Bad Paper

Lexington, KY: In Sangin, Scott McEtchin told Elliott that he joined the Marines to get his life together after a bout of teenage trouble. But trouble wasn’t far behind when McEtchin got back from Afghanistan.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Third Squad is a podcast about war. Every episode contains
strong language and descriptions of violence that may not be
suitable for all listeners. When I got kicked out and
I had no benefits or no direction or guideline or
none of my friends I had served with around me
or in my life, I started selling cocaine, so I mean,

(00:22):
and I was going to school as well. But how
the hell else am I going to paper? I'm back
to square one. What did that feel like for you?
Suck felt like fucking defeat. I would describe it like
the same way a guy feels when he walks in
on his fucking wife lane in bed with another dude.

(00:43):
It felt that shitty. Fi'm Elliott Woods. This is Third
Squad Episode eight, Bad Paper. After my trip to see

(01:08):
David rich Bolsky in Alaska, I knocked out a sevent
mile drive from my home in Montana, across the barren
corn and soy fields of the Midwest to Kentucky horse Country,
where spring has arrived and the trees are bursting with
pink and white blossoms. I picked up Tommy along the way,
and now we're rolling through a tidy subdivision north of
Lexington like the most Edward Scissor Hansey neighborhood we've been

(01:33):
too so far. I think it's nice. Is nice? We're
looking for third Squad veteran Scott mckitchen's house. Dang, Gina.
Is this his house? Yeah, that's his house. Look at
the Marine Corps thing on the license plate. Does he
live here by himself? I guess we'll find out. Maybe
he lives here with this dog's probably like everybody else.

(01:53):
Mckatchen was a troubled kid before he joined the Marine Corps.
I remember him telling me about it back at Patrol
based Fires when I reviewed him on his cop I'm
PFC Scott mccatchen. I'm twenty years older from Pleasant in California.
He was stripped down to his shorts and had a
big wad of grizzly snuff in his lip. So then
the first question is why did you joined the Marine Corps.

(02:15):
I joined the Marine Corps because I was kicked out
of my house while I was going to college and
just started being financially unstable. So I joined the Marine
Corps so I could basically have a stable lifestyle, I guess,
and get away from home. His reasons for enlisting. We're

(02:35):
almost identical to my own. Tell me a little bit about,
just very briefly, about the kid that you were, that
that didn't do so out of college, because I was
actually that kid too. I was a kid in college
that I went to college and just wanted to party,
didn't care too much about school or think what I
could possibly lose if I were to just do nothing

(02:58):
but party. And sure enough I lost it. But I
fucking manned up when I joined the military. And here
I am saying in Afghanistan, things seem to be looking
up for Mketchen. His house is large and well maintained,
like all the others in the neighborhood, with a perfect

(03:19):
lawn and happy little shrubs. The two car garages wide open,
and there's a new looking white Infinity parked inside, and
there's Mcatchen swinging open the door to greet us. Are
you doing good? How are you? I'm good. He's wearing
a gray Marine Corps hoodie with the sleeves pushed up,
showing skull and spiderweb tattoos running up his arms, and

(03:41):
he's got a German shepherd by his side that's the
size of a small pony. The dog's name is Rugan. Excited, dude,
I got I got here like basically as soon as
I got When was that so? Yeah? Dude, He's he's
been my like WindMan ever since. When I met m.

(04:05):
Catchen in two thousand eleven, he was stick skinny and
looked like a child. Now he's thirty and he's still
a string bean. His jeans are falling off his hips.
And even though he's got the same bright smile I
remember from Sangin, the youth has gone from his face.
He's got a shadow of dark stubble and circles under
his eyes. Tick our shoes off. Now it's all right,

(04:29):
But Ketchen's house looks barely lived in, and I just
got the place in May so great neighborhood. There's a
big TV on the wall above a gas fireplace, with
an Xbox on the shelf underneath, and an overstuffed couch
under a large print of graffiti. Ruger the dog has
an entire bedroom to himself, complete with a queen bed

(04:50):
and his very own flat screen TV. The place is immaculate,
almost like a realtor prepared it for an open house,
except for one little thing. Sorry about all the pot
I'm a bit of a stoner. Back when mckatchen was
living in the squalor of patrol based fires, he told
me he wanted to hit the big time someday after

(05:13):
my contracts up, I plan on leaving the Marine Corps
and then I'm I want to use my g I
bill and go to go back to college and hopefully
get a degree in business graphic design something and then
get rich one day. By all appearances, he's on his way,
even though he's not currently employed. Well, I just got fired, dudes.

(05:34):
The Ketchen tells me he was working part time at
a nursing home, but he got let go after an
argument with another employee. It was a shitty job. The
details are kind of vague anyway, Mketchen says he's not
too worried about it, but financially I'm great, So like whatever,
it's a relatively minor bump and the road he has
been traveling since sangin. When I got back from Afghanistan

(05:57):
a few months after we returned to him, I got
JPD and stuff, and that was scary. That's where it
began since the last time I saw you. So what
does m JP mean? Non judicial punishment? It's it's not good.
Are you able to tell us what happened? Yeah, Um,
the whole unit knows. So it's no secret. I have

(06:19):
no shame in it. Honestly, I can think if anything,
I grew from it. I just turned twenty one. We've
been back in the States for about the months or whatever,
and it was New Year's and we had a lead
block in ninety six hour lead block and one of
my friends had some cocaine in San Diego, and so
I did some blow and uh, you know, I thought

(06:40):
I had enough time to get clean. Um, and we
had a great test that after we got back from
that lead block, and I failed it, and uh gotten
some serious trouble with the Marines and stuff, and uh so,
long story short, that's what got me out of the
Marine Corps. That vacation funk up cost mccatching more than
his job. He got kicked out with an other than

(07:01):
honorable discharge, staying on his record known in the military
is bad paper that followed him back into civilian life.
There are five main categories of military discharge. Of the five,
honorable is the only one that doesn't have negative consequences.
The others are general under honorable conditions other than honorable

(07:21):
bad conduct and dishonorable. Guys who like rape people will
get sucking bad contexts. So do you get a dishonorable discharge,
you have to like pretty much kill somebody now. The
other than honorable, it's basically just a hey, thanks, we
used you. We're not going to give you any benefits.
Thanks for your fucking time. That's it. That's what you got.

