I Think This is Hell

Ventnor City, NJ: Jeffrey Lopez grew up steps away from the Atlantic Ocean with a house full of brothers who loved to fight. His mother, Rosibel, escaped war-torn El Salvador in hopes of raising her family in peace—and her son’s deployment to Sangin was a nightmare come true.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Third Squad is a podcast about war. All episodes contain
strong language and graphic descriptions of violence that may not
be suitable for all listeners. I think we live in hell.
I think this is how and Il test through how
to make it to Heaven. And I guess Josh had

(00:20):
already pood that he's like a great individual. Dutcher and Nick,
all right, you guys could come up. I'm Elliott Woods.
This is Third Squad Episode eleven. I think this is hell.

(00:53):
So where are we gonna go? Now? Do you want
to cruise the round? Yeah? I want to see the spots.
I want to see the landmarks of your life. It's
been a long and winding road from Camp Pendleton's right
smack on the Pacific Coast to Atlantic City, New Jersey,
more than eight thousand miles in fact, plus a trip
to Alaska. Now, Tommy and I are out cruising down

(01:16):
Atlantic Avenue on a breezy and blue skied Easter Sunday
with Third Squad veteran Jeffrey Lopez. Right here, He's got
on shorts and an anime T shirt with slip on
sandals and socks. He's smaller than I remember with the
scruffy beard and sleepy eyes. We drive under the arched

(01:36):
walkway of the Tropicana Casino and into a block that
looks like it's stumbled into broad daylight after a hard
night of drinking Delilah's Den the most Beautiful show Girls.
I had my face up strip clubs too before or after.
Lopez was born here, the son of a refugee from

(01:56):
El Salvador, and he grew up with his four brothers
in Nur City, just down the beach from the casinos
and the boardwalk of Old Atlantic City. For New Yorkers
and Philadelphians, Atlantic City is a weekend getaway for gambling
and shopping, and often enough it's a punchline. This is
where the Trump Plaza, the former President's spectacular failure of
a casino, got demolished a little over a month ago

(02:18):
with three thousand sticks of TNT, leaving a literal money
pit behind for Lopez. Though this place is home in
Atlantic Avenue is Memory Lane, have a few janks thing
to walk right over to head up the slab machines.

(02:40):
The last couple of decades have not been kind to
Atlantic City. The Greater Recession hit the casino industry so
hard that the state actually had to take over the
city's finances. Then there was Hurricane Sandy in which made
landfall in Atlantic City and damaged thousands of homes before
rampaging up the coast. And now there's COVID, which has

(03:01):
cost about one in three of the area's leisure and
hospitality workers their jobs. To put it mildly, the boardwalk
empires on the rocks, but Lopez exudes maximum chill. So
this is like the main strip on when we were younger.
We used to come here to get like our haircuts,
by all our gear, but not a lot of the stories.
I plowed down and there's a lot of jug selling

(03:24):
us to the dudes who hang on the corners now
are not the kind of people you mess with. But
Lopez says there was a time when he and his
brothers and their crew from the neighborhood owned this strip,
and their favorite after school activity was going out looking
for trouble. So where did the fights happen? Where were
the brawls? We've had some here up here by the

(03:46):
barbershop on Dover, on the boardwalk, wherever there was like
bus stops. We'll just meet people that are like, well,
we won't be in school and we'll get a call
from someone like I'm on a bus with these people
coming us here, and we'll be at the bus not
waiting for them to get off. What the fun you

(04:06):
guys coordinated by cell phone? Yeah? We had like the
brick Nokia is back then. Oh yeah, next till with
the chir Wipez says the fights weren't gang related. It
was more like his version of Taylor Moody's Metal and Motion.
It's a good way to work off surplus teenage testosterone,
but it wasn't harmless. Were you picking fights with people

(04:30):
who didn't want anything to do with it, or were
you always picking fights with people who were looking for
I used to be a little like bully, an asshole
to people. I used to talk to everybody make it
feel bad about themselves. I was, but now I'm like
the complete opposite. How do you think that happened? How
do you think that transformation happened? I don't know. Do

(04:53):
you think it had anything to do with coming back
from the Marines? Maybe maybe being more grateful for life?
I question as a boy making others miserables that bring
like love to the tape, Lopez has a very good
reason to be grateful for life. He was nearly killed
in the June twelfth, two thousand eleven mass casualty and

(05:15):
sang in and he came home with more than a
changed attitude. This is like a purple heart memorial up here,
coming up there. It is right there, Purple Heart Combat Wounded,
dedicated to all men and women wounded in all our wars.
Did you used to see that when you were a kid? Yeah,
but I never knew a purple heart mat And now
it means a little more because you're one of the people. Uh,

(05:40):
you have that metal. We turned into a narrow street
with houses packed close together on both sides and a
view of the bay. At the end of the block.
We pull up in front of a white two story
with a wide porch that belongs to Lopez's mom, Rosie Bell,
who we're going to meet later. Lopez has lived in
this house all of his life, aside from a couple

(06:02):
of semesters at college and his five years in the corps.
He shows us around to the backyard, which is cluttered
with his kids toys, and where there's a shed tucked
up against the fence. We duck inside this cold Man,
because your little studio here and a little getaways. But
Lopez's older brother, Francisco, built this hangout spot in high
school as a refuge from the chaos inside the house

(06:23):
home to five brothers, Lopez's mom and stepdad, and their grandmother.
Lopez inherited the studio when he moved back here after
the Marine Corps. He's got a deluxe computer set up
in a futon couch covered by a blanket with cartoon
faces of hip hop legends, and there's a window into
a soundproof booth with a microphone where he records the
raps he writes like this one inspired by his time

(06:46):
and sang it bandom. Brothers even leaked that you can
hear more in the hep fires, mud huts and the
hell Man. This hell Man a beautiful strands of l
e eds give the place a soothing, subterranean glow. It's
so comfortable down here. I'm tempted to take a nap,

(07:06):
but we got some talking to do, so Lopez plops
into his swivel chair and I take a seat on
the couch. This is crazy, but you actually look younger. Yeah,
I don't know if it's because you have hair maybe
Lopez has a mop of dark curls now, but back
in Sangin, he wore his hair shaved almost to the skin.
Just introduce yourself. My name is Jeffrey Lopez on twenty

(07:28):
two years old from Vannice City, New Jersey, Okay. So
when I met him in July two th eleven, he
still had pock marks on his deeply tanned face from
the shrapne he took on June twelve, including a nickel
size scab close to the tip of his nose. He
was pretty mellow back then too. If you couldn't describe
sanging to some of your friends back home and never

