Speaker 1: Third Squad is a podcast about war. Every episode contains
Speaker 1: strong language and descriptions of violence that may not be
Speaker 1: suitable for all listeners. When I got kicked out and
Speaker 1: I had no benefits or no direction or guideline or
Speaker 1: none of my friends I had served with around me
Speaker 1: or in my life, I started selling cocaine, so I mean,
Speaker 1: and I was going to school as well. But how
Speaker 1: the hell else am I going to paper? I'm back
Speaker 1: to square one. What did that feel like for you?
Speaker 1: Suck felt like fucking defeat. I would describe it like
Speaker 1: the same way a guy feels when he walks in
Speaker 1: on his fucking wife lane in bed with another dude.
Speaker 1: It felt that shitty. Fi'm Elliott Woods. This is Third
Speaker 1: Squad Episode eight, Bad Paper. After my trip to see
Speaker 1: David rich Bolsky in Alaska, I knocked out a sevent
Speaker 1: mile drive from my home in Montana, across the barren
Speaker 1: corn and soy fields of the Midwest to Kentucky horse Country,
Speaker 1: where spring has arrived and the trees are bursting with
Speaker 1: pink and white blossoms. I picked up Tommy along the way,
Speaker 1: and now we're rolling through a tidy subdivision north of
Speaker 1: Lexington like the most Edward Scissor Hansey neighborhood we've been
Speaker 1: too so far. I think it's nice. Is nice? We're
Speaker 1: looking for third Squad veteran Scott mckitchen's house. Dang, Gina.
Speaker 1: Is this his house? Yeah, that's his house. Look at
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps thing on the license plate. Does he
Speaker 1: live here by himself? I guess we'll find out. Maybe
Speaker 1: he lives here with this dog's probably like everybody else.
Speaker 1: Mckatchen was a troubled kid before he joined the Marine Corps.
Speaker 1: I remember him telling me about it back at Patrol
Speaker 1: based Fires when I reviewed him on his cop I'm
Speaker 1: PFC Scott mccatchen. I'm twenty years older from Pleasant in California.
Speaker 1: He was stripped down to his shorts and had a
Speaker 1: big wad of grizzly snuff in his lip. So then
Speaker 1: the first question is why did you joined the Marine Corps.
Speaker 1: I joined the Marine Corps because I was kicked out
Speaker 1: of my house while I was going to college and
Speaker 1: just started being financially unstable. So I joined the Marine
Speaker 1: Corps so I could basically have a stable lifestyle, I guess,
Speaker 1: and get away from home. His reasons for enlisting. We're
Speaker 1: almost identical to my own. Tell me a little bit about,
Speaker 1: just very briefly, about the kid that you were, that
Speaker 1: that didn't do so out of college, because I was
Speaker 1: actually that kid too. I was a kid in college
Speaker 1: that I went to college and just wanted to party,
Speaker 1: didn't care too much about school or think what I
Speaker 1: could possibly lose if I were to just do nothing
Speaker 1: but party. And sure enough I lost it. But I
Speaker 1: fucking manned up when I joined the military. And here
Speaker 1: I am saying in Afghanistan, things seem to be looking
Speaker 1: up for Mketchen. His house is large and well maintained,
Speaker 1: like all the others in the neighborhood, with a perfect
Speaker 1: lawn and happy little shrubs. The two car garages wide open,
Speaker 1: and there's a new looking white Infinity parked inside, and
Speaker 1: there's Mcatchen swinging open the door to greet us. Are
Speaker 1: you doing good? How are you? I'm good. He's wearing
Speaker 1: a gray Marine Corps hoodie with the sleeves pushed up,
Speaker 1: showing skull and spiderweb tattoos running up his arms, and
Speaker 1: he's got a German shepherd by his side that's the
Speaker 1: size of a small pony. The dog's name is Rugan. Excited, dude,
Speaker 1: I got I got here like basically as soon as
Speaker 1: I got When was that so? Yeah? Dude, He's he's
Speaker 1: been my like WindMan ever since. When I met m.
Speaker 1: Catchen in two thousand eleven, he was stick skinny and
Speaker 1: looked like a child. Now he's thirty and he's still
Speaker 1: a string bean. His jeans are falling off his hips.
Speaker 1: And even though he's got the same bright smile I
Speaker 1: remember from Sangin, the youth has gone from his face.
Speaker 1: He's got a shadow of dark stubble and circles under
Speaker 1: his eyes. Tick our shoes off. Now it's all right,
Speaker 1: But Ketchen's house looks barely lived in, and I just
Speaker 1: got the place in May so great neighborhood. There's a
Speaker 1: big TV on the wall above a gas fireplace, with
Speaker 1: an Xbox on the shelf underneath, and an overstuffed couch
Speaker 1: under a large print of graffiti. Ruger the dog has
Speaker 1: an entire bedroom to himself, complete with a queen bed
Speaker 1: and his very own flat screen TV. The place is immaculate,
Speaker 1: almost like a realtor prepared it for an open house,
Speaker 1: except for one little thing. Sorry about all the pot
Speaker 1: I'm a bit of a stoner. Back when mckatchen was
Speaker 1: living in the squalor of patrol based fires, he told
Speaker 1: me he wanted to hit the big time someday after
Speaker 1: my contracts up, I plan on leaving the Marine Corps
Speaker 1: and then I'm I want to use my g I
Speaker 1: bill and go to go back to college and hopefully
Speaker 1: get a degree in business graphic design something and then
Speaker 1: get rich one day. By all appearances, he's on his way,
Speaker 1: even though he's not currently employed. Well, I just got fired, dudes.
Speaker 1: The Ketchen tells me he was working part time at
Speaker 1: a nursing home, but he got let go after an
Speaker 1: argument with another employee. It was a shitty job. The
Speaker 1: details are kind of vague anyway, Mketchen says he's not
Speaker 1: too worried about it, but financially I'm great, So like whatever,
Speaker 1: it's a relatively minor bump and the road he has
Speaker 1: been traveling since sangin. When I got back from Afghanistan
Speaker 1: a few months after we returned to him, I got
Speaker 1: JPD and stuff, and that was scary. That's where it
Speaker 1: began since the last time I saw you. So what
Speaker 1: does m JP mean? Non judicial punishment? It's it's not good.
Speaker 1: Are you able to tell us what happened? Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: the whole unit knows. So it's no secret. I have
Speaker 1: no shame in it. Honestly, I can think if anything,
Speaker 1: I grew from it. I just turned twenty one. We've
Speaker 1: been back in the States for about the months or whatever,
Speaker 1: and it was New Year's and we had a lead
Speaker 1: block in ninety six hour lead block and one of
Speaker 1: my friends had some cocaine in San Diego, and so
Speaker 1: I did some blow and uh, you know, I thought
Speaker 1: I had enough time to get clean. Um, and we
Speaker 1: had a great test that after we got back from
Speaker 1: that lead block, and I failed it, and uh gotten
Speaker 1: some serious trouble with the Marines and stuff, and uh so,
Speaker 1: long story short, that's what got me out of the
Speaker 1: Marine Corps. That vacation funk up cost mccatching more than
Speaker 1: his job. He got kicked out with an other than
Speaker 1: honorable discharge, staying on his record known in the military
Speaker 1: is bad paper that followed him back into civilian life.
Speaker 1: There are five main categories of military discharge. Of the five,
Speaker 1: honorable is the only one that doesn't have negative consequences.
Speaker 1: The others are general under honorable conditions other than honorable
Speaker 1: bad conduct and dishonorable. Guys who like rape people will
Speaker 1: get sucking bad contexts. So do you get a dishonorable discharge,
Speaker 1: you have to like pretty much kill somebody now. The
Speaker 1: other than honorable, it's basically just a hey, thanks, we
Speaker 1: used you. We're not going to give you any benefits.
