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[dramatic middle eastern stringer]
[high-pitched ringing]
WADE: Yeah, we're going into Baghdad.
We're gonna take Baghdad.
The Army had been engaging on the west side of the city.
They had dropped some paratroopers
into the, I think Baghdad airport.
So they had a foothold there.
But we were gonna come in from the east and because 24
hours prior to that, Intel had seen, or there had
been a public appearance of Saddam Hussein with the crowds.
And there's footage of this.
I remember watching footage later
on in years later afterwards.
It was like, oh, timeline connected it.
He'd done his first, like, outside of this famous mosque,
the rally is Citizens and then taken off.
And that was the last known place where the-- so we were
going to these palaces that had been bombed to look for him.
[dramatic middle eastern music]
WADE: We came in from the west side of the city.
And soon as we got on the outside
the enemy, the Fedayeen Troopers,
the Fedayeen were these guys in black pajamas.
They were, you know, Iraqis trained sort of
like paramilitary guys.
They blew up a oil tanker to sort of try and get us,
but also to like, sort of mark to the city,
"Hey, US is in this side of the city."
And as soon as that thing went on, it was like World War III.
I mean, I was in the back of a high back Humvee 'cause
what it was me and a couple other 51 that had
been making explosive breach charges to blow doors
because we were like, we're gonna hit a pallet.
We're gonna have some big heavy doors.
We gotta blow some doors.
And so while we're driving into the city before
we got to the actual city, we were making explosive charges
in the back of a Humvee with lights on our heads and
bumpy traffic, you know, movements.
And then as soon as, like, the shooting started,
we lift up the-- 'cause we were in a clear sight.
It was like little canvas-backed Humvee.
We open up the side thing so we can see.
And I had my night vision 7-Bravos on,
which is like a monocle that covers both eyes.
So it's really bad.
You don't get depth of perception or nothing.
And you just see all of our IR lasers from
everybody's rifles pointing everywhere.
And then you see all the shots going and the tracers.
- [gunfire] - WADE: It was like, intense.
- [gunfire] - [tense music]
[indistinct shouting]
WADE: And what happened was we got into the city and
the Abrams, I guess leading the way got lost.
And we had to go back through another, like,
we called it the gauntlet because it was intense.
I mean, there was guys left, right, center, above,
below shooting at us, the whole battalion.
It was like a shooting gallery for these guys.
And they just-- our battalion loved it so much
we went back through it again because we had
to take another turn to get to this palace.
Later on, I think [indistinct] palace.
We came in the green zone,
and I think it actually was in
another documentary called Gunner's Palace,
I think, from the video-- from the footage of that one.
I think I could say, yeah, that's the same palace we hit.
MAN: All right, let's go get ready.
- Go ahead. - WADE: We fight.
And you know, that fight starts probably
like three, four in the morning or something.
I can't remember. But we fight and we
finally get to the palaces
a few hours later after taking casualties.
I know Alpha company lost Gunner Sergeant Bori got shot in
the Humvee in the head, and he was killed.
Then, you know, everybody, every company took
casualties, guys got shot in the back
of the AAVs, RPGs were hit, and Humvees.
MAN: We just had an RPG impact right next to us.
[gunfire]
Miraculously nothing, you know, hit us. I mean,
my buddy's Humvee got hit with a RPG and went through
the driver's window and hit
the driver's windshield and
blew out the windshield forward.
And it had hit like his ISO mat or sleeping mat.
'Cause he had had it on the side of this like thing.
And that ricocheted saved I think a lot of people's lives.
It was just like crazy stories like that happened.
MAN: Stay back, stay back. We're good. Good.
One guy, one of the 81s platoon sergeants, he got shot.
He was wearing a tanker's helmet 'cause had
to be audio into the AAV. And he got shot.
And the bullet literally skipped over his head and went
out the other side.
He had like the burn mark from it.
And you could see like the Kevlar helmet.
You could see the scratch mark from where
the bullet just went out that way.
Couldn't believe it. You know,
like there was stories like that.
And we got to the palace and we breached inside,
got inside the palace, it was abandoned.
We had JDAM it weeks prior. Wasn't much into it.
But as soon as we got in there, then the Fedayeen tried
to-- they were really attacking position then.
And the mosque was still a block away.
And that was Alpha company's objective,
was to go clear the mosques to make sure he wasn't there,
which I don't think he was gonna be there.
So they go and as they're attacking the mosques,
you know, the Fedayeen really just poured on us.
They're trying to overrun.
But we had eight tens come and shoot their gun on
the streets, which was really cool to see.
[imitates gunfire, laughing] Just stopped right there.
[dramatic music]
WADE: And since we have weapons
that we can hop frequencies and get on like the Aircom channels,
but you'd see it and you'd see it coming and lining up.
And then you'd see it literally see the cloud of smoke.
And then you'd see the jet literally slowdown
in space and in the air.
And then you just hear the [imitates gunfire] of
the actual gun we got going.
That shit tore those boys up.
I mean, that gun is a badass.
It's a badass gun, badass weapon.
Having that come in, you were like phew!
And then I remember we, you know, 'cause we had
invaded this palace, so there was ten, 12-foot walls
that we were sort of behind, but we were getting on positions
on palace roofs and stuff like that to get eyes on
the alleyways and the roads to fight these guys off.
And I remember we had a Chinook come in.
Our FACA called in a Chinook to get casualties and prisoners out
and also drop off ammunition and medicine and stuff like that.
So I remember it came down and it was like small
courtyard because all the explo-- like
from the JDAM there was like a lot of debris.
And it like had its tail down, basically.
Picked up the casualties, picked out some box of ammo.
And then I remember it getting up,
and then I see RPGs fly by it.
You're like, whew, that could've been dangerous.
Like if Chinook go down that's the most vulnerable position.
Once it gets to like that it's going down.
But yeah, so the pilot took a face maneuvers.
I think they loaded up Gunny Bore's body on that one.
But yeah, you know, we had a good firefight.
A good firefight that morning into the early, you know,
afternoon things sort of quieted down and started doing patrols.
And we started, you know, fortifying our position.
[high-pitched ringing]
[dramatic middle eastern music]
♪♪♪
[music fades]
JOHN: I didn't have a lot of direction.
I graduated high school.
Of course, a lot of the really good
friends I have from back then, I still have now.
But it was a lot of just getting up every day, going to work.
I worked at a jail before I joined the Army.
I went to college the first time.
And like a lot of people that joined the military,
we weren't-- I wasn't mentally prepared or,
you know, emotionally prepared.
I was still a little, just a little juvenile in actions.
But it was like everybody else.
You're just kinda ignorant to anything you're gonna
go through whenever you get in the military.
So it was just living life every day, like I said, going to
work and playing with friends, hanging out, seeing family.
WADE: You know, just typical suburban life.
Played baseball as a kid, you know, sports,
had my brothers ran in the neighborhood,
got in trouble, you know, all the usual, all usual things.
And then, you know, around middle school and high
school started exploring more and doing things my way.
And I always knew I was gonna join the Marines, you know.
Young in high school I knew I wasn't ready for college.
I didn't have the maturity,
if that's possible to think like that.