(07:49):
been here, have no idea what it's like over here,
what would you tell him? Sangings crazy and it looks
like a beautiful country. But as far as stepping out
the wire with all your gears shitty cash, right, yeah,
you can see whatever you want to ask, that's about
it can't really explain to someone you don't want to be.
Some of the guys in Third Squad had joined the

(08:09):
Marines to get as far away from where they grew
up as possible, but Lopez was homesick for his mom's
busy house and he'd eaten enough m R. E's to
last a lifetime. I'm just being abound my family, you know,
just sitting there talking to them. I miss McDonald's, Applebee's,
All you can Eat crabs and like the face type

(08:30):
of fe Lopez had gotten some college under his belt
before he enlisted, and he'd also been stationed in Spain
for seven months, where he came up with big dreams
for his post Marine Corps life. When I go back
to college, like stay studying business probably takes some like
cooking classes. I already know how to cook, but so

(08:50):
I could open up my restaurant one day. Is that
what you want to do out in Spain? In Spain? Yeah,
I still don't have a name for it, but signing
with my last name Lopez, I don't know. Do you
think you can hang with the Spanish on their own cuisine? Yeah?
And IK Lopez Restaurant never made the leap from dream

(09:13):
to reality, but he and his mom do have a
side biss selling her Salvadoran papusas, and Lopez did find
full time work in the restaurant industry as a waiter
at the Golden Nugget Casino, where his mom and stepdad
also Worklipez also has a part time gig at the
Wawa convenience store down the street. Like some of his
favorite rappers, he's all about the hustle. Yeah, I work

(09:34):
a lot, gotta work when you're poor. Do you consider
yourself poor? Yeah? I mean I would love to just
get paid from music into that, but you know, my
kids got to east, so I might have to go
bust out this nine to five real quick. Lopez has
two kids, a ten year old son named Jack's who
was born while he was in Sanging, and a two
year old daughter named Jace. They're growing up in the

(09:57):
very same house their dad came home to as a
new warn, where hustle was built into the family foundation.
We're probably one of the few Hispanic families in this
neighborhood at the time that had their own house as
my mother's house. Lopez's mom and dad got divorced when
he was a little kid. Rosie Bell eventually started dating

(10:17):
a man named Nate. They met at the at the buffet,
the base of a buffet, and they got married quick after.
They're just hard workers, always been there for us, seeing
them like get us ready for school and then they'll
go to work and won't come back till the night.
My grandma was watching us, so you can see that

(10:38):
they had so much dedication to grind to make sure
their their kids were good. In high school, Rosie Bell's
house became the rally point for Lopez and his brother's
huge group of friends. We'd get the cops called on
us around here all the time since because like the
crowd we would hang but it was mostly like Hispanics
and blacks. Some people would call the cops on your

(10:59):
parents and on your family, on us, like just for
hanging out. Our music too loud. But it changed now
and all the labors neighbors love me now. It's like
they forgot about everything. So when you got out of
the Marine Corps and came back, was it like slipping
into a comfortable pair of old shoes. You just right back? Yeah,

(11:23):
music is love has his lifelong passion. He started keeping
a notebook of poems and lyrics in high school. I
remember the first song I wrote, I was living. Life
is hard depending where you're coming from, especially when you're
a mom with a couple of sons and a couple
of jobs. But we make it through. At another parting
less step that comes to it's just two of us,

(11:45):
but he wants another son and another one. That makes
four of us. Growing up in the struggle broke as
fuck might be different, but we still know what's love.
Give each other's pounds and hugs, throw it up if
you knew what it was, So us love even though
there's no clue up above, and don't realize what's happened
then because your fans make more money than the average man,
but we bumm me with our pay lists. Temps, hatred, grin.

(12:06):
Can't trust most studies. Maybe friends look for y'alls? What
made me sin? So I don't be great? Ship got
the made me did? Wow? That was cool. That was
like the first thing I ever wrote. And it's funny
because I remember that, But anything new that I write down,
it's hard to memorize, Like I have bad memory. Now,

(12:27):
what do you think happened to your memory? Probably all
the explosions. I can remember stuff like from before or
anything like from that and like till now. It's kind
of like it could be the smoke into smoke a lot.
How much do you smoke? Like two grams a day? Maybe,
Lopez says the weed helps with his war related anxiety
and PTSD symptoms, but he says he smoked even more

(12:50):
before he joined the military, until I would get off
a word, make like fifty bucks and tips and go
by like an eighth of weed. Smoke at all? Probably yeah, most,
because there's a few of us, would get battles, We
go to sleep, do it again the next day. The
Ganja fest ended when Lopez had to get clean for

(13:11):
boot camp in Sangin. He snuck a few hits of
hashish with the Afghan National Army soldiers at peb fires,
but his pot smoking career didn't begin again in earnest
until he got out of the core. What do you
remember about the first time you got high after five years?
Do you remember having a low tolerance or anything. It
was a way different high from what I remember in

(13:33):
high school. It was more like kind of being stuck.
When I was in high school, it was just like
giggles and munchy and stuff. You're seeing movies. But then
all the weed now is just completely different. There's a
lot more potent. I mean, I could be stuck in
his chair all day. I'll be productive in his chair,
like I'll be fighting or something. It doesn't like stop

(13:54):
me from doing anything. Like I go to work, smoke
a b lion still performed the same way without it.
If I smoked even ten percent of a blunt, you'd
have to take me to the hospital. I have a
psychotic break, all right, He's gonna take some deep breaths. No,
you'd have to put me in a straight jacket. I've

(14:16):
always remembered that Lopez was one of the only guys
in third Squad who seemed to have a clear motive
for joining the military, And even though he grew up
just down the coast from New York City, it had
nothing to do with September eleven, one of our childhood
friends he got killed in in Iraq, So I felt like, oh,
now I had to go and do something about it.

(14:38):
That's that was my mindsets, like young mind stick. Then
I asked my mother to like sign the papers for me,
but she wouldn't let me. I was seventeen, so then
I had to wait like another year and I want finally,
most app was a team that I joined. What was
your friend's name? He was Eric a Eric Plasios And

(14:59):
that may do you feel like you had to join? Yeah,
it was more like I gotta go avenge or something
like that. And you see stuff in movies, like somebody's
brother gets beat up, it's like, all right, we gotta
go get him now. It's kind of like that. When
you were growing up. Did a lot of people go
and join the military. A lot of people did. U,

(15:20):
My brother did, my younger brother. I had one of
my cousins all marines. Most of our friends, a lot
of them are veterans. Lopez was attracted to the military
for reasons beyond the desire to avenge the death of
Eric Pelacios in the Rock. In high school, he and
a bunch of his friends did junior r OTC. It's
kind of like boy Scouts, but you wear military uniforms

(15:42):
and learn basic stuff like how to march and how
do identify the enlisted in officer ranks. The chief that
was in charge of us, he was real cool. Looking
at his stack, everything he had that could have been
part of it. Tell people what a stack is. What
do you mean A stack is all your ribbons or
awards from the military. The stack of ribbons and things

(16:04):
that go on the chest, all those colorful ribbons, the
cool looking stuff. So that was impressive. To you when
you were a high school kid. All that shiny stuff,
I know what it meant. Lopez was only seventeen when
he first attempted to join the military, but his mom,

(16:26):
Rosie Bell, absolutely refused to sign the papers for him.
So Lopez went off to college instead, about two and
a half hours away near the Poconos, but his heart
wasn't in it. He came home at the end of
the school year and never went back. He tried community
college too, but he didn't like that either. By then,

(16:47):
Lopez was eighteen, and against his mother's wishes, he made
a rash decision. I was driving down Ventnor and I
was just thinking, like, you know, school wasn't for me.
I knew it from the always hated school. I was like,
I'm sired of the school. I was like, you know what,
it's time to finally go, and I just drove straight there.

