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. I remember this night, about ten
Speaker 1: years ago. I was walking down this brick street in Charlottesville, Virginia,
Speaker 1: where no cars are allowed, so there are big trees
Speaker 1: where there used to be traffic, and there are tons
Speaker 1: of bars and restaurants with outdoor seating. It was a
Speaker 1: perfect summer night, and the whole place was packed with
Speaker 1: beautiful young people out having a good time, people about
Speaker 1: my age. Part of me wanted to grab a drink
Speaker 1: and join them, but this much bigger part of me
Speaker 1: wanted to flip over a table and scream, do you
Speaker 1: have any fucking idea? There's a war going on? We
Speaker 1: all know how the Afghanistan war ends. Now I've concluded
Speaker 1: that it's time to end America's longest war. It's time
Speaker 1: for American troops to come home. The Afghan government and
Speaker 1: security forces collapsed under a Taliban van. The pandemonium outside
Speaker 1: Kabbal airports of Taliban fighters have flooded the capitol. Afghan
Speaker 1: officials troops have surrendered Bodroom Air Base to the Taliban.
Speaker 1: We just learned that the presidential palace was officially handed
Speaker 1: over the Taliban presidents maybe former president now as Traf
Speaker 1: Ghani leaves town Taliban fighters behind the desk of the
Speaker 1: presidential Palace. I did not, nor did anyone else, see
Speaker 1: a collapse of an army that size in eleven days.
Speaker 1: Seeing the images of Afghan's hugging the landing gear of
Speaker 1: an Air Force C seventeen as it lifted off from Kabul,
Speaker 1: it's impossible not to remember the Americans plummeting from the
Speaker 1: burning towers almost exactly twenty years earlier, and you can
Speaker 1: see the two towers a huge exposure out rating to
Speaker 1: pray on all of us get out of the m
Speaker 1: and for a lot of people, these images are going
Speaker 1: to be the gruesome book ends to America's longest war.
Speaker 1: But me, I'm stuck between the book ends. I'm Elliott Woods.
Speaker 1: I'm a veteran and a journalist. And there's this one
Speaker 1: MBD I did back in two thousand eleven that I
Speaker 1: can't stop thinking about. In a part of Afghanistan called Sangin,
Speaker 1: with the squad of strung out marines who lived in
Speaker 1: mud brick buildings surrounded by barriers, filled with dirt and rocks.
Speaker 1: It was my fourth MBD in Afghanistan in two years,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know it at the time, but it
Speaker 1: would also be my last, and I could never have
Speaker 1: known that I was documenting the final days of one
Speaker 1: of those Marines. This is the story of that marine
Speaker 1: and his squad, Third Squad, Episode one, Keep Pushing. I
Speaker 1: landed and sang in on a V twenty two Osprey
Speaker 1: and July two thousand eleven, took an armored gun truck
Speaker 1: out to a dusty outpost. That's where I met the
Speaker 1: twelve Marines of Third Squad for the first time. My
Speaker 1: name is Jeffrey Lopez. Got the catch, We take off.
Speaker 1: Brian Sheer, Michael Minor, Taylor Moody, Emmanuel Mendoza, Michael Joseph Dutcher.
Speaker 1: They were officially Third Squad, first Platoon, Blackfoot Company from
Speaker 1: the first Battalion, Fifth Marines, or one five for short.
Speaker 1: They were infantry, the riflemen and machine gunners known in
Speaker 1: the core as grunts, and their home base was Camp Pendleton, California,
Speaker 1: but they came from all over the United States, Asia,
Speaker 1: in California, California and Repid City, South Dakota, North Carolina, Watertown,
Speaker 1: New York, Missical, Texas, Home Park, Illinois, Asheville, North Carolina.
Speaker 1: Most of them were fresh out of high school, and
Speaker 1: I could hardly be leave how young they looked. They
Speaker 1: could be sitting in the street that right here, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us fucking push out of the opening book
Speaker 1: unless you just do the comes over. They were at war,
Speaker 1: but they still acted like kids. Sometimes when the guy
Speaker 1: is running to the left building left the building seven,
Speaker 1: So you're all angry and stuff, do you know, hug No,
Speaker 1: I'm going in fucking patient. You're making You're making my
Speaker 1: combat recording sound really immature. This is supposed to be war. Guys.
Speaker 1: I brought an old film camera with me to take
Speaker 1: their portraits, and I also brought an audio recorder, and
Speaker 1: whenever we had a break between patrols and sleeping I
Speaker 1: try to pull one of them aside for a sit
Speaker 1: down interview in one of those stuffy mud brick rooms,
Speaker 1: which wasn't always easy. My name is h and Matthew Fort,
Speaker 1: and I was born Stone. So from this point forward,
Speaker 1: if you guys are gonna stay in here, and you
Speaker 1: should make as little noise as possible, Okay, said no?
Speaker 1: Bell girl, no farting? Can you handle that? Okay? They
Speaker 1: were bone tired and they didn't always know quite what
Speaker 1: to make of me or my questions. But they were cool.
Speaker 1: I guess I was a welcome diversion. Was fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty fun. It's kind of fun where it
Speaker 1: really wasted one night and you do a bunch of
Speaker 1: stupid ship it's fun to talk about. Firefights are fun.
Speaker 1: I enjoy firefights. You drop bombs on people and kill
Speaker 1: bad man. That's that's what we're here for. Still, it
Speaker 1: didn't take me long to see that the excitement barely
Speaker 1: covered up the dread. If you could describe saying it
Speaker 1: in a couple of sentences, what would you say, Probably
Speaker 1: one of the worst places on earth right now. I
Speaker 1: could hear the stress and exhaustion in their voices. They
Speaker 1: were far from home and in full blown survival mode,
Speaker 1: and all they had was each other. Everything you do
Speaker 1: out here is fair, fella, Marines in yourself. I love
Speaker 1: my Marines. Those are my boys, and I just don't
Speaker 1: want anything to happen to them. I want to keep
Speaker 1: them as safe as I possibly can. And what I'd
Speaker 1: like to consider the most probably one of the most
Speaker 1: dangerous place on Earth. Sang In is a rural district
Speaker 1: in southern Afghanistan's Helmand Province, which shares its name with
Speaker 1: a wide river that forms way up in the Hindu
Speaker 1: Kush Mountains. Most of Helmand is a scorched waste land,
Speaker 1: but the river cuts a sliver of green from north
Speaker 1: to south across the desert. It's a lifeline to Sangon's farmers,
Speaker 1: whose main cash crop is poppy, the key ingredient in heroin.
Speaker 1: And when Third Squad first showed up and sang In,
Speaker 1: the scenery kind of blew their minds. Everybody thinks, you know,
Speaker 1: when they think of Ghanistan, they think the Middle East.
