers,
Speaker 1: I was gone. It didn't matter anymore. No matter how
Speaker 1: good you were before, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: what you did before, what you did up to that point.
Speaker 1: Now that you're leaving, they don't care for I found
Speaker 1: out quickly that nobody on the outside gave a ship
Speaker 1: about his years as a badass marine either. You know,
Speaker 1: you apply for a job and they want you to
Speaker 1: have a degree. But while these kids were going to
Speaker 1: college and getting degrees in basket weaving, I was in
Speaker 1: the military. I did my nine years of service. You know,
Speaker 1: I was in charge of more men, more responsibility, doing
Speaker 1: everything from hygiene to maintenance to cleaning too. It doesn't
Speaker 1: matter logistics. It's all encompassing. You know, we control every
Speaker 1: part of somebody's life, Like I did this stuff, and
Speaker 1: none of that mattered. I basically gave up nine years
Speaker 1: to start over back home in Pennsylvania. The hard charging,
Speaker 1: purpose driven marine would spend his first two years as
Speaker 1: a civilian neck deep in the most unskilled labor, digging
Speaker 1: ditches for gas and plumbing lines. It was not a
Speaker 1: good fit. Down in those ditches. The weight of Sangin
Speaker 1: started to bear down on Fry, his marriage broke up
Speaker 1: in a brief relationship led unexpectedly to a second son.
Speaker 1: Whenever he didn't have his boys, he would resist going
Speaker 1: home after work to an empty house where he'd be
Speaker 1: alone with his thoughts. He took to closing down the bars,
Speaker 1: drowning his grief and his grievances and alcohol and burning
Speaker 1: a hole in his pocket until it just had an
Speaker 1: epiphany one days, like covered and ship standing on the
Speaker 1: hillside in February and Pennsylvania, that this is not what
Speaker 1: I was made to do. There was a barbershop that
Speaker 1: was looking to expand, so I started pursuing it. The
Speaker 1: other barber's offered Fry a new kind of brotherhood in
Speaker 1: a renewed sense of purpose. A year later, he decided
Speaker 1: to go out on his own and opened Straight Ahead,
Speaker 1: where he offers something more than a haircut to those
Speaker 1: blue collar guys who wind up in his chair. You know,
Speaker 1: people perceive me as something because I'm tattooed and I'm larger,
Speaker 1: and I was in the Marine Corps. So then when
Speaker 1: I you know, I opened up and show them that,
Speaker 1: like I'll talk about emotions. I'll talk about like the
Speaker 1: stuff that you don't really want to talk about. It
Speaker 1: sets people back, but I also get a lot of
Speaker 1: people that will open up to me because of that.
Speaker 1: Being there on his customers best and worst days and
Speaker 1: the days in between, gives Fry a sense of community
Speaker 1: that's infinitely better than the bar rooms he used to haunts,
Speaker 1: and home isn't a place for I avoids anymore. In
Speaker 1: two thousand seventeen, he met a woman named Emily who
Speaker 1: was also figuring out life as a single parent. Now
Speaker 1: they're married and raising their boys together. It was Emily
Speaker 1: who encouraged fries newfound faith. Meanwhile, his barber friends turned
Speaker 1: him onto a different strain of religion. You're here, start
Speaker 1: passing me, especially jiu jitsu. Just do it, a martial
Speaker 1: art that channels the discipline and grit he developed as
Speaker 1: a marine. He teaches classes at a local gym a
Speaker 1: few times a week, and he trains with monastic devotion
Speaker 1: for his own semi pro fights. He's even launched a
Speaker 1: nonprofit called the Veteran Bushido Brotherhood that provides free martial
Speaker 1: arts training to veterans. The physical pain and the physical
Speaker 1: struggle get you out of your own head for a moment,
Speaker 1: and everything becomes way clear, and you just feel better.
Speaker 1: You know, you just feel way better. In a play
Speaker 1: on funk cancer, the Bushido Brotherhood, rash guards say fuck PTSD.