I don't know. I just knew it wasn't for me.
And so the Marine Corps for me early on was something
I wanted to do at least.
And, you know, having my father serve in Vietnam as a pilot in
the Air Force, he wasn't too keen on me being in the Marines.
'Cause his last tour of duty he was repatriating the remains
of servicemen to Dover, Delaware from Vietnam.
And so he definitely didn't want me be in the Marines, but...
OMAR: I guess I was just a normal
mischievous kid, you know, liked to explore.
I know we went fishing quite a bit.
Went down to the river and just had fun as much as we could.
We didn't have a lot of money.
So whenever those times came that we were able
to get out, you know, we made the best.
It's just gonna sound silly and posterous I guess
but just watching Rambo and Predatorand stuff
like that made me wanna join.
We had various engagements then on my third deployment.
This was during the surge of 2006, 2007.
And my unit was sent to Baghdad.
On that deployment, I earned a silver star
and my first purple heart.
MAN: Oh, damn!
[indistinct shouting]
[gunfire]
OMAR: We were out on a joint patrol
with the Iraqi national police.
And I was in charge of a small team of INPs.
[camera shutter]
So we were set up on like at a T intersection.
The enemy was behind us roughly 100,
200 meters if that.
And as we were setting in,
we started receiving fire from the rear.
And I was shot.
I was shot in my right thigh.
And then two of my men were shot as well.
[gunfire]
I didn't realize they were shot until I moved to
cover behind those walls that I was instructing the INPs
to return fire when I noticed that I was missing two of them.
I returned some fire to kinda like keep the bad
guys' heads down 'cause they were still getting shot at.
And I ran out and I dragged one of 'em, one of the INPs,
and I went back out there and was still getting shot at.
I picked up the other guy and carried him.
And I put him behind the wall returned some more fire.
And my squad leader finally got to me and
was trying to patch my leg up.
Though I was shot and just bleeding,
like, just drenched in blood.
But, again, I wanted to make sure my guys were good.
They did have multiple shots.
One guy was shot in his back and in his arm.
The other guy was shot in his belly and his leg.
Everything was slow motion. Everything was slow motion.
And, you know, the guys that saw what I did were like,
"Dude, you were, you know, moving so fast.
And it looked like we were watching a movie."
And me, I felt like I wasn't moving fast at all.
Like I had sandbags weighing me down.
But my guys weren't heavy when I picked them
up or when I dragged them.
But I felt heavy.
I couldn't tell you what I was thinking.
It was just get to them, you know,
get to them and bring them home.
And a lot of people, you know, would tell me
like, "Dude, like, why'd you do that?
You're crazy. Those guys aren't American."
But they were fighting.
They've been fighting beside us for a few months.
And, you know, you get to know people.
You eat with 'em, you sleep with 'em, you know,
you sweat with 'em, you bleed with them.
And it doesn't matter if they were Americans or
from Mars or whatever.
They were my guys.
[soft pensive music]
On my second deployment,
something very, very significant did happen.
I received my citizenship, so I accomplished the mission
that I initially set off for and becoming a citizen
and earning my citizenship.
And of all places, I received my citizenship in
Iraq, in Baghdad, in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces.
And yeah, it was awesome.
So initially on my first deployment, my resident alien
card had expired and the guys would mess with me,
like, "Dude, you're gonna get deported.
Instead of going home, you're gonna go to Mexico."
And I was freaked out 'cause I didn't know anybody in Mexico.
You know, all my family's here.
And we tried the process for the citizenship.
And then before my second deployment,
I had taken the picture and everything.
And during--
If I'm not mistaken, like we were coming back from
a mission and I found out that I had to go to
Baghdad to receive my citizenship.
♪♪♪
OMAR: So they had an actual ceremony.
I wanna say it was over, maybe over 300 people.
It was quite a bit. Quite a few folks.
It was just awesome.
'Cause President Bush gave a speech to us.
And I just felt like I've done it.
[high-pitched ringing]
The day that I was injured... [sighs]
we had aerosoled out around two o'clock at night.
We rode in a Chinook out to the middle of nowhere,
into a valley, and walked for a couple
hours to set up on a coot.
We were out on a mission, it was called Operation Shark Attack.
It was gonna last like a week or so.
And it was not long after Bergdahl had
gone missing in '09.
I think, by the way, a crow flies.
We were 20 miles or so, I think away from the FOB
that he was-- that he absconded from.
But we were out to search every coot, house,
tent, nomad, whatever.
Everything that we came across for any kind of intel
weapon or whatever.
It may not have been strictly related to
Bergdahl through the private network,
but the higher OPs knew a little bit more about that.
So we were aerosoled out, slept in a ditch that night.
It was the first time I had legitimately slept in a ditch.
We woke up, had a brief firefight that morning,
and then made it to the first coot, searched the entire coot.
And we were there for about two hours too long.
As soon as our fighter pilots checked off station,
we came under fire.
And as soon as we started receiving fire,
I rolled onto all fours from the sitter position.
And an RPG landed under my face.
[loud blast]
[dramatic music]
JOHN: You know, I got really lucky, to say the least.
I caught the spinoff of the shrapnel and
the explosion kinda gave me a brain injury.
But, you know, I was conscious through pretty well all of it.
Got to run out to the bird after.
And if I got to meet the Medevac pilot,
I'd love to shake his hand.
'Cause he landed under heavy enemy fire.
It was a little while after I was hit
that set against the wall for a while.
The first medic that got to me, Lauren Pearson,
later Lauren Haskins, she made it to me,
took care of me until the Medevac Bird got there.
We actually lost her,
I think, three or four years after our deployment
where demons kinda got the better of her.
And, yeah, Lieutenant Lyon ran me out to the bird.
He tried to get me to be carried off,
and I said that I'm not being carried off, I'm running off.
So he picked me up, put my arm around his shoulder,
and we ran out to the bird and got to take
off like an episode of M#A#S#H.
It was great.
[helicopter whirring]
♪♪♪
Yeah. So I had my M4 sitting next to me on the bipod.
I had just eaten my first MRE in two or three days.
It was just, we were so burnt out on MREs that I mean,
I lost close to 80 pounds on deployment, at least.
It was pretty great, great for myself.
But the moment that we came under fire,
kinda like the first firefight, you just take cover.
So I rolled onto all fours.
And as soon as the RPG hit it was just black,
I was able to stand up.
And as the lights started coming back,
I could see some dust and blood pouring over, like a bad movie.
So I knew something was wrong.
And my buddy Kat Nao was on the exact opposite side of
me from where I was, where the RPG impacted.
Thankfully, he got a few small lacerations to his arm.
Years later, I found out that he actually
rode the Medevac helicopter with me.
I didn't tie two and two together until I got
to take my Lieutenant deer hunting
years ago and really recap on what happened.
But I could see the blood coming over,
made it over to the wall called for medic.
My buddies got the medic down there to me.
And she covered up my face with some gauze,
was, you know, just tending to me as Lieutenant Lyon,
just, you know, our hero.
He was running back and forth directing fire
from three squads.
I can't say enough good things about him.
He kept running by asking if I had been
hit with morphine yet.