Speaker 1: They think of some big, giant, hot desert. But like
Speaker 1: it's not like that. You wouldn't expect how green it
Speaker 1: is when you get out here. It's amazing that you
Speaker 1: see flowers blooming everywhere, big fields of green crops and
Speaker 1: grass and trees. The reads an hour twelve ft tall,
Speaker 1: and there's bamboo that's even duller than that. Like you
Speaker 1: just walked across open, huge fields like you would see,
Speaker 1: Like been to France before, so those huge open fields
Speaker 1: they have there. It's kind of like take that the
Speaker 1: swampy ship and mix it together, and yet saying in
Speaker 1: Afghanistan it looks like a beautiful country. But as far
Speaker 1: as stepping out the wire with all your gears, shitty
Speaker 1: o you cash right? Yeah, you can see whatever you
Speaker 1: want to ask. That's about it. I can't really explain.
Speaker 1: It's all you don't want to be. The situation in
Speaker 1: Sangin was terrible. Hundreds of British, Afghan and American troops
Speaker 1: have been killed and wounded. The war was in its
Speaker 1: tenth year, and what had begun is a straightforward mission
Speaker 1: to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden and members
Speaker 1: of al Qaeda. After nine eleven had morphed into a
Speaker 1: complicated nation building effort in a raging battle against the Taliban.
Speaker 1: We'll get into why that shift happened later in the series.
Speaker 1: For now, you just need to know that at this
Speaker 1: particular moment, Afghanistan was spiraling out of control, and President
Speaker 1: Barack Obama had deployed tens of thousands of extra troops
Speaker 1: in a bid to turn the war around. The situation
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan has deteriorate. This phase of the war became
Speaker 1: known as the Afghanistan Surge and third Squad deployed at
Speaker 1: its peak, and as Commander in Chief, I have determined
Speaker 1: that it is in our vital national interest to send
Speaker 1: an additional thirty thousand US troops to Afghanistan. Third Squad
Speaker 1: was tasked with carrying out the surge strategy at whatever cost,
Speaker 1: but the big picture was barely visible from their perspective.
Speaker 1: And that's the perspective I went there to report on
Speaker 1: the third Squad. Marines all had their own reasons for
Speaker 1: joining the corps. So number one, why did join the
Speaker 1: Marine Corps? I joined the Marines because the Marines are
Speaker 1: the best. They're badass. This is private first class. Scott mccatchen,
Speaker 1: a twenty year old college dropout for Northern California. Tell
Speaker 1: me a little bit about, just very briefly, about the
Speaker 1: kid that you were, that that didn't do so out
Speaker 1: of college, because I was actually that kid too. I
Speaker 1: was a kid in college that I just wanted a party.
Speaker 1: Didn't it care too much about school or think what
Speaker 1: I could possibly lose if I were to just do
Speaker 1: nothing but party. And sure enough I lost it. But
Speaker 1: I fucking manned up and I joined the military. And
Speaker 1: here I am saying in Afghanistan. Lance Corporal David Ortega,
Speaker 1: twenty year old from southern California, came from a military family.
Speaker 1: He was so nervous when he talked to me, his
Speaker 1: voice trembled. I would just always look up to the
Speaker 1: Marines and I was like, I'm gonna become one of
Speaker 1: them someday. I'm gonna keep introducing you to the squad,
Speaker 1: but don't worry about keeping track of all the names.
Speaker 1: You'll get to know the guys throughout the series. Lance
Speaker 1: Corporal Taylor Moody was also twenty years old. He was
Speaker 1: from Upstate New York. He was rail Finn and his
Speaker 1: hair was trimmed close on the sides, in line with
Speaker 1: Marine Corps REGs. But he hadn't always looked like that
Speaker 1: back in the States. When I was in high school,
Speaker 1: I was just a little punk. I had a mohawk.
Speaker 1: I was like a foot long, and I died it red.
Speaker 1: I went to conserts all the time, and I used
Speaker 1: to brag about how good I was at washing, and
Speaker 1: that was pretty good. You know, I did my ship.
Speaker 1: You know, washing is right, okay, you know I beat
Speaker 1: the ships. Some guys in the mosh pit, but that's
Speaker 1: That's not important to me anymore. The only thing right
Speaker 1: now that matters to me he is getting home alive
Speaker 1: with me. Guys, I can Corporal man Well Mendoza told
Speaker 1: me he was a responsible kid who worked three jobs
Speaker 1: during high school in the East Texas border town where
Speaker 1: he grew up. He was twenty when I met him,
Speaker 1: which means he was still in elementary school when eleven happened.
Speaker 1: I'll never forget September eleven. I'll never forget what happened
Speaker 1: in New York. And I'll never forget people, never hurt
Speaker 1: people that died. I'll of my country. I'm a patriot
Speaker 1: straight up, like even Mexican. I love I love America
Speaker 1: because we had a lot of great things in our country.
Speaker 1: I have such a great life back home. I got
Speaker 1: my family, I had a good education, you know, so
Speaker 1: I felt like I needed to pay that dead. The
Speaker 1: youngest of the group was nineteen year old Lance Corporal
Speaker 1: David rich Boalski from Wailua, Hawaii. I joined the Marine
Speaker 1: Corps because I want to go off the island. Mission.
Speaker 1: Accomplished mud hut, three ft thick walls of mud. Right now,
Speaker 1: it's actually pretty dirty, just because I've been disgusting and
Speaker 1: not cleaned it, and uh I got fleas because of
Speaker 1: the fucking chickens that run around. The sweltering mud brick
Speaker 1: compound where the squad lived was officially called Patrol based Fires,
Speaker 1: but everyone just called it fires or PB fires. It
Speaker 1: was home to a single platoon of Marines around arty guys,
Speaker 1: plus the various people who supported them. The platoons three
Speaker 1: squads took turns patrolling, resting, and pulling watch. Southern Afghanistan
Speaker 1: was a furnace that July. The heat made my lips
Speaker 1: crack and the dry air burned the inside of my
Speaker 1: nose when I inhaled. Hygienically, it's there is none. You're
Speaker 1: a constantly dirty. Twenty year old Lance Corporal Brian Shearer
Speaker 1: was from Rapid City, South Dakota. He wanted to join
Speaker 1: the Marines ever since he was a little kid, and
Speaker 1: now here he was embracing the suck. You get really
Speaker 1: bad transfer from being in uh water all day, and
Speaker 1: then you stay in your socks and you can never
Speaker 1: get your feet dry or clean. The guys bathed by
Speaker 1: poking holes in water bottles and squeezing them over their
Speaker 1: heads whenever there was time to rest. They sacked out
Speaker 1: on cots and played video games or watch DVDs on
Speaker 1: little personal players. When I they were all stoked because
Speaker 1: they've just gotten lights, but there was still much to
Speaker 1: be desired. The things I missed the most back in
Speaker 1: the United States are definitely women, drinking good food, having
Speaker 1: the luxury of electricity, running water all the time, just
Speaker 1: simple ship going, taking a crap and a fucking toilet.