(07:45):
That's what I got initially, which means, and this is
the important thing, that means you're cut off from via benefits,
any health care benefits, mental health, any anything, conosation, college,
educational bents. Everything you joined the ser is for that
your recruiter lurge you in with you're no longer entitled to.

(08:06):
So I'd gone through everything, I've gone through the combat deployment,
and now I'm being looked at like a piece of ship,
which I know I'm not. You know, even at the time, no,
I'm not. I think they're pieces of ship for not
give me a chance. Because I was a fucking good marine,
and I know my marines would attest to that. I
got kicked to the curb because I made one poor

(08:28):
choice after fallless service I would say getting kicked out
of the Marine Corps derailed in the catching, it's fucking crazy.
You're going, you know, six ft into the deep end,
quicker than like anything, and and you have no clue
where to get a footing in life when they fucking

(08:50):
throw you out on the streets and you can't even
go see a therapist after you just got back from
seeing your friends blown in half. That's fucked up. In
a matter of months, he'd gone from fighting for his

(09:11):
life and sang in alongside the insanely type brotherhood of
Third Squad to being out on his ass with the
stigma of an other than honorable discharge hanging around his neck.
He was totally isolated, and he was desperate. When I
got kicked out and I had no benefits or no
direction or guideline or none of my friends I had
served with around me or in my life. I started

(09:33):
selling cocaine, so I mean, and I was going to
school as well, But how the hell else am I
going to paper? I'm back to square one? What did
that feel like for you? Suck felt like fucking defeat.
I would describe it like the same way a guy

(09:54):
feels when he walks in on his fucking wife Lane
in bed with another dude. It felt a shitty. Because
of his bad paper discharge, Mketchen wasn't eligible for the
g I Bill, which pays education expenses for veterans with
honorable discharges. His parents, Cindy and Doug, were outraged by

(10:15):
the Marine Corps decision to throw their son out with
no benefits. They told Scott they would cover his tuition,
room and board as long as he was earning passing grades.
So he enrolled at Santa Barbara City College and everything
went okay for one semester. But when m Ketchen started
partying and doing drugs instead of going to class, his
parents cut him off. That's how he wound up selling cocaine.

(10:38):
Mketchen knew he was hurtling towards self destruction and needed
to get out of the Santa Barbara party scene, so
he decided to move to a place where nothing could
possibly go wrong. I decided Las Vegas a good spot
to go because my uncle's successful doctor out there. He's
got his own private practice stuff and probably just pay
me to do some bullshit job or whatever. So I

(11:01):
was out there just doing just that, just bullshit work. Um,
but I was still lost, and I was doing drugs
and uh, just self medicating. Mckatchen had been out of
the Marine Corps for about a year and a half
when he got to Vegas, and he was still in
a dark place, but he wanted to get his feet

(11:22):
under him. His mom found out it might be possible
to get his discharge upgraded with the help of a
nonprofit called am Vets, which would mean getting his v A,
healthcare and education benefits restored. She helped mkeatchin get in
touch with them and they supplied a pro bono attorney
to start the process. In the meantime, mketchen was self
medicating with Xanex, which he tells me led to back

(11:45):
to back arrest for driving under the influence. I got
a couple of d U E s while I was
in Las Vegas, and uh that was another kick in
the fucking gut. It was a very expensive ordeal. Uh
then A labeled as like basically a criminal and I
had to, uh, you know, lose my license. So I

(12:06):
was forced to you know, take public transportation and is
getting old real quick. You know. The first time he
got a d U I, he wrecked his girlfriend's car.
The second time, a neighbor called the cops when she
saw him passed out behind the wheel in his driveway.
After that second d u I mckatchen spent ten days
in jail. That's where he saw an apparition from his

(12:28):
troubled childhood that was in jail for a little bit.
This junkie comes up to me clearly like he's coming
off a heroin and no doubt about it, because he's like, Hey,
do I know you from somewhere? And I hadn't lived
in Las Vegas that long and I'm just like no,
I'm like, I don't know you, you know any anyone

(12:50):
to associate with this, any of these people. To be
honest with you, um, I'd like to hold myself to
a higher standard than them. He's like, no, no, man,
I know you from somewhere, and I'm like, dude, I
don't fucking know you, Like what are you talking about?
And then he's like Red Rock Canyon School, I was

(13:11):
there with you, and I'm thinking, like what, And then
I started putting two and two together and the kid
just looked like shit because he'd been using so much heroin.
But I did recognize him once he had said that,
and I was like, oh my god. Seeing his former

(13:31):
classmate was a wake up call. The catching was fucking
up again, and he knew better than anyone how much
uglier things could get. We'll be back after the break.

(14:11):
Scott mckittchen was adopted as a baby. He grew up
in a Bay Area suburb called Pleasanton, California. But the
way mckatchen tells it, his childhood wasn't always pleasant. I
was kind of a ship headed kid, and I've always
kind of gotten trouble here and there. I was just
getting fights and stuff at school and slacking off just

(14:31):
you know, not going to school and stuff like that.
At some point in his teenage years, he started fighting
a lot with his parents. Things at a low point
when a policeman showed up at the house after mckitchen
got caught stealing from his neighbor's yards. It was around
that time that his parents planned a special sixteenth birthday
party for him at his uncle's house in Vegas. He's

(14:53):
got a secret sick house and stuff, and my parents
were like, hey, you want to go to stay with
your uncle Baldy for your sixteenth birthdam Like hell yeah,
mckatchen thought maybe things with his parents were taking a turn,
and he was right, just not in the way he expected.
They tricked me. Actually, I got woken up in the
morning of my birthday by two probably an investigators, took

(15:16):
me up there, up there to his new home away
from home. It's called Red Rock Canyon School and it
was in St. George, Utaw. Was it a boarding school
for kids who are getting in trouble? Yeah, for sure.
Mckatchen and I have this in common too. I got
sent to a military boarding school when I was a teenager,
but no one tricked me. I went voluntarily. Mckatchen says

