October 21, 2021 • 54 mins
Sangin, Afghanistan, 2011: Michael Dutcher and the rest of Third Squad lived in a sweltering mudbrick compound called Patrol Base Fires, surrounded by lush farmland, irrigation canals, and a minefield of IEDs. In Elliott’s original audio from Sangin, the Third Squad Marines describe life in Sangin during the Afghanistan “surge” and the horrific events of June 2011, when half the PB Fires Marines got wounded or killed.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Third Squad is a podcast about war. Every episode contains
strong language and descriptions of violence that may not be
suitable for all listeners. I remember this night, about ten
years ago. I was walking down this brick street in Charlottesville, Virginia,
(00:25):
where no cars are allowed, so there are big trees
where there used to be traffic, and there are tons
of bars and restaurants with outdoor seating. It was a
perfect summer night, and the whole place was packed with
beautiful young people out having a good time, people about
my age. Part of me wanted to grab a drink
(00:45):
and join them, but this much bigger part of me
wanted to flip over a table and scream, do you
have any fucking idea? There's a war going on? We
all know how the Afghanistan war ends. Now I've concluded
that it's time to end America's longest war. It's time
(01:05):
for American troops to come home. The Afghan government and
security forces collapsed under a Taliban van. The pandemonium outside
Kabbal airports of Taliban fighters have flooded the capitol. Afghan
officials troops have surrendered Bodroom Air Base to the Taliban.
We just learned that the presidential palace was officially handed
(01:26):
over the Taliban presidents maybe former president now as Traf
Ghani leaves town Taliban fighters behind the desk of the
presidential Palace. I did not, nor did anyone else, see
a collapse of an army that size in eleven days.
Seeing the images of Afghan's hugging the landing gear of
an Air Force C seventeen as it lifted off from Kabul,
(01:47):
it's impossible not to remember the Americans plummeting from the
burning towers almost exactly twenty years earlier, and you can
see the two towers a huge exposure out rating to
pray on all of us get out of the m
and for a lot of people, these images are going
to be the gruesome book ends to America's longest war.
(02:07):
But me, I'm stuck between the book ends. I'm Elliott Woods.
I'm a veteran and a journalist. And there's this one
MBD I did back in two thousand eleven that I
can't stop thinking about. In a part of Afghanistan called Sangin,
with the squad of strung out marines who lived in
mud brick buildings surrounded by barriers, filled with dirt and rocks.
(02:30):
It was my fourth MBD in Afghanistan in two years,
and I didn't know it at the time, but it
would also be my last, and I could never have
known that I was documenting the final days of one
of those Marines. This is the story of that marine
and his squad, Third Squad, Episode one, Keep Pushing. I
(02:56):
landed and sang in on a V twenty two Osprey
and July two thousand eleven, took an armored gun truck
out to a dusty outpost. That's where I met the
twelve Marines of Third Squad for the first time. My
name is Jeffrey Lopez. Got the catch, We take off.
Brian Sheer, Michael Minor, Taylor Moody, Emmanuel Mendoza, Michael Joseph Dutcher.
(03:22):
They were officially Third Squad, first Platoon, Blackfoot Company from
the first Battalion, Fifth Marines, or one five for short.
They were infantry, the riflemen and machine gunners known in
the core as grunts, and their home base was Camp Pendleton, California,
but they came from all over the United States, Asia,
in California, California and Repid City, South Dakota, North Carolina, Watertown,
(03:47):
New York, Missical, Texas, Home Park, Illinois, Asheville, North Carolina.
Most of them were fresh out of high school, and
I could hardly be leave how young they looked. They
could be sitting in the street that right here, just
waiting for us fucking push out of the opening book
(04:08):
unless you just do the comes over. They were at war,
but they still acted like kids. Sometimes when the guy
is running to the left building left the building seven,
So you're all angry and stuff, do you know, hug No,
I'm going in fucking patient. You're making You're making my
combat recording sound really immature. This is supposed to be war. Guys.