Speaker 1: It's a tough approach from a tough guy who's learned
Speaker 1: to be vulnerable, a fighter who broke the hold of
Speaker 1: his pain by reaching for connection. Has a story gotten
Speaker 1: easier to tell the more you tell it. Yes, the
Speaker 1: pain subsides a bit and more of an acceptance of it.
Speaker 1: But the main thing that makes it easier is that
Speaker 1: I use it for growth. And because I use it
Speaker 1: for growth, I don't view it as a negative thing anymore.
Speaker 1: You know where it was, You know something that you
Speaker 1: push deep down in your stomach and hide and don't
Speaker 1: talk about because men don't talk about stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And it becomes easier when you accept it and bear
Speaker 1: it and get better because of it. There's a name
Speaker 1: for the positive outlook, Fries describing post traumatic growth or PTG.
Speaker 1: It's an emerging field of study that's like a halogen
Speaker 1: lamp at the end of a dark tunnel, an antidote
Speaker 1: to what Fry sees as the curse of PTSD. If
Speaker 1: we accept this thing, this blanket statement, like oh, he
Speaker 1: is PTS take pills and now it's a crutch. If
Speaker 1: it becomes a permanent crutch, you know, this is something
Speaker 1: that you will just it's that negative lifestyle for for her,
Speaker 1: like you're just stuck on it. You're stuck in that
Speaker 1: negative cycle. You just gotta say no to. There's a
Speaker 1: line from Ernest Hemingway, who was injured as an ambulance
Speaker 1: driver in World War One, that captures the idea of
Speaker 1: PTG pretty well. The world breaks everyone, and afterward many
Speaker 1: are strong at the broken places. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: what I was saying to Matthew for it in Texas,
Speaker 1: when I talked about the tree that gets struck by
Speaker 1: lightning and grows around the damage. Researchers have identified a
Speaker 1: few reliable pathways to post traumatic growth disclosure telling the
Speaker 1: story and being real about the trauma and its effects,
Speaker 1: narrative development, accepting the past and imagining how the bad
Speaker 1: days can be the foundation of a brighter future, and
Speaker 1: service building community by helping others overcome their challenges. For
Speaker 1: I figured out most of this stuff by trial and error,
Speaker 1: and now he's passing it on. If I can teach
Speaker 1: people and help one person, you know, like one person
Speaker 1: understand and feel better about themselves and be more productive
Speaker 1: and like have better mindset because of my experiences that
Speaker 1: I can share, like absolutely, Like I'll do that all
Speaker 1: day long. I'll tell my story eight billion times and
Speaker 1: show my weakness to people. Would because it's not weakness,
Speaker 1: you know, it's the strength of you know, being able
Speaker 1: to use it as a weapon. There was a long
Speaker 1: time when Fry wanted nothing more than to be a weapon.
Speaker 1: But by the time he got to sang In, he
Speaker 1: was an old man for a grunt. His hunger for
Speaker 1: action had given way to a simpler desire to help.
Speaker 1: He was only squad leader for about three months, but
Speaker 1: his feelings of responsibility didn't just go away. In the
Speaker 1: years after they said goodbye, I knew that, like, they
Speaker 1: weren't going to be well. You know, I would try
Speaker 1: to reach out to some of them on Facebook if
Speaker 1: I could catch them, and I was working a lot,
Speaker 1: and I didn't really whatever excuses out there, I we
Speaker 1: lost connection. But it wasn't a week that went by
Speaker 1: that I didn't think about how they were doing, if
Speaker 1: they were all right, if they were being successful, if
Speaker 1: they were locked in a bedroom, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: up all night. Several of the third squad vets were struggling,
Speaker 1: staying up all night fighting their demons with booze and drugs.
Speaker 1: One of them, whose post military life happened to be
Speaker 1: the picture of success, was teetering on the edge of
Speaker 1: the abyss. It was like eleven or twelve o'clock at
Speaker 1: night and I my phone rings. Nobody ever calls my phone,
Speaker 1: So something triggered in me. You know, I had to
Speaker 1: answer the phone. Any other time I would have just
Speaker 1: I would have hit canceled. And I picked up the phone,
Speaker 1: and I could just hear the pain. You know, as
Speaker 1: soon as I answer, I knew who it was immediately.