Speaker 1: Thanks for your fucking time. That's it. That's what you got.
Speaker 1: That's what I got initially, which means, and this is
Speaker 1: the important thing, that means you're cut off from via benefits,
Speaker 1: any health care benefits, mental health, any anything, conosation, college,
Speaker 1: educational bents. Everything you joined the ser is for that
Speaker 1: your recruiter lurge you in with you're no longer entitled to.
Speaker 1: So I'd gone through everything, I've gone through the combat deployment,
Speaker 1: and now I'm being looked at like a piece of ship,
Speaker 1: which I know I'm not. You know, even at the time, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not. I think they're pieces of ship for not
Speaker 1: give me a chance. Because I was a fucking good marine,
Speaker 1: and I know my marines would attest to that. I
Speaker 1: got kicked to the curb because I made one poor
Speaker 1: choice after fallless service I would say getting kicked out
Speaker 1: of the Marine Corps derailed in the catching, it's fucking crazy.
Speaker 1: You're going, you know, six ft into the deep end,
Speaker 1: quicker than like anything, and and you have no clue
Speaker 1: where to get a footing in life when they fucking
Speaker 1: throw you out on the streets and you can't even
Speaker 1: go see a therapist after you just got back from
Speaker 1: seeing your friends blown in half. That's fucked up. In
Speaker 1: a matter of months, he'd gone from fighting for his
Speaker 1: life and sang in alongside the insanely type brotherhood of
Speaker 1: Third Squad to being out on his ass with the
Speaker 1: stigma of an other than honorable discharge hanging around his neck.
Speaker 1: He was totally isolated, and he was desperate. When I
Speaker 1: got kicked out and I had no benefits or no
Speaker 1: direction or guideline or none of my friends I had
Speaker 1: served with around me or in my life. I started
Speaker 1: selling cocaine, so I mean, and I was going to
Speaker 1: school as well, But how the hell else am I
Speaker 1: going to paper? I'm back to square one? What did
Speaker 1: that feel like for you? Suck felt like fucking defeat.
Speaker 1: I would describe it like the same way a guy
Speaker 1: feels when he walks in on his fucking wife Lane
Speaker 1: in bed with another dude. It felt a shitty. Because
Speaker 1: of his bad paper discharge, Mketchen wasn't eligible for the
Speaker 1: g I Bill, which pays education expenses for veterans with
Speaker 1: honorable discharges. His parents, Cindy and Doug, were outraged by
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps decision to throw their son out with
Speaker 1: no benefits. They told Scott they would cover his tuition,
Speaker 1: room and board as long as he was earning passing grades.
Speaker 1: So he enrolled at Santa Barbara City College and everything
Speaker 1: went okay for one semester. But when m Ketchen started
Speaker 1: partying and doing drugs instead of going to class, his
Speaker 1: parents cut him off. That's how he wound up selling cocaine.
Speaker 1: Mketchen knew he was hurtling towards self destruction and needed
Speaker 1: to get out of the Santa Barbara party scene, so
Speaker 1: he decided to move to a place where nothing could
Speaker 1: possibly go wrong. I decided Las Vegas a good spot
Speaker 1: to go because my uncle's successful doctor out there. He's
Speaker 1: got his own private practice stuff and probably just pay
Speaker 1: me to do some bullshit job or whatever. So I
Speaker 1: was out there just doing just that, just bullshit work. Um,
Speaker 1: but I was still lost, and I was doing drugs
Speaker 1: and uh, just self medicating. Mckatchen had been out of
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps for about a year and a half
Speaker 1: when he got to Vegas, and he was still in
Speaker 1: a dark place, but he wanted to get his feet
Speaker 1: under him. His mom found out it might be possible
Speaker 1: to get his discharge upgraded with the help of a
Speaker 1: nonprofit called am Vets, which would mean getting his v A,
Speaker 1: healthcare and education benefits restored. She helped mkeatchin get in
Speaker 1: touch with them and they supplied a pro bono attorney
Speaker 1: to start the process. In the meantime, mketchen was self
Speaker 1: medicating with Xanex, which he tells me led to back
Speaker 1: to back arrest for driving under the influence. I got
Speaker 1: a couple of d U E s while I was
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas, and uh that was another kick in
Speaker 1: the fucking gut. It was a very expensive ordeal. Uh
Speaker 1: then A labeled as like basically a criminal and I
Speaker 1: had to, uh, you know, lose my license. So I
Speaker 1: was forced to you know, take public transportation and is
Speaker 1: getting old real quick. You know. The first time he
Speaker 1: got a d U I, he wrecked his girlfriend's car.
Speaker 1: The second time, a neighbor called the cops when she
Speaker 1: saw him passed out behind the wheel in his driveway.
Speaker 1: After that second d u I mckatchen spent ten days
Speaker 1: in jail. That's where he saw an apparition from his
Speaker 1: troubled childhood that was in jail for a little bit.
Speaker 1: This junkie comes up to me clearly like he's coming
Speaker 1: off a heroin and no doubt about it, because he's like, Hey,
Speaker 1: do I know you from somewhere? And I hadn't lived
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas that long and I'm just like no,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know you, you know any anyone
Speaker 1: to associate with this, any of these people. To be
Speaker 1: honest with you, um, I'd like to hold myself to
Speaker 1: a higher standard than them. He's like, no, no, man,
Speaker 1: I know you from somewhere, and I'm like, dude, I
Speaker 1: don't fucking know you, Like what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: And then he's like Red Rock Canyon School, I was
Speaker 1: there with you, and I'm thinking, like what, And then
Speaker 1: I started putting two and two together and the kid
Speaker 1: just looked like shit because he'd been using so much heroin.
Speaker 1: But I did recognize him once he had said that,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh my god. Seeing his former
Speaker 1: classmate was a wake up call. The catching was fucking
Speaker 1: up again, and he knew better than anyone how much
Speaker 1: uglier things could get. We'll be back after the break.
Speaker 1: Scott mckittchen was adopted as a baby. He grew up
Speaker 1: in a Bay Area suburb called Pleasanton, California. But the
Speaker 1: way mckatchen tells it, his childhood wasn't always pleasant. I
Speaker 1: was kind of a ship headed kid, and I've always
Speaker 1: kind of gotten trouble here and there. I was just
Speaker 1: getting fights and stuff at school and slacking off just
Speaker 1: you know, not going to school and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: At some point in his teenage years, he started fighting
Speaker 1: a lot with his parents. Things at a low point
Speaker 1: when a policeman showed up at the house after mckitchen
Speaker 1: got caught stealing from his neighbor's yards. It was around
Speaker 1: that time that his parents planned a special sixteenth birthday
Speaker 1: party for him at his uncle's house in Vegas. He's
Speaker 1: got a secret sick house and stuff, and my parents
Speaker 1: were like, hey, you want to go to stay with
Speaker 1: your uncle Baldy for your sixteenth birthdam Like hell yeah,
Speaker 1: mckatchen thought maybe things with his parents were taking a turn,
Speaker 1: and he was right, just not in the way he expected.