(04:32):
I brought an old film camera with me to take
their portraits, and I also brought an audio recorder, and
whenever we had a break between patrols and sleeping I
try to pull one of them aside for a sit
down interview in one of those stuffy mud brick rooms,
which wasn't always easy. My name is h and Matthew Fort,
and I was born Stone. So from this point forward,
(04:55):
if you guys are gonna stay in here, and you
should make as little noise as possible, Okay, said no?
Bell girl, no farting? Can you handle that? Okay? They
were bone tired and they didn't always know quite what
to make of me or my questions. But they were cool.
(05:17):
I guess I was a welcome diversion. Was fun. Yeah,
it's it's pretty fun. It's kind of fun where it
really wasted one night and you do a bunch of
stupid ship it's fun to talk about. Firefights are fun.
I enjoy firefights. You drop bombs on people and kill
bad man. That's that's what we're here for. Still, it
(05:39):
didn't take me long to see that the excitement barely
covered up the dread. If you could describe saying it
in a couple of sentences, what would you say, Probably
one of the worst places on earth right now. I
could hear the stress and exhaustion in their voices. They
were far from home and in full blown survival mode,
and all they had was each other. Everything you do
(06:01):
out here is fair, fella, Marines in yourself. I love
my Marines. Those are my boys, and I just don't
want anything to happen to them. I want to keep
them as safe as I possibly can. And what I'd
like to consider the most probably one of the most
dangerous place on Earth. Sang In is a rural district
in southern Afghanistan's Helmand Province, which shares its name with
(06:23):
a wide river that forms way up in the Hindu
Kush Mountains. Most of Helmand is a scorched waste land,
but the river cuts a sliver of green from north
to south across the desert. It's a lifeline to Sangon's farmers,
whose main cash crop is poppy, the key ingredient in heroin.
And when Third Squad first showed up and sang In,
the scenery kind of blew their minds. Everybody thinks, you know,
(06:46):
when they think of Ghanistan, they think the Middle East.
They think of some big, giant, hot desert. But like
it's not like that. You wouldn't expect how green it
is when you get out here. It's amazing that you
see flowers blooming everywhere, big fields of green crops and
grass and trees. The reads an hour twelve ft tall,
and there's bamboo that's even duller than that. Like you
(07:06):
just walked across open, huge fields like you would see,
Like been to France before, so those huge open fields
they have there. It's kind of like take that the
swampy ship and mix it together, and yet saying in
Afghanistan it looks like a beautiful country. But as far
as stepping out the wire with all your gears, shitty
o you cash right? Yeah, you can see whatever you
(07:27):
want to ask. That's about it. I can't really explain.
It's all you don't want to be. The situation in
Sangin was terrible. Hundreds of British, Afghan and American troops
have been killed and wounded. The war was in its
tenth year, and what had begun is a straightforward mission
(07:48):
to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden and members
of al Qaeda. After nine eleven had morphed into a
complicated nation building effort in a raging battle against the Taliban.
We'll get into why that shift happened later in the series.
For now, you just need to know that at this
particular moment, Afghanistan was spiraling out of control, and President
Barack Obama had deployed tens of thousands of extra troops
(08:10):
in a bid to turn the war around. The situation
in Afghanistan has deteriorate. This phase of the war became
known as the Afghanistan Surge and third Squad deployed at
its peak, and as Commander in Chief, I have determined
that it is in our vital national interest to send
an additional thirty thousand US troops to Afghanistan. Third Squad
(08:33):
was tasked with carrying out the surge strategy at whatever cost,
but the big picture was barely visible from their perspective.
And that's the perspective I went there to report on
the third Squad. Marines all had their own reasons for
joining the corps. So number one, why did join the
Marine Corps? I joined the Marines because the Marines are
(08:53):
the best. They're badass. This is private first class. Scott mccatchen,
a twenty year old college dropout for Northern California. 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 just wanted a party.