Speaker 1: It was Manni Mendoza. Yeah. Man, he answered the phone
Speaker 1: talk like four in the morning. He was in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1: He was like hysterical, and I could just tell the
Speaker 1: pain in his voice. And he like he was by
Speaker 1: himself at college in his dorm room. He drank a
Speaker 1: little bit, and then he went went and watched Lone
Speaker 1: Survivor by himself, and it just triggered all of it.
Speaker 1: So many different ways that could have gone, but he
Speaker 1: went the wrong way. To me, it sounded like he
Speaker 1: maybe never even thought about it. Before the whole situation
Speaker 1: with Ducher, because he was blown up, and I mean
Speaker 1: Mendoza was right behind him, and Mendoza like was kind
Speaker 1: of knocked down for weeks, Like we kept him on base,
Speaker 1: we didn't let him patrol anymore. But like I was
Speaker 1: actually in fear that he wasn't going to return to
Speaker 1: normal because he would just like sit on his rack
Speaker 1: and like stare. You would talk to him, and he
Speaker 1: was not there. It it took weeks for him to
Speaker 1: to come back. So when I'm hearing this, it was
Speaker 1: like a first outpouring of like a realization of what happened.
Speaker 1: And he didn't remember completely, and he he thought it
Speaker 1: was his fault. It was all my fault. It was me.
Speaker 1: I did it. Like in his voice, there was no
Speaker 1: question when he called me that he thought he was
Speaker 1: responsible for Dutcher's death. Basically the only thing that I
Speaker 1: could do and knew what to do was talk to
Speaker 1: him and let him talk. And then I told him
Speaker 1: if anybody's responsibility was mine that Dutcher died, and he
Speaker 1: put the blame on himself. I was a squad leader.
Speaker 1: I was in charge. These were my marines. I dictated
Speaker 1: the robe out so these were my choices that led
Speaker 1: us to go on this route. The Dutcher got hit
Speaker 1: and he said, no, I was a squad leader, I
Speaker 1: was a sergeant. I was in charge of that patrol.
Speaker 1: I couldn't let him try to bear that. I knew
Speaker 1: that I could. I was in the right mind to
Speaker 1: bear that weight, and he wasn't. Yes, that got to me.
Speaker 1: It got to me. It made me. I realized that
Speaker 1: there are people who care. I was like, get that
Speaker 1: out of your fucking head. You're not in charge. This
Speaker 1: is my patrol, is my decision, it's not yours. You
Speaker 1: were following my direction. And it kind of like brought
Speaker 1: him back down, and I could tell his his temperament changed.
Speaker 1: Everything kind of changed to calm down because I was
Speaker 1: feeling the burden and here is Jered reading 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. I
Speaker 1: made sure that he was, like good. When I left
Speaker 1: the phone, I felt confident that he was in a
Speaker 1: much better place. He was listening, He actually listened. Did
Speaker 1: he tell you that he had a gun? Did you
Speaker 1: know that? So? Yeah, the story that we heard from
Speaker 1: Manny is pretty much identic goal to what you just
Speaker 1: told us, except for the fact that he had a
Speaker 1: gun and was planning on taking his life that night,
Speaker 1: and the way he tells the story you saved his life.
Speaker 1: That's like the mm hmmm. Situations like that is like
Speaker 1: proof that God is like there, you know, I think
Speaker 1: there's there's no other way that like I would have
Speaker 1: answered the phone, uh, or that I would have the words,
Speaker 1: you know, to comfort him in that situation, and that
Speaker 1: I was put there, you know, to be his squad
Speaker 1: leader and then to follow through with that, you know,
Speaker 1: in the future. I mean, that's no absolute confirmation to me.
Speaker 1: Do you hear people like I wish I would have
Speaker 1: just answered the phone. I wish I would have talked
Speaker 1: to him. I wish I'm just so thankful that I
Speaker 1: answered the phone, for I didn't have to go to Sangon.