And finally just told our medic to give me morphine.
And it felt like you hit the bottom of a roller coaster.
I asked her to never do it again.
It was-- I didn't really feel a lot of pain.
My face was lacerated from side to side from the nose
over to the right side of the eyebrow.
My eye, we couldn't tell at the time it had been,
you know, cut in half a couple muscles.
My tear duct kinda had shrapnel everywhere.
And then, of course, I had the bleed on the brain, but all
I could do was feel pressure, which maybe it was shock,
maybe it was just-- thankfully I couldn't feel the pain.
But, you know, and then I just sat there,
listened to my guys, you know, lay down fire and get after it.
And sat there for a while 'til medevac was able to come in.
Like I said, I was able to run out
under my own power and get on the bird.
And then we made it to the first medevac station
in FOB Shank where I was checked out.
Kat Nao actually came in because
I screamed like a little girl
whenever they were checking me for blood everywhere.
It was kind of funny, screamed like a little girl,
but it was still, still pretty bad.
And then, you know, I was medevaced
all the way to Bagram for surgery.
I was asked in Shank to call my folks, tell 'em what happened.
I didn't want to tell 'em.
A month earlier I'd hit an IED
and I didn't wanna call my parents,
but I had to call my dad. They made me.
And I told him, "Hey, Dad, I hit an IED today.
I'm fine. I just missed-- like, tore some muscles in my chest."
A couple weeks later, I hit my second IED.
That one wasn't very bad at all.
We were transporting spaghetti for our third platoon.
We got to go and take showers for the first time in a month.
And we were bringing hot shower to the guys.
And when we hit the IED I was the only
one in the back of that truck.
And it just threw spaghetti and marinara sauce
or ketchup in the army everywhere.
So I got out of that truck and I was covered in,
you know, ketchup and everything.
But yeah, my second IED I didn't have to call my folks.
After being injured from the RPG, they asked me to call
my parents at FOB Shank, the first medevac station.
I wouldn't do it.
Got to Bagram.
Before they even talked about doing surgery,
they asked me to call my parents and I said no.
The third time was right before I went into
surgery to have my eye removed.
The surgeon came in and told me I had to call my
parents or they were gonna call 'em for me.
So I called my dad.
It was two or three o'clock in the morning in
the United States in the Midwest and got to wake him up.
Say, "Hey, Dad, it's Michael."
He is like, "Yeah, I know. What do you want?"
You know, 'cause I understand he's sleeping.
But yeah, I got to tell him, "Hey, Dad, I got hit.
Might lose my eye. They're gonna try and save it."
I had a lengthy argument with the surgeon, with a few
threats in there because I'm young and dumb.
And asked him to call Mom and tell her what happened.
And not long after that, I think the entire,
you know, my entire hometown of a thousand people knew,
but went through surgery.
They did take out my eye.
Woke up to a priest giving me my final rights.
I told him, "Hey, bro, I'm not done yet." [chuckles]
And then just sat there.
You know, I'm in Bagram's Hospital.
I can't do anything combat-wise. I'm not any good to my guys.
And was just waiting for the next step.
That's where-- Sat there for about a day.
And then we loaded up and flew to Landstuhl in Germany.
And then long after that, we flew to the United States
to Walter Reed to be in the hospital for
almost a year and a half.
Going to appointments, going through occupational
therapy, rehabbing for my injuries.
[tense music]
WADE: My platoon commander, Lieutenant Glover,
was very aggressive and very interested
in getting into fights.
And I remember one morning we
were in Fallujah, waking up on the squawk box.
We were kinda like--
Half of us were on awake,
half us were sleeping at night
sort of doing that.
And I remember he comes to the squawk box,
which is like little speaker in the NVA.
He's like, "They put a roadblock up down by
this mosque on Michigan. We're gonna go pick a fight."
I said, "He just say that?"
He said we're gonna go pick a fight.
It's like four in the morning, five in the morning.
Like, ah man, okay. So we get on the road,
go to Michigan, we push down to where the mosque is,
and then the T section is route Violet.
And they create this little like, I mean,
it's like a couple tires and a couple obstacles or whatever.
And as soon as we get down there an RPG flies over
the truck behind us, this hood blows up.
And then it was game on.
They basically just tried to ambush us from Violet.
Well, in the Marine Corps, we're taught,
if you're in ambush, you push through it or
you take the fight to the enemy.
So we lead gun truck.
We literally face down Violet and just gunning down
Violet towards these people shooting at us.
And there's a guy, Haze, our 50 cal machine
gunner in our truck,
he cut 'em in half.
He was behind a bulldozer blade shooting at us.
And then the rounds-- [imitates shouting, falling]
And then, like, I realized that we're
in an ambush, like, on Violet.
'Cause I see, like, I don't think they were
expecting us to come down as fast.
They were like scrambling to get behind barriers to shoot at us.
I remember a guy with a PKM is, like,
behind these concrete blocks.
And I see him trying to line up his shot and
I start shooting him.
I just remember my peripheral vision seeing RPGs flying over
our hood and like, and we're gunning it.
And then you hear the squad like,
"Turn around, gun one, turn around, gun one."
Me, Peter, was our driver,
when we took that turn onto Violet,
we're pushing down, he'd gotten shot.
We didn't know what happened. He's like, "Ah, my ass hurts.
My ass hurts." And we're like, "Just keep driving.
Keep driving." And he's like, "It's on fire.
Is anything on fire? Am I on fire?"
I'm like, "You're not on fire, dude."
'Cause I'm back right. And I see that he's got
blood on his ass. I'm like, "You got shot.
It must have been through the firewall.
You're fine. It's not like spurting or anything.
Just sit on it. You'll be fine."
But like then that squawk box was like, "Gun one turn around.
Gun one turn around."
And he's like, "Turn the fuck around.
Turn the fuck around." And I remember this, like,
almost like a-- it had to be from like Hollywood movie.
I remember we turned around and you see the whole
platoon up on route Michigan.
We were the only truck that had gone down Violet
to fight with these guys.
And then I remember turning around RPG smack in the road
in front of us and some of the guys in the other gun trucks
and the other trucks were like, "Dude, I just remember you guys
disappearing behind clouds were like RPG explosions.
And then driving through it, like,
it was like a Hollywood movie."
Like us coming through the smoke clearing
still in one tack, you know, like in one piece.
And we're just, you know, firing our way down Violet.
And so we link back up with a platoon on Michigan and
the platoon commander's like, "Hey--"
Glover's like, "Hey, we're gonna call for tanks.
We're gonna go down there and clear it.
Don't do that again." [laughing]
And so he calls up tanks and tanks come up finally.
They're so slow. And they're like, so...
I'm like, "You guys are an armored tank.
We have nothing here and we're fighting."
We call the tanks up. And then we start pushing down.
And now what's gonna happen is we were, you know,
we were on this side of the city in Fallujah.
We had now taken up to Michigan and now we had to clear West.
So Alpha and Bravo company now had to start
clearing west of all the ground we had just
taken on Michigan so our flank wasn't exposed.
And so they start clearing and we push down Violet to do
a blocking position to hold Violet.
And it's pretty kinetic. There's fighting,
our tanks are shooting its main cannon,
and stuff like that.