Speaker 1: They tricked me. Actually, I got woken up in the
Speaker 1: morning of my birthday by two probably an investigators, took
Speaker 1: me up there, up there to his new home away
Speaker 1: from home. It's called Red Rock Canyon School and it
Speaker 1: was in St. George, Utaw. Was it a boarding school
Speaker 1: for kids who are getting in trouble? Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: Mckatchen and I have this in common too. I got
Speaker 1: sent to a military boarding school when I was a teenager,
Speaker 1: but no one tricked me. I went voluntarily. Mckatchen says
Speaker 1: he felt betrayed. I couldn't believe my parents did me
Speaker 1: like that. Dude. You know, it's important for you to
Speaker 1: know that I contacted mketchen's mom and dad to get
Speaker 1: their side of the story. They told me sending Scott
Speaker 1: to Red Rock Canyon School was the most difficult thing
Speaker 1: they'd ever done as parents, but it felt like they
Speaker 1: were out of options. His mom told me he was
Speaker 1: so out of control, stealing and lying to us that
Speaker 1: we were afraid he would end up either dead or
Speaker 1: in jail. Mcatchin tells me that for an adopted kid,
Speaker 1: being lied to and left behind was particularly rough. He
Speaker 1: felt abandoned and no one was giving out hugs. At
Speaker 1: Red Rock Canyon School, it was housed in an old
Speaker 1: hotel that look kind of like your average Laquinta in
Speaker 1: Beija exterior terra cotta roof tiles and palm tree landscaping.
Speaker 1: It was billed as a therapeutic center for troubled teenagers,
Speaker 1: but as mcatchen tells it, the place was more like
Speaker 1: a prison. Yeah. It was insane for sure. Um they
Speaker 1: beat the crap out of kids up there. Mckatchen says
Speaker 1: he got thrown around by the staff and saw other
Speaker 1: kids get hit, and he noticed that he had something
Speaker 1: in common with a lot of his fellow students. Most
Speaker 1: of the kids up there were adopted, and so that
Speaker 1: school had contract from the like state of California and stuff.
Speaker 1: If you were adopted, the state of California would pay
Speaker 1: for the kids stay there. Oregon and Washington also contracted
Speaker 1: the school the How's foster kids. What mcatchen and his
Speaker 1: parents didn't know at the time was that Red Rock
Speaker 1: was in the midst of a lawsuit over allegations of
Speaker 1: child abuse by staff. More complaints piled up over the years,
Speaker 1: until the state of Utah finally shut the facility down
Speaker 1: in two thousand nineteen. Mcatchen went there in two thousand six.
Speaker 1: His parents enrolled him in a nine month program. If
Speaker 1: he could shape up during that time, he could come
Speaker 1: back home. It reminded me kind of of like something
Speaker 1: like boot camp, you know what I mean, where you
Speaker 1: get up at the same time every morning, everyone does,
Speaker 1: and then you go get your breakfast, after you do
Speaker 1: your personal hygiene and whatnot, and then you'd go from
Speaker 1: breakfast to you. I think they made escape DoPT um
Speaker 1: after breakfast, and then it'd be school um and school.
Speaker 1: There was just a joke, it was. It was a
Speaker 1: good place for kids to really get ahead in school
Speaker 1: because it was easy and you could catch up on
Speaker 1: your credits and stuff. So I actually got a lot done.
Speaker 1: There was nothing to like about the school, but Mketchen
Speaker 1: did well in the highly structured environment. He finished the
Speaker 1: program on schedule and was back home in time for
Speaker 1: his junior year. But after everything that happened, he says
Speaker 1: he never really felt comfortable in his parents house again.
Speaker 1: I felt like I was faking who I was, so
Speaker 1: that I could just have a brief over my head,
Speaker 1: my my parents house, you know what I mean, which
Speaker 1: I don't think any kids should have to do, but
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, ship, dude. I faked the funk, and
Speaker 1: then once I graduated high school, um, I got the
Speaker 1: hell out of there immediately. Mckatchen's relationship with his parents
Speaker 1: was strained, but they helped him find and pay for
Speaker 1: an apartment when he moved out, and they paid his
Speaker 1: tuition at Las Pasidas Community College in nearby Livermore. Mketchen
Speaker 1: did well his first semester, but he wasn't quite as
Speaker 1: ready for adulthood as he thought. I was working a
Speaker 1: shitty job at Jack in the Box and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: living in the San Francisco Bay area eighteen years old
Speaker 1: and then trying to go to college. It was a
Speaker 1: shitty life. Man. In a second semester, mketchen lost interest
Speaker 1: in school. He was still fighting with his parents, and
Speaker 1: the self discipline developed at Red Rock Canyon School was
Speaker 1: failing him. The military suddenly seemed like a way to
Speaker 1: get back on track, and in Mketchen's mind, there was
Speaker 1: only one branch worth joining. I loved the old school
Speaker 1: Marine Corps commercials you know that every kid would watch
Speaker 1: and it's got like the Marine skill in the clip,
Speaker 1: the passage is intense. But if you complete the journey
Speaker 1: and then he gets his n c O swords at
Speaker 1: the top, Like, I just thought that was the sickest uniform.
Speaker 1: That's why I picked the Marines. The Marine recruiters had
Speaker 1: mccatchin right where they wanted him. In need of an
Speaker 1: injection of self confidence and a kick in the ass.
Speaker 1: You go into the service because of some incentive that
Speaker 1: they're offering you. I mean, why else would you fucking
Speaker 1: do it? You know what I mean? Like, so I'm
Speaker 1: going in there, Yeah, I need something to build my
Speaker 1: life on. I don't really have shipped going for me.
Speaker 1: They're gonna pay me. They're gonna pay for my school
Speaker 1: when I get out. So those are the Those are
Speaker 1: the big incentives for I think most guys to join,
Speaker 1: and they just want to serve their country too, and
Speaker 1: they think it's honorable. I do think it's honorable. When
Speaker 1: mcatchin began the recruitment process in the spring of two
Speaker 1: thousand and ten, he wasn't exactly a dream recruit. Basically,
Speaker 1: they're kind of monitoring you before you go to boot
Speaker 1: camp and they're making sure you're still in shape and
Speaker 1: fit to go and basically not getting in trouble. New tattoos,
Speaker 1: And I got new tattoos, and my recruiter was Piste.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just the tattoos either. At the time, I
Speaker 1: was a piece of ship in the eyes of a
Speaker 1: Marine Corps recruiter. Like I was still smoking heed, you know.
Speaker 1: But they're trying to drill into your head get claimed
Speaker 1: because we're we can take you you do, And like
Speaker 1: I was showing potential. I was. I was in shape.
Speaker 1: I was running probably four or five, maybe six miles
Speaker 1: every day before I went to boot camp, because they
Speaker 1: were like, I don't want to be struggling too hard,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. If you go there out
Speaker 1: of shape, it's gonna be way more difficult. Well, mccatchin
Speaker 1: first told his mom and dad that he wanted to
Speaker 1: join the Marines. They didn't fall into a patriotic swoop.
Speaker 1: It was two thousand ten and there were two wars
Speaker 1: going on. My parents were fucking so against it, so
Speaker 1: against it. Cindy and Doug mckittchen had ample reason to
Speaker 1: worry because Scott was dead set on becoming a Marine
Speaker 1: Corps infantryman. Along with the extreme danger he would likely
Speaker 1: face on the front lines, they worried that he would
Speaker 1: finish his enlistment with no marketable skills. There just aren't
Speaker 1: a lot of jobs for trigger poolers in the civilian economy.
Speaker 1: My dad, when I enlisted, he tried to pay me
Speaker 1: not to go. Basically, mckittchen's dad offered to pay him
Speaker 1: to do odd jobs and stay in school. Doug had
Speaker 1: another reason for wanting to keep Scott out of the military.
Speaker 1: As a working class teenager with a draft card in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen sixties, he marched with anti war demonstrators
Speaker 1: in San Francisco. Doug's draft number never got called, but
Speaker 1: he says he probably would have gone to Canada if
Speaker 1: it had. He didn't think the Vietnam War was worth
Speaker 1: his life, and when it came to his own son's life,
Speaker 1: he didn't feel differently about a Rock and Afghanistan. But
Speaker 1: the father's opposition only made the son dig in. I
Speaker 1: kind of always looked at him like he dodged the
Speaker 1: draft a little bit. You know, he didn't want to go.