Speaker 1: The flushes um come out here and you lose everything
Speaker 1: and then you realize what you really had. Back in
Speaker 1: the United States, food was something that guys talked about
Speaker 1: a lot, so much that I'm surprised they weren't hiding
Speaker 1: copies of bone appetite under their cots instead of nudy mags.
Speaker 1: Pickens around the patrol base could be pretty slim. So
Speaker 1: what do you eat? I don't know what you like
Speaker 1: to what you what you like to eat, Well, it's
Speaker 1: not what I like to eat. It's what I have
Speaker 1: to eat. And most of the time it's it's just
Speaker 1: like a kind of spaghettier, the thing of ramen Newles
Speaker 1: heat it open the sun Somewhere. Twenty two year old
Speaker 1: Lance Corporal Jeffrey Lopez was small but scrappy looking. He
Speaker 1: craved the comfort food of the Jersey Shore where he
Speaker 1: grew up. My Miss McDonald's Applebee's all you can eat crabs,
Speaker 1: like the base ade buffet. The food at patrol Base
Speaker 1: Fires was well, it's sure as funk, was not the
Speaker 1: bay side buffet. I didn't notice it at first, but
Speaker 1: the other Marines in my squad noticed. Since even other
Speaker 1: even other squads noticed, I had lost a ship ton
Speaker 1: of weight and you can see yourself that um extremely skinny.
Speaker 1: And then I just kept losing more and more weight.
Speaker 1: All I could do is think of food, and it's
Speaker 1: that's still I do was. I think of food like
Speaker 1: on patrol. Will take a quick break every now and
Speaker 1: then I'll just be sitting there and thinking, God, I'm
Speaker 1: so fucking hungry. It wasn't just the food from home
Speaker 1: that they missed. I mean, none of us have seen
Speaker 1: our families, and almost a year now none of us
Speaker 1: have been back home. And almost a year now. I
Speaker 1: told you. Third Squad had been an Afghanistan for four
Speaker 1: months when I arrived, but they trained constantly during the
Speaker 1: work up period leading up to the deployment, with almost
Speaker 1: no downtime. Some of them had girlfriends, wives, even kids
Speaker 1: waiting for them back in the States. They were homesick,
Speaker 1: but it was more than that. They were worried they
Speaker 1: might never see their families again. I'm really looking forward
Speaker 1: to getting back home, being able to just relax with
Speaker 1: the family and just not having to worry on a
Speaker 1: day to day basis as to whether or not you're
Speaker 1: gonna get hurt badly that day. So, I mean, civilians
Speaker 1: don't wake up in the morning and say I'm gonna
Speaker 1: lose my legs today or die today. For most of
Speaker 1: third Squad, Sanging was their first deployment, and before they
Speaker 1: got there they'd heard horror stories about what it was like.
Speaker 1: Their predecessors at patrol based fires were from the third Battalion,
Speaker 1: Fifth Marine Regiment or three five, also from Camp Pendleton.
Speaker 1: Three five had a horrendous time and Sanging. Over their
Speaker 1: seven months tour, twenty five of their marines died and
Speaker 1: a hundred and eighty four were wounded. That's about one
Speaker 1: out of every five marines and the battalion. It was
Speaker 1: the worst casualty rate of any single unit in the
Speaker 1: Afghanistan War up to that point. Many of those casualties
Speaker 1: were caused by the Taliban's weapon of choice and sang
Speaker 1: in the pressure plate improvised explosive device or i e D,
Speaker 1: a homemade land mine that detonates when someone steps on it.
Speaker 1: Mines and i e d s are ingenious, knowing that
Speaker 1: you can step right next to one or sit right
Speaker 1: with one between your legs, and you have no ideas
Speaker 1: ever there until someone steps on it and dies. News
Speaker 1: of three fives bloody tour spread through Camp Pendleton while
Speaker 1: Third Squad was training to deploy. It was like every
Speaker 1: day seemed like three five was taking casualties, especially Corman.
Speaker 1: It seemed like they're losing Corman left and right. Corman
Speaker 1: or U S Navy sailors who provide medical aid to
Speaker 1: wounded Marines in combat. In the Army, they're called medics
Speaker 1: Third Squads. Corman was twenty five year old hospitalman first
Speaker 1: Class Matthew for It from the Chicago suburbs. The guys
Speaker 1: called him Doc and he wore a few different hats
Speaker 1: and also how I yelled part therapist, part fucking nurse,
Speaker 1: part counselor for it was a little softer than the Marines,
Speaker 1: with a round face and buzzed red hair. He told
Speaker 1: me about the handoff with three five. When I got here,
Speaker 1: only like two of the original Corman remained. Everybody else
Speaker 1: had either have been like blown up or shot or something.
Speaker 1: So yeah, when I got here, I was paranoid as hell,
Speaker 1: and for it wasn't the only one. Twenty year old
Speaker 1: Lance Corporal John Bollinger from Cheyenne, Wyoming had also prepared
Speaker 1: himself for the worst. When we first were coming, I
Speaker 1: was honestly expecting, like you couldn't you couldn't move without
Speaker 1: hitting ninety and all their wear were Taliban everywhere and
Speaker 1: everyone's you know, getting shot and blown up. That was
Speaker 1: that was my expectation. Was fucking it was going to
Speaker 1: be popping off. But when Third Squad got to sang
Speaker 1: In and settled into their new home and patrol based fires,
Speaker 1: everything was weirdly calm. For the first two months sanging
Speaker 1: I didn't really meet my expectations at all, Like we
Speaker 1: were just basically just patrolling for the ship of it,
Speaker 1: Like nothing happened for the first two months. There was
Speaker 1: no fire, there was no shooting or anything. It was
Speaker 1: just start up walking around like we owned the place.
Speaker 1: That's Taylor Moody again, the mosh pitt Menace telling me
Speaker 1: what it was like when the squad first started going
Speaker 1: out on patrol. When we first got here, the people
Speaker 1: wouldn't even come out to us because the previous unit
Speaker 1: was pretty rough on him. Then we started doing the
Speaker 1: COIN operations and just talking with the people, you know,
Speaker 1: getting to know what was going on, asking him questions,
Speaker 1: looking for the enemy so we can exploit what they're
Speaker 1: doing against him. Point that Acrony and Moody just used
Speaker 1: stands for counterinsurgency. The basic idea of COIN is to
Speaker 1: drive a wedge between insurgents and the civilian population by
Speaker 1: delivering humanitarian aid things like new roads, medicine, and schools,
Speaker 1: basically trying to buy the local people's love so they'll
Speaker 1: reject the insurgency, in this case, the Taliban and support
Speaker 1: the legitimate government instead. Coin is supposed to be more
Speaker 1: about protecting the people than killing the enemy. Back in
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War, they called it winning hearts and minds.