(17:08):
I was on a flight A few weeks after, like
a month later, Just like his former squad leader Jerick Fry,
Lopez had had an epiphany that carried him straight to
a Marine Corps recruiting office. This one was nestled in

(17:29):
a strip mall in a nearby town. What did you
say to the recruiter, I just want to join, like
what are my options? And he took me through everything.
I think I did some pull ups, like the first
day I was there, probably had when he did like
two or something, you did the paperwork. I went on
a run with him and the next thing I know,

(17:50):
I was on the yellow footprints. Now would I tell
you you're gonna get all your crap jet up and
get up my bus? Geno, My yellow flippridge stops done?
Do you understand the yellow footprints are a hallmark of
Marine Corps bootcamp. Recruits fresh off the bus have to
stand on the footprints and shuffle through processing stations, getting

(18:12):
screamed at by drill instructors and flat brimmed campaign hats
the whole time. Get off my bus. Lopez hit the
yellow footprints at Parris Island, South Carolina, in April two.
Did you feel like joining the Marines was something that
would make you more of a man at all? Did

(18:33):
you do you ever feel anything like that? Did you
feel like you wanted to be like a fighting man?
Did that part of the recruiting speak to you at all?
I don't think so. I felt like I was a
man before that as a kid, I've always thought I
was a man. This is nonsense and a kid's head.
I'm a man, I'm grown. It did make me mature

(18:53):
a lot quicker. Lopez signed up to spend his first
two years as part of the Marine Security Force Regiment,
the group that Michael Dutcher also served in that protects
critical US assets around the world like embassies and nuclear weapons,
but Lopez says he didn't really know what he was
getting into. When I went to the recruiting station. He

(19:14):
told me that I would be like on the front
line where it all went down, like he'll be in
the red zone this and now I was like, oh,
that sounds so cool. So I was like, all right,
put me in Security Forces in and then I was
in freaking Spain on vacation. I was like, this is
nothing that I asked for. So that was not what
you thought you were signing up for. The recruiter lied

(19:36):
to me, asshole. Wait, hold on, a recruiter lied to you. Ye,
never you would expect that. Yeah, he'll say you're gonna
be in the ship. I was like, you up. But
then what happened because eventually things changed and you were
not in security forces anymore. So what what happened? I
had the security forces. They asked us what unit we

(19:58):
wanted to go with, and me and some other guys
were like, oh, wish unit deploys like the quickest, and
they're like one five. They send us there. Then Lopezants
and Marine buddies who were also going to Won five
took a road trip from Jersey out to California. They
arrived at Camp Pendleton in October two. I was just ready.

(20:19):
I just wanted to guard, you know, And what did
you want to do? What were you what were you
ready to do? What do you think I wanted to fight?
Shoot stuff, but not just stuff, shoot bad guys, shoot
their stuff, their hard and stuff, shoot their hearts, their
horse and stuff. Why do you think you were so

(20:40):
eager to go shoot people? You know, their label these terrorists,
so when people fight them, they're bad guys, you know,
doing bad stuff. But what what was the bad stuff
that they were doing in your mind at the time?
What did you think that they were doing that made
you want to go shoot them? Person shooting at us?

(21:01):
That's the best time. I didn't know anything else. I
don't know why we were there. I didn't know what
they were defending, um their reason for fighting. I just
wanted to fight, go to war, just what I've been
changing to do. Six months after Lopez got to Camp Pendleton,

(21:21):
his wish came true. He deployed to sang In, where
he got to shoot at people and get shot at.
But for the mother, whose wishes he denied, it was
seven months of NonStop torment. We'll be back after the break, Chile.

(22:17):
This has red tillie green pepper, onion, garlic, and lots
of celery. It goes in here with the teas, which
is hot. Lopez told me about his mom's legendary papusas,
and I called to set up this visit months ago,
and now I'm lucky enough to see the magic unfold
right in your kitchen. Rosa Belt is not only preparing

(22:38):
her native El Salvador's national dish, she's also kind enough
to teach me how to make it. And this is right.
Some means caamiento, which means Marriott's. She's got the slaw already.
And now we're folding period pork shoulder. We fried beans
and cheese into the papoosa dough manos and la massa

(23:00):
in there we used to sell these during the pandemic
when we weren't working. There were days when we sold
the thousand alls worth of pupusas at the end of
Jeffrey is very good at selling. Rose Bell is a machine.
She's flipping papusas and stuffing new ones at the same time,
shuttling him into the dining room as soon as they

(23:21):
come off the griddle. She's got a big family to feed.
There's her husband, Nate, plus two of Lopez's younger brothers
who live at home. Then Lopez, his girlfriend and his
two kids from his previous relationship. Some parents dream of
the day their kids will fly the nest, but Rose
Belt loves having as many of her kids as possible
under one roof, and her grandkids too. They say children

(23:48):
are loved, but grandchildren are adored. If dabies behave you
just give them back to their dad. We have had
eight children in this house, some lived downstairs, other substas.
They're cassins, but they love its other like siblings. Rosie
Bell's papoosas are out of this world, Rikissima's. When she

(24:11):
has some time to chat, we go out to lopez
A studio where it's quiet. I want to know what
kind of kid Jeffrey was and what it was like
to send him off to war. But first I want
to hear about her journey to the United States. You
know the Sando legal. I came from a Salvador illegally.
It took about fifteen days to get here. We traveled

(24:33):
by bass from l Salvador to Guatemala and onto Mexico.
Then we got to playing to Tijuana. From there we
went to a hotel where we stayed for four days.
Then we arrived in the US. It was Rosie Bell
carried her infant son, Francisco with her on the trip,

(24:54):
and she was pregnant with another boy, who she would
name Jeffrey. She remembers taking a long bus ride from Tijuana,
then waiting across the river somewhere to get into the
United States, and briefly passing through Houston on her way
to Atlantic City, where her mother and brothers were waiting
for her. They'd saved up to pay for her to

(25:15):
come and join them, and it wasn't just because they
missed her well. America argues about President Briggan's plan to
send a military aide with El Salvador Paradis killing there
continues to take a daily life. At the time, El
Salvador was being torn apart by a vicious civil war
that pitted leftist guerrillas against the military government, whose forces

(25:36):
were funded, trained, and armed by the United States. That
President Reagan feels the El Salvador situation is at a
critical state and he is bound to take all necessary
makers to ensure the trouble of government for Vails, who
was part of the same Cold War strategy that compelled
the US to arm the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviets.