Speaker 1: I get it. I don't think anyone should have to
Speaker 1: go do that if they don't want to, you know,
Speaker 1: But then again, you know, I I didn't really have options,
Speaker 1: So this was my option, was that I'm creating for
Speaker 1: myself to go into the service to better my life basically.
Speaker 1: But then the second I'm doing something for myself, I
Speaker 1: get my father trying to pay me not to do it,
Speaker 1: and I'm just like, well, what the fuck? Like, you know,
Speaker 1: hell no, And you were eighteen, so you didn't need
Speaker 1: them to sign the catchin ship to Marine Corps Recruit
Speaker 1: Depot San Diego in June two. Tell me about what
Speaker 1: it was like for you when you showed up. What
Speaker 1: are your first memories of getting there. It's the same
Speaker 1: as every single Marine Corps recruit. So you get off
Speaker 1: of a bus and they line you up on these
Speaker 1: yellow foot prints and they basically strip every bit of
Speaker 1: individuality out of you. So everyone gets the same haircut,
Speaker 1: they get their civilian clothes taken away. You're all dressed
Speaker 1: the same, and you just get accustomed to being yellowed at.
Speaker 1: So they're trying to make you a little tougher. I
Speaker 1: guess you know, what do you remember about how you
Speaker 1: evolved over the course of that training. They make you
Speaker 1: work for everything to be proud of, just every little
Speaker 1: thing you earn it. For instance, like boot bands, just
Speaker 1: something to hold your cammys up over your boots. You
Speaker 1: don't get those when you first arrive. I think you
Speaker 1: go a whole week just looking like basically looking like
Speaker 1: a fool. So it's like they kind of bring you
Speaker 1: down so low that every single little thing you do
Speaker 1: get in regards to uniform or whatever we're in, just
Speaker 1: little accomplishments that they have to you know, put you
Speaker 1: through endurance test, obstacle courses, stook. They make you feel
Speaker 1: like you should be proud of what you're doing because
Speaker 1: you're you're you're bettering yourself by doing some of this stuff,
Speaker 1: I guess, and so just a sense of pride really,
Speaker 1: you know, mckatchen had never had much to be proud of,
Speaker 1: so those little accomplishments and the recognition that came with
Speaker 1: them meant a lot to him. His parents were there
Speaker 1: to watch him parade by and his dress blues on
Speaker 1: graduation day, and despite their initial resistance to his enlistment,
Speaker 1: they were awed by his transformation. For the moment, Mketchen's
Speaker 1: plan to create something for himself was working, but boot
Speaker 1: Camp was only level one and nailing the obstacle course
Speaker 1: was a cinch compared to what lay ahead. He had
Speaker 1: enlisted as an O three fifty one quick description and
Speaker 1: O three fifty one is an infantry assaultment in the
Speaker 1: Marine Corps. An anti tank assaultman. We handle anti tank
Speaker 1: weapons and explosives demolition, so we do any thing from
Speaker 1: blowing up walls to preach buildings, preached doors, locked doors, bunkers.
Speaker 1: Anything we can blow up we can get into and destroy.
Speaker 1: Once he finished School of Infantry, Mcatchen got assigned a
Speaker 1: weapons platoon, Blackfoot Company one five, along with David rich Bolski,
Speaker 1: the machine gunner. Eventually they both got attached to first
Speaker 1: Platoon and third Squad. The guys had a blast together
Speaker 1: during their brief time state side before the deployment. Penalton
Speaker 1: is a great spot to be stationed because go up
Speaker 1: and a lot a good restaurant. It's a lot of
Speaker 1: good bars. A lot of guys were spending all their
Speaker 1: fucking money, me included um just getting getting messed up, partying,
Speaker 1: a lot, a lot of a lot of chicks, a
Speaker 1: lot of booty tang So I think I think most
Speaker 1: of us were pretty pretty much just being frivolous with
Speaker 1: our money. That was the first thing to go when
Speaker 1: when you are aware that you might not come back.
Speaker 1: The party stopped during the workup for Sangon. They were
Speaker 1: in the middle of a three week long field exercise
Speaker 1: in the Mojave Desert when the platoon sergeant gathered everybody
Speaker 1: around for a talk. Basically, his speech to us is
Speaker 1: that people are going to die, not only either coming back.
Speaker 1: You're young, and you're like, holy shit, like here it goes.
Speaker 1: I remember that. You know O'Brien was there, and McDaniels was.
Speaker 1: They were there and Thoughtcher was there, and they're dead now.
Speaker 1: The Marines gave him Catchen more than a fresh start
Speaker 1: and a shot of pride. They gave him what he
Speaker 1: needed most at that time in his life, the warmth
Speaker 1: of a new family that knew nothing about his past.
Speaker 1: From the I'm enlisted all the way through the Sanging deployment,
Speaker 1: mckittchen always had Marines around him, like Michael Dutcher, who
Speaker 1: supported him like an older brother. Dutcher was always just
Speaker 1: so calm and just such a caring person. I remember
Speaker 1: talking with him in Afghanistan even and he would ask me,
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do after this. I'm like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I have no idea. I was scared. I
Speaker 1: was scared. I wasn't gonna make it out of there.
Speaker 1: And he started asking me what I was interested in,
Speaker 1: and I'll be honest with you. Back in the day,
Speaker 1: I was I liked exstasy, fucking going to raves and
Speaker 1: Dutcher was like, well, you could go be a sounding
Speaker 1: light technician, and I'm plentiers on, like, I don't know
Speaker 1: what the hell is said, but it sounds cool. Mckatchen
Speaker 1: was terrified, but he was also having the adventure of
Speaker 1: a lifetime with his marine brothers, and he did his
Speaker 1: best to capture every moment they spent together seven hundred
Speaker 1: seventy nine photos in this album. We huddle around his
Speaker 1: laptops so he can show us a Facebook gallery of
Speaker 1: his deployment photo. It's been a long time. I haven't
Speaker 1: even looked at these in quite a while. UM like
Speaker 1: cool thing about these photos though, it's all sequential. It's
Speaker 1: all in the order from when we like, did you know,
Speaker 1: leaving Riverside? Starting around here on our way to background
Speaker 1: and everything. Mckatchen was like the squad's self appointed documentarian,
Speaker 1: and no detail was too small to catch his eye.
Speaker 1: This was a cond of machine in Germany. That's the
Speaker 1: fucking burn page. Was your human feces and a bag
Speaker 1: in there and wagbag wag bagging it. Fucking look at
Speaker 1: all our nudies on the wall up. Yeah, yes, we
Speaker 1: jerking off. Dudn't got we got the material. Did you
Speaker 1: see the other photo those two flies Evan sex. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I caught that. Yeah, let me know when you catch
Speaker 1: a piece like that. I'm starting to think mccatchen may
Speaker 1: have missed his true calling. Along with his more avant
Speaker 1: garde work, there are pictures of the cramped hot rooms
Speaker 1: where they s up to peep fires, of the villagers
Speaker 1: they saw on patrol, and of the squad's prickly palm
Speaker 1: sized mascot Ducher Sonic or a different. He's also got
Speaker 1: pictures of just about everybody in the platoon. There's for it,
Speaker 1: with his legs, with both of his legs. They're among
Speaker 1: the last pictures ever taken of some of these guys
Speaker 1: while they were still in one piece, and some of them,
Speaker 1: like Dutcher, would never be photographed again. Mckittchen was usually
Speaker 1: behind the camera that's why I'm not aim Quite a
Speaker 1: few of these with my deceased friends and stuff. I
Speaker 1: was taking their photo. It was definitely not my top priority.