Speaker 1: Sounds good in theory, but during the surge in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: it was young frontline troops like Third Squad who carried
Speaker 1: out most of the work, and they didn't really have
Speaker 1: the training or the resources to do it. They were grunts,
Speaker 1: not diplomats. Are typical days, you know, wake up very early,
Speaker 1: probably earlier than the average American. Trap on a flak
Speaker 1: that weighs thirty pounds because it's got bulletproof plates in it.
Speaker 1: On top of that, put a pack on your back.
Speaker 1: You have rounds that weigh a law. You have a rifle.
Speaker 1: I carry my rocket long, sure, the weigh thirty pounds,
Speaker 1: So I carry a lot of weight. Patrol all day, walking,
Speaker 1: walking through creeks, mud canals, water rivers, tall grass, corn fields,
Speaker 1: and it just gets really tiring carrying all that weight
Speaker 1: and body armor, weapons and ammunition. Gave them a firepower
Speaker 1: advantage over the lightly armed Taliban, but it beat the
Speaker 1: ship out of their bodies. A twenty year old marine
Speaker 1: can look like he's thirty maybe not not maybe maybe
Speaker 1: not in facial features, and like some people, some of
Speaker 1: us can't grow full beards and stuff. But our knees
Speaker 1: will be so jam packed and the carloads to be
Speaker 1: ripped up in our feet will be callous, like I
Speaker 1: don't know, like some dogs feed or something like the
Speaker 1: little paths or whatever. Those grueling foot patrols were third squads,
Speaker 1: only real opportunity to talk to the local people, one
Speaker 1: of the most critical elements of counterinsurgency. But the Taliban
Speaker 1: were out there too, hiding in the green fields and
Speaker 1: tree lines surrounding PEP fires, waiting to ambush the Marines.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the enemy fighters and lookouts would hide in plain sight.
Speaker 1: Dressing him up to match the population is like crazy
Speaker 1: smart because you don't know who they are, and they
Speaker 1: could be watching any point. They could be shaking your
Speaker 1: hand at any point. My first afternoon at PB fires,
Speaker 1: I went out on patrol with third Squad in their
Speaker 1: platoon commander. Almost as soon as we left the compound gate,
Speaker 1: we were hip deep in a canal. The cool water
Speaker 1: felt good in the heat, but as soon as I
Speaker 1: climbed out, I was conscious of every step. There was
Speaker 1: a marine at the front of the patrol with the
Speaker 1: metal detector sweeping for I U d S, and another
Speaker 1: one behind him marking the cleared path with a can
Speaker 1: of blue spray talk. I stayed glued to those blue streaks.
Speaker 1: Eventually the patrol stopped to talk to a farmer who
Speaker 1: had knee high corn in his fields and a few
Speaker 1: cows tethered by nose ranks. Traffic to start right now,
Speaker 1: getting a lot of goodents all over. They were trying
Speaker 1: to gather information about the Taliban. The tree brought us.
Speaker 1: They are living tour, yeah and pish at the end
Speaker 1: of there is a compound. The end of the compounds,
Speaker 1: they are living. The man told them through an interpreter
Speaker 1: that the Marines were not the only ones visiting his
Speaker 1: home coming, but the ninth Taliman. Okay, so the night
Speaker 1: to Taliban com It was risky for the man to
Speaker 1: talk to the Marines. Anyone caught helping the Americans could
Speaker 1: be punished by the Taliban. The Talibans not two people.
Speaker 1: Don't there. The longer the squad stayed, the more likely
Speaker 1: they'd be spotted by the enemy. They were walking the
Speaker 1: fine line between doing their jobs and putting people in danger.
Speaker 1: They hold him, don't him come back here, because we're
Speaker 1: talking to this guy, and if this guy gets same
Speaker 1: with someone, he's gonna get in trouble. To stop that kid.
Speaker 1: Don't let him back here yet, We'll come to him.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of responsibility for the Marines, but
Speaker 1: the I E. D. S that had devastated the previous battalion,
Speaker 1: we're still out there. And they did more than damage flesh.
Speaker 1: They severely inhibited the Marines movement, making it almost impossible
Speaker 1: to do counterinsurgency. They had to find them. Then we
Speaker 1: solved the two Taliban out here where they planted nineties
Speaker 1: today we saw two of them in the tree line.
Speaker 1: And that's sometimes the intelligence gathering paid off Roger and
Speaker 1: we cannot be break a bone. We found a secondary
Speaker 1: about ten ms to the southwest of the first one
Speaker 1: we found. As we're pushing back, they saw it. They
Speaker 1: found a cluster of I E. D s and detonated
Speaker 1: them safely. Oh my god, goddamn, I'm glad I didn't
Speaker 1: go off. It was a small victory in the bigger war.
Speaker 1: Out on patrol, everyone in the squad looked more or
Speaker 1: less the same. They all wore desert camouflage uniforms and
Speaker 1: kevlar helmets and wrap around sunglasses, and they wore body
Speaker 1: armor weighed down by ammunition pouches and first aid kits
Speaker 1: and water. But each person had a slightly different job.
Speaker 1: The radio operator maintained colms with the patrol base, and
Speaker 1: then there were the riflemen and the machine gunners. The
Speaker 1: assaultment carried things like rocket launchers and the corman cared
Speaker 1: for the wounded. Then there was the combat engineer, the
Speaker 1: one who walked up front with the metal detector to
Speaker 1: scan the path for i e d s. This job
Speaker 1: was called sweeper and it was one of the most
Speaker 1: dangerous jobs in the entire war. Those guys, you know
Speaker 1: they're gonna get Like if you sweep, you're gonna get
Speaker 1: hit eventually, Like you don't want to get hit, but
Speaker 1: there's a good chance to get hit. On patrol, everybody
Speaker 1: walked single file behind the sweeper, following his exact path.
Speaker 1: He moved real slow. You pretty much moved with the sweeper.
Speaker 1: Space can't any faster than a corporal. Michael Miner from Seagrove,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, was the oldest member of third Squad. He
Speaker 1: had two deployments to a Rock under his belt before
Speaker 1: sang in. Miner told me the Taliban didn't just wait
Speaker 1: around for the Marines to step on i e d s.