(15:40):
he felt betrayed. I couldn't believe my parents did me
like that. Dude. You know, it's important for you to
know that I contacted mketchen's mom and dad to get
their side of the story. They told me sending Scott
to Red Rock Canyon School was the most difficult thing
they'd ever done as parents, but it felt like they
were out of options. His mom told me he was

(16:05):
so out of control, stealing and lying to us that
we were afraid he would end up either dead or
in jail. Mcatchin tells me that for an adopted kid,
being lied to and left behind was particularly rough. He
felt abandoned and no one was giving out hugs. At
Red Rock Canyon School, it was housed in an old

(16:26):
hotel that look kind of like your average Laquinta in
Beija exterior terra cotta roof tiles and palm tree landscaping.
It was billed as a therapeutic center for troubled teenagers,
but as mcatchen tells it, the place was more like
a prison. Yeah. It was insane for sure. Um they
beat the crap out of kids up there. Mckatchen says

(16:46):
he got thrown around by the staff and saw other
kids get hit, and he noticed that he had something
in common with a lot of his fellow students. Most
of the kids up there were adopted, and so that
school had contract from the like state of California and stuff.
If you were adopted, the state of California would pay
for the kids stay there. Oregon and Washington also contracted

(17:09):
the school the How's foster kids. What mcatchen and his
parents didn't know at the time was that Red Rock
was in the midst of a lawsuit over allegations of
child abuse by staff. More complaints piled up over the years,
until the state of Utah finally shut the facility down
in two thousand nineteen. Mcatchen went there in two thousand six.

(17:37):
His parents enrolled him in a nine month program. If
he could shape up during that time, he could come
back home. It reminded me kind of of like something
like boot camp, you know what I mean, where you
get up at the same time every morning, everyone does,
and then you go get your breakfast, after you do
your personal hygiene and whatnot, and then you'd go from

(17:59):
breakfast to you. I think they made escape DoPT um
after breakfast, and then it'd be school um and school.
There was just a joke, it was. It was a
good place for kids to really get ahead in school
because it was easy and you could catch up on
your credits and stuff. So I actually got a lot done.

(18:20):
There was nothing to like about the school, but Mketchen
did well in the highly structured environment. He finished the
program on schedule and was back home in time for
his junior year. But after everything that happened, he says
he never really felt comfortable in his parents house again.
I felt like I was faking who I was, so
that I could just have a brief over my head,

(18:43):
my my parents house, you know what I mean, which
I don't think any kids should have to do, but
I mean, yeah, ship, dude. I faked the funk, and
then once I graduated high school, um, I got the
hell out of there immediately. Mckatchen's relationship with his parents
was strained, but they helped him find and pay for
an apartment when he moved out, and they paid his
tuition at Las Pasidas Community College in nearby Livermore. Mketchen

(19:08):
did well his first semester, but he wasn't quite as
ready for adulthood as he thought. I was working a
shitty job at Jack in the Box and uh, you know,
living in the San Francisco Bay area eighteen years old
and then trying to go to college. It was a
shitty life. Man. In a second semester, mketchen lost interest

(19:32):
in school. He was still fighting with his parents, and
the self discipline developed at Red Rock Canyon School was
failing him. The military suddenly seemed like a way to
get back on track, and in Mketchen's mind, there was
only one branch worth joining. I loved the old school
Marine Corps commercials you know that every kid would watch

(19:56):
and it's got like the Marine skill in the clip,
the passage is intense. But if you complete the journey
and then he gets his n c O swords at
the top, Like, I just thought that was the sickest uniform.

(20:17):
That's why I picked the Marines. The Marine recruiters had
mccatchin right where they wanted him. In need of an
injection of self confidence and a kick in the ass.
You go into the service because of some incentive that
they're offering you. I mean, why else would you fucking
do it? You know what I mean? Like, so I'm

(20:37):
going in there, Yeah, I need something to build my
life on. I don't really have shipped going for me.
They're gonna pay me. They're gonna pay for my school
when I get out. So those are the Those are
the big incentives for I think most guys to join,
and they just want to serve their country too, and
they think it's honorable. I do think it's honorable. When

(20:58):
mcatchin began the recruitment process in the spring of two
thousand and ten, he wasn't exactly a dream recruit. Basically,
they're kind of monitoring you before you go to boot
camp and they're making sure you're still in shape and
fit to go and basically not getting in trouble. New tattoos,
And I got new tattoos, and my recruiter was Piste.

(21:18):
It wasn't just the tattoos either. At the time, I
was a piece of ship in the eyes of a
Marine Corps recruiter. Like I was still smoking heed, you know.
But they're trying to drill into your head get claimed
because we're we can take you you do, And like
I was showing potential. I was. I was in shape.
I was running probably four or five, maybe six miles

(21:41):
every day before I went to boot camp, because they
were like, I don't want to be struggling too hard,
you know what I mean. If you go there out
of shape, it's gonna be way more difficult. Well, mccatchin
first told his mom and dad that he wanted to
join the Marines. They didn't fall into a patriotic swoop.
It was two thousand ten and there were two wars
going on. My parents were fucking so against it, so

(22:06):
against it. Cindy and Doug mckittchen had ample reason to
worry because Scott was dead set on becoming a Marine
Corps infantryman. Along with the extreme danger he would likely
face on the front lines, they worried that he would
finish his enlistment with no marketable skills. There just aren't
a lot of jobs for trigger poolers in the civilian economy.

(22:26):
My dad, when I enlisted, he tried to pay me
not to go. Basically, mckittchen's dad offered to pay him
to do odd jobs and stay in school. Doug had
another reason for wanting to keep Scott out of the military.
As a working class teenager with a draft card in
the late nineteen sixties, he marched with anti war demonstrators

(22:47):
in San Francisco. Doug's draft number never got called, but
he says he probably would have gone to Canada if
it had. He didn't think the Vietnam War was worth
his life, and when it came to his own son's life,
he didn't feel differently about a Rock and Afghanistan. But
the father's opposition only made the son dig in. I

(23:07):
kind of always looked at him like he dodged the
draft a little bit. You know, he didn't want to go.
I get it. I don't think anyone should have to
go do that if they don't want to, you know,
But then again, you know, I I didn't really have options,
So this was my option, was that I'm creating for
myself to go into the service to better my life basically.