(25:57):
But the history of US involvement in El Salvador or
goes back much farther than the Cold War. Ever since
the turn of the twentieth century, the US had been
propping up right wing governments in Central America and the
Caribbean in order to protect corporate interests in the agricultural sector,
where exploitation was the business model. The autocratic rulers of

(26:18):
these so called banana republics were typically elites with European heritage,
ruling over impoverished indigenous and mixed race communities. They met
demands for reform from peasants and laborers with brutal repression
and when rebels took up arms against their repressive governments
under the banner of Marxism in the second half of
the twentieth century. The US through its weight behind the

(26:40):
effort to crush the uprisings, sending billions in aid, along
with weapons, military advisors, special forces, air support, and CIA operatives.
Central America's problems do directly affect the security and the
well being of our own people. By the nineteen eighties,
the region was engulfed in violence. The U S and
its Central American government proxies called it counterinsurgency, but too

(27:05):
many people on the ground, like Rosy Bell, it felt
like state territory. Some seventy thousand civilians were killed in
El Salvador between nineteen seventy nine, and according to an
official truth commission convened at the end of the war

(27:25):
and estimated eight of the victims were murdered by government
forces and paramilitary death squads, more than a million people
out of a population of just over five million fled
the country. Rosy Bell was one of them, and there's
no telling what might have happened if she'd stayed. For

(27:48):
most Americans, war is something that happens far away, but
for Rosy Bell. It was life and it wasn't something
she'd ever dream of chasing. It was something real. We
would always hear the fighting between the garrigus and the soldiers.
Sometimes it was really close. We lived near a river

(28:11):
where there were often classes. You could hear everything, the
bullets and the bombs that people appeared. They said they
killed fourteen people. They have to fourteen that on that side,
that people every day. A couple of years after Rosy
Bell got to the United States, she was able to
get protected status through a special program for refugees from

(28:34):
the Al Salvador crisis, and after marrying Nate, who's from
Puerto Rico, she was able to get her US citizenship.
Her story has a mostly happy outcome, but the region
she fled is still plagued by violence, still forcing people
in the flag. This latest caravan passing through Mexico, now
numbering in the thousands, at least seven hundred thousand Central

(28:56):
American migrants made the dangerous journey to the southern border
of the United States, fleeing poverty, chronic drought, in a
new wave of violence that has its origins and yet
another one of America's forever wars the War on drugs.
Since the nine nineties, the U S has deported tens
of thousands of gang members to El Salvador, where they've

(29:17):
taken root in the ruins left by the civil war
and grown their ranks to become a seemingly unstoppable force
of destruction. The same law of unintended consequences that helped
turn Afghanistan into an opium empire run by war lords
has turned El Salvador into one of the most dangerous
countries in the world. At its worst point, the country's

(29:38):
homicide rates spiked to about one murder per every thousand citizens.
Rosie Bell fled her home because she wanted her children
to grow up in a place with no death squads
or bodies in the streets. She could never have known

(29:59):
that she would also be saving them from the deadly
after shocks of the War on Drugs. Not long after
Roosevelt arrived in New Jersey, she gave birth to her
second son, Jeffrey. When I only he was a very
very good boy, very handsome, very intelligent. He always went

(30:22):
to school and always got good grades. He was very
very affectionate. It was in Lopez his teenage years that
he discovered his love of fighting. He told me he
and his crew went out looking for trouble, but his
mom doesn't remember it like that. He was a little mischievous,

(30:42):
but he was good, just he played around. I'm sure
they fought, but it wasn't because he was a bully.
They came looking for him one time, about thirty people
show that right here in front of the house, wanting
to jump him. Roosevelt might have had rose colored lenses
about Lopez's fighting problem, which actually got him kicked out

(31:05):
of high school, but she didn't suffer any illusions about
the seriousness of real fighting, the kind that involves uniforms,
guns and killing. She'd worked hard to build a life
for her family and peace, and she aimed to keep
it that way. So when Lopez came to ask for
her permission to join the Marines at seventeen, she said no.
She actually said she'd sooner break his bones than allow

(31:27):
him to join the military. She wanted him to get
an education and a good job, and for a while
it seemed like he was on that path. But they
are no college. But then he dropped out of school
and told me I'm joining the Marines, and he left
and That's when the torture started for me. I knew

(31:48):
he was going to go to work, and that's why
I didn't support him joining. I was angry, especially with
whoever recruited him. I didn't even want to hear from him.
I've always thought that words don't lead to anything. I
don't know why they fight, because it was just the

(32:09):
same in the Salvador. We were at war there, and
I really don't know what it sieved. It's governments that
send this voice off to war to get killed or
to be damb it psychologically. Rossi Ball was correct in
her prediction that Lopez would end up going to war,
but she could never have guessed that he gets sent
to the most violent place and all of Afghanistan. Wow,

(32:32):
we'll not get up ensangle. He goes away, and I'm
left wondering what's going to happen to him. I begged
God to protect him. For me, every minute that he
was over there felt like torture because I was always
waiting to receive bad news. I imagined that he was suffering,
that maybe he was starving in cold. I imagined everything,

(32:56):
because everyone knows that in war there are times when
people do not even have enough to eat because they
are on the battlefield and maybe they haven't been able
to get food to them out there. Just like Brian
Sheer's parents described around the fire pit in Rapid City,
Rossie Bell would spend Lopez his entire depploment waiting on
pins and needles for any news. I was always waiting

(33:22):
by the phone, shouting Jeffrey, running around, always waiting for
him to call. I used to tell my family be
ready for his phone, cale, I'm going to work, but
it wasn't very easy for him to call us. Lopez
did call, he was sparing with the details about what
he was going through, and sang in. Consumed by worry

(33:42):
over all the unknowns, Rossie Bell turned her faith for comfort.
I'm not one of those religious people who walks into
the church beating her test. But I do believe in
our Father. I know that he exists and that whatever
we ask from our heart, he's there to listen to us.
She prayed for her son constantly all the time. I