Speaker 1: He could have filed his medical paperwork and put the
Speaker 1: Marine Corps behind him, gone home to Pennsylvania and got
Speaker 1: on with his life. But in a gesture that bore
Speaker 1: little resemblance to the blind leap of a seventeen year
Speaker 1: old recruit, for I made a choice to risk death
Speaker 1: to help a few scared kids he'd never met. We
Speaker 1: don't deploy for the country. You know, you're not thinking
Speaker 1: of that. You're not deploying for the greater cause or something.
Speaker 1: You are deploying to support your brothers and bring your
Speaker 1: brothers back. That is what you're trying to do. You're
Speaker 1: trying to make sure that as many people that are
Speaker 1: your brothers, your guys, your marines, you bring them home.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty cynical about the greater cause that generated so
Speaker 1: much bloodshed and Helmond the plan to build peace by
Speaker 1: bringing a surge of violence along with wads of cash
Speaker 1: and a distant promise of electricity, the plan to keep
Speaker 1: Americans safe by killing the Afghans we didn't like and
Speaker 1: forcing our protection on the ones we did. But I
Speaker 1: was a journalist and sangon. My job was to ask questions,
Speaker 1: and that's still my job. A decade later, Fry was
Speaker 1: a twenty four year old sergeant, and for him, there
Speaker 1: was no greater cause than bringing marines home alive. He'd
Speaker 1: seen the alternative up close, standing guard next to caskets
Speaker 1: while families collapsed into bottomless sorrow. He didn't want anyone
Speaker 1: else to go through that. In the end. He couldn't
Speaker 1: save Dutcher or spare his family, but he's not a failure.
Speaker 1: There are ten young men home alive from Sangon whose
Speaker 1: families owe a lot to fry, and there's one kid
Speaker 1: from the Rio Grand Valley who owes him everything. M
Speaker 1: Next time on Third Squad, we drive to Upstate New
Speaker 1: York to visit Taylor Moody, third Squad's hungriest marine. I
Speaker 1: don't think I could have been more than one percent body.
Speaker 1: I could feel myself getting weaker and weaker and weaker,
Speaker 1: was having to carry more and more and more because
Speaker 1: more and more people are getting blown up or killed.
Speaker 1: Coming back from Sangon, one of the first things that
Speaker 1: I did was order party peck from Taco Bell. That
Speaker 1: was a mistake. I was on that pot within about
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes after finishing those tacos, and I was there
Speaker 1: for a minute, or was there for a while. Just
Speaker 1: a reminder if you want to stick around after the credits,
Speaker 1: I'll come back to that footnote about America's wild Cold
Speaker 1: War experiment in Helmont. Third Squad is written and produced
Speaker 1: by Elliott Woods, Tommy Andreas, and Maria Burne. It's an
Speaker 1: Heirloom Media production distributed by iHeart Media. Funding support for
Speaker 1: Third Squad comes from the National Endowment for the Humanities
Speaker 1: and collaboration with the Center for Warren Society at San
Speaker 1: Diego State University. If you're interested in supporting our work
Speaker 1: with a financial contribution, please visit the donate page at
Speaker 1: third squad dot com, where you'll also find photographs from
Speaker 1: Sangin and from our road trip. Original music for Third
Speaker 1: Squad by Mondo Boys, editing and sound designed by John Ward.
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Ben and Kaitlin. Special thanks to Scott Carrier,
Speaker 1: Marianne Andre Ted Jenaway's, Benjamin Bush, caitlinsh Carrie Gracie, Kevin Connolly,
Speaker 1: Lena Ferguson, and Daniel Weggland of Georgetown University. If you
Speaker 1: got a minute, please leave us a rating and your
Speaker 1: preferred podcast app. It will help other people find the show.
Speaker 1: You can find me on Instagram and Twitter at Elliott Woods.