Speaker 1: But if we're back at the troll base or something,
Speaker 1: had a moment snapped pictures of the guys, you're for
Speaker 1: sure absolutely like this is kind of once in a
Speaker 1: lifetime experience and you've got to document it. When he
Speaker 1: finally does point himself out, I barely recognize him. See
Speaker 1: I'm still a little guy. That's you. What the funk?
Speaker 1: That does not look like you at all? Because I
Speaker 1: have a shade. No, it's not the hair. You just
Speaker 1: look like a person. Mckatchen was only twenty and sangin
Speaker 1: not the youngest guy in the squad. That was rich Vulski,
Speaker 1: but he could have fooled me. I remember being amazed
Speaker 1: by how scrawny he was, especially since I knew he
Speaker 1: had to carry one of the heaviest weapons, a thirty
Speaker 1: pound rocket launcher called the shoulder launched Multipurpose Assault weapon
Speaker 1: or small He looked intimidating enough when he was all
Speaker 1: geared up, but stripped down to his shorts back at
Speaker 1: peb Fires, he could have passed for a high school
Speaker 1: freshman here he is back in Sangin. I'm not even
Speaker 1: a full grown man yet. Since I graduated high school,
Speaker 1: I've still been maturing and I've come out here and
Speaker 1: I've just changed, because when you're growing up, you change.
Speaker 1: Mckatchen might not have been a full grown man, but
Speaker 1: the power he wielded with his shoulder fired tank killer
Speaker 1: astonished him and still astonishes him. I wasn't even allowed
Speaker 1: to buy alcohol in the United States, but I could
Speaker 1: decide who lived, and he would fucking die at the
Speaker 1: hands of my finger. In Afghanistan crazy. All the third
Speaker 1: Squad guys were tough, but mckitchen had a certain kind
Speaker 1: of maturity like some of the other guys. It came
Speaker 1: out when I asked him about the Taliban. I think
Speaker 1: the Toaliban, as far as fighting us, is composed of
Speaker 1: younger people just looking for a purpose in their life,
Speaker 1: because in Afghanistan a lot of the people are poor
Speaker 1: and have nothing, and they're looking for a way out
Speaker 1: and something that they can do with their life. So
Speaker 1: America's here. They can fight America. They can get paid,
Speaker 1: they can be doing something other than farming land or
Speaker 1: selling goats at the bizarre. So that's right. That's why
Speaker 1: I think they fight us. You don't think they have
Speaker 1: any bigger ideological purpose or anything like that. I think
Speaker 1: they're against democracy. They probably don't like foreigners in their country.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, I think they're just young
Speaker 1: kids like us that want to way out. Young kids
Speaker 1: like us that want to weigh out. Sounds familiar. A
Speaker 1: lot of people think the military is a magnet for
Speaker 1: bad kids, hard luck cases who have nowhere else to go.
Speaker 1: In reality, most recruits are middle class kids with middle
Speaker 1: class ambitions and clean records. But the military does serve
Speaker 1: as one of those break glass and pulling case of
Speaker 1: emergency levers for young people like Mketchen who just can't
Speaker 1: quite get their ship together. I ought to know I
Speaker 1: was one of them. I got kicked out of high
Speaker 1: school my senior year. I was smoking a lot of
Speaker 1: weed and starting to experiment with harder drugs. In so
Speaker 1: many words, I was out of control and no but
Speaker 1: he really knew what to do with me. My dad
Speaker 1: offered to send me to a boot camp style school
Speaker 1: for one last chance. It was called Valley Forge Military Academy,
Speaker 1: and as crazy as it sounds, I loved it. I
Speaker 1: got good grades and transferred to a four year college
Speaker 1: in New York City, but I wasn't ready for freedom.
Speaker 1: I failed out after one semester. I was twenty years
Speaker 1: old and pretty sure that I had already ruined my life.
Speaker 1: And then one day in July two thousand one, after
Speaker 1: my shift at a shitty retail job, I found a
Speaker 1: flyer on my windshield. It said join the Army National
Speaker 1: Guard and get money for college just one weekend a month,
Speaker 1: in two weeks every summer. I was a young man
Speaker 1: looking for a way out, and there it was like
Speaker 1: manna from fucking Heaven. I only really had one question
Speaker 1: for the recruiter, where do I sign? Six weeks later,
Speaker 1: terrorists hijacked four planes, and the under stand that a
Speaker 1: plane has crashed into the World Trade Center. We don't
Speaker 1: know anything. Went to basic training that October is the
Speaker 1: US invasion of Afghanistan was just beginning. The United States
Speaker 1: military has begun strikes against Al Qaeda terrorist training camps
Speaker 1: and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. A
Speaker 1: little more than two years after that, in March two
Speaker 1: thousand four, I went to a rock as a combat engineer,
Speaker 1: mckatchen and I were looking for the same thing when
Speaker 1: we called the recruiter away out a chance at a
Speaker 1: better life than the one we'd already wasted. But as
Speaker 1: much as we have in common, there's a lot that
Speaker 1: mckatchen and I don't share. I had one close encounter
Speaker 1: with the poorly made I E D in Iraq. No
Speaker 1: one in our convoy was seriously hurt. Mcatchen witnessed one
Speaker 1: horrific event after another and spent months on end expecting
Speaker 1: to die. Sitting at his kitchen table in Kentucky, I
Speaker 1: asked what he remembers most about living in that pressure cooker.
Speaker 1: It's the bad memories, Like that's the first memories that
Speaker 1: you think about. There's there's no doubt about it. Like
Speaker 1: mon Well Mendoza, mcatchen is haunted by his memories of
Speaker 1: the mission to retrieve Nicholas O'Brien's body after he was
Speaker 1: killed by an I E ED on June nine, two eleven.
Speaker 1: Nicholas O'Brien was probably a thing for all of us,
Speaker 1: our first major casually deal that we had to deal
Speaker 1: with in UH. This one was rough, okay, because probably
Speaker 1: we couldn't find him initially, he was thrown pretty far
Speaker 1: from the blast. Just a lot of confusion onto what
Speaker 1: the funk was going on, and long story short, found him.
Speaker 1: He was deceased. That was the first dead marine i'd seen.
Speaker 1: Team on New was was Nick. But the hards part
Speaker 1: was was afterwards we were trying to find his body
Speaker 1: parts and they were making us put him in evidence
Speaker 1: back and ship, and we stayed out there all night.
Speaker 1: We're trying to find his fucking night vision, his gear,
Speaker 1: and so we're picking up his his body parts and
Speaker 1: uh red false. He held up a piece of his
Speaker 1: fucking thigh to me and said, look, that was just
Speaker 1: one of those situations where I'm like, dude, we're in
Speaker 1: a fecking mad world, like this is nuts, literally picking
Speaker 1: up pieces of of your dead friend. And then later
Speaker 1: that night we stayed watched because I believe we hadn't.
Speaker 1: We're treated allar his gear and equipment that we were
Speaker 1: trying to account for body parts too. And say, we're
Speaker 1: sitting basically a tree line right where Obriham was killed
Speaker 1: got blown up, and I heard wild Afghan dogs. They're
Speaker 1: fucking close, dude, but you can't see ship really on
Speaker 1: night vision. Maybe a thermal Yeah, but all I could
Speaker 1: think was, Dude, these dogs are fucking eating my friend.
Speaker 1: I'm lucky not to have any memories like that from
Speaker 1: my deployment to a rock. I wasn't there the day
Speaker 1: two guys from my company got killed by a suicide bomber.