(23:29):
But then the second I'm doing something for myself, I
get my father trying to pay me not to do it,
and I'm just like, well, what the fuck? Like, you know,
hell no, And you were eighteen, so you didn't need
them to sign the catchin ship to Marine Corps Recruit
Depot San Diego in June two. Tell me about what

(23:50):
it was like for you when you showed up. What
are your first memories of getting there. It's the same
as every single Marine Corps recruit. So you get off
of a bus and they line you up on these
yellow foot prints and they basically strip every bit of
individuality out of you. So everyone gets the same haircut,
they get their civilian clothes taken away. You're all dressed

(24:13):
the same, and you just get accustomed to being yellowed at.
So they're trying to make you a little tougher. I
guess you know, what do you remember about how you
evolved over the course of that training. They make you
work for everything to be proud of, just every little
thing you earn it. For instance, like boot bands, just

(24:35):
something to hold your cammys up over your boots. You
don't get those when you first arrive. I think you
go a whole week just looking like basically looking like
a fool. So it's like they kind of bring you
down so low that every single little thing you do
get in regards to uniform or whatever we're in, just
little accomplishments that they have to you know, put you

(24:57):
through endurance test, obstacle courses, stook. They make you feel
like you should be proud of what you're doing because
you're you're you're bettering yourself by doing some of this stuff,
I guess, and so just a sense of pride really,
you know, mckatchen had never had much to be proud of,
so those little accomplishments and the recognition that came with

(25:19):
them meant a lot to him. His parents were there
to watch him parade by and his dress blues on
graduation day, and despite their initial resistance to his enlistment,
they were awed by his transformation. For the moment, Mketchen's
plan to create something for himself was working, but boot
Camp was only level one and nailing the obstacle course

(25:40):
was a cinch compared to what lay ahead. He had
enlisted as an O three fifty one quick description and
O three fifty one is an infantry assaultment in the
Marine Corps. An anti tank assaultman. We handle anti tank
weapons and explosives demolition, so we do any thing from

(26:00):
blowing up walls to preach buildings, preached doors, locked doors, bunkers.
Anything we can blow up we can get into and destroy.
Once he finished School of Infantry, Mcatchen got assigned a
weapons platoon, Blackfoot Company one five, along with David rich Bolski,
the machine gunner. Eventually they both got attached to first

(26:22):
Platoon and third Squad. The guys had a blast together
during their brief time state side before the deployment. Penalton
is a great spot to be stationed because go up
and a lot a good restaurant. It's a lot of
good bars. A lot of guys were spending all their
fucking money, me included um just getting getting messed up, partying,
a lot, a lot of a lot of chicks, a

(26:42):
lot of booty tang So I think I think most
of us were pretty pretty much just being frivolous with
our money. That was the first thing to go when
when you are aware that you might not come back.
The party stopped during the workup for Sangon. They were
in the middle of a three week long field exercise
in the Mojave Desert when the platoon sergeant gathered everybody

(27:05):
around for a talk. Basically, his speech to us is
that people are going to die, not only either coming back.
You're young, and you're like, holy shit, like here it goes.

(27:26):
I remember that. You know O'Brien was there, and McDaniels was.
They were there and Thoughtcher was there, and they're dead now.

(27:47):
The Marines gave him Catchen more than a fresh start
and a shot of pride. They gave him what he
needed most at that time in his life, the warmth
of a new family that knew nothing about his past.
From the I'm enlisted all the way through the Sanging deployment,
mckittchen always had Marines around him, like Michael Dutcher, who
supported him like an older brother. Dutcher was always just

(28:10):
so calm and just such a caring person. I remember
talking with him in Afghanistan even and he would ask me,
what are you gonna do after this. I'm like, I
don't know, I have no idea. I was scared. I
was scared. I wasn't gonna make it out of there.
And he started asking me what I was interested in,
and I'll be honest with you. Back in the day,

(28:31):
I was I liked exstasy, fucking going to raves and
Dutcher was like, well, you could go be a sounding
light technician, and I'm plentiers on, like, I don't know
what the hell is said, but it sounds cool. Mckatchen
was terrified, but he was also having the adventure of
a lifetime with his marine brothers, and he did his
best to capture every moment they spent together seven hundred

(28:52):
seventy nine photos in this album. We huddle around his
laptops so he can show us a Facebook gallery of
his deployment photo. It's been a long time. I haven't
even looked at these in quite a while. UM like
cool thing about these photos though, it's all sequential. It's
all in the order from when we like, did you know,
leaving Riverside? Starting around here on our way to background

(29:15):
and everything. Mckatchen was like the squad's self appointed documentarian,
and no detail was too small to catch his eye.
This was a cond of machine in Germany. That's the
fucking burn page. Was your human feces and a bag
in there and wagbag wag bagging it. Fucking look at
all our nudies on the wall up. Yeah, yes, we

(29:37):
jerking off. Dudn't got we got the material. Did you
see the other photo those two flies Evan sex. Yeah,
I caught that. Yeah, let me know when you catch
a piece like that. I'm starting to think mccatchen may
have missed his true calling. Along with his more avant
garde work, there are pictures of the cramped hot rooms

(29:59):
where they s up to peep fires, of the villagers
they saw on patrol, and of the squad's prickly palm
sized mascot Ducher Sonic or a different. He's also got
pictures of just about everybody in the platoon. There's for it,
with his legs, with both of his legs. They're among

(30:22):
the last pictures ever taken of some of these guys
while they were still in one piece, and some of them,
like Dutcher, would never be photographed again. Mckittchen was usually
behind the camera that's why I'm not aim Quite a
few of these with my deceased friends and stuff. I
was taking their photo. It was definitely not my top priority.