Speaker 1: The hiding tree lines, white forest shoot as that way
Speaker 1: they'll try to draw. Since I E d s. The
Speaker 1: danger the Marines confronted outside the patrol base was extreme
Speaker 1: and it came with a heavy dose of fear. So
Speaker 1: how often do you think about your legs and your
Speaker 1: feet every day. Tell me about that. You think about
Speaker 1: it and you're walking around, You're stomping through all the
Speaker 1: corn fields and the freaking weeds and the tree lines
Speaker 1: and the canals, and you're just thinking, damn, that could
Speaker 1: be an I d right there. Do you ever? I mean,
Speaker 1: this is kind of weird question, but I'm only asking
Speaker 1: this because when I've found out that I was going
Speaker 1: to be coming to sang And several months ago, I
Speaker 1: started thinking about it more and more and more. And
Speaker 1: every time I go for a rounder, i go for
Speaker 1: high creaking on my bike, I'd be looking on my
Speaker 1: legs thinking I really like running, I really like biking,
Speaker 1: I really like walking. I mean, do you ever imagine
Speaker 1: what life would be like without legs? Yeah? I do
Speaker 1: all the time, but right now we just make jokes
Speaker 1: about it, you know, like you can you see it
Speaker 1: all the time. You know, people lose their legs and
Speaker 1: you have to help them out, and then you know,
Speaker 1: you think about yours, and just like man, I can
Speaker 1: just imagine going back to leather Necker, going to Germany
Speaker 1: and getting surgery and then finally I'm all healed up
Speaker 1: and they get my little tink tink legs. That's what
Speaker 1: we call them, our little metal legs. We talk about jokes,
Speaker 1: and you know, like I think smoothing be so much easier.
Speaker 1: We just attached paddles to our little metal legs, you know,
Speaker 1: and get those fucking those balanced legs. We see on
Speaker 1: TV all the time that guys have just run a
Speaker 1: little faster. You know. It's it's all about making jokes
Speaker 1: out here. If you don't make jokes, and it's just
Speaker 1: gonna be gon'll be too grim. Yeah, it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: any happiness there. Third squads first months at pb fires
Speaker 1: were unusually happy. It was calm enough that the Marines
Speaker 1: started to wonder if they had missed the war. But
Speaker 1: this was the cruelest of deceptions, and the calm was
Speaker 1: shattered one day in June. We'll be back after the break.
Speaker 1: We were here for three months, and I was just like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're good, we're getting out of here. This place is
Speaker 1: done well, three five security, We're golden. And then I
Speaker 1: was sitting in this exact same room and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden we heard a big boom and then
Speaker 1: my squad leader started as he comes running in and
Speaker 1: says one two got hit. It was June nine, two eleven.
Speaker 1: David Ortega and the rest of Third Squad were at
Speaker 1: Pep Fires when they got the news that another squad,
Speaker 1: Second Squad, had suffered a casualty. Lance Corporal Nicholas O'Brien
Speaker 1: was a rifleman, but he'd been filling in for the
Speaker 1: engineer that day. He was sweeping for I. E. D.
Speaker 1: S when he stepped on one and was killed, and
Speaker 1: I was just like fuck. I didn't even know what
Speaker 1: to think. O'Brien may not have been in Third Squad,
Speaker 1: but that didn't matter. He was part of first Platoon,
Speaker 1: one of the forty odd guys they had trained with
Speaker 1: at Camp Pendleton and had been living with at Peb
Speaker 1: Fires for months, and the whole platoon was tight. O'Brian
Speaker 1: was someone that anybody could be friends with him best
Speaker 1: personality in the world, always making people laugh, and he
Speaker 1: was just a great person to be around, and he
Speaker 1: was to always have your back no matter what. Every
Speaker 1: day I noticed his absence, it's hard to see that
Speaker 1: he's gone. O'Brien had a reputation around the patrol base
Speaker 1: for being generous with his care packages. He was also
Speaker 1: known for his outspoken North Carolina pride. He just turned
Speaker 1: twenty one, and his death rattled the younger guys who
Speaker 1: were on their first deployment. Even for Michael Miner, who
Speaker 1: had been to combat before, it was a wake up call.
Speaker 1: You've been around. Yeah, you're years old, so you're fucking
Speaker 1: granddad compared to these kids. It's basically what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to say. So, what's it like seeing some of these,
Speaker 1: you know, young kids go through this when you have
Speaker 1: as much experience as you do already. I came to
Speaker 1: this already knowing what to expect a little bit. These
Speaker 1: guys had no idea Minor and O'Brien had bonded over
Speaker 1: their shared North Carolina roots. He death forced Minor to
Speaker 1: remember a lesson he learned back in a Rock Get close,
Speaker 1: but not too close the way you have no emotional
Speaker 1: attachments to anybody around because you never know when their
Speaker 1: time is so filling. Wise, don't meant to come off
Speaker 1: as a cold hearted montherfucker, because I really don't see
Speaker 1: the difference. It would be wildly wrong to say that
Speaker 1: Third Squad hadn't taken the threat and sang in seriously
Speaker 1: before O'Brien died They all knew how badly three five
Speaker 1: had gotten hammered, and there had been casualties elsewhere and
Speaker 1: sang and since they arrived, but they weren't close to
Speaker 1: those guys O'Brien. Though O'Brien was their brother. His death
Speaker 1: made ship very real, but it wasn't like they could
Speaker 1: sit around and dwell on it. We just one of
Speaker 1: those things. It's got to keep going no matter what.
Speaker 1: A tway maybe bad, but just keep pushing, keep pushing.
Speaker 1: It was the only option. Three days after O'Brien died,
Speaker 1: third Squad headed out from PB fires to help another platoon,
Speaker 1: third Platoon from a nearby patrol base. They got the
Speaker 1: Taliban held in a building and they were there for
Speaker 1: over a day, just in a shootout with them, and
Speaker 1: we were going up to re supply them. Everyone had
Speaker 1: full packs, main packs of water and chow. We're going up.
Speaker 1: They've been in contact pretty much all day and they're
Speaker 1: obviously out because you get the firefly for that one.
Speaker 1: You run our rounds and you get thirsty, and we
Speaker 1: all started pushing up, pushing up. A few guys made
Speaker 1: across the bridge. We're a crossing a bridge that we
Speaker 1: crossed every day. We're just walking along everyone. It was
Speaker 1: just a normal patrol. Everyone was just bullshitting and talking.
Speaker 1: And we were about two outside of fires the only
Speaker 1: blind spot from that post, and and uh, there's just
Speaker 1: the idea went off and it was just a smoke cloud.
Speaker 1: I was like in the back of which all when
Speaker 1: we first heard the explosion. I saw this big ass, huge,
Speaker 1: sixty ft mushroom cloud just shoved in the air. Mc
Speaker 1: daniels struck the first I D. Lance Corporal Joshua McDaniels
Speaker 1: was third squads combat engineer. He was up front sweeping
Speaker 1: when he stepped on an I E D that launched
Speaker 1: him straight up into the air. The blast hits several
Speaker 1: of the other marines around him, including David rich Bolski.
Speaker 1: It's about the ideas, maybe like fifteen ms away from that.
Speaker 1: One just knocked me on my ass. As the dust cleared,
Speaker 1: the deafening boom gave way to screams. It was the scariest,
Speaker 1: scariest moment, as well as the worst moment in my life.