(34:05):
prayed to God to take care of him, to take
care of his friends, to bring him home to me alife.
In October two thousand eleven, Roosevelt flew out to California
so she could be there at Camp Pendleton when Lopez
and the rest of the one five survivors got home
from Sanging Well, Elijah Muff, it was the happiest day
of my life when I saw my son. When I

(34:27):
saw him, I said, Oh my God, it's him, It's Jeffrey.
I ran to him like a crazy person. It was
the happiest moment of my life to see my son
again and to know that he was okay. It's been
almost ten years since that joyous reunion, and even after
all this time, roose Bell still catches herself sometimes feeling

(34:48):
the same anxiety she felt while he was away. Whenever
I think about it, it's like relieving it all over again.
Do you feel a thing in your stomach like butterflies?
But I thank God that I have him right here.
I don't want him to ever leave. I tell him

(35:08):
that he has to stay with me until the mold.
I don't want to let him fly, but I know
he has to some day. I have to accept that.
Lopez still hasn't shared much about the war with his mom,
and he never told me about things that happened over there.
He had quite a few scars on his face, and

(35:29):
I never noticed because he hid it until one day
I saw a photo by accident, and then I realized it.
I think God, that my son is here. The photo
of Lopez that Rosie Bell saw was from after the
June twelve attacks. His scars have completely vanished now, and

(35:53):
while Rosy Bell worries that her son may have invisible wounds,
she thinks he's managing everything well enough. And as much
as Lopez likes to think of himself as a fighter,
he's always been so much more to her. Jeffrey has
always been a boy with a good height. He's generous
with his friends. Whoever is his friend is his true friend.

(36:16):
He sews you who he really is. He's not hypocrite,
not fake at all, and his family is really important
to him. He's really sweet. What more can I say?
And yes, his smoke's weight. I can't stand that anymore.
I want to take it away from him, but I can't.

(36:39):
Lopez says the weed helps him deal with his emotions,
but Rosebell is not so sure. She wishes he lay
off a bit. As far as she's concerned, it's family
that keeps Lopez grounded, and as much as he loves
his blunts. I'm sure he'd agree. Jo familia is. I
think it's really good have a strong family bond. We

(37:02):
all have to be there for each other, and he's
like that. He's always there for me, He's always there
for everyone. We're pretty tight family. Lopez may not have
told his mom much about his time and sang In,
but Rosie Ball didn't need to have the details to
know that her son had survived something horrific. We'll be

(37:35):
back after the break. H three years after defying his

(38:12):
mother's wishes by joining the Marines, Lopez deployed to Sangin.
The fighting would be intense and he'd get some ribbons
for his stack, just like the jar otc chief he
looked up to in high school. But there wouldn't be
any vengeance for his childhood friend, Eric Pelacio's got killed
in a rock and no one from Afghanistan had anything
to do with that. By the time I got to

(38:34):
sang In, Lopez had a new target for his vengeance.
The Taliban. Here we are patrol based fires in July
two thousand eleven. How do you rate them in terms
of of a fighting force? They fight like fake as gangs.
Back in the states, like planning i E d s.
Fucking sugnatas going where we can't see them as hide

(39:00):
behind stuff. If they were to step up trying to
fight us like we fight them, they wouldn't stand a chance.
And what's it like day to day going up against
that I D threat? I mean it's invisible enemy. It
sucks uh as no other way around it. I mean
we gotta find them. We've got to give rid of them.

(39:21):
So we're out here trying to do that. Wipez had
grown up fighting his opponents face to face according to
an unwritten code of teenage honor. But the Taliban weren't
trying to win a neighborhood street brawl. If they followed
any rules at all, they were the ancient tenets of
guerrilla warfare, like this one from the sixth century BC

(39:42):
Chinese philosopher Son Too. No when to fight and when
not to fight. Avoid what is strong, and strike at
what is weak. Know how to deceive the enemy. Appear
weak when you're strong, and strong when you're weak. Convincing

(40:08):
your enemy that you're a bunch of cowards while sneaking
out at night to plant I E D s is
classic deception. And when those I E d S found
their targets, the Taliban were nowhere to be seen, Like
on June twelve, two thousand eleven, when those I E
d S found Lopez and his squad. You mentioned earlier
that you said something like that your memory doesn't work

(40:28):
that well anymore, and you think that it's because of
the explosions. So tell me about the first explosion that
you were close to if you can. That was the
one that McDaniels stepped on the right behind him, a
few guys behind him before you got killed on June twelfth.

(40:52):
Joshua McDaniels was third squads combat engineer, especially trained on
the metal detector and responsible for all the squads sweeping.
Lopez usually walked behind McDaniels, serving as his eyes and
ears while McDaniels focused on the ground. They talked a
lot on patrol and became good friends. He's always seem happy.

(41:13):
He didn't like take anybody ship. He He's always straightforward
without anything. We would sit down and lay in the
wet fields and just he just clowned around, always smoking
is a Marboro or had his dip in before him.
I used to hate marbles, then I was smoking song
with him. Lopez was the closest person to McDaniels when

(41:37):
he stepped on the I E. D. And seconds after
the explosion, he was the first person to arrive at
his side, screaming, yelling in pain. I got out. There
is just missing his legs. Everything was out and what
were you gonna do? What was it? What was on
your mind in terms of what you needed to do
in that moment, I couldn't do any I was like

(41:58):
in shock until the next explosion. Then I like snapped
back into reality. But by the time I already got
back to it, Doc was already on McDaniel's performing and
I was talking to him, trying to keep him calm
while Doc was working on him. Lopez cradled McDaniel's head
in his hands while Doc four it worked on him.

(42:20):
He tried to comfort his friend as his life drained away,
but there was really nothing else he could do. McDaniels
died on the Metavac helicopter minutes later. Lopez also got

(42:42):
blown up that day. He got hit by the I E.
D that killed McDaniels and the one that tore off
Cody Elliott's leg, along with the shrapnel injuries to his face.
He suffered a serious tb I, which meant he got
pulled from the patrol rotation for ten days to recover.
When Lopez got back into the mix, he picked up
a new job, sweeping. He told me about it back

(43:04):
and Sanging. Lately, I've been sweeping. It's been my job,
and when we first got here, it wasn't as bad.
But now that all the threads getting like a lot heavier,
it's kind of starting to suck each day, like going out. Damn,
I gotta sweep again. But I mean, I'd rather it

(43:25):
be me than anybody else, So definitely quick to let
everybody know I'll do it. Why are you quick to
do it? Why would you rather be you? Because I mean,
I've lived, I've enjoyed my life, and if I die ship,
I'm in a more peaceful place than around all this ship,
so I don't really care. Lopez was twenty two years old.