[loud blast]
WADE: And we're like, "Hey, [indistinct].
He-- you know, he's good for now.
He's sitting on the wound, but he'll need to be medevac'd."
So we hold the line for like maybe an hour or two before
Alpha and Bravo come we can finish clearing
all the buildings that are south of us...
[gunfire]
...of bad guys so they can take
this now new position.
And that's our, you know, line of--
anybody in front of that, bad guys. Kill 'em.
MAN: All right, let's watch each other's back, baby.
Watch each other's back.
- Go! Go! - [indistinct shouting]
Roof is clear. We got roof.
WADE: Yeah, that was a crazy day.
It got pretty kinetic real fast.
[pensive music]
OMAR: So later on that day,
we made another movement.
And that's whenever I got injured.
My weapon squad leader was shot in the head.
[gunfire]
And I went to try and retrieve him so that my
medic and I can work on him and I can call it in.
And as I was dragging him,
the ground collapsed underneath us.
And we fell roughly 50, 60 foot
into a [indistinct] into a hole.
♪♪♪
You couldn't tell there was anything there.
Like it was covered up, camouflaged so, so good.
So good even that the weapon squad
was posted up almost on top of it.
And there was a small little berm that I wanted
to get my weapon squad leader behind so it could
provide us some sort of cover or something.
'Cause there were still rounds coming in.
And as I was dragging him, I can remember, like,
the rounds coming in around us like a cookie cutter.
They were just landing around us,
but not hitting us, thank God.
And I remember that there was another guy that was shot
as well, through the femur.
And again, it was three injured.
I think I remember exactly what I was thinking.
I was thinking like, man, it's gonna be, you know,
booby traps, it's gonna be some punchy sticks.
[exhales]
And everything with me seems like forever, right?
Like when we fell, I just, I felt like I was
falling for an eternity.
Like I had time to think about, man,
there's alligators in there.
There's explosives down there.
There's-- you know,
any type of scenario that you can
possibly think of probably went through my
head at that time just thinking about it.
And I remember hitting the ground and just
instantly feeling an enormous amount of pain.
And soon as I hit the ground, my weapon squad leader
landed on top of me.
And so I had not only my weight but his on top of mine.
♪♪♪
We could barely, barely fit in there.
And I remember having to call up and let the guys
know that we were in there.
They seen us fall and I remember having to assess Bouchard's
injuries, having to see if he was alive, if he was okay.
But I guess with all the pain,
we were both in and out of consciousness.
[brooding music]
OMAR: I fell straight down.
I felt like I hit so hard.
And maybe, you know, you talking about close to
500 pounds of meat and gear impacting.
My fib, tibs broke.
I have so much hardware in there right now and they had
to split my-- my legs open in order to save them.
'Cause there was a possibility that I would lose them.
We were in that hole for roughly two hours.
JOHN: And so we secured that site.
I had Saddam's revenge that night, again.
WADE: So I stayed up on the turret
the whole night for my truck.
'Cause I was like, "I can't sleep.
I'm puking shitting myself, so it'll be fun."
- [loud blast] - WADE: And I remember the first
mortars that came in and they hit and it was
early light, like just first light.
They weren't near us, but we're like,
"Hey, sir, I think we're getting bracketed."
Bracketing is when you shoot a mortar and
you sort of adjust and you shoot again.
Kinda-- okay, now where are we going?
[loud blast]
WADE: So the two commander's like, "Hey, yeah,
let's mount up. Let's start moving
our gun truck positions.
Let's move." And as we're doing that a mortar
lands in between our truck and the high back,
which the high back has no arm in the back.
It's literally an open, like, bench seat.
And guys are just hanging out there and
they get pepper shot and all.
So then now we have casualties.
So Lieutenant Glover's like, "Hey, we're gonna have
to call this one out.
We're gonna have to bounce.
We're not gonna hold this position."
'Cause what we were gonna have to do was hold
that position until they could get
like a wrecking crew out there
with a big 18-wheeler flatbed truck that they--
with a crane, that could pick that [indistinct] put it on
this truck thing and then haul it out of there.
That's got like two or three days' worth of sitting
around in the desert waiting for that to happen.
And we had a similar mission later on that sucked.
So he's like, "Hey, we're gonna call it in.
They're gonna have to blow it in place.
They're gonna have to drop a JDAM on it or something."
Just 'cause we have casualties.
And as we get together and we start pushing down
out on this road,
we take this road and that's when the real ambush happens.
We're in this road that's literally lined
up with just reeds.
Deep, deep, deep gullies and reeds 'cause it's farmland.
So they have this natural defense
that they can hide in and they just start chewing us up.
And we're pushing north through this town,
this little itty bitty town.
And it's bad folks in there too.
They're waiting for us,
RPGs, all that sort of stuff.
And we fight our way through that.
Somehow in the firefight, our crypto and our radio gets
kicked and it drops.
So we're only able to talk on unsecured comms
to the other trucks.
And the rest of its-- our private channel's just garbage.
We can't communicate with the rest of the platoon.
But anyways, so I think we have to
fall back in and let someone else take lead.
And the whole goal is to get to the cloverleaf.
That's casualty collections point.
And we're a few clicks away.
We're like 20 minutes away.
As we're driving through that firefight,
Boye is in one gun truck and he's in a high back,
but he's on a mounted-- he has his light machine gun saw.
[brooding music]
WADE: So he's on the top of that Humvee,
basically pretty exposed, shooting.
And an RPG hits and hits his leg and cuts
his femoral artery, I believe.
And he dies that day.
♪♪♪
WADE: He fought through that ambush.
I'm sicker than hell at Saddam's revenge.
So I'm, like, totally, like, just beasted out on me,
like nothing in me.
I'd fired all my rounds.
I had like 14 or 16 magazines.
I'd gone through all my ammo.
We fought in that fire really.
And we get to the cloverleaf and we give
Boye to the medics.
And they're trying to do the resuscitation.
I didn't really observe.
I was away from that looking at other things.
And then we go from the cloverleaf back to our soda
factory where we're sort of staging our operations
and all of our trucks have like a lot of damage.
So the mechanics are working on our trucks to
keep us operational.
And that's when Lieutenant Glover...
[somber music]
...he called us together,
let us know Boye didn't make it.
♪♪♪
The day was still young and we were still QRF.
And I think it was Charlie Company's AAV,
it might have been Bravos.
One of them they had pushed past Violet.
They were doing like a little patrol mission and their AAV,
I think got disoriented or whatever and it went past Violet
and it got ambushed and got mobility kill.
The driver, he got hit with a couple RPGs.
The driver was killed instantly.
The lieutenant and the platoon commander
had a, basically, RPG that was like a armor piercing.
So it basically turns into liquid hot copper and burns.
He had gotten a critical hit through his leg.
Luckily it cauterized his wound
so he didn't bleed to death, but he was done-zo.
So his guys got out and took over a building
next to them where the AAV was immobilized.
[gunfire]
And then they were getting overrun.
And so we as QRF have to spool up
and we go in there to try and get 'em out.
We get out to that location and it is very kinetic.
It's a hornet's nest.