Speaker 1: That's definitely the scariest moment. The squad scrambled to respond.
Speaker 1: The first thing I did, I just spread towards the
Speaker 1: front of the patrol. I got up. I started putting
Speaker 1: out turn kids. The tourniquet is a belt that slips
Speaker 1: around a limb and can be cranks super tight to
Speaker 1: stop arterial bleeding, a common cause of death after an
Speaker 1: I e D strike. Everyone carried tourniquets on patrol, not
Speaker 1: just the Corman ground up over there, and I started
Speaker 1: trying to work on him, but he was straight up
Speaker 1: blown in half. I used probably about just gone, like
Speaker 1: his whole half of his body was gone. So it
Speaker 1: wasn't really much places to put a turn kit. So
Speaker 1: I just started talking to him because he was screaming
Speaker 1: and uh, how was like holding his hand. They tell
Speaker 1: him I was gonna be okay, And that's what Lance
Speaker 1: Corporal Eliott stepped on the second I D. In the chaos,
Speaker 1: Lance Corporal Cody Elliott and machine gunner who floated between squads,
Speaker 1: stepped on another I E D. The blast took down
Speaker 1: everyone around him, including rich Bollski. I blacked out after that.
Speaker 1: The Corman dock for it, also got hit as he
Speaker 1: was rushing up to treat casualties of the first id D.
Speaker 1: When I got blown up, I stumbled for a little bit,
Speaker 1: like like I lost my hearing for a couple of seconds,
Speaker 1: I kind of felt straight to my knees. I ain't
Speaker 1: black out, but I just kind of sat there confused
Speaker 1: for a couple of semes, just wanting what the hell
Speaker 1: was going on. When the dust cleared, they died. The
Speaker 1: dude who was in from the Lance Corporate Elliott, I
Speaker 1: just saw his entire face was just covered in blood.
Speaker 1: First thing I did, I just looked down to make
Speaker 1: sure I was still okay and make sure I still
Speaker 1: have my legs and arms, and then I just went
Speaker 1: straight to McDaniels. McDaniels was for its first real world casualty.
Speaker 1: When I got to him, his legs were gone almost
Speaker 1: at least the flesh round his legs were gone, almost
Speaker 1: up to his waist pretty much like I would say,
Speaker 1: six inches below his hip was like where it had stopped,
Speaker 1: and everything else below that was just bone. I tried
Speaker 1: getting the turni uets on him, even like the metom.
Speaker 1: I had a little bit difficulty just trying to get
Speaker 1: on because it was like slipping off his leg almost,
Speaker 1: And I like I applied like three Turner kits on
Speaker 1: his right leg and one metal one his left leg,
Speaker 1: which had a little bit more flesh on it than
Speaker 1: the other one. For it completed about a year of
Speaker 1: specialized training to get ready for that moment, but no
Speaker 1: amount of simulation could have fully prepared him. I was
Speaker 1: just basically like constantly saying to myself, fuck my life,
Speaker 1: over and over again. He worked frantically over the gaping
Speaker 1: hole below McDaniel's waste. I just began stuffing it was
Speaker 1: as much gauze and combat cause that I had, just
Speaker 1: trying to get the bleeding stopped, but it wasn't working.
Speaker 1: He had lost too much blood and he was starting
Speaker 1: to go into unconsciousness and starting to lose a pulse.
Speaker 1: For it stuck McDaniels with an EpiPen and the last
Speaker 1: ditch effort to boost his heart rate, and then we
Speaker 1: got him on the grid. Mc annuals still had a
Speaker 1: pulse when the Marines loaded him onto a Metavac helicopter.
Speaker 1: M Meanwhile, the walking wounded started picking themselves up off
Speaker 1: the ground. When I came to, I was just laying
Speaker 1: face down in the sand. It's like in a poll
Speaker 1: of blood. Rich Volsky had been knocked hard by the
Speaker 1: second I e d, so had Brian Sheer. There was
Speaker 1: just nothing but smoke, and I I walked out of
Speaker 1: the smoke, I saw that I still had all my limbs,
Speaker 1: and I just it's just instinct. I just turned around
Speaker 1: and ran right back in. And that's when I saw
Speaker 1: rich Volsky laying there in the in the hole, and
Speaker 1: I turned him over and he was bleeding from the
Speaker 1: side of his face, and I checked to make sure
Speaker 1: he wasn't bleeding underneath his flak to where I could
Speaker 1: see Sheer Lance Corporal Sheer rolled me over and he has, hey, man,
Speaker 1: you got all your limbs, got your legs. I don't
Speaker 1: know how you did it. I was like, you can
Speaker 1: be okay, And I was like what, because like I
Speaker 1: had a severe concussion. UM, I just got knocked straight
Speaker 1: retarded and he started dragging me out. He was out
Speaker 1: of it. He was really out of it, and I
Speaker 1: didn't want him walking off or anything. So I grabbed
Speaker 1: him and I pulled him back across the back, across
Speaker 1: the bridge and got him back to UM got him
Speaker 1: back to safety. I had a piece of shrapnel about
Speaker 1: the size of a dime lodged in my temple, and
Speaker 1: I had some more for just fragg and stuff in
Speaker 1: my shoulder and pretty much the whole right side of
Speaker 1: my body was like road rash. So I just fell
Speaker 1: on his skateboard slid for about ten ft. My face
Speaker 1: is just like a burger, like nasty burger. While all
Speaker 1: this was going on, Mane Well Mendoza pulled security to
Speaker 1: make sure no one tried to ambush them, but he
Speaker 1: still caught glimpses of the carnage. I wasn't expecting the blood,
Speaker 1: uh bones dangling everywhere. I wasn't expecting that. I was
Speaker 1: hoping I wouldn't have to see that, but I did.
Speaker 1: Two more I e d S went off before the
Speaker 1: day was out, and the Marines found and safely destroyed
Speaker 1: five more. To realize that the Taliban could plant nine
Speaker 1: I e d S right under their noses, buried behind
Speaker 1: a stand of trees, just two yards from the guard
Speaker 1: posts of PB fires. It was a rude awakening. All told,
Speaker 1: seventeen men got hit on June twelve. Three went home
Speaker 1: with missing limbs and Joshua McDaniels, who they had put
Speaker 1: on the metavact bird with a pulse. The guys found
Speaker 1: out later he didn't make it. McDaniels had been captain
Speaker 1: of his high school football team back in London, Ohio.
Speaker 1: He liked to drive around in an old Mercedes Benz
Speaker 1: blasting the star spang old banner. He was one when
Speaker 1: he died, and he left behind a young widow. As
Speaker 1: for the Taliban, they were just getting started. Then after
Speaker 1: that we started getting hit, you know, I E d. S.