(30:42):
But if we're back at the troll base or something,
had a moment snapped pictures of the guys, you're for
sure absolutely like this is kind of once in a
lifetime experience and you've got to document it. When he
finally does point himself out, I barely recognize him. See
I'm still a little guy. That's you. What the funk?

(31:03):
That does not look like you at all? Because I
have a shade. No, it's not the hair. You just
look like a person. Mckatchen was only twenty and sangin
not the youngest guy in the squad. That was rich Vulski,
but he could have fooled me. I remember being amazed
by how scrawny he was, especially since I knew he
had to carry one of the heaviest weapons, a thirty

(31:24):
pound rocket launcher called the shoulder launched Multipurpose Assault weapon
or small He looked intimidating enough when he was all
geared up, but stripped down to his shorts back at
peb Fires, he could have passed for a high school
freshman here he is back in Sangin. I'm not even
a full grown man yet. Since I graduated high school,
I've still been maturing and I've come out here and

(31:46):
I've just changed, because when you're growing up, you change.
Mckatchen might not have been a full grown man, but
the power he wielded with his shoulder fired tank killer
astonished him and still astonishes him. I wasn't even allowed
to buy alcohol in the United States, but I could
decide who lived, and he would fucking die at the

(32:07):
hands of my finger. In Afghanistan crazy. All the third
Squad guys were tough, but mckitchen had a certain kind
of maturity like some of the other guys. It came
out when I asked him about the Taliban. I think
the Toaliban, as far as fighting us, is composed of

(32:28):
younger people just looking for a purpose in their life,
because in Afghanistan a lot of the people are poor
and have nothing, and they're looking for a way out
and something that they can do with their life. So
America's here. They can fight America. They can get paid,
they can be doing something other than farming land or
selling goats at the bizarre. So that's right. That's why

(32:53):
I think they fight us. You don't think they have
any bigger ideological purpose or anything like that. I think
they're against democracy. They probably don't like foreigners in their country.
But for the most part, I think they're just young
kids like us that want to way out. Young kids
like us that want to weigh out. Sounds familiar. A

(33:19):
lot of people think the military is a magnet for
bad kids, hard luck cases who have nowhere else to go.
In reality, most recruits are middle class kids with middle
class ambitions and clean records. But the military does serve
as one of those break glass and pulling case of
emergency levers for young people like Mketchen who just can't

(33:40):
quite get their ship together. I ought to know I
was one of them. I got kicked out of high
school my senior year. I was smoking a lot of
weed and starting to experiment with harder drugs. In so
many words, I was out of control and no but
he really knew what to do with me. My dad

(34:02):
offered to send me to a boot camp style school
for one last chance. It was called Valley Forge Military Academy,
and as crazy as it sounds, I loved it. I
got good grades and transferred to a four year college
in New York City, but I wasn't ready for freedom.
I failed out after one semester. I was twenty years

(34:24):
old and pretty sure that I had already ruined my life.
And then one day in July two thousand one, after
my shift at a shitty retail job, I found a
flyer on my windshield. It said join the Army National
Guard and get money for college just one weekend a month,
in two weeks every summer. I was a young man
looking for a way out, and there it was like

(34:46):
manna from fucking Heaven. I only really had one question
for the recruiter, where do I sign? Six weeks later,
terrorists hijacked four planes, and the under stand that a
plane has crashed into the World Trade Center. We don't
know anything. Went to basic training that October is the
US invasion of Afghanistan was just beginning. The United States

(35:09):
military has begun strikes against Al Qaeda terrorist training camps
and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. A
little more than two years after that, in March two
thousand four, I went to a rock as a combat engineer,
mckatchen and I were looking for the same thing when

(35:32):
we called the recruiter away out a chance at a
better life than the one we'd already wasted. But as
much as we have in common, there's a lot that
mckatchen and I don't share. I had one close encounter
with the poorly made I E D in Iraq. No

(35:52):
one in our convoy was seriously hurt. Mcatchen witnessed one
horrific event after another and spent months on end expecting
to die. Sitting at his kitchen table in Kentucky, I
asked what he remembers most about living in that pressure cooker.
It's the bad memories, Like that's the first memories that

(36:13):
you think about. There's there's no doubt about it. Like
mon Well Mendoza, mcatchen is haunted by his memories of
the mission to retrieve Nicholas O'Brien's body after he was
killed by an I E ED on June nine, two eleven.
Nicholas O'Brien was probably a thing for all of us,
our first major casually deal that we had to deal

(36:34):
with in UH. This one was rough, okay, because probably
we couldn't find him initially, he was thrown pretty far
from the blast. Just a lot of confusion onto what
the funk was going on, and long story short, found him.
He was deceased. That was the first dead marine i'd seen.
Team on New was was Nick. But the hards part
was was afterwards we were trying to find his body

(36:57):
parts and they were making us put him in evidence
back and ship, and we stayed out there all night.
We're trying to find his fucking night vision, his gear,
and so we're picking up his his body parts and
uh red false. He held up a piece of his
fucking thigh to me and said, look, that was just

(37:19):
one of those situations where I'm like, dude, we're in
a fecking mad world, like this is nuts, literally picking
up pieces of of your dead friend. And then later
that night we stayed watched because I believe we hadn't.
We're treated allar his gear and equipment that we were

(37:41):
trying to account for body parts too. And say, we're
sitting basically a tree line right where Obriham was killed
got blown up, and I heard wild Afghan dogs. They're
fucking close, dude, but you can't see ship really on
night vision. Maybe a thermal Yeah, but all I could

(38:03):
think was, Dude, these dogs are fucking eating my friend.