They're trying to overrun those 'cause it's--
they want that AAV for propaganda.
They wanna kill that platoon
and get shown on Al Jazeera news.
And so Glover calls up the Abrams tanks
and is like, "Hey, you guys are towing this thing outta here.
Figure out how to rig this thing for tow
but you're towing it out there."
And I just remember hearing like the Abrams tanks guys
were like, "Well, it's getting dark." So he is like...
He's like, "We're out here. You're in an armored vehicle.
I don't wanna hear it. You're rigging this thing
for tow and you're pulling it out here.
It's not gonna be used. There's a dead marine in here.
You're not leaving him."
And so we were holding down the position
and I think it became too dangerous
for our Humvees 'cause we had an RPG
hit under our vehicle and blow us up.
And we were all sitting there and quiet
and like, "Nobody's injured. Nobody's--
And Lieutenant Glover's like, "Hey, pull the Humvees back
and just hang out this phase line
and we'll come to you and pull this out."
So we got the AAV outta there that night.
And it was a long day.
In between Boye's death and, you know,
us responding to that QRF call, I had been, like,
given a bunch of IVs 'cause I was just done.
The medic-- the Corman was like, "Hey,
you need some liquids."
And so they've put me like four or five bags
of IV and I was still barely hanging on.
I was real sick. That was a long day.
That was a tough one.
You know, but I think what shown was the leadership
of my platoon commander and he was like,
"We can sit around and wallow about it
or we can continue our job."
And I think that was the best thing for the platoon, you know.
Boye's death really affected the platoon I know that.
Universally loved, you know.
I remember in Okinawa he'd gotten
in a drinking incident and we were only there
for like three months, but they have this unique thing
in Okinawa called CCU, Correctional Custody Unit.
And he'd gotten sent there because he'd gotten
another NJP busted down a rank.
And in CCU what they do is they take small rocks
and make 'em into smaller rocks
and move those smaller rocks
across the parade deck in bags.
Like, that's all they do.
Then they'll move the other rocks and break 'em
with hammers, make 'em smaller,
put 'em in sandbags, and bring 'em up.
That's their days of activities.
And they march around like bootcamp
and it's like real crappy to be at CCU.
I remember he being lunched in the chow hall,
and we were already combat vets,
and we'd make fun of like the MPs
that were guarding and we'd get him in so much trouble.
[laughing] We would just talk to his guards
tell 'em they're, you know, pussies, pogues, you know.
And they would just take it out on Boye.
[laughing] But, yeah, Boye was just loved, you know.
He could sing, he could sing his ass off.
Dude could play a guitar.
[somber music]
Sparsky, this is when Sparsky
really started to shine as a sergeant.
You know, cold as ice on the comms,
not freaking out when we're in an ambush,
just being like, "Yeah, contact, right," blah, blah.
Just like monotone.
Like, I don't know.
I'm behind him, but it's like...
I'm shooting and shouting.
You know, like at some points
it's pure terror in those ambushes.
And it's a miracle, like...
I mean, our Humvee was riddled with holes.
We had RPG blasts in it, we had--
It was amazing how that truck looked
at the end 'til it got blown up.
But yeah, Fallujah then the sad thing was is,
you know, after that day, a couple weeks, days later,
maybe a couple days they came and told us
that we were pulling out of Fallujah.
[tense music]
MAN: Whoa.
♪♪♪
And that really, really was a gut punch,
because like, we had taken all this territory.
We were, you know, a quarter way through the city.
We were gonna finish the city.
We had the momentum. We had 'em on their ass.
They'd politically been trying to delay our offensive.
That's why we had a halt in operations at Violet.
We couldn't go any further. They didn't want us--
They had done a political agreement.
And our snipers were killing these guys.
I mean, we were just-- we had 'em on the run.
We were gonna take that city.
and politics came in and squashed it.
And, like, had us walk, you know,
basically, they pull outta the city
with these like Iraqi army units
that didn't know which side of the gun to look at
to shoot, you know, take over our positions.
And like, of course, they were hand in hand
with the insurgents.
We'd spend a month in Fallujah.
And to have that sort of taken from us was really--
it eats at me today, you know, 'cause three, five
and all those other units we had go in there
in November shouldn't have had to.
We could have finished it and been done with it.
So yeah, that's something that always eats at me to this day.
I decided to do this because I got tired of losing people.
I mean, I got out around 2013, I separated from the service.
And I'm probably averaging
around six to seven people, or at least one a year.
And I think I just got tired of losing people, man.
It's one thing to put money towards the charity or,
you know, say I, you know, I support veteran suicide,
or I wear a bracelet for 22,
you know, veterans the day that commit suicide.
But I wanted to do something
and it kills me that I can't be everywhere.
So I hope that this film is some sort of force multiplier,
what we call it in the military
to help veterans know, like,
"Hey, man, you're not the only one.
It's okay."
And then also to bring awareness
to the general public that it's not always PTSD.
It may not be this thing or that thing,
but they're struggling with something.
And just recognize that and just understand that
one veteran is okay, you know.
Fucking ask for help.
Sergeant Kershaw, you know, needs help sometimes.
Sergeant Hernandez need help.
Sergeant Span.
You know, Sergeant Gomez or Specialist Gomez,
or whatever it is, it's okay, man.
You know, we got your back.
It's not-- And again, like I'm sitting up here
talking like it's fucking easy before you ask me that question.
It's not.
There's no pill, no matter what the VA prescribes you,
it's always gonna be there.
You're changed forever. You just gotta deal with it.
You gotta surround yourself around people
that make you know, like, hey,
you're not the only one going through it, you can beat it.
It's like an ongoing battle, right? It's--
I don't think I've beaten it, but I've gotten better.
That thing starts crawling up my back again.
Like I know how to deal with it.
And everyone deals it their own way.
I know how to deal with it. But my daughter,
because at the time my son wasn't born.
And I remember...
like my wife would--
so the kind of like the battle rhythm
we had every day was-- and granted,
if you were to look at me outside of everybody,
like if you were to look at me like in a box
of like, how is his transition going?
I think you would probably think I was doing okay.
I work for a major company, doing well.
But that shit doesn't matter to me.
And I was chasing something.
I think I fell into that purpose, community,
and identity bucket personally.
And it didn't hit me 'til five years later.
And I can remember the battle rhythm we had was,
I would always take Camilla to school, no matter what.
That was my thing. Daddy took her to school.
And I worked, I drop her off, go into work,
travel, do whatever, go to DC, do some meetings,
come back, and then, you know, if I could pick her up
for the most part, I picked her up.
And then we got home.
Joanna, my wife, kinda took over.
Like she was, you know, the one that was really good
at putting her to bed because she wasn't a good sleeper.
She would do that. She was the nurturing one.
So I had this dead space of like,
from 7:30, and I didn't go to bed 'til like 2:00
every night of just like, up in my own thoughts.
And around 2019, I would just sit there
and stare at a fucking blank TV screen.
And I couldn't understand it.
If I could explain it visually,
and this is what I tell the other veterans
when I'm explaining it, is like, it feels like
if you could look at my body and something would represent
like that feeling, it feels like black tar.