Speaker 1: But I've got my own memories of dogs. Michael Toon
Speaker 1: has spent a few weeks doing I D patrols and
Speaker 1: security for forensic pathologists near the amazingly well preserved ruins
Speaker 1: of an ancient Ptarthian city called Alhatra. The pathologists were
Speaker 1: digging up mass graves which contained corpses of Kurdish civilians,
Speaker 1: a few hundred of the more than fifty thousand Kurds
Speaker 1: who were murdered by Saddam Hussein's henchmen in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: The pathologists were collecting evidence to use in Saddam's war
Speaker 1: crimes trial, and because of the dry desert conditions, the
Speaker 1: bodies were well preserved. One long pit was filled with
Speaker 1: men still in their suits and dress shoes, and in
Speaker 1: another pit there were piles of women in colorful dresses
Speaker 1: with children lying beside them. Guarding the site for the
Speaker 1: evidence team seemed to me like a worthwhile mission, even
Speaker 1: if the rest of the war had stopped making sense.
Speaker 1: But every night, while we were back at our patrol base,
Speaker 1: the dogs would come in. They would pull back the
Speaker 1: tarps to gnaw on the corpses. In the morning, we
Speaker 1: would pull the tarps back again. I can still hear
Speaker 1: the flies buzzing, and smell the damp rod in the air,
Speaker 1: the smell of a dumpster on a warm day at
Speaker 1: the beach. Hardly a day goes by without a memory
Speaker 1: like this one creeping into my thoughts. So how often
Speaker 1: do you think about those days? These days? Oh? Man,
Speaker 1: I'll never forget them, dude, you know what I mean. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't intentionally try to think about those days, but
Speaker 1: I do unavoidably think about them, like they pop into
Speaker 1: my head all the time. It's like cancer. Once you
Speaker 1: go through something so traumatic like that, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: ingrained in you. So what is PTSD for you? What
Speaker 1: is it for me? I haveing lack of patients, easily frustrated,
Speaker 1: like thinking about horrible memories from the past that you
Speaker 1: just can't get out of your head. Gotta get fucked
Speaker 1: up to go to sleep, to function, I have to
Speaker 1: smoke weed every day, Like I mean, that's PTSD right.
Speaker 1: In the early days after Mketchen got kicked out of
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps, his attempts to self medicate his PTSD
Speaker 1: sent him barreling in a potentially fatal direction in Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: In a matter of a few months, he wrecked a car,
Speaker 1: got to do us, lost his driver's license, got evicted
Speaker 1: from his apartment, and found himself without enough money for
Speaker 1: food and clothes, but with a bottle of pills that
Speaker 1: suddenly seemed as dangerous as a gun. He had survived
Speaker 1: the war, and now he was fighting to survive the piece.
Speaker 1: We'll be back after the break. Here we go Bud's
Speaker 1: Gun Shopping Range. Yeah, the biggest one in Lexington. This
Speaker 1: is where people like to come shait and buy their guns,
Speaker 1: especially by their stuff. Since we have the whole day together,
Speaker 1: we take a break to go to one of mc
Speaker 1: ketchen's favorite places. Don't like to crowded tonight either. Mcatchen
Speaker 1: loves his guns. You don't name your dog after the
Speaker 1: country's biggest firearms manufacturer for nothing. We're gonna be on
Speaker 1: lane Tin number one than you. Thank you alright. When
Speaker 1: we get to our lane on the range, Mcatchen cracks
Speaker 1: open a long black pelican case that's like a clown
Speaker 1: car for guns. He's got a Glock nine mill pistol,
Speaker 1: a pump twelve gage shotgun, and a Ruger Air fifteen rifled.
Speaker 1: It's almost identical to the M four he carried slung
Speaker 1: across his back and sang it, I'm gonna go for
Speaker 1: that bottom left target. WHOA, I like it? Yeah, that
Speaker 1: smells so good. I love the smell like gunpowder, doesn't it?
Speaker 1: It does. It's been a while, man, since I've been
Speaker 1: out shooting. Blasting off a few mags is one of
Speaker 1: the ways Mcatchen likes to take the edge off, and
Speaker 1: I can assure you the dopamine releases exquisite. Back at
Speaker 1: the house, mkeatchin shows me another one of his relaxation methods.
Speaker 1: You want some sound to it, It's just gonna sound
Speaker 1: like a propane torch. I'll just get it. Likes red.
Speaker 1: I've smoked a lot of weed in my day, but
Speaker 1: I've never seen anything quite like this. It's called dabs.
Speaker 1: It's basically just like concentrated THHC. So they take the
Speaker 1: bobs and they process it and they process the oil
Speaker 1: out of it and in. Instead of just smoking the flour,
Speaker 1: you're smoking the oil. He scoops out a tiny glob
Speaker 1: of what looks like honey from a small canister. So
Speaker 1: then you just like basically just dab it on there
Speaker 1: and hit it like a bob. It's a little hot.
Speaker 1: There we go, fucking I now we get Mcatchen is
Speaker 1: still weary of pills after his dark days in Vegas.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of veterans and plenty of non veterans,
Speaker 1: he prefers to smoke pot to cope with his anxiety
Speaker 1: and PTSD. After his high settles into a mellow buzz,
Speaker 1: we sit down to talk again. I want to talk
Speaker 1: more about Dutcher, and M. Catchin tells me about this
Speaker 1: time as rocket launcher jammed when they were in the
Speaker 1: middle of a firefight and it was Dutcher who bailed
Speaker 1: him out. Scary because you're getting shot at and your
Speaker 1: weapons not shooting, and it's a bad feeling. And Dutcher
Speaker 1: came over and they knew what to do to help
Speaker 1: me fucking flip the rocket out and we got it off.
Speaker 1: And then it's just his knowledge was was unreal. Never
Speaker 1: met a marine with knowledge like him. Then the Catchin
Speaker 1: tells me something I didn't know about. The day Dutcher
Speaker 1: got killed, we had no sweepers left. Everyone been fucking hurt.
Speaker 1: I had my rocket launchers and I've done some sweeping
Speaker 1: for sure, but they wanted me to take my rocket
Speaker 1: out and sweep. I'm like, I'm not sweeping with the
Speaker 1: rocket launcher. You crazy, Like what the funk? There was
Speaker 1: some crazy ship going on late in that deployment. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I got us say I didn't want to do I
Speaker 1: didn't same what's been happening. Not didn't want it, dude,
Speaker 1: But at the same time too, like if I was
Speaker 1: the option, then nap for sure I would. And I
Speaker 1: was about to just put the rock down, just fucking
Speaker 1: do it, and Dutcher came in my huge It was like,
Speaker 1: all sweep. These are the simple twists of fate that
Speaker 1: deliver tragedy to one home and spare another. Dutcher wasn't
Speaker 1: destined to die that day. Nobody was. It came down
Speaker 1: to a last minute change of plans and a well
Speaker 1: played trick by a Taliban operative posing as a farmer.
Speaker 1: But it could have gone a hundred different ways had
Speaker 1: Mketchen swept that day, it might have been his mom
Speaker 1: who found a casualty officer and dress blues at her door.
Speaker 1: Or maybe the squad would have chosen a different route.
Speaker 1: Maybe they wouldn't have followed that farmer into the trap.
Speaker 1: Maybe Mketchen would have found the i e. D. With
Speaker 1: his metal detector, or maybe half the squad would have
Speaker 1: walked over it, none the wiser, just like they walked
Speaker 1: over the one that got Matthew for it. The what
Speaker 1: ifs can pile up to the point where they bury you.
Speaker 1: A lot of the other guys have taken a lot
Speaker 1: of the blame on themselves, and so one of the
Speaker 1: things that I've been learning is just how everybody almost
Speaker 1: who was anywhere close to the front of that patrol
Speaker 1: or had any kind of leadership can't. I can't. You
Speaker 1: can't put any of that blame on yourself. None of
Speaker 1: us did anything wrong whatsoever. Yes, plain and simple facts.