(38:39):
I'm lucky not to have any memories like that from
my deployment to a rock. I wasn't there the day
two guys from my company got killed by a suicide bomber.
But I've got my own memories of dogs. Michael Toon
has spent a few weeks doing I D patrols and
security for forensic pathologists near the amazingly well preserved ruins

(39:00):
of an ancient Ptarthian city called Alhatra. The pathologists were
digging up mass graves which contained corpses of Kurdish civilians,
a few hundred of the more than fifty thousand Kurds
who were murdered by Saddam Hussein's henchmen in the nineteen eighties.
The pathologists were collecting evidence to use in Saddam's war
crimes trial, and because of the dry desert conditions, the

(39:23):
bodies were well preserved. One long pit was filled with
men still in their suits and dress shoes, and in
another pit there were piles of women in colorful dresses
with children lying beside them. Guarding the site for the
evidence team seemed to me like a worthwhile mission, even

(39:43):
if the rest of the war had stopped making sense.
But every night, while we were back at our patrol base,
the dogs would come in. They would pull back the
tarps to gnaw on the corpses. In the morning, we
would pull the tarps back again. I can still hear
the flies buzzing, and smell the damp rod in the air,

(40:05):
the smell of a dumpster on a warm day at
the beach. Hardly a day goes by without a memory
like this one creeping into my thoughts. So how often
do you think about those days? These days? Oh? Man,

(40:27):
I'll never forget them, dude, you know what I mean. Like,
I don't intentionally try to think about those days, but
I do unavoidably think about them, like they pop into
my head all the time. It's like cancer. Once you
go through something so traumatic like that, it's gonna be
ingrained in you. So what is PTSD for you? What

(40:52):
is it for me? I haveing lack of patients, easily frustrated,
like thinking about horrible memories from the past that you
just can't get out of your head. Gotta get fucked
up to go to sleep, to function, I have to
smoke weed every day, Like I mean, that's PTSD right.

(41:13):
In the early days after Mketchen got kicked out of
the Marine Corps, his attempts to self medicate his PTSD
sent him barreling in a potentially fatal direction in Las Vegas.
In a matter of a few months, he wrecked a car,
got to do us, lost his driver's license, got evicted
from his apartment, and found himself without enough money for

(41:33):
food and clothes, but with a bottle of pills that
suddenly seemed as dangerous as a gun. He had survived
the war, and now he was fighting to survive the piece.
We'll be back after the break. Here we go Bud's

(42:20):
Gun Shopping Range. Yeah, the biggest one in Lexington. This
is where people like to come shait and buy their guns,
especially by their stuff. Since we have the whole day together,
we take a break to go to one of mc
ketchen's favorite places. Don't like to crowded tonight either. Mcatchen
loves his guns. You don't name your dog after the
country's biggest firearms manufacturer for nothing. We're gonna be on

(42:43):
lane Tin number one than you. Thank you alright. When
we get to our lane on the range, Mcatchen cracks
open a long black pelican case that's like a clown
car for guns. He's got a Glock nine mill pistol,
a pump twelve gage shotgun, and a Ruger Air fifteen rifled.

(43:03):
It's almost identical to the M four he carried slung
across his back and sang it, I'm gonna go for
that bottom left target. WHOA, I like it? Yeah, that

(43:27):
smells so good. I love the smell like gunpowder, doesn't it?
It does. It's been a while, man, since I've been
out shooting. Blasting off a few mags is one of
the ways Mcatchen likes to take the edge off, and
I can assure you the dopamine releases exquisite. Back at
the house, mkeatchin shows me another one of his relaxation methods.

(43:51):
You want some sound to it, It's just gonna sound
like a propane torch. I'll just get it. Likes red.
I've smoked a lot of weed in my day, but
I've never seen anything quite like this. It's called dabs.
It's basically just like concentrated THHC. So they take the

(44:14):
bobs and they process it and they process the oil
out of it and in. Instead of just smoking the flour,
you're smoking the oil. He scoops out a tiny glob
of what looks like honey from a small canister. So
then you just like basically just dab it on there
and hit it like a bob. It's a little hot.

(44:43):
There we go, fucking I now we get Mcatchen is
still weary of pills after his dark days in Vegas.
Like a lot of veterans and plenty of non veterans,
he prefers to smoke pot to cope with his anxiety
and PTSD. After his high settles into a mellow buzz,
we sit down to talk again. I want to talk

(45:05):
more about Dutcher, and M. Catchin tells me about this
time as rocket launcher jammed when they were in the
middle of a firefight and it was Dutcher who bailed
him out. Scary because you're getting shot at and your
weapons not shooting, and it's a bad feeling. And Dutcher
came over and they knew what to do to help
me fucking flip the rocket out and we got it off.

(45:27):
And then it's just his knowledge was was unreal. Never
met a marine with knowledge like him. Then the Catchin
tells me something I didn't know about. The day Dutcher
got killed, we had no sweepers left. Everyone been fucking hurt.
I had my rocket launchers and I've done some sweeping
for sure, but they wanted me to take my rocket

(45:48):
out and sweep. I'm like, I'm not sweeping with the
rocket launcher. You crazy, Like what the funk? There was
some crazy ship going on late in that deployment. Honestly,
I got us say I didn't want to do I
didn't same what's been happening. Not didn't want it, dude,
But at the same time too, like if I was
the option, then nap for sure I would. And I

(46:08):
was about to just put the rock down, just fucking
do it, and Dutcher came in my huge It was like,
all sweep. These are the simple twists of fate that
deliver tragedy to one home and spare another. Dutcher wasn't

(46:29):
destined to die that day. Nobody was. It came down
to a last minute change of plans and a well
played trick by a Taliban operative posing as a farmer.
But it could have gone a hundred different ways had
Mketchen swept that day, it might have been his mom
who found a casualty officer and dress blues at her door.

(46:51):
Or maybe the squad would have chosen a different route.
Maybe they wouldn't have followed that farmer into the trap.
Maybe Mketchen would have found the i e. D. With
his metal detector, or maybe half the squad would have
walked over it, none the wiser, just like they walked
over the one that got Matthew for it. The what
ifs can pile up to the point where they bury you.

(47:22):
A lot of the other guys have taken a lot
of the blame on themselves, and so one of the
things that I've been learning is just how everybody almost
who was anywhere close to the front of that patrol
or had any kind of leadership can't. I can't. You
can't put any of that blame on yourself. None of
us did anything wrong whatsoever. Yes, plain and simple facts.