Is like slowly creeping up and you're trying internally
in your head to fight that motherfucker off.
And then you're just like, "What the fuck? What the fuck?"
And then, you know, it creeps up there,
and then you're just super fucking depressed
and angry and you can't figure out why,
you don't think anyone fucking understands you.
All of us have fucking guns.
So you're fighting to, you know, to not make yourself a target,
a 50-meter target, right?
You know, your closest threat.
And for me, my purpose
and who saved me was my daughter.
'Cause I couldn't imagine-- And it was bad.
And I couldn't imagine her waking up
and seeing me like that.
And more importantly, this may sound weird,
in my head, I was like, "Fuck, who's gonna take her to school?
She's gotta get to school.
She counts on Daddy to get her to school."
So I think it was less of her finding me.
'Cause I feel like, you know, somebody else would've found me.
But it was more like, you know,
my baby counts on me to take her to school.
So, you know, one day...
I think one day, she's gonna know.
♪♪♪
She's gonna know that she saved her daddy's life.
Yeah.
[brooding music]
So getting outta the Marine Corps, I was eager.
I got home on a Thursday and by that Tuesday
fall semester community college started.
So like my brother flew out to Camp Pendleton.
We got in the truck and we did a road trip
for like ten days across country, which is awesome.
I needed that. It was a good experience.
But it really helped me decompress,
but then hit the books right ahead right from then on.
And the suicides and all that stuff
started happening a few years later.
All the traumas finally caught up to us, I think.
We lost some guys in combat, but we lost more to suicide.
You know, the first one that I knew of was Nelson.
He was in 80 ones. I knew him.
Evidently, he'd been recalled back
to the Marines and I don't know.
Either wasn't allowed to be infantry,
or they weren't gonna let him serve in that role.
I've heard mixed stories, but he took his life.
And then Sparsky and another Sergeant Mansfield,
they went up to pay respects at the funeral as our unit.
War takes a toll and a price that, you know,
you can never necessarily justify,
but it's something that's gotta happen.
It's gonna happen, you know, inevitably
just like kids on the playground,
they're gonna fight at some point.
War's a heck of a lot worse.
But in a lot of instances, you can't get around it.
Luckily you've got people that'll go out
and fight it for you.
So you can sit back and have that argument.
You know, you can armchair quarterback
anything that you want, but until you've been there,
you'll never really know, you know, what war means
to a lot of us guys that have been there and fought it.
The transition was scary.
It was scary because...
I mean, all I've done for the past 16 years was the army.
And I was afraid.
I was afraid that I would fail as a civilian.
I was still learning to walk whenever I was retired.
I had to wear braces for a long time.
And even to this day I still do.
But having a good...
support group like family
and, you know, your brother-in-laws
and stuff like that was very, very beneficial
for the transition
'cause they just showed me all kinds of love
and letting me know that everything was gonna be okay.
I have lost quite a few actually.
And...
And just not too long ago,
we had a guy that committed suicide.
I mean, these are all good guys.
These are all great, great, great guys,
and you wouldn't expect that from them.
You wouldn't expect them to take their lives
and put their pain onto somebody else.
And the thing is that when we as veterans
commit suicide, we don't stop the pain.
We inherit it our loved ones, to our kids,
to our wives...
our husbands, our parents,
our siblings, and just anybody else that care for you.
And so I think it's very important
that we have a support group.
I was in school by time I think I was going to college in DC.
And Ski. I'd talked to Ski the week before
he was gonna get out.
He was getting medically separated,
'cause of the brain damage
from the explosion that we had had together.
And I was like, "Well, that's good.
You got all these options.
You got school, man. You're gonna be great. No worries."
You know, wife and kids, he's two sons.
And he came back from that funeral
and Lieutenant Russell had dinner with him that Sunday.
I barbecued with him.
And then Monday he killed himself,
shot himself in the head.
[somber music]
[exhales]
That's the toughest one.
'Cause, you know, Ski was a great leader.
We got along. We were best friends.
And...
to see how quickly he deteriorated
and he was still active duty.
And he'd been promoted meritoriously from sergeant
to Staff Sergeant, and made Gunny real quick.
It was an unheard of in the Marine Corps.
And...
yeah, for him to take his life,
I wasn't expecting it, didn't believe it.
I still, at times don't believe it.
And that was a hard one.
The whole platoon felt that one, I think.
You know, I've tried to make amends with it,
but it's something that lingers with me.
And then from that, we learned about Heinzic,
who was my platoon.
Heinzic had gotten out around the same time I got out.
He had a baby mama in San Diego,
and he was having custody battles with her, evidently.
And his dad came out to help him try and get him on his feet,
help him, you know, get right with things.
I think his dad was a veteran maybe too.
And Heinzic comes home from work one day
and his dad comes in, walking in,
and then Heinzic shoots himself in front of his father.
Killed himself right in front of his dad.
♪♪♪
WADE: And I only learned about this because few years later,
back about five years ago, 2016, I took a road trip.
I visited the graves of the guys that we lost.
And I left, you know, my contact information
and a little memento and a t-shirt,
I think, of the unit.
And Heinzic's grandma got ahold of me.
And she had been down at the plots
a week later after I'd visited for her husband,
her husband had finally passed away.
And she told me the story of what happened to Heinzic.
And then she told me that five years after
Heinzic killed himself, his father killed himself.
So this grandma was out there burying
her husband at a grave family plot
where her grandson and her son were buried
because of this war.
And Boye, I went and visited Boye's grave
and Lieutenant Childers's grave.
And at Boye's, I met his mom.
She met me out there.
She took a break from her factory job.
What was it?
Hornady. She works for Hornady.
And she met me at the grave site.
And then I noticed that there was
another headstone with Boye on it.
And she told me the story that Boye's brother
was in the Army when he got killed
and he was getting out already.
And a few years later, Boye's brother
took his own life, you know.
And I totally believe it's because of the war.
You know, he lost his brother
and he probably had his own traumas
that the military wasn't dealing with properly, so.
And the tragedy just keep going.
You know, I lost a lot of guys to suicide.
It's tough.
And, you know.
You don't know who to point the finger at.
I do know that some of these pharmaceutical companies
they put these guys up on wasn't helpful.
I know, without a doubt that caused a lot of the issues.
The VA couldn't handle it, handle the volume of patients.
Couldn't give the one-on-one care,
the direct counseling they need.
Just give 'em drugs, numb 'em out, cope 'em out,
make 'em numb.
They won't respond to anything then.
And it's been fatal ever since they started doing that.
And in the military we always talk about like,
not failing, not letting people down.
And that was one of my fears too
of letting my mom and dad down
or letting my nieces and nephews down.
And just thinking about all the people that I would hurt,
just because I thought that it would end my pain.
And just opening up, opening up to somebody.
And that really helped me out quite a bit
'cause you feel lighter at the end of the day.
I've called the hotline and...
I was a bit disappointed
with it because it's not like you talk to somebody right away.
And I wish that we could talk to people.
I now have a lot of regrets or things
I've had to come to grips with as far
as understanding my role in a war
that you look back on, it don't make sense.
It was tough to see Afghanistan
go the way it did, especially knowing
all the sacrifice put in that country as well.