Speaker 1: That's kind of what I was absolutely getting at. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: we did everything that we were supposed to do perfectly.
Speaker 1: We were a great fucking unit. We're fucking we're crack.
Speaker 1: So what does it make you like? How do you
Speaker 1: feel hearing other guys talk about placing the blame. I
Speaker 1: think it's sad, I really do. And even if hopefully
Speaker 1: my guys go back and hear this ship, because no
Speaker 1: one did anything wrong. And if you feel that way,
Speaker 1: it's just gonna hold you back. Okay. So somehow you
Speaker 1: came to a conclusion or a point of view that
Speaker 1: it wasn't going to do you any good to blame
Speaker 1: yourself or have you know? What? Why? What? What did
Speaker 1: I do? So I want to know, did you feel
Speaker 1: that way as soon as you got home? Or is
Speaker 1: that I never had a guilty conscience. Never. Never, I
Speaker 1: saw some fucked up ship and so yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do drugs and fucking drink a lot maybe kind of
Speaker 1: try to block those memories out of my mind. But
Speaker 1: we didn't do anything wrong. That's just war. People fucking die,
Speaker 1: people get hurt. Mcatchen's managed to stave off the guilt
Speaker 1: that plagues some of the other guys like man Well,
Speaker 1: Mendoza and Matthew for it, but he's still carrying the
Speaker 1: her He'll never forget being spurned by the country he
Speaker 1: pledged his life to protect, the country that asked him
Speaker 1: to kill people in the service of foreign policy, but
Speaker 1: abandoned him. On account of a single bad choice when
Speaker 1: he got home. It's not like I did not know
Speaker 1: there wouldn't be consequences to my actions. So there's definitely
Speaker 1: a point where you just got to own up to
Speaker 1: your fucking faults. And I fully own up to it.
Speaker 1: Like I knew for years that they told us new drugs.
Speaker 1: What did I do? What did I do? This is
Speaker 1: before comment they were telling me that's not acceptable. I
Speaker 1: still fucking broke the rules. But I think the punishment
Speaker 1: for the crime was way excessive, And that's my stance,
Speaker 1: Like that's like, come on, especially for someone who just
Speaker 1: risk their life on entire deployment, throw me a fucking bone.
Speaker 1: Mckatchen says his jarring reentry into civilian life made an
Speaker 1: already difficult sit suation that much worse. If you're gonna
Speaker 1: fucking throw people out of the military, you should at
Speaker 1: least provide mental health. If they've been to combat, you
Speaker 1: don't have any support. It makes things tougher, it does.
Speaker 1: And then also the feeling that like when you get
Speaker 1: in trouble like that, you feel like your former friends
Speaker 1: in the Marines and shouldn't even want to assaciate with you.
Speaker 1: But I think that for future people, if you were
Speaker 1: to make a situation like this a little easier on
Speaker 1: the veteran, even if he made a mistake, I think
Speaker 1: it would be good to at least pointing him in
Speaker 1: the right direction. I think the catching is right. I
Speaker 1: can't think of any reason why people who are damaged
Speaker 1: doing the work of war for the country should be
Speaker 1: denied the tools of healing back home. There's got to
Speaker 1: be some sort of fucking system to guide somebody so
Speaker 1: they don't just go out there fucking taking pills and
Speaker 1: getting to u eyes and maybe killing somebody you know,
Speaker 1: and legitimate may be killing somebody The military got rid
Speaker 1: of to catch him when he was still amped up
Speaker 1: and reeling from the horror he'd survived. He was a
Speaker 1: danger to himself and to others. Rather than keeping him close,
Speaker 1: his marine family cut him loose, and he wasn't alone.
Speaker 1: He was part of a wave of more than a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand less than honorable discharges across branches in the
Speaker 1: post nine eleven era, a wave of bad paper that
Speaker 1: crested as the wars began to wind down. What I heard,
Speaker 1: and I'd still here, just stay. They try to keep
Speaker 1: their numbers on two hund thousand. They were kicking people
Speaker 1: out left and right, young marines coming back from the
Speaker 1: deployment failing drug tests, making a poor decision that any
Speaker 1: young man would make. Only a few years earlier, during
Speaker 1: the worst phase of the Iraq War, in the build
Speaker 1: up to the Afghanistan Surge, the Army and Marine Corps
Speaker 1: had relaxed enlistment standards in order to fill the recruiting pipeline,
Speaker 1: allowing people with criminal histories, mental health and substant issues
Speaker 1: to join an unusually high rates with special waivers. But
Speaker 1: once the Surgis were over, the military started looking to
Speaker 1: cut dead weight. Soldiers and marines getting into trouble were
Speaker 1: the easiest ones to call, the ones who were caught
Speaker 1: using drugs or got d u e s, the ones
Speaker 1: who brought the violence into their homes. Not surprisingly, a
Speaker 1: lot of them had serious mental health and behavioral problems
Speaker 1: directly related to their combat service. Macatchen and I talked
Speaker 1: about this for a long time, like I want to
Speaker 1: be clear, this is this is my opinion about all this.
Speaker 1: But I think what they were doing is they were
Speaker 1: getting rid of people because that was easier than dealing
Speaker 1: with them. That was easier than keep keeping them close
Speaker 1: to the fam, keeping them in the tribe, and saying
Speaker 1: you're fucked up and we're not going to tolerate that.
Speaker 1: But while we have you here and while you have
Speaker 1: no choice, we're going to try to get you straight,
Speaker 1: because number one, that's the right thing to do. We
Speaker 1: owe that to you. Number Two, if we turn you
Speaker 1: loose on society right now, there's a damn good chance
Speaker 1: you're gonna hurt yourself or you're gonna hurt somebody else
Speaker 1: because you're a fucking trained killer with a fucking twisted
Speaker 1: head right now. Yeah, for sure. And that's dangerous. That's
Speaker 1: fucking dangerous, you know. And so for a lot of
Speaker 1: people in that situation, it might have resulted in, you know,
Speaker 1: they go out and get a d U I and
Speaker 1: I could have been you could have well mind you
Speaker 1: do you? I as a missed the meter. You know,
Speaker 1: all these guys coming out they can still buy guns though,
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying, and say, like if you they're
Speaker 1: throwing you down this fucking negative track and everything he had,
Speaker 1: this veterans still able to buy guns. It's a recipe
Speaker 1: for disaster, like it really is. It is funny that
Speaker 1: we're saying. We're saying this, but we did has come
Speaker 1: from the gun ranch today? Great time. Yeah, well we
Speaker 1: got our heads straight, so I do. At least now.
Speaker 1: Mcktchen tells me he's in a much better place now.
Speaker 1: He left Las Vegas in two thousand seventeen to work
Speaker 1: on a hemp farm in Colorado with a marine buddy.
Speaker 1: He was able to save some money, and then he
Speaker 1: followed the hemp business to Kentucky. The m that's attorney
Speaker 1: successfully upgraded his discharge to honorable for v A purposes,
Speaker 1: which makes him eligible for all the benefits his recruiter promised.
Speaker 1: In two thousand twenty, he bought the house he lives
Speaker 1: in with a no money down v A home loan.
Speaker 1: He also receives disability from the v A for PTSD,
Speaker 1: t b I, tendis and hearing loss, which pays most
Speaker 1: of his bills, and he's using his g I bill
Speaker 1: to get his Associates degree, which entitles him to a
Speaker 1: monthly housing allowance too. He's planning to transfer to the
Speaker 1: University of Kentucky to get a degree in marketing, and
Speaker 1: he's got a dream to work for a professional sports
Speaker 1: team someday, but he's still thousands of miles from where
Speaker 1: he grew up, in a random place where he knows
Speaker 1: almost no one, And even though the California kid has
Speaker 1: picked up a little Kentucky twang, it doesn't really seem
Speaker 1: like this place is home. It's sad, dude, because like clearly,
Speaker 1: I live alone. I don't hardly talk to my fucking family.