(43:47):
He had a family at home that surrounded him with love,
and by the time I met him, he also had
a family of his own. He had married his high
school girlfriend a few months before he left for Sanging,
and she had given birth to their first fild while
he was deployed the baby boy, who Lopez had never
even met. Lopez had everything to live for, and yet

(44:08):
he often volunteered for the job that had just gotten
his friend McDaniels killed. And you found some I A
d s. I found a few. I remember I kicked one.
I kicked one because I was sweeping and I kept
getting it hit and I couldn't find anything. So I
was just I sat there for like five minutes trying

(44:28):
to look for something. I couldn't find anything, So that
just like thought, I started kicking around and if I
just I hit something, I see some like tape around it,
and I was like ship. So then we all backed
up and they came and I think they said it
was like five or ten pounds. It sounded like a
big explosion. So they came into the control debt. Yeah,

(44:51):
So what did that feel like for you to know
that you had found one of these I das that
have been causing so much damage to your platoon? It
was It was good because it was on the path
that we always take. We've always taken that thing. But
then that day just happened to be an idea. There
were you scared to do this job? Were you worried

(45:12):
about it. No, not so much. How is that possible.
It's hard for me to understand how you could not
be paranoid or anxious. I've never like feared much like anything. Really,
It's just like like you know what you're getting yourself.
You already mentally prepare yourself to. Like I've told myself, like,

(45:36):
all right, this is the day that I die. So
if I go out there and worst case scenario, I die,
I mentally prepared myself. Lopez is lack of fear, sometimes

(46:00):
edged into recklessness, like when he disobeyed that order to
stay inside the patrol base when he was sidelined because
of his TB. I I sneake out one time when
Galvin enough stepped on They stepped on those ideas they
had nobody to sweep, so I just went out. June
was the third in the string of mass casualty incidents

(46:23):
that I've referred to before as the June curse. Seven
Marines were wounded. First Squads Lance Corporal Eric Galvan lost
both legs and his right arm. Sergeant Josh Yarborough also
lost both legs in a finger. With so much chaos
unfolding outside the walls, of PB fires. Lopez couldn't stand
to be stuck inside. He was worried about his friends,

(46:46):
so he geared up, grabbed one of the metal detectors,
and headed for the gate with everybody else. How do
you sneak out? I picture the the Marines being a
pretty tight organization that doesn't allow a lot of sneaking
of any kind. So how did you when some explosions
go off, everyone's just getting ready to real quick, and
you're just going out help somebody who's never been there

(47:08):
understand why you would want to go out when you
didn't have to, Like like a lot of people would think.
I think most people would think if I could get
out of something like that, I would, So tell me
what was going through your head? Well, I was pretty
good at sweeping, so I felt like if I'm there
in the front leading them, then everyone behind me is

(47:30):
all right. That's why I felt like I always had
to sweep, even when when Dutchess was they gave me
that day off. The day was September eleven. Sergeant Jerick Fry,
the squad leader, told him to stay put because the
sweepers were getting exhausted and Lopez needed to rest and

(47:53):
I'm like, na, I should go out sweeping, and I
could kind of like begged them. They're like, nah, you're staying.
I was like, all right, I handled choice, laid down.
The next thing I hear an explosion. Yeah, that was Dutcher.

(48:13):
Lopez wasn't there on the scene to witness the frantic
rush to stop Dutcher from bleeding to death, but he
was there when everybody got back to the patrol base.
So what did you guys usually do when somebody got killed.
I guess everyone just get back to like the only thing,
there's still stuff there that has to be done. And

(48:34):
then the next day they would go us like steak
and lobster. Here's somebody die. Really, that's a longs time
we seek good food once noting bad happened. Well, Bez

(49:00):
doesn't know exactly how the surfing turf got to Patrol
Base fires, but it had undoubtedly come down the same
multibillion dollar supply chain that ran all the way from
the Pentagon to the farthest flung outposts of the Forever Wars,
where troops like Third Squad lived in the dirt and
ate U g R s and m R e s.
But somewhere along that chain. At an air base in

(49:20):
Helmond or maybe Kandahar, near the ammunition depots and the
jet hangers, there were support troops and private contractors living
in air conditioned shipping containers who had flushing toilets and
took showers every day. They were the long tail to
the combat troops tooth, and most of them never came
close to the fighting. They eight made to order Mongolian

(49:41):
stir fry and ice cream, and giant dining facilities where
there were also lobsters, which could be delivered at a
moment's notice to marines out in the boondocks who were
shaken up by the death of their friend. Lopez eight
his ration of the US government's bounty after Dutcher, but
it didn't console him, and he was still shaken up

(50:03):
when he got back to California a few weeks later,
where he first began to process the nightmare he'd survived.
Those images would constantly replaying my head. We had no
control over that, but it would get worse when I
would drink. So when I first got back, I was
drinking a lot. What were those images that were coming
back since the missing lens explosions, the blood and what

(50:27):
would it be like when it would come back, What
did it feel like? What did it look like in
your head? Wasn't like gone fast forward? Or was it
like a sad moment like thing about now, like I
just see Josh there on the floor, And would that
image come to you just out of nowhere or would
it could you kind of feel it coming on or
did certain things trigger it or how did it I
guess the time of the year, like right now, we

(50:49):
would be in Afghanistan, so I would think that like
every year, like oh ship today I would be there.
It sounds like that doesn't happen as much anymore or No.
When I was so at Callie, my friend introduced me
to shrooms. So I went on a shroom trip, and

(51:09):
I would feel like I'm talking to like the friends
we love, to their spirits, I would feel like, everything's
will be all right. You know they're good, You're good.
When they will all meet up, will all be good?
Their spirits would say that in the trend, I felt
like I was talking to Josh on that trip, that
specific trip. Did you see him? No, I felt him.

(51:32):
It was in the backyard, and it got to the
point that like I got scared because I thought he
was like like really, I was like, oh, fund us
like spirit thing. So then I started like kind of
like praying because it was just like like a ghost.
So then everything calmed down. At that moment. It went
from like the plants moving around, everything just calm, like

(51:54):
nothing's there. Lopez tells me the feeling of calms dayed
with him long after that shrim trip. Things got better,
at least when he was awake. In his dreams, he
was still fighting. It would be like d Day Warriors.
Uh that that I didn't even experience, you know, images

(52:15):
I dream, but I don't remember my dreams. When um,
I'm smoking, like and it's like it's calm dreams. It's nothing.
But if I go to sleep in like I don't smoke,
then that's when I have those dreams. Lopez is a
firm believer in the power of certain drugs to relieve
his anxiety, but he's also tried other things like yoga, meditation,

(52:36):
and decalcifying his pennial, which apparently involves freeing up your
third eye by cutting out sugar and fluoride, among other things.
In the end, though, Lopez always comes back to weed.
Do you think it would be hard if you didn't
smoke weed all day. That's crazy. What is that without
this that I would have to rely only secrets on liquor?