Speaker 1: Fucking bollets started whizzing all over the place. That's when
Speaker 1: we realized we didn't really own the place. We couldn't
Speaker 1: just walk around like we're freaking invincible. Just three days later,
Speaker 1: on June seven, more First Platoon Marines got blown up
Speaker 1: in another multiple I e D. Mass casualty. The Marine
Speaker 1: started calling it the Curse of June. We'll be back
Speaker 1: after the break. The June curse happened before I arrived
Speaker 1: in Sangin, so I never met O'Brien or McDaniels. In fact,
Speaker 1: I never met a bunch of the Marines who had
Speaker 1: been at peb fires before I got there. In July.
Speaker 1: Close to half the guys who began the deployment had
Speaker 1: been wounded by then, and a lot of them got
Speaker 1: sent home for good to recover, including Sergeant Andrew Ski Mattelski,
Speaker 1: third Squad's original squad leader. For the ones who were left,
Speaker 1: there was only one option. Keep pushing. At first, it's
Speaker 1: fucking it's like it just hurts. But then over time,
Speaker 1: over time, you get over it, and you just learned
Speaker 1: that you have to keep pushing, and you still start
Speaker 1: to getting numbed everything. You know, someone gets hit and
Speaker 1: it's just someone getting hit. You know, like if they survived,
Speaker 1: they're going back to the States. If they're dead, at
Speaker 1: least they're not here. The three mass casualty incidents of
Speaker 1: the June Curse rendered First Platoon combat ineffective, too shorthanded
Speaker 1: and thin on leadership to go into combat, so the
Speaker 1: higher ups decided to pull First Platoon back to a
Speaker 1: bigger base while they shuffled people around and waited for
Speaker 1: fresh bodies from back home. When I got to Patrol
Speaker 1: Base Fires in late July, the platoon was reinforced and
Speaker 1: back in action, but the lineup was a little different.
Speaker 1: Third Squad had two new faces. One of those new
Speaker 1: Third Squad faces was Sergeant Jerich Fry, four year old
Speaker 1: combat replacement from Irwin, Pennsylvania, who took over for the
Speaker 1: critically injured Sergeant Ski as squad leader. If one person
Speaker 1: in the team's week or in the squad's week, the
Speaker 1: squad will fail. So everybody has to pull their own weight.
Speaker 1: Everybody has to know their job, the job below them,
Speaker 1: the job of o them. The other new face was
Speaker 1: already pretty familiar to the squad, all right, So you're
Speaker 1: on faith wonderful all right? So first, just what's your
Speaker 1: full name? Michael Joseph Dutcher. Dutcher was originally in first Squad,
Speaker 1: but he got transferred to third squad to boost their numbers.
Speaker 1: Do you have a nickname in the squad? Dutch? You
Speaker 1: could spot him from across the patrol base because of
Speaker 1: his dorky standard issue glasses known in the military as
Speaker 1: bcgs or birth control goggles. The first thing is why
Speaker 1: did you join the Marine Corps? I honestly, I have
Speaker 1: no idea anymore. There was something about Dutch that I
Speaker 1: was drawn to as soon as we started talking. He
Speaker 1: had the warm drawal of his native Ashville, and with
Speaker 1: his thick glasses and overgrown buzz, he cut a generer
Speaker 1: figure than the other Marines, and he often had a
Speaker 1: wad of Frank's red hot buffalo wing flavored sunflower seeds
Speaker 1: in his cheek. He passed around the bag to everyone
Speaker 1: on patrol, including me. The you have to summon singing
Speaker 1: in one sentence to somebody back home, how would you
Speaker 1: describe it? I would definitely say keep your eyes out
Speaker 1: and turn your ears up, because paying attention to everything
Speaker 1: is the only thing you have out here to keep
Speaker 1: you alive. Dutch was smart and curious in the ways
Speaker 1: that made for a good counterinsurgency marine. He'd even learned
Speaker 1: a bit of Pashto from the interpreters. What do you
Speaker 1: think the Taliban are fighting for? They call themselves mugaden,
Speaker 1: but they're not really that. A lot of them are
Speaker 1: doing stuff that doesn't really describe the Muslim way of
Speaker 1: life as I've learned about it and heard about it
Speaker 1: from locals. Mden is the word for Muslim holy warriors.
Speaker 1: They fight and kill whenever everyone else wouldn't. They do
Speaker 1: things that Muslims shouldn't and wouldn't do. What's an example
Speaker 1: of something that you think that Muslims shouldn't do according
Speaker 1: to the rules with the Taliban do their whole murder
Speaker 1: and intimidation campaign. They threatened locals and their own people,
Speaker 1: who threatened other Muslims. They in place, I e. D
Speaker 1: s that can kill children, and they're buying and selling
Speaker 1: drugs that in the end killed mass quantities of people
Speaker 1: and destroy families. On one patrol, I took photos of
Speaker 1: Dutch using a handheld device to collect biometric data from
Speaker 1: a middle aged man wearing a turban. The fingerprints, mug shots,
Speaker 1: and Irish scans were checked against lists of known Taliban insurgents.
Speaker 1: The man's kids looked on from a doorway with curious
Speaker 1: smiles on their faces, but the man looked scared. To
Speaker 1: have marines bristling with weapons stroll up to your house
Speaker 1: and asked to scan your eyeballs had to be terrifying,
Speaker 1: no matter how much they promised they were there to
Speaker 1: help you. And I knew many locals wish nothing more
Speaker 1: than for the foreign troops in the Afghan Army to
Speaker 1: go away. Maybe then the fighting would have stopped. I
Speaker 1: don't know how much of this went through Dutch's mind,
Speaker 1: but he reminded me of myself before I was a journalist,
Speaker 1: back when I was an Army National Guard combat engineer.
Speaker 1: During my own deployment to a rock in two thousand four,
Speaker 1: I learned a bit of Arabic from the interpreters and
Speaker 1: tried to get to know the Iraqi soldiers. I remember
Speaker 1: wishing I could go into town and order lunch, hang out,
Speaker 1: shoot the ship with the locals, but it wasn't a
Speaker 1: semester abroad, and it wasn't one for Dutch either, though
Speaker 1: we did have plans to go to college. Eventually, are
Speaker 1: you going to re enlist? Um? I get out and
Speaker 1: you know June twelve, I'm not going to re enlist.
Speaker 1: I'm probably gonna do a nine day early out program
Speaker 1: and go back to college and get my teaching Newly,
Speaker 1: since I've joined the Marine Corps, I have decided I did.