Speaker 1: I really don't never had a problem finding ass. But
Speaker 1: I don't have anything fucking place in my life, Dude,
Speaker 1: I don't. I have Ruger. I have my dog. That's it.
Speaker 1: Mcatchin tells me he's got a few good marine buddies
Speaker 1: from other battalions he can lean on, but they live
Speaker 1: far away, and he doesn't talk much with the guys
Speaker 1: from Third Squad anymore. He says he doesn't really have
Speaker 1: any close friends in Kentucky, and he has a really
Speaker 1: hard time relating to people. When I go out into
Speaker 1: the public, I try to be courteous and respectful, but
Speaker 1: my patience for people is very low. It really is.
Speaker 1: And the thing that has really affected me heavily since
Speaker 1: coming back from a deployment like that, honestly, is my
Speaker 1: ability to feel sympathetic or empathetic for other human beings.
Speaker 1: I don't because I just I've been through so much.
Speaker 1: I don't care what fucking people's problems are. And that's
Speaker 1: one area of my life that I'm trying to work on,
Speaker 1: because that's part of being a good human being. I
Speaker 1: realized that. But after coming back from ship like that, dude,
Speaker 1: I didn't feel sympathy for people at all. Can you relate?
Speaker 1: I mean, so, here's what's happened for me. I came
Speaker 1: home from Iraq fucking angry and mean. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: sort of looked down on everybody else's problems because I
Speaker 1: was like, it just doesn't right. You don't deserve my
Speaker 1: concern because I've seen a world where the suffering is
Speaker 1: so much more extreme. And yet the other half of
Speaker 1: me was like, but everything's relative for everybody, and I
Speaker 1: can't walk through the world just hating everyone. If I
Speaker 1: just walk around like nobody else's problems matter and like
Speaker 1: I'm the only one who knows what's real, Well, you
Speaker 1: know what's going to happen is I'm going to be
Speaker 1: the one who's sitting at home alone. Yeah, look at me, dude.
Speaker 1: As we're talking, I start to wonder if the brief
Speaker 1: years of fraternity in the Marine Corps were worth the
Speaker 1: rest of it, the grief and devastation of losing brothers
Speaker 1: like Dutcher, the PTSD, the betrayal that could not have
Speaker 1: come at a worse moment. Basically, I wonder if the
Speaker 1: Marines made his life better or worse. They broke me
Speaker 1: down and then everything since, like I built off of it.
Speaker 1: It made me who I am today. I'm a Marine.
Speaker 1: I will be a Marine until I die. I'm always
Speaker 1: a neat person. I'm clean, I dress well, I shaved
Speaker 1: my face, I get a haircut. I fucking do still
Speaker 1: make my bed. Like, yeah, the Marine Corps built nice
Speaker 1: little fucking foundation for me to build on, and the
Speaker 1: Marine Corps is what my ship together. But during that
Speaker 1: time when you were in the low place, how much
Speaker 1: do you think your experience in saying and had to
Speaker 1: do with that? Like, and if and if it did
Speaker 1: have something to do with it, how do you think
Speaker 1: that worked? Like, what do you think the relationship? I
Speaker 1: hate to say it like this, but it's kind of facts. Okay,
Speaker 1: when you lose a lot of friends and then you
Speaker 1: get to a fucking super low point in your life
Speaker 1: and you use the excuse almost like, well, I just
Speaker 1: want to go see my friends, Like it makes your
Speaker 1: logic to kill yourself and end it so much more
Speaker 1: logic in your own head because you've got friends up
Speaker 1: there waiting for you, and you miss him and you
Speaker 1: want to go see him. When I listened back to
Speaker 1: this conversation months later, that thing m ketchen said about
Speaker 1: the logic of suicide gave me chills. More than seven
Speaker 1: thousand American troops have died in combat since nine eleven,
Speaker 1: mostly in a Rock and Afghanistan. Over the same period,
Speaker 1: more than thirty thousand active duty troops and post nine
Speaker 1: eleven veterans have taken their own lives At home. Mckitchen
Speaker 1: and I both know people who have succumbed to the
Speaker 1: deadly logic, and I suddenly realized that when he said
Speaker 1: You've got friends up there waiting for you, and you
Speaker 1: missed them and you want to go see them, I
Speaker 1: wasn't sure if he was describing a general thought pattern
Speaker 1: or his own suicidal ideations, so I called the double check.
Speaker 1: He told me the thoughts he described were indeed his own,
Speaker 1: and that soon after his jailston in Vegas, when he
Speaker 1: was at rock bottom. He began to tell himself it
Speaker 1: would have been better if he had just died in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: that he just wanted to be with O'Brien, McDaniels and Dutcher.
Speaker 1: That voice grew louder until one day he was holding
Speaker 1: a pistol with a plan to shoot his dog and
Speaker 1: then turn the gun on himself, but he couldn't bring
Speaker 1: himself to kill Ruger. His trance broke long enough to
Speaker 1: call his mom. She immediately called the police and they
Speaker 1: brought him to a hospital, and when he was released
Speaker 1: after the mandatory seventy two hours, he was shaken and
Speaker 1: more determined than ever to stay alive. It was around
Speaker 1: that time that he got his VA benefits restored. He
Speaker 1: began therapy, went back to school, and started collecting disability
Speaker 1: payments that relieved the financial pressure in no uncertain terms.
Speaker 1: Mketchen says that having his discharge upgraded in his benefits
Speaker 1: re stored saved his life. When we spoke again, mckatchen
Speaker 1: assured me his worst days are behind him. He's looking
Speaker 1: toward the future, and he's no longer in a hurry
Speaker 1: to see his dead friends, but they're always with him.
Speaker 1: He's got tattoos to commemorate them, including a tangle of
Speaker 1: poppy blossoms growing out of a skull on his right forearm.
Speaker 1: The ink begins just above the thin hand that once
Speaker 1: squeezed the grip of a rocket launcher and sang in
Speaker 1: the hand of a scared kid with the power to
Speaker 1: decide who lived and who died. If you're having thoughts
Speaker 1: about suicide or self harm, please don't wait to get help.
Speaker 1: Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at one D two seven, three,
Speaker 1: eight to five to talk to someone now. Next time,
Speaker 1: on Third Squad, we drive up through Appalachia to the
Speaker 1: outskirts of Pittsburgh to see Squad leader Jerick Fry. I
Speaker 1: remember stepping out of the wire. We're walking in a
Speaker 1: single file line with the metal detector in 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 were in a
Speaker 1: body bag. You can't be afraid as a leader, you
Speaker 1: can't show fear. You have to be that strong, steady rock,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to be that for those guys. Third
Speaker 1: Squad is written and produced by Elliott Woods, Tommy Andres,
Speaker 1: and Maria Burrne. It's an heirloom media production distributed by
Speaker 1: iHeart Media. Funding support for Third Squad comes from the
Speaker 1: National Endowment for the Humanities in collaboration with the Center
Speaker 1: for Warren Society at San Diego State University. Additional funding
Speaker 1: for this episode comes from the journalism nonprofit the Economic
Speaker 1: Hardship Reporting Project. 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 design by John Ward.
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Ben Kalin. Special thanks to Scott Carrier,
Speaker 1: Marianne Andre, Ted, Jenoways, Benjamin Bush, Caitlin sh Carrie Gracie,
Speaker 1: Kevin Connolly, and Lena Ferguson. If you got a minute,
Speaker 1: please leave us a rating and 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.