Didn't it care too much about school or think what
(09:17):
I could possibly lose if I were to just do
nothing but party. And sure enough I lost it. But
I fucking manned up and I joined the military. And
here I am saying in Afghanistan. Lance Corporal David Ortega,
twenty year old from southern California, came from a military family.
(09:37):
He was so nervous when he talked to me, his
voice trembled. I would just always look up to the
Marines and I was like, I'm gonna become one of
them someday. I'm gonna keep introducing you to the squad,
but don't worry about keeping track of all the names.
You'll get to know the guys throughout the series. Lance
Corporal Taylor Moody was also twenty years old. He was
from Upstate New York. He was rail Finn and his
(09:58):
hair was trimmed close on the sides, in line with
Marine Corps REGs. But he hadn't always looked like that
back in the States. When I was in high school,
I was just a little punk. I had a mohawk.
I was like a foot long, and I died it red.
I went to conserts all the time, and I used
to brag about how good I was at washing, and
(10:19):
that was pretty good. You know, I did my ship.
You know, washing is right, okay, you know I beat
the ships. Some guys in the mosh pit, but that's
That's not important to me anymore. The only thing right
now that matters to me he is getting home alive
with me. Guys, I can Corporal man Well Mendoza told
(10:39):
me he was a responsible kid who worked three jobs
during high school in the East Texas border town where
he grew up. He was twenty when I met him,
which means he was still in elementary school when eleven happened.
I'll never forget September eleven. I'll never forget what happened
in New York. And I'll never forget people, never hurt
people that died. I'll of my country. I'm a patriot
(11:01):
straight up, like even Mexican. I love I love America
because we had a lot of great things in our country.
I have such a great life back home. I got
my family, I had a good education, you know, so
I felt like I needed to pay that dead. The
youngest of the group was nineteen year old Lance Corporal
(11:23):
David rich Boalski from Wailua, Hawaii. I joined the Marine
Corps because I want to go off the island. Mission.
Accomplished mud hut, three ft thick walls of mud. Right now,
it's actually pretty dirty, just because I've been disgusting and
not cleaned it, and uh I got fleas because of
(11:43):
the fucking chickens that run around. The sweltering mud brick
compound where the squad lived was officially called Patrol based Fires,
but everyone just called it fires or PB fires. It
was home to a single platoon of Marines around arty guys,
plus the various people who supported them. The platoons three
(12:11):
squads took turns patrolling, resting, and pulling watch. Southern Afghanistan
was a furnace that July. The heat made my lips
crack and the dry air burned the inside of my
nose when I inhaled. Hygienically, it's there is none. You're
a constantly dirty. Twenty year old Lance Corporal Brian Shearer
was from Rapid City, South Dakota. He wanted to join
(12:33):
the Marines ever since he was a little kid, and
now here he was embracing the suck. You get really
bad transfer from being in uh water all day, and
then you stay in your socks and you can never
get your feet dry or clean. The guys bathed by
poking holes in water bottles and squeezing them over their
heads whenever there was time to rest. They sacked out
(12:54):
on cots and played video games or watch DVDs on
little personal players. When I they were all stoked because
they've just gotten lights, but there was still much to
be desired. The things I missed the most back in
the United States are definitely women, drinking good food, having
the luxury of electricity, running water all the time, just
(13:17):
simple ship going, taking a crap and a fucking toilet.
The flushes um come out here and you lose everything
and then you realize what you really had. Back in
the United States, food was something that guys talked about
a lot, so much that I'm surprised they weren't hiding
copies of bone appetite under their cots instead of nudy mags.