Speaker 1: I want to follow my mom's footsteps and become a
Speaker 1: teacher because I really like what she does. Right now,
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to figure out what subject I want
Speaker 1: to teach. In the short term, all you wanted to
Speaker 1: do was kick back and relax. The thing I missed
Speaker 1: most about civilian life in general is uh, definitely weekends
Speaker 1: that I can't wait to go back sleeping and not
Speaker 1: have to worry about anything. Unlike Third Squad, I could
Speaker 1: return to regular life whenever I wanted. So when my
Speaker 1: m bed was over, I packed up my camera gear
Speaker 1: and my recorder and flew back to the States. I've
Speaker 1: been home from sang In for a few weeks. When
Speaker 1: the film from that old school camera came back from
Speaker 1: the developer, I couldn't wait to see the portraits of
Speaker 1: Third Squad. Scanning the negatives was painstaking, lee slow, line
Speaker 1: by line, the marines faces unfurled across the monitor. That's
Speaker 1: when a Twitter notification from the Department of Defense popped up.
Speaker 1: I clicked on the link. A marine had been killed
Speaker 1: in Sangin, a marine from Third Squad. It was Dutch.
Speaker 1: Duchess portrait was lying right there on my desk, next
Speaker 1: in line for the scanner. I stared at it in disbelief.
Speaker 1: I couldn't stop thinking about how much he'd been looking
Speaker 1: forward to getting out, how he planned to go back
Speaker 1: to school and move on with his life, hold up
Speaker 1: in some leafy college town, to follow the trail of
Speaker 1: his curiosity wherever it led, never having to sweep for
Speaker 1: I E. D S. Sleep, and not have to worry
Speaker 1: about anything. Dutch was so close to getting out of Sangin.
Speaker 1: He would have been home in a couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: back on leave with his family in Asheville. When I
Speaker 1: go back. I'll tell him the good stuff, what we've done,
Speaker 1: the friends I've made, what I've done with my friends.
Speaker 1: It was Dutch and his friends who were on my
Speaker 1: mind that night in Charlottesville. When I was walking past
Speaker 1: all those safe and happy people smiling over their expensive cocktails.
Speaker 1: I thought about how devastated they must have been to
Speaker 1: lose him yet another dead friend, and I could imagine
Speaker 1: how they might feel. The list of my friends who
Speaker 1: died in the wars in the Rock and Afghanistan kept
Speaker 1: getting longer, and I wasn't sure I could handle anymore death.
Speaker 1: After Dutch. I was also starting to feel like my
Speaker 1: own luck was running out. The fact that I still
Speaker 1: have my legs and that my mind and my heart
Speaker 1: were still more or less intact. It felt like something
Speaker 1: I shouldn't take for granted. I began to tell myself
Speaker 1: that it was okay to choose life, so I did.
Speaker 1: I never went back to the war, but the feeling
Speaker 1: that I abandoned something has always tortured me, like I
Speaker 1: walked away from the most important mission I ever had.
Speaker 1: It's been ten years and now I know that the
Speaker 1: rage I felt that night was masking something deeper. My
Speaker 1: profound grief, grief that's heavier now than ever before. Grief
Speaker 1: for the dead and for the ruined lives, and over
Speaker 1: the new nightmare that's just beginning in Afghanistan. It may
Speaker 1: seem like we're right back where we started twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: but that's forgetting the mountain of tragedy between the book ends.
Speaker 1: For the US, the war at Afghanistan came at a
Speaker 1: financial cost of over two trillion dollars, but that's not
Speaker 1: the cost that keeps me up at night. I think
Speaker 1: about the hundred thousand Afghans who died in the fighting,
Speaker 1: and the millions who were forced to flee their homes.
Speaker 1: And I think about the tens of thousands of American
Speaker 1: troops who came home with physical or psychological wounds, and
Speaker 1: the nearly undred who died. I think about Dutch. Earlier
Speaker 1: this year, with the tenth anniversary of Dutchess death and
Speaker 1: the final withdrawal from Afghanistan looming, I started thinking a
Speaker 1: lot about that mission. I abandoned the mission to use
Speaker 1: my own experience as a veteran to help Americans understand
Speaker 1: what it was like on the front lines of a
Speaker 1: forgotten war. I decided it was finally time to go back,
Speaker 1: not to Afghanistan, but to the Squad, Third Squad. Their
Speaker 1: story is here now, and the war isn't over for them.
Speaker 1: It's woven into their lives back home, and for some
Speaker 1: of them and their families, the war left holes that
Speaker 1: will never be filled. I recently found out the Dutch
Speaker 1: had a big plan for when he got home from Sanging.
Speaker 1: He was going to ride his motorcycle all the way
Speaker 1: from Camp Pendleton on the Pacific coast clear across the
Speaker 1: country to his mom's house in North Carolina. I decided
Speaker 1: to make the journey that Dutch never got to. I
Speaker 1: made a plan to drive from coast to coast and
Speaker 1: to track down Dutchess friends along the way, the Third
Speaker 1: Squad Marines, to find out what became of them since
Speaker 1: we said goodbye and sang it, to talk about the
Speaker 1: war and coming home, and to ask what was it
Speaker 1: all for? And where do we go from here? Coming
Speaker 1: up on Third Squad, I was in my own little world.
Speaker 1: But once I felt her embrace, and just like it's
Speaker 1: slowly awoken, you know the way I was before I left.
Speaker 1: If we don't talk about the killing, we're not talking
Speaker 1: about war. So to the extent that you're willing to
Speaker 1: talk about it, I would like to go there with
Speaker 1: you if you're able to killing Okay, physically, he was home.
Speaker 1: I don't think it was really until you know, second
Speaker 1: weekning back woke up in the middle of the night
Speaker 1: getting choked, and so I was drinking a lot. I
Speaker 1: drink a lot, smoke a lot, and when you know,
Speaker 1: I just felt like I gave up, or actually I
Speaker 1: did give up. It's like, let's just put it all
Speaker 1: the way now, let's just put it all away. I
Speaker 1: almost want to make a sign it says, do not enlist,
Speaker 1: do not enlist? Do you have a chance to die?
Speaker 1: I do not believe what they say. They are liars.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be a fucking dick, but you're
Speaker 1: not a dick. I'm just saying that. I what's gonna
Speaker 1: fucking change, right? Maybe nothing? Probably nothing? But you know
Speaker 1: what will change if I don't do it? Definitely nothing.
Speaker 1: Third Squad is written and produced by Elliott Woods, Tommy Andres,
Speaker 1: and Maria Byrne. It's an Heirloom Media production distributed by
Speaker 1: iHeart Media, funding support from the National Endowment for the
Speaker 1: Humanities and collaboration with the Center for Warren Society at
Speaker 1: San Diego State University. Original music by Mondo Boys, editing
Speaker 1: and sound design by John Ward. Fact checking by Ben Kalin.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Scott Carrier, Benjamin Bush, Caitlin Esh, Carrie Gracie,
Speaker 1: Kevin Connolly, Lena Ferguson, and Nick Ward. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to see my photographs from Sangin and from our road trip,
Speaker 1: please visit third squad dot com. You can find me
Speaker 1: on Instagram and Twitter at Elliott Woods.