(53:02):
Or you could talk to somebody. I don't want to
talk like that. But like when I hang out hang
out with everyone, they're mostly talking and I'm just like
listening to children. I throw in my few sentences when
they asked me for my opinion. You never wanted to
go see uh psychologist or counselor or therapist or anything
like that. How come I don't think I need to?

(53:23):
And do you think it's mostly the I guess you
would call it self medication with the weed that keeps straight?
Or what do you think my kids? M that's what
I really need. Wilpez's marriage broke up after he got

(53:46):
back from Sangin, but he's got a serious girlfriend now
who lives with him in rosy Bell's house. They're expecting
a child together, another grand baby for rosy Bell to
a doore. Wipez swears that the it is still inside him,
but he's not looking for any fights these days. You
could almost say he's retired, hung up the gloves. The

(54:08):
old Lopez is as distant a memory as the yellow
footprints at Paris Island. He says he's thankful for the
friends he made in the Marines, but after all these years,
he's come around to his mother's view of war. Was
it worth it? I guess not. It's definitely not worth it,
not lives and limbs being kind of messed up for

(54:30):
the rest of your life. I think some wars are pointless, Like,
I don't know what the reason for us being over there.
Why do you think we were out there? That's a
big question, Jeffrey. How much time you got listener, Okay.

(54:52):
We talked for a while about the history and the
politics that led up to the Afghanistan search, and about
how the simple mission to capture or kill have been
lauden and destroy Al Qaida's camps in the months after
nine eleven fell paraded catastrophic mission creep, and about how
President George W. Bush's decision to pretty much abandon Afghanistan
for a rock in two thousand three helped hasten the

(55:14):
Taliban's resurgence. And then when Obama came in, he was
talking to all these generals and military strategists and the
Secretary of Defense, and they were saying, if we pull
out of Afghanistan, the Taliban are gonna take over, and
that's going to be seen as a loss against an
Islamist force. So we gotta ramp up the fighting. And

(55:38):
I think the most important question at that time should
have been, even if we can defeat the Taliban, what
what do we actually win? Is America's safer? If we're
gonna go send all these people over there to do
all this killing and dying, what do we get out
of it? There's more enemies. You were there, did you
see anything over there that you wanted? Did you see

(56:02):
anybody over there who you thought you might run into
and be afraid of here on the streets of Ventnor
or Atlantic City. No, it's not hard for me to

(56:28):
understand the cocktail of teenage emotions and desires that draws
young men like Lopez to recruiting offices. And I have
a pretty good idea of what they're looking to get
from the military. I've been there. But what's America's excuse?
Why was the country so eager to chase the war
after nine eleven? What was America looking for? The easiest

(56:51):
answer is also the most cynical. The military industrial complex
saw a golden opportunity to make a killing. That may
be true, but it's too simple, and it lets the
rest of us off the hook. I think the answer
is more elemental, and I think the responsibility for the

(57:12):
damage caused in America's name since nine eleven touches almost
all of us. The September eleventh attacks shattered America's myth
of invulnerability and unleashed an overwhelming will to violence among
average people and the political class. We were humiliated by
the sudden realization that others could hurt us just like

(57:32):
we could hurt them. We were angry and afraid, and
we were willing to do almost anything to make those
feelings go away, anything except take the time to think
through our actions. In September two thousand one, when President
Bush asked Congress for authorization to launch the war on Terror,

(57:55):
only one congressional representative voted against it. One four House
members and senators voted to give Bush the money and
the authority to take America headlong into a war against
an idea. Bin Laden was a mass murderer and a monster,

(58:16):
but he seemed to know his son, Sue. He understood
his enemy, and he laid the perfect trap. Like a
judo fighter who uses the weight and momentum of his
opponent against him. By delivering a spectacular blow to America's
most iconic symbols of power, Bin Laden triggered a violent
response out of all proportion to the actual threat. That's

(58:39):
the whole point of terrorism. But the war on Terror
was not a mere overreaction to that single devastating act.
It was part of a much bigger pattern, a product
of broken code deep in America's cultural DNA, a pathological
faith in our capacity to solve complex problems with brute force,

(59:00):
ronic overconfidence in our own military superiority, and a fatal
tendency to underestimate the enemy. I'm pretty sure bin Lauden
understood all of that too, just like ho Chi men
did in his day. Been Lauden financed Al Qaeda's Plains
operation on a shoe string budget of about five thousand dollars,

(59:21):
or half the cost of a single Tomahawk cruise missile,
and it was successful Beyond his wildest dreams. America lurched
into an era of war that generated widespread instability throughout
the Middle East and Central Asia. The presence of mostly
Christian invaders in the Muslim world played into ancient narratives
and fueled viral resistance to American power. As the years

(59:45):
dragged on, America piled up trillions in war debt and
thousands of dead and wounded. The wars cost America credibility
abroad and so division at home. I don't know what
we ever hoped to win, but what we've lost is agree.

(01:00:08):
What's most astonishing to me is that even after US
leaders had time to cool off and think about just
how perfectly the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations were playing into
bin Laden's plans, they still decided to double down with
the Afghanistan search. I think, for me, the great tragedy
of it all is that once you set that machine

(01:00:32):
in motion, you can't really turn it off. And that's
what happened as we set that machine in motion in
Afghanistan in October two thousand one, and it took on
a life of its own. It's easier to start a
war than it is to finish one, and nobody wants
to be the one who's blamed for losing it. And
I still wonder why we're not more piste off about that. Right.

(01:00:56):
There needs to be like some type of like revolt.
As long as those people whoever they are in control
and you know, keep paying us peasants with thirty thousand
a year to serve for them, It's always gonna be
like that. But you say that you don't, you know,

(01:01:19):
you have no regrets, you're not mad about it. I
mean you gotta be piste off about it, like your
your brothers are gone. But I'm not gonna let's not
like that is win my my whole life. Like I'm
still gonna not get past it because it's always gonna

(01:01:40):
be there, but I'm going to figure out how to
move forward. So part of moving forward for you has
been making music music, making sure my kids are good,
teaching them like the best I can, to make sure
they make wise decisions. Like my son is like, I'm
gonna being marial like you're not, Like, no way I

(01:02:02):
would let you. I'll break your bones before you go.
Why that's our minds aren't meant to take that much,
like her, that much damage. So to know my son
like has to go like through what I go through.