And the treasurer. Fuck the money.
People made plenty of money off this war.
It's really the guys, the lives.
You know, even the Iraqis and Afghans,
you know, I feel bad for them. Worse.
We fucked them up.
Made 'em dependent, then left them behind to dry.
And it's something I have to accept my role in.
You know, at the time I wouldn't take anything back.
If you give me the experience, I'll take it over again.
I'll do it again.
But it's tough to realize
the consequences of these decisions
our country made, our leadership made.
I definitely think, you know,
it could have been done differently.
It should have been done differently.
But I think there's money to be made and people
are wanting to profit off of this.
It's sad.
But yeah, I got into college.
After I graduated from my four-year university,
I got into private security myself.
It was good money. And I was addicted to the adrenaline.
It's a simpler life overseas.
You have your job, sleep, work out, eat.
You know, job, sleep, work out, eat.
So it's simple. You don't have like the gossip.
You don't have the "what's going on in this city"
or what's going on here, this controversy.
It's a simplified life. And I loved it.
And I got addicted to the adrenaline rush of combat.
You know, my whole time in university
I kept on trying to join military.
Like I joined LRS unit, a National Guard LRS unit,
a Long Range Surveillance unit,
because I wanted to get trained
and I wanted to continue to fight.
And when Ski got killed, I got real close to joining
back in the Marines and going back in
'cause I was like, I gotta get in to fight.
I have some anger issues.
[laughing]
And luckily I talked to Lieutenant Glover still.
I was really in good contact with him.
And he sort of said, "Hey, do yourself this.
Go to school, complete school.
If you wanna go in, you can go in afterwards."
And so I'm really glad he told me to do that
'cause, at the time, I didn't have a real good compass.
I go with any direction.
And to have him encourage me to stay in school
and I did it, it's an accomplishment for me.
Especially going to, like, the school I went to.
If you would ask my peers in high school
they probably would've never thought
I could get into it and go to that school.
So I was kinda spiteful.
I think I mentioned early on about, you know,
being enlisted, of taking the dummies route,
going enlisted.
So for me, you know, I had this chip on my shoulder
for sure, and I probably still do about the wasted lives.
And I finally have accepted
that we probably shouldn't have gone into Iraq.
You know, looking at the facts now,
knowing we kinda all were lied to.
I mean, they used General Powell
and all those people as pawns to set something up
that I think didn't need to happen, you know?
And it's sad that nobody's been held accountable.
Our government lets them get away with it.
I definitely have some issues with the way
we abandoned things in Iraq.
And hell, if I would've lost.
I remember being in Kuwait,
searching the desert because someone lost a bayonet.
We weren't allowed to leave.
You know, get on line and look for a freaking bayonet
that's maybe $20 worth of equipment.
Yet the generals were allowed to leave
billions of dollars of equipment in Afghanistan.
And nobody's held accountable.
And it's just hypocrisy to me.
And I can't accept that like, they taught me
all these values and these things
that were important to me then to turn around
and them not even live by 'em and hold themselves up
to the same accountable things that I was held to.
It really is frustrating to see.
So, that's my gripe of the year, I guess.
[laughing]
You know, I like to go hunting.
You know, I go deer, go with some buddies,
and go elk hunting and all that.
And there's no comparison.
You know, you're taking a life, but one's feeding your family.
One's taking another human off this world.
You know, at the end of the day while we were deployed,
it kinda turned into who's making it home tonight?
You or me?
And I wanna go home worse.
You know, I wanna go home more.
Whenever I came back, I went and found my childhood priest,
tried to talk to him a little bit about it.
He's an older gentleman and he definitely gave me his time.
But when you haven't been there, you don't really understand.
There's one priest I wish I could run into
back home near Kansas City.
He was a, I think he retired as a captain
in the Marines from Vietnam.
Yeah, the Vietnam era.
But I mean, it's really something
you've gotta come to grips with yourself.
You know, you're sending 18, 19, 20-year-olds over there
if they're fresh and they're taking lives.
You know, if they're not lucky in a facetious way.
But the part of the military
that actually sees direct combat is very, very small.
So if you are lucky in the fact that you're part
of that percent you need to have your head on right.
I've got some friends that grew up, you know,
they're the same age, grew up close to the same way,
but in different parts of the country.
And I know that a lot of us have handled it all differently.
Taking a life is...
it's not something to be taken lightly.
But at the end of the day,
it's I wanna go home more
and I'm going home to my family.
So you made your choice and I made mine,
and you're going to meet your maker and not me today.
You know, when you leave the military,
you lose your purpose, your identity,
and your community.
I was fortunate I came home and I came back
to my old high school buddies
that were still around and family and friends
that were still there in the community.
And so I sort of had some people to safeguard me a little bit.
Like, I did implode. And I wasn't--
They told me to do something, I was gonna do the opposite.
But they at least, you know, they kept the rails on.
It kept me on the rails.
I think for a lot of people,
they lose one, you know, two or three of those:
purpose, identity, community,
and it creates a downward spiral.
So much so.
I think with Ski, I look back,
they were taking away his purpose.
They were taking away his identity.
He was no longer gonna be allowed to be a Marine,
a very good marine.
And I'm sure he had his own issues
with the war and his own family issues.
You know, I don't know exactly led him to pull that gun out.
But I know he was suffering.
And, you know, like I lost my identity,
but I still retain it.
You know, I still will tell people I'm a marine.
[laughing] But I think,
yeah, I think people--
the military does a good job at taking people,
making 'em the killers.
It doesn't do a good job
processing 'em out to be "normal."
And it's not their job to really.
They have a mission.
It's not to always do the backend stuff.
I think we're realizing now I think they put a great effort
into counteracting the negative things.
It's changed, you know, the talks of mental health.
You didn't talk about it in 2004, 2005.
Kidding me? No, you're not talking about it.
We're not pussies here.
[laughs] I knew I was fucked up,
but I always knew I wanted to work in the government
with a security claim, so I never brought it up.
It took me over a decade to finally
admit that I had PTSD.
And it was only after I was working overseas
I was like, "I need to get help."
I need to have a quality of life that it's worth
what I've done, what I've put myself through.
I think that's one of the bigger things.
And I think it plays with some of my childhood trauma,
was I've never felt worthy of love.
And, uh...
MAN: What are your hobbies now?
So, I weld sometimes.
I do fishing, take the kids fishing.
Heck just last week I took my niece
and my nephew's Tito's kids to go look at alligators.
And like, I just enjoy seeing
their smiles and their--
That's what makes me wanna wake up in the morning
to where they call for me.
And...
I don't wanna let them down.
And so I think if we as veterans find something
that makes you wanna wake up,
then we need to look for that, for whatever it is.
As long as it's productive, then I think we'd be okay.
But I really think, like the brothers I served with,
I'm so glad I can be in contact with a lot of them.
We've stayed together, we stayed pretty close together.
And a lot of us have found our paths in unique ways.
You know, I think for a lot of them.
And I encourage all of them that I served with,
you know, to do alternative therapies.
There's not a silver bullet that's gonna fix a veteran.
There's multiple paths to find a purpose,
a place in society and your new tribe.