(47:44):
That's kind of what I was absolutely getting at. Absolutely,
we did everything that we were supposed to do perfectly.
We were a great fucking unit. We're fucking we're crack.
So what does it make you like? How do you
feel hearing other guys talk about placing the blame. I
think it's sad, I really do. And even if hopefully
my guys go back and hear this ship, because no

(48:06):
one did anything wrong. And if you feel that way,
it's just gonna hold you back. Okay. So somehow you
came to a conclusion or a point of view that
it wasn't going to do you any good to blame
yourself or have you know? What? Why? What? What did

(48:27):
I do? So I want to know, did you feel
that way as soon as you got home? Or is
that I never had a guilty conscience. Never. Never, I
saw some fucked up ship and so yeah, I'm gonna
do drugs and fucking drink a lot maybe kind of
try to block those memories out of my mind. But
we didn't do anything wrong. That's just war. People fucking die,

(48:49):
people get hurt. Mcatchen's managed to stave off the guilt
that plagues some of the other guys like man Well,
Mendoza and Matthew for it, but he's still carrying the
her He'll never forget being spurned by the country he
pledged his life to protect, the country that asked him
to kill people in the service of foreign policy, but

(49:09):
abandoned him. On account of a single bad choice when
he got home. It's not like I did not know
there wouldn't be consequences to my actions. So there's definitely
a point where you just got to own up to
your fucking faults. And I fully own up to it.
Like I knew for years that they told us new drugs.

(49:30):
What did I do? What did I do? This is
before comment they were telling me that's not acceptable. I
still fucking broke the rules. But I think the punishment
for the crime was way excessive, And that's my stance,
Like that's like, come on, especially for someone who just
risk their life on entire deployment, throw me a fucking bone.

(49:55):
Mckatchen says his jarring reentry into civilian life made an
already difficult sit suation that much worse. If you're gonna
fucking throw people out of the military, you should at
least provide mental health. If they've been to combat, you
don't have any support. It makes things tougher, it does.
And then also the feeling that like when you get

(50:18):
in trouble like that, you feel like your former friends
in the Marines and shouldn't even want to assaciate with you.
But I think that for future people, if you were
to make a situation like this a little easier on
the veteran, even if he made a mistake, I think
it would be good to at least pointing him in

(50:38):
the right direction. I think the catching is right. I
can't think of any reason why people who are damaged
doing the work of war for the country should be
denied the tools of healing back home. There's got to
be some sort of fucking system to guide somebody so
they don't just go out there fucking taking pills and
getting to u eyes and maybe killing somebody you know,

(50:59):
and legitimate may be killing somebody The military got rid
of to catch him when he was still amped up
and reeling from the horror he'd survived. He was a
danger to himself and to others. Rather than keeping him close,
his marine family cut him loose, and he wasn't alone.

(51:20):
He was part of a wave of more than a
hundred thousand less than honorable discharges across branches in the
post nine eleven era, a wave of bad paper that
crested as the wars began to wind down. What I heard,
and I'd still here, just stay. They try to keep
their numbers on two hund thousand. They were kicking people
out left and right, young marines coming back from the
deployment failing drug tests, making a poor decision that any

(51:43):
young man would make. Only a few years earlier, during
the worst phase of the Iraq War, in the build
up to the Afghanistan Surge, the Army and Marine Corps
had relaxed enlistment standards in order to fill the recruiting pipeline,
allowing people with criminal histories, mental health and substant issues
to join an unusually high rates with special waivers. But

(52:05):
once the Surgis were over, the military started looking to
cut dead weight. Soldiers and marines getting into trouble were
the easiest ones to call, the ones who were caught
using drugs or got d u e s, the ones
who brought the violence into their homes. Not surprisingly, a
lot of them had serious mental health and behavioral problems

(52:28):
directly related to their combat service. Macatchen and I talked
about this for a long time, like I want to
be clear, this is this is my opinion about all this.
But I think what they were doing is they were
getting rid of people because that was easier than dealing
with them. That was easier than keep keeping them close

(52:50):
to the fam, keeping them in the tribe, and saying
you're fucked up and we're not going to tolerate that.
But while we have you here and while you have
no choice, we're going to try to get you straight,
because number one, that's the right thing to do. We
owe that to you. Number Two, if we turn you
loose on society right now, there's a damn good chance

(53:12):
you're gonna hurt yourself or you're gonna hurt somebody else
because you're a fucking trained killer with a fucking twisted
head right now. Yeah, for sure. And that's dangerous. That's
fucking dangerous, you know. And so for a lot of
people in that situation, it might have resulted in, you know,
they go out and get a d U I and
I could have been you could have well mind you

(53:35):
do you? I as a missed the meter. You know,
all these guys coming out they can still buy guns though,
That's what I'm saying, and say, like if you they're
throwing you down this fucking negative track and everything he had,
this veterans still able to buy guns. It's a recipe
for disaster, like it really is. It is funny that

(53:58):
we're saying. We're saying this, but we did has come
from the gun ranch today? Great time. Yeah, well we
got our heads straight, so I do. At least now.
Mcktchen tells me he's in a much better place now.

(54:19):
He left Las Vegas in two thousand seventeen to work
on a hemp farm in Colorado with a marine buddy.
He was able to save some money, and then he
followed the hemp business to Kentucky. The m that's attorney
successfully upgraded his discharge to honorable for v A purposes,
which makes him eligible for all the benefits his recruiter promised.
In two thousand twenty, he bought the house he lives

(54:41):
in with a no money down v A home loan.
He also receives disability from the v A for PTSD,
t b I, tendis and hearing loss, which pays most
of his bills, and he's using his g I bill
to get his Associates degree, which entitles him to a
monthly housing allowance too. He's planning to transfer to the
University of Kentucky to get a degree in marketing, and

(55:02):
he's got a dream to work for a professional sports
team someday, but he's still thousands of miles from where
he grew up, in a random place where he knows
almost no one, And even though the California kid has
picked up a little Kentucky twang, it doesn't really seem
like this place is home. It's sad, dude, because like clearly,

(55:23):
I live alone. I don't hardly talk to my fucking family.
I really don't never had a problem finding ass. But
I don't have anything fucking place in my life, Dude,
I don't. I have Ruger. I have my dog. That's it.
Mcatchin tells me he's got a few good marine buddies

(55:45):
from other battalions he can lean on, but they live
far away, and he doesn't talk much with the guys
from Third Squad anymore. He says he doesn't really have
any close friends in Kentucky, and he has a really
hard time relating to people. When I go out into
the public, I try to be courteous and respectful, but
my patience for people is very low. It really is.