Pickens around the patrol base could be pretty slim. So
(13:40):
what do you eat? I don't know what you like
to what you what you like to eat, Well, it's
not what I like to eat. It's what I have
to eat. And most of the time it's it's just
like a kind of spaghettier, the thing of ramen Newles
heat it open the sun Somewhere. Twenty two year old
Lance Corporal Jeffrey Lopez was small but scrappy looking. He
(14:04):
craved the comfort food of the Jersey Shore where he
grew up. My Miss McDonald's Applebee's all you can eat crabs,
like the base ade buffet. The food at patrol Base
Fires was well, it's sure as funk, was not the
bay side buffet. I didn't notice it at first, but
the other Marines in my squad noticed. Since even other
(14:27):
even other squads noticed, I had lost a ship ton
of weight and you can see yourself that um extremely skinny.
And then I just kept losing more and more weight.
All I could do is think of food, and it's
that's still I do was. I think of food like
on patrol. Will take a quick break every now and
then I'll just be sitting there and thinking, God, I'm
(14:47):
so fucking hungry. It wasn't just the food from home
that they missed. I mean, none of us have seen
our families, and almost a year now none of us
have been back home. And almost a year now. I
told you. Third Squad had been an Afghanistan for four
months when I arrived, but they trained constantly during the
work up period leading up to the deployment, with almost
no downtime. Some of them had girlfriends, wives, even kids
(15:11):
waiting for them back in the States. They were homesick,
but it was more than that. They were worried they
might never see their families again. I'm really looking forward
to getting back home, being able to just relax with
the family and just not having to worry on a
day to day basis as to whether or not you're
gonna get hurt badly that day. So, I mean, civilians
(15:32):
don't wake up in the morning and say I'm gonna
lose my legs today or die today. For most of
third Squad, Sanging was their first deployment, and before they
got there they'd heard horror stories about what it was like.
Their predecessors at patrol based fires were from the third Battalion,
Fifth Marine Regiment or three five, also from Camp Pendleton.
(15:54):
Three five had a horrendous time and Sanging. Over their
seven months tour, twenty five of their marines died and
a hundred and eighty four were wounded. That's about one
out of every five marines and the battalion. It was
the worst casualty rate of any single unit in the
Afghanistan War up to that point. Many of those casualties
were caused by the Taliban's weapon of choice and sang
(16:16):
in the pressure plate improvised explosive device or i e D,
a homemade land mine that detonates when someone steps on it.
Mines and i e d s are ingenious, knowing that
you can step right next to one or sit right
with one between your legs, and you have no ideas
ever there until someone steps on it and dies. News
(16:40):
of three fives bloody tour spread through Camp Pendleton while
Third Squad was training to deploy. It was like every
day seemed like three five was taking casualties, especially Corman.
It seemed like they're losing Corman left and right. Corman
or U S Navy sailors who provide medical aid to
wounded Marines in combat. In the Army, they're called medics
Third Squads. Corman was twenty five year old hospitalman first
(17:03):
Class Matthew for It from the Chicago suburbs. The guys
called him Doc and he wore a few different hats
and also how I yelled part therapist, part fucking nurse,
part counselor for it was a little softer than the Marines,
with a round face and buzzed red hair. He told
me about the handoff with three five. When I got here,
(17:25):
only like two of the original Corman remained. Everybody else
had either have been like blown up or shot or something.
So yeah, when I got here, I was paranoid as hell,
and for it wasn't the only one. Twenty year old
Lance Corporal John Bollinger from Cheyenne, Wyoming had also prepared
himself for the worst. When we first were coming, I
(17:47):
was honestly expecting, like you couldn't you couldn't move without
hitting ninety and all their wear were Taliban everywhere and
everyone's you know, getting shot and blown up. That was
that was my expectation. Was fucking it was going to
be popping off. But when Third Squad got to sang
In and settled into their new home and patrol based fires,
everything was weirdly calm. For the first two months sanging
(18:11):
I didn't really meet my expectations at all, Like we
were just basically just patrolling for the ship of it,
Like nothing happened for the first two months. There was
no fire, there was no shooting or anything. It was
just start up walking around like we owned the place.