Speaker 1: Now back to that footnote. America's pre nine eleven experience
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan is a case study in the law of
Speaker 1: unintended consequences. During the Cold War, the US spent three
Speaker 1: decades and more than six hundred million in today's dollars
Speaker 1: in an effort to make the helm On Desert bloom
Speaker 1: an usher in a new era of modern agriculture. It
Speaker 1: was all part of a campaign to diminish Soviet influence
Speaker 1: in southern Afghanistan. The Afghans who held power in Kabul
Speaker 1: had a different goal. They wanted to increase the authority
Speaker 1: of the central government in the rural south, home to
Speaker 1: nomads and occasionally rebellious Pashtun families who preferred to be
Speaker 1: left alone. In what would become a monument of failed
Speaker 1: nation building, American contractors based out of an enclave called
Speaker 1: Little America, built the Damnit Kajackey in a vast irrigation
Speaker 1: network in the Helmond River Valley. They designed and oversaw
Speaker 1: the construction of canals that marines would slash across half
Speaker 1: a century later when they flooded into Helmond with the
Speaker 1: Surge and yet another attempt to expand the power of
Speaker 1: afghanistan central government into the Pashtun heartland by force. The
Speaker 1: Cold War project was known by several names over the years,
Speaker 1: but the one that stuck was the Helmond Valley Authority
Speaker 1: or h v A. The Kajackey Power Station was the
Speaker 1: hv A's last big stroke for the Soviet invasion brought
Speaker 1: it to a halt in nineteen seventy nine. In the
Speaker 1: decade of war that followed, America switched from funding agriculture
Speaker 1: to arming the anti Soviet militias known as Mujahideen. By
Speaker 1: conservative estimates, at least five hundred thousand Afghans died in
Speaker 1: the fighting before the Soviets finally withdrew in nineteen nine.
Speaker 1: Then the Mujahadeen turned on each other in a vicious
Speaker 1: struggle for power known as the Afghan Civil War. They
Speaker 1: laid waste to Kabul and brought an era of warlordism
Speaker 1: and exploitation to rural areas that only ended when the
Speaker 1: Taliban seized power in nineteen six. Afghans measure there forever
Speaker 1: war in generations, not years. Amid all the chaos, Kajaki
Speaker 1: fell into ruin and its electricity output dropped to a trickle,
Speaker 1: but poppies thrived in Helman thanks to all that American
Speaker 1: built irrigation infrastructure. The province became the opium capital of
Speaker 1: the world and eventually a major power center for the Taliban.
Speaker 1: In the twenty one century, it would become the deadliest
Speaker 1: province for Coalition troops and all of Afghanistan. On the
Speaker 1: eve of the surge in about two thousand eight, a
Speaker 1: new generation of nation builders fixed their hopes of saving
Speaker 1: a failing war on reviving the dreams of the h
Speaker 1: v A, and above all, on fixing the Kajackey power station.
Speaker 1: The basic idea was that powering more homes and businesses
Speaker 1: and major southern population centers like Kandahar City would build
Speaker 1: trust in the Afghan government's capacity to provide essential services
Speaker 1: and would interrupt the Taliban's recruiting pipeline by creating more
Speaker 1: attractive jobs for young men than i e. D. Technician
Speaker 1: and Taliban gun slinger. No one had ever proved that
Speaker 1: more electricity would lead to less violence, but that didn't
Speaker 1: stop the war planners from going all in with American
Speaker 1: blood and treasure. After hundreds of Coalition and Afghan casualties
Speaker 1: and hundreds of millions of dollars, the Kajackey upgrade was
Speaker 1: finally completed in two thousand sixteen, but the surge of
Speaker 1: a like tricity didn't stop the Taliban. They retook Sangin
Speaker 1: and most of Helmon from Afghan troops a year later,
Speaker 1: and they seized Kandahar City in the days leading up
Speaker 1: to the fall of Kabul in August two thousand one.
Speaker 1: Built on the ruins of American ambition, the Taliban's poppy
Speaker 1: empire is more lucrative now than ever before. According to
Speaker 1: the u N, Afghanistan produces about twice as much opium
Speaker 1: today as it didn't two thousand, the last year before
Speaker 1: the American invasion. That's enough to supply more than eighty
Speaker 1: percent of the world's heroin and helmon. Where America spent
Speaker 1: billions and the Marines shed so much blood, produces more
Speaker 1: opium than the rest of Afghanistan's provinces combined.