(56:08):
And the thing that has really affected me heavily since
coming back from a deployment like that, honestly, is my
ability to feel sympathetic or empathetic for other human beings.
I don't because I just I've been through so much.
I don't care what fucking people's problems are. And that's

(56:29):
one area of my life that I'm trying to work on,
because that's part of being a good human being. I
realized that. But after coming back from ship like that, dude,
I didn't feel sympathy for people at all. Can you relate?
I mean, so, here's what's happened for me. I came

(56:50):
home from Iraq fucking angry and mean. So yeah, I
sort of looked down on everybody else's problems because I
was like, it just doesn't right. You don't deserve my
concern because I've seen a world where the suffering is

(57:10):
so much more extreme. And yet the other half of
me was like, but everything's relative for everybody, and I
can't walk through the world just hating everyone. If I
just walk around like nobody else's problems matter and like
I'm the only one who knows what's real, Well, you
know what's going to happen is I'm going to be
the one who's sitting at home alone. Yeah, look at me, dude.

(57:34):
As we're talking, I start to wonder if the brief
years of fraternity in the Marine Corps were worth the
rest of it, the grief and devastation of losing brothers
like Dutcher, the PTSD, the betrayal that could not have
come at a worse moment. Basically, I wonder if the
Marines made his life better or worse. They broke me
down and then everything since, like I built off of it.

(57:57):
It made me who I am today. I'm a Marine.
I will be a Marine until I die. I'm always
a neat person. I'm clean, I dress well, I shaved
my face, I get a haircut. I fucking do still
make my bed. Like, yeah, the Marine Corps built nice
little fucking foundation for me to build on, and the
Marine Corps is what my ship together. But during that

(58:19):
time when you were in the low place, how much
do you think your experience in saying and had to
do with that? Like, and if and if it did
have something to do with it, how do you think
that worked? Like, what do you think the relationship? I
hate to say it like this, but it's kind of facts. Okay,
when you lose a lot of friends and then you

(58:39):
get to a fucking super low point in your life
and you use the excuse almost like, well, I just
want to go see my friends, Like it makes your
logic to kill yourself and end it so much more

(58:59):
logic in your own head because you've got friends up
there waiting for you, and you miss him and you
want to go see him. When I listened back to
this conversation months later, that thing m ketchen said about
the logic of suicide gave me chills. More than seven

(59:21):
thousand American troops have died in combat since nine eleven,
mostly in a Rock and Afghanistan. Over the same period,
more than thirty thousand active duty troops and post nine
eleven veterans have taken their own lives At home. Mckitchen
and I both know people who have succumbed to the
deadly logic, and I suddenly realized that when he said

(59:43):
You've got friends up there waiting for you, and you
missed them and you want to go see them, I
wasn't sure if he was describing a general thought pattern
or his own suicidal ideations, so I called the double check.
He told me the thoughts he described were indeed his own,
and that soon after his jailston in Vegas, when he

(01:00:03):
was at rock bottom. He began to tell himself it
would have been better if he had just died in Afghanistan,
that he just wanted to be with O'Brien, McDaniels and Dutcher.
That voice grew louder until one day he was holding
a pistol with a plan to shoot his dog and
then turn the gun on himself, but he couldn't bring

(01:00:24):
himself to kill Ruger. His trance broke long enough to
call his mom. She immediately called the police and they
brought him to a hospital, and when he was released
after the mandatory seventy two hours, he was shaken and
more determined than ever to stay alive. It was around
that time that he got his VA benefits restored. He

(01:00:47):
began therapy, went back to school, and started collecting disability
payments that relieved the financial pressure in no uncertain terms.
Mketchen says that having his discharge upgraded in his benefits
re stored saved his life. When we spoke again, mckatchen

(01:01:12):
assured me his worst days are behind him. He's looking
toward the future, and he's no longer in a hurry
to see his dead friends, but they're always with him.
He's got tattoos to commemorate them, including a tangle of
poppy blossoms growing out of a skull on his right forearm.
The ink begins just above the thin hand that once

(01:01:33):
squeezed the grip of a rocket launcher and sang in
the hand of a scared kid with the power to
decide who lived and who died. If you're having thoughts

(01:02:02):
about suicide or self harm, please don't wait to get help.
Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at one D two seven, three,
eight to five to talk to someone now. Next time,
on Third Squad, we drive up through Appalachia to the

(01:02:22):
outskirts of Pittsburgh to see Squad leader Jerick Fry. I
remember stepping out of the wire. We're walking in a
single file line with the metal detector in the front,
which is nothing that I've experienced before, and that moment
I accepted that I wasn't going to make it out
of there except on a helicopter or were in a

(01:02:42):
body bag. You can't be afraid as a leader, you
can't show fear. You have to be that strong, steady rock,
and I wanted to be that for those guys. Third
Squad is written and produced by Elliott Woods, Tommy Andres,
and Maria Burrne. It's an heirloom media production distributed by

(01:03:04):
iHeart Media. Funding support for Third Squad comes from the
National Endowment for the Humanities in collaboration with the Center
for Warren Society at San Diego State University. Additional funding
for this episode comes from the journalism nonprofit the Economic
Hardship Reporting Project. If you're interested in supporting our work
with a financial contribution, please visit the donate page at

(01:03:27):
third squad dot com, where you'll also find photographs from
Sangin and from our road trip. Original music for Third
Squad by Mondo Boys, editing and sound design by John Ward.
Fact checking by Ben Kalin. Special thanks to Scott Carrier,
Marianne Andre, Ted, Jenoways, Benjamin Bush, Caitlin sh Carrie Gracie,

(01:03:48):
Kevin Connolly, and Lena Ferguson. If you got a minute,
please leave us a rating and your preferred podcast app.
It'll help other people find the show. You can find
me on Instagram and Twitter at Elliott Woods.