That's Taylor Moody again, the mosh pitt Menace telling me
what it was like when the squad first started going
(18:32):
out on patrol. When we first got here, the people
wouldn't even come out to us because the previous unit
was pretty rough on him. Then we started doing the
COIN operations and just talking with the people, you know,
getting to know what was going on, asking him questions,
looking for the enemy so we can exploit what they're
doing against him. Point that Acrony and Moody just used
(18:57):
stands for counterinsurgency. The basic idea of COIN is to
drive a wedge between insurgents and the civilian population by
delivering humanitarian aid things like new roads, medicine, and schools,
basically trying to buy the local people's love so they'll
reject the insurgency, in this case, the Taliban and support
the legitimate government instead. Coin is supposed to be more
(19:21):
about protecting the people than killing the enemy. Back in
the Vietnam War, they called it winning hearts and minds.
Sounds good in theory, but during the surge in Afghanistan,
it was young frontline troops like Third Squad who carried
out most of the work, and they didn't really have
the training or the resources to do it. They were grunts,
(19:42):
not diplomats. Are typical days, you know, wake up very early,
probably earlier than the average American. Trap on a flak
that weighs thirty pounds because it's got bulletproof plates in it.
On top of that, put a pack on your back.
You have rounds that weigh a law. You have a rifle.
I carry my rocket long, sure, the weigh thirty pounds,
So I carry a lot of weight. Patrol all day, walking,
(20:04):
walking through creeks, mud canals, water rivers, tall grass, corn fields,
and it just gets really tiring carrying all that weight
and body armor, weapons and ammunition. Gave them a firepower
advantage over the lightly armed Taliban, but it beat the
ship out of their bodies. A twenty year old marine
can look like he's thirty maybe not not maybe maybe
(20:27):
not in facial features, and like some people, some of
us can't grow full beards and stuff. But our knees
will be so jam packed and the carloads to be
ripped up in our feet will be callous, like I
don't know, like some dogs feed or something like the
little paths or whatever. Those grueling foot patrols were third squads,
(20:50):
only real opportunity to talk to the local people, one
of the most critical elements of counterinsurgency. But the Taliban
were out there too, hiding in the green fields and
tree lines surrounding PEP fires, waiting to ambush the Marines.
Sometimes the enemy fighters and lookouts would hide in plain sight.
Dressing him up to match the population is like crazy
(21:13):
smart because you don't know who they are, and they
could be watching any point. They could be shaking your
hand at any point. My first afternoon at PB fires,
I went out on patrol with third Squad in their
platoon commander. Almost as soon as we left the compound gate,
we were hip deep in a canal. The cool water
(21:33):
felt good in the heat, but as soon as I
climbed out, I was conscious of every step. There was
a marine at the front of the patrol with the
metal detector sweeping for I U d S, and another
one behind him marking the cleared path with a can
of blue spray talk. I stayed glued to those blue streaks.
(21:54):
Eventually the patrol stopped to talk to a farmer who
had knee high corn in his fields and a few
cows tethered by nose ranks. Traffic to start right now,
getting a lot of goodents all over. They were trying
to gather information about the Taliban. The tree brought us.
They are living tour, yeah and pish at the end
(22:14):
of there is a compound. The end of the compounds,
they are living. The man told them through an interpreter
that the Marines were not the only ones visiting his
home coming, but the ninth Taliman. Okay, so the night
to Taliban com It was risky for the man to
talk to the Marines. Anyone caught helping the Americans could
be punished by the Taliban. The Talibans not two people.
(22:38):
Don't there. The longer the squad stayed, the more likely
they'd be spotted by the enemy. They were walking the
fine line between doing their jobs and putting people in danger.
They hold him, don't him come back here, because we're
talking to this guy, and if this guy gets same
with someone, he's gonna get in trouble. To stop that kid.
Don't let him back here yet, We'll come to him.
It was a lot of responsibility for the Marines, but
(22:59):
the I E. D. S that had devastated the previous battalion,
we're still out there. And they did more than damage flesh.
They severely inhibited the Marines movement, making it almost impossible
to do counterinsurgency. They had to find them. Then we
solved the two Taliban out here where they planted nineties
(23:19):
today we saw two of them in the tree line.
And that's sometimes the intelligence gathering paid off Roger and
we cannot be break a bone. We found a secondary
about ten ms to the southwest of the first one
we found. As we're pushing back, they saw it. They
(23:45):
found a cluster of I E. D s and detonated
them safely. Oh my god, goddamn, I'm glad I didn't
go off. It was a small victory in the bigger war.
Out on patrol, everyone in the squad looked more or
less the same. They all wore desert camouflage uniforms and
(24:06):
kevlar helmets and wrap around sunglasses, and they wore body
armor weighed down by ammunition pouches and first aid kits
and water. But each person had a slightly different job.
The radio operator maintained colms with the patrol base, and
then there were the riflemen and the machine gunners. The
assaultment carried things like rocket launchers and the corman cared
(24:27):
for the wounded. Then there was the combat engineer, the
one who walked up front with the metal detector to
scan the path for i e d s. This job
was called sweeper and it was one of the most
dangerous jobs in the entire war. Those guys, you know
they're gonna get Like if you sweep, you're gonna get
hit eventually, Like you don't want to get hit, but
there's a good chance to get hit. On patrol, everybody
(24:51):
walked single file behind the sweeper, following his exact path.
He moved real slow. You pretty much moved with the sweeper.
Space can't any faster than a corporal. Michael Miner from Seagrove,
North Carolina, was the oldest member of third Squad. He
had two deployments to a Rock under his belt before
sang in. Miner told me the Taliban didn't just wait
(25:12):
around for the Marines to step on i e d s.
The hiding tree lines, white forest shoot as that way
they'll try to draw. Since I E d s. The
danger the Marines confronted outside the patrol base was extreme
and it came with a heavy dose of fear. So
how often do you think about your legs and your
feet every day. Tell me about that. You think about
(25:35):
it and you're walking around, You're stomping through all the
corn fields and the freaking weeds and the tree lines
and the canals, and you're just thinking, damn, that could
be an I d right there. Do you ever? I mean,
this is kind of weird question, but I'm only asking
this because when I've found out that I was going
to be coming to sang And several months ago, I
started thinking about it more and more and more. And
(25:57):
every time I go for a rounder, i go for
high creaking on my bike, I'd be looking on my
legs thinking I really like running, I really like biking,
I really like walking. I mean, do you ever imagine
what life would be like without legs? Yeah? I do
all the time, but right now we just make jokes
(26:18):
about it, you know, like you can you see it
all the time. You know, people lose their legs and
you have to help them out, and then you know,
you think about yours, and just like man, I can
just imagine going back to leather Necker, going to Germany
and getting surgery and then finally I'm all healed up
and they get my little tink tink legs. That's what
we call them, our little metal legs. We talk about jokes,
(26:41):
and you know, like I think smoothing be so much easier.
We just attached paddles to our little metal legs, you know,
and get those fucking those balanced legs. We see on
TV all the time that guys have just run a
little faster. You know. It's it's all about making jokes
out here. If you don't make jokes, and it's just
(27:02):
gonna be gon'll be too grim. Yeah, it wouldn't be
any happiness there. Third squads first months at pb fires
were unusually happy. It was calm enough that the Marines
started to wonder if they had missed the war. But
(27:25):
this was the cruelest of deceptions, and the calm was
shattered one day in June. We'll be back after the break.
(27:51):
We were here for three months, and I was just like, oh,
we're good, we're getting out of here. This place is
done well, three five security, We're golden. And then I
was sitting in this exact same room and then all
of a sudden we heard a big boom and then
my squad leader started as he comes running in and
(28:11):
says one two got hit. It was June nine, two eleven.
David Ortega and the rest of Third Squad were at
Pep Fires when they got the news that another squad,
Second Squad, had suffered a casualty. Lance Corporal Nicholas O'Brien
was a rifleman, but he'd been filling in for the
(28:32):
engineer that day. He was sweeping for I. E. D.
S when he stepped on one and was killed, and
I was just like fuck. I didn't even know what
to think. O'Brien may not have been in Third Squad,
but that didn't matter. He was part of first Platoon,
one of the forty odd guys they had trained with
(28:53):
at Camp Pendleton and had been living with at Peb
Fires for months, and the whole platoon was tight. O'Brian
was someone that anybody could be friends with him best
personality in the world, always making people laugh, and he
was just a great person to be around, and he
was to always have your back no matter what. Every
day I noticed his absence, it's hard to see that
(29:15):
he's gone. O'Brien had a reputation around the patrol base
for being generous with his care packages. He was also
known for his outspoken North Carolina pride. He just turned
twenty one, and his death rattled the younger guys who
were on their first deployment. Even for Michael Miner, who
had been to combat before, it was a wake up call.
(29:37):
You've been around. Yeah, you're years old, so you're fucking
granddad compared to these kids. It's basically what I'm trying
to say. So, what's it like seeing some of these,
you know, young kids go through this when you have
as much experience as you do already. I came to
this already knowing what to expect a little bit. These
guys had no idea Minor and O'Brien had bonded over
their shared North Carolina roots. He death forced Minor to
(30:01):
remember a lesson he learned back in a Rock Get close,
but not too close the way you have no emotional
attachments to anybody around because you never know when their
time is so filling. Wise, don't meant to come off
as a cold hearted montherfucker, because I really don't see
the difference. It would be wildly wrong to say that
(30:32):
Third Squad hadn't taken the threat and sang in seriously
before O'Brien died They all knew how badly three five
had gotten hammered, and there had been casualties elsewhere and
sang and since they arrived, but they weren't close to
those guys O'Brien. Though O'Brien was their brother. His death
made ship very real, but it wasn't like they could
(30:54):
sit around and dwell on it. We just one of
those things. It's got to keep going no matter what.
A tway maybe bad, but just keep pushing, keep pushing.
It was the only option. Three days after O'Brien died,
third Squad headed out from PB fires to help another platoon,
third Platoon from a nearby patrol base. They got the
(31:17):
Taliban held in a building and they were there for
over a day, just in a shootout with them, and
we were going up to re supply them. Everyone had
full packs, main packs of water and chow. We're going up.
They've been in contact pretty much all day and they're
obviously out because you get the firefly for that one.
You run our rounds and you get thirsty, and we
(31:38):
all started pushing up, pushing up. A few guys made
across the bridge. We're a crossing a bridge that we
crossed every day. We're just walking along everyone. It was
just a normal patrol. Everyone was just bullshitting and talking.
And we were about two outside of fires the only
blind spot from that post, and and uh, there's just
(32:06):
the idea went off and it was just a smoke cloud.
I was like in the back of which all when
we first heard the explosion. I saw this big ass, huge,
sixty ft mushroom cloud just shoved in the air. Mc
daniels struck the first I D. Lance Corporal Joshua McDaniels
was third squads combat engineer. He was up front sweeping
(32:27):
when he stepped on an I E D that launched
him straight up into the air. The blast hits several
of the other marines around him, including David rich Bolski.
It's about the ideas, maybe like fifteen ms away from that.
One just knocked me on my ass. As the dust cleared,
the deafening boom gave way to screams. It was the scariest,
(32:48):
scariest moment, as well as the worst moment in my life.
That's definitely the scariest moment. The squad scrambled to respond.
The first thing I did, I just spread towards the
front of the patrol. I got up. I started putting
out turn kids. The tourniquet is a belt that slips
around a limb and can be cranks super tight to
(33:09):
stop arterial bleeding, a common cause of death after an
I e D strike. Everyone carried tourniquets on patrol, not
just the Corman ground up over there, and I started
trying to work on him, but he was straight up
blown in half. I used probably about just gone, like
his whole half of his body was gone. So it
(33:30):
wasn't really much places to put a turn kit. So
I just started talking to him because he was screaming
and uh, how was like holding his hand. They tell
him I was gonna be okay, And that's what Lance
Corporal Eliott stepped on the second I D. In the chaos,
Lance Corporal Cody Elliott and machine gunner who floated between squads,
(33:51):
stepped on another I E D. The blast took down
everyone around him, including rich Bollski. I blacked out after that.
The Corman dock for it, also got hit as he
was rushing up to treat casualties of the first id D.
When I got blown up, I stumbled for a little bit,
(34:14):
like like I lost my hearing for a couple of seconds,
I kind of felt straight to my knees. I ain't
black out, but I just kind of sat there confused
for a couple of semes, just wanting what the hell
was going on. When the dust cleared, they died. The
dude who was in from the Lance Corporate Elliott, I
just saw his entire face was just covered in blood.
First thing I did, I just looked down to make
(34:35):
sure I was still okay and make sure I still
have my legs and arms, and then I just went
straight to McDaniels. McDaniels was for its first real world casualty.
When I got to him, his legs were gone almost
at least the flesh round his legs were gone, almost
up to his waist pretty much like I would say,
six inches below his hip was like where it had stopped,
(34:56):
and everything else below that was just bone. I tried
getting the turni uets on him, even like the metom.
I had a little bit difficulty just trying to get
on because it was like slipping off his leg almost,
And I like I applied like three Turner kits on
his right leg and one metal one his left leg,
which had a little bit more flesh on it than
(35:17):
the other one. For it completed about a year of
specialized training to get ready for that moment, but no
amount of simulation could have fully prepared him. I was
just basically like constantly saying to myself, fuck my life,
over and over again. He worked frantically over the gaping
hole below McDaniel's waste. I just began stuffing it was
(35:38):
as much gauze and combat cause that I had, just
trying to get the bleeding stopped, but it wasn't working.
He had lost too much blood and he was starting
to go into unconsciousness and starting to lose a pulse.
For it stuck McDaniels with an EpiPen and the last
ditch effort to boost his heart rate, and then we
got him on the grid. Mc annuals still had a
(36:00):
pulse when the Marines loaded him onto a Metavac helicopter.
M Meanwhile, the walking wounded started picking themselves up off
the ground. When I came to, I was just laying
face down in the sand. It's like in a poll
of blood. Rich Volsky had been knocked hard by the
(36:21):
second I e d, so had Brian Sheer. There was
just nothing but smoke, and I I walked out of
the smoke, I saw that I still had all my limbs,
and I just it's just instinct. I just turned around
and ran right back in. And that's when I saw
rich Volsky laying there in the in the hole, and
(36:44):
I turned him over and he was bleeding from the
side of his face, and I checked to make sure
he wasn't bleeding underneath his flak to where I could
see Sheer Lance Corporal Sheer rolled me over and he has, hey, man,
you got all your limbs, got your legs. I don't
know how you did it. I was like, you can
(37:04):
be okay, And I was like what, because like I
had a severe concussion. UM, I just got knocked straight
retarded and he started dragging me out. He was out
of it. He was really out of it, and I
didn't want him walking off or anything. So I grabbed
him and I pulled him back across the back, across
the bridge and got him back to UM got him
(37:28):
back to safety. I had a piece of shrapnel about
the size of a dime lodged in my temple, and
I had some more for just fragg and stuff in
my shoulder and pretty much the whole right side of
my body was like road rash. So I just fell
on his skateboard slid for about ten ft. My face
(37:50):
is just like a burger, like nasty burger. While all
this was going on, Mane Well Mendoza pulled security to
make sure no one tried to ambush them, but he
still caught glimpses of the carnage. I wasn't expecting the blood,
uh bones dangling everywhere. I wasn