(01:02:24):
Who do I want that? Like Several of the other
Third Squad survivors and countless veterans of Wars across time,
Lopez has struggled with guilt over the deaths of his friends.
For a long time, he blamed himself for not doing
enough to save McDaniels, and he felt like he should

(01:02:46):
have been the one sweeping on the day that Dutcher died.
But over the years he's slowly come to accept that
none of it was his fault. What's written for us, like,
that's our path if it is meant to happen, that
you can't escape death. When God calls for you, that's it.
It could have been me if that was my day
to go. Sometimes God just calls on you early. Where

(01:03:10):
do you think God was in Afghanistan during the bad stuff?
How do you factor your faith in God or your
idea of God into what was happening over there, what
happened to you and your friends. It's like testing us
kind of. So he's pushing us to see see how
far we could be pushed until we're like, I've had

(01:03:33):
it with life. I think we live in hell. I
think this is how and our test through how to
make it to heaven. And I guess Josh had already
pooed that. He's like a great individual. Dutcher and Nick
and he's like, all right, you guys could come out
so but I didn't start thinking like that so like

(01:03:54):
a few years ago. M Yeah, it's never ending. Take

(01:04:18):
your time. Yeah, probably the first few people in a
in a while, and they've seen me cry. Well, if
it makes you feel any better, I'd say there's about
eight or nine people who have been the first people
to see me crying a long time over the last
couple of weeks. So it sounds good, though you Gott's

(01:04:40):
not calling on me anytime soon. I think he wants
to test me a little more. I feel like I'm
stuck here for a while. This is a tricky beat production.
Lopez may not like to talk about his private pain,
but he's working through it in his own way with
his music. It's all chaos. It's pray ours sound pretty

(01:05:04):
fraw and take it to the graveyard. We all pray,
but we'll see no good society? Is she feel like
I'm the only wolf? The time that we all unite
every state, every race, whether black or your way, everything
in between. That you know what I mean, He's out
here men to be king za queen. I think it's
time that we all unite every state, every race where

(01:05:25):
they're black or your white, everything in between. You you
know what I mean. We just out here, meant to
be James Za Queens. The following morning, we say goodbye
to Lopez in the driveway of Rosie Bell's house. After
dozens of hours of conversations, there are no more third

(01:05:47):
Squad survivors on the itinerary, and I want to take
a moment before we get back on the highway to
let that sink in. So we drive a few blocks
in park next to a bridge d over a wide canal.

(01:06:08):
While I'm standing there looking out on the water, a
group of rowers comes gliding under the bridge and bright
colored shells. They look like high school kids. Their oars
dip under the surface, pulling them past vacant summer homes
and empty docks. I take a deep breath and savor
the quiet and the feeling of the salty air on
my skin. Maybe Lopez is right, maybe this is hell,

(01:06:34):
But to me, it seems more like some kind of
purgatory where we're all just walking in circles trying to
get unstuck. For my entire life, America has been trapped
in an endless cycle of wars with unclear objectives, often
cloaked in secrecy, and always fought in other people's countries.

(01:06:59):
It's sometimes America funds and arms proxies like the Afghan
Mujahadeen and the Salvadoran military to commit violence on our behalf,
and sometimes we send our own to do the killing
and dying, Young troops like Lopez and the Marines of
Third Squad, who have little understanding of the big picture
and no firm commitment to anything beyond their own survival,

(01:07:21):
but who shoulder the bulk of the country's pain and
moral injury in the aftermath. Young kids like me. I
want nothing more than for this cycle to end, but
I'm starting to lose hope that it ever will. It's
hard to even know when or where the Forever Wars began,

(01:07:42):
but I don't think they really started on nine eleven.
The War on Terror is only the latest chapter in
a saga of U s imperialism that stretches back through
Central America, Vietnam, the Philippines, the Indian Wars, and beyond.
And I don't think that saga is over just because
we've closed the door on Afghanistan. America still has ongoing

(01:08:02):
counter terrorism missions and dozens of countries around the world,
from Yemen and Syria to the Philippines, Somalia and Mali.
These endless wars since nine eleven have cost an estimated
eight trillion dollars and have directly caused nearly one million deaths.
I think what that money could have done for the
living in Atlantic City or Deer River or any of

(01:08:26):
the broke down small towns and rust belt cities that
passed through over the past few weeks. And what did
all that money and all that death by the US did.
Finally tracked down and killed bin Laden, But the wars
have failed to accomplish the impossible objective laid out by
President Bush before the US Congress in September two thoe.

(01:08:47):
Our war on Terra begins with Alcata, but it does
not end there. It will not end until every terrorist
group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.

(01:09:16):
According to the State Department's official list, there are more
than five times as many Islamic terror organizations around the
globe today as there were twenty years ago. When planes
crashed into skyscrapers on a perfect blue sky day like
this one, just over the horizon from where I'm standing
right now. The ocean breeze sends ripples across the reflected sky.

(01:09:49):
I watched the rowers glide silently out of sight. They're
slick trails, linger on the surface for a moment, then
disappear into the chop. If there's one thing I've learned
on this trip and in all the years since I
first came home from war, it's that you have to
cherish these subtle and fleeting moments of peace, because maybe

(01:10:12):
that's all there will ever be. This journey isn't over yet.

(01:10:37):
Several months ago, I wrote to Michael Dutcher's mother, Teresa,
to ask if she'd be willing to talk to me
about Michael's life and how losing him has affected her family.
She was hesitant at first, but we talked on the
phone and she eventually agreed. Now we're making our final
approach to Asheville, North Carolina, where Teresa still lives in
the house where she raised Michael. I've had a lot

(01:11:00):
of time to think over these thousands of miles and
hundreds of hours behind the wheel, about what it'll be
like to finally meet Teresa, and about the gravity of
what I'm asking of her. There's no doubt in my
mind that this will be the most difficult conversation of
all ten days. It's all I had left. And we

(01:11:26):
told him, never volunteer, no matter what you do, never volunteer.
And what did he do? He volunteered. Third Squad odd

(01:12:00):
is written and produced by Elliott Woods, Tommy Andres, and
Maria Byrne. It's an Airloo Media production distributed by iHeart Media.
Had a lot upon my mentor depending on no one,
not a body, to wrest all the memories we made
in deserts all over, all our medals left, all our

(01:12:23):
brethren whose funding. Support for Third Squad comes from the
National Endowment for the Humanities in collaboration with the Center
for War in Society at San Diego State University. If
you're interested in supporting our work with a financial contribution,
please visit the donate page a 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.

(01:12:46):
Additional music in this episode by Jeffrey Lopez. Voiceover for
Rosy Bell by Espedanza Eski bab editing and sound designed
by John Ward. Fact checking by Ben Kalin Special thanks
to Scott Carrier, Marianne Andre, Ted Jenoways, Benjamin Bush, Carrie Gracie,
Kevin Connolly, Lena Ferguson, and Brown University's Costs of War Project.

(01:13:10):
If you've got a minute, please leave us a rating
in your preferred podcast app. It'll help other people find
the show. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter
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