I'm so grateful that I have the guys
I served with still around.
They'll check me when I'm fooling around
and being an idiot.
But they'll also tell me, "Oh no,
hey, it's not that big of a deal.
You screw that up. Who cares?"
You know, bigger picture of things.
They put thing in perspective for me
that a lot of times I forget.
Especially like my buddy Joe Wells,
he lets me know that like, I don't owe anybody anything.
You know? If I wanna do this for the rest of my life,
I'm good. I've made my peace. I have my friends.
I don't need to prove anything to anybody.
If there's something I want to accomplish,
I can accomplish it.
But I think a lot of veterans
get themselves into trouble is
in our society I can order everything to my house
and not have to deal with a single human being.
I don't have to engage with anybody.
And that's not a good thing, is what I try to tell people.
We're social creatures we need to have social interaction.
We need to have connections.
And where our fear is like we had this deep, deep bond.
And I know-- What's that author's name?
Sebastian Junger and he talks about that.
And I agree with his book, Tribe.
You have these deep connections with these guys.
They're intimate, you know.
[laughing] Deep jokes, like just meaning with each other.
And then they part ways and rip each other out.
It's hard. For years after getting out in the Marines,
my goal was I wanna be wealthy enough
to be able to pay for everybody's family
to come to a reunion for a week from each deployment.
'Cause each deployment we had different guys with us
and do a big, huge way and be able to be so successful.
That was my big heritage goal.
Be so successful that I could afford
to pay for everybody's families to take the week off.
You know, all that stuff.
Have all the sorts of therapies and, you know,
ways to reconnect.
And I realize like, I'm not gonna get there professionally,
but maybe there's a way for me to be a part
of a nonprofit that can do something like that one day.
But it's tough to see guys go home and suffer,
especially when you knew them in the military
as like the good-to-go guy, the guy that was reliable.
The guy who will watch your back.
And to see how this rot has set in with our country,
with drugs, with meth, with opioids,
and the same problems that plague these veterans
are the same problems that plague our nation.
And it sucks that nobody wants to step up
and try to really go after these things.
It's disheartening to see my buddies,
some of them, you know, I love seeing the success stories.
I've got guys that are successful
and it's not always the boohoo thing.
They've taken those experiences and turned it
into something positive, used it to make themselves
plenty of money and build a family that's full of love.
Then [indistinct] guys that have really
self-destructed and, you know,
done every bad decision they could think of if not more.
And I think a lot of it is lack of services initially maybe.
Or, you know, had something gone a different way,
break another way, maybe they'd have a better step forward
and never a new start.
But it's tough to see, you know,
that's probably like the road trips I've done cross country
multiple times is like, it's for me.
I'm gonna be selfish. It's a lot of--
It feeds my heart to be able to see these guys again.
But it's also part of it is me checking in on 'em.
And like, you see the guys that are really proud
to show off themselves, they're like,
"Hey, this--" My best friend Staples.
I lived with him for four years in the Marines."
And Stack, nicest dude ever from Youngstown, Ohio.
Big brother. Looks like Mike Tyson.
Has a lisp. And me and him were roommates
and we fought with each other initially
and then we became brothers after.
And he came home with me on leave.
And when he got out, he is a big guy.
So people like to try to test themselves with him.
And he wasn't gonna back down from a fight.
Evidently, he got into a fight in Ohio
and got arrested
and got put in the system
and that system holds onto him.
I did that road trip part of it to reconnect with him.
And I did meet up with him. I got to hug him, I'd see him.
But I could tell he was shy, didn't wanna talk
about his past, didn't wanna talk
about what he's up to these days.
'Cause he was in and out of, like, the legal system
and didn't have a whole lot of opportunities
in front of him, especially in, like, Youngstown, Ohio.
It's hard. But his family's there.
Guys like him I wish I could get ahold of
and give another opportunity
or just offer 'em whatever they need.
You know, like they're the ones
that I want to encourage, get services.
I'm fine. I can advocate for myself.
It's those guys like him.
And since I saw him, I've been outta contact with him.
You can't get ahold of him anymore.
I've gone back to Youngstown, Ohio
on my road trips and knocked on doors
and asked around but still can't find him.
And that's like I guess my big hairy goal eventually
is to have a real reconnection with him and other guys.
You know, I'm not worried about the guys
that are still texting me and I see on social media maybe.
It's the guys that have quieted up, sort of.
You see them extract themselves outta life.
Those are the guys I worry about.
'Cause it's never good.
You know, guys shouldn't have to fight
these battles by themselves, you know.
Ancient tribes, they're warriors.
They came home to different settings.
And I think for our veterans, we need to figure out
a way to bring these guys home and let them
integrate into a society that understands them.
There should never be a military-civilian divide
or veteran-civilian divide.
That's just veterans trying to put up walls.
I read a good story from a ranger who wrote it,
basically said, "Yeah, I had best friends,
best brothers in my life but that was 20 years ago
and I have 60 years of my life ahead of me."
He said, "Is that the last
of my relationships I'm ever gonna have?"
No, you have to build new relationships.
You have to find people that may not be that.
Now, I still have a habit of finding veterans
and they just gravitate towards each other.
But I do try to find people that aren't veterans to engage with.
You know, they might think my humor's
a little sick or weird.
I probably cuss too much.
But, you know, I do try to connect with them
'cause they're Americans just like me and you.
And I want them to understand what sacrifice is.
That's why I tell my story
or parts of it to anyone that asks.
It doesn't mean no good to hold onto it.
Nobody knows what sacrifice is.
Nobody knows what the cost of sending our youth to fight.
You know, what's the true cost?
Well, I'll tell you the true cost.
People like Heinzic.
That's whole family's destroyed.
Boye, a whole family's devastated.
[sniffling] You know, that's the hard part.
[somber guitar music]
♪ Trouble dies ♪
♪ And not out at the rocks ♪
♪ Does help praise ♪
♪ As the bullet shell struck ♪
♪ Be careful Don't be eager ♪
♪ When your fingers on the trigger ♪
♪ Out in the open, and your gun's all you got ♪
♪ Sin is like a wildfire, souls are quick to burn ♪
♪ When will I learn ♪
♪ That sometimes pain is underserved ♪
♪ Be careful Don't be bitter ♪
♪ When you could be a forgiver ♪
♪ Out in this world left alone with your thoughts ♪
♪ And I wish I could revive my soul ♪
♪ But maybe I'm too broken ♪
♪ Don't hold me liable ♪
♪ If I'm not outspoken ♪
♪ They say I'm tribal [indistinct] ♪
♪ Leading all my life full revival ♪
♪ But a broken tribe is all I know ♪
♪ Would you care ♪
♪ To try to understand ♪
♪ Hurt that was felt was more in our hands ♪
♪ Be cautious when you listen ♪
♪ 'Cause the tears don't seem to glisten ♪
♪ Out in the middle of the desert sand ♪
♪ Would you come running ♪
♪ And show me your love ♪
♪ If I said the memories are all creeping up ♪
♪ Be cautious with you talking ♪
♪ Don't you know that I was walking ♪
♪ Or carrying weight of a hurt friend? ♪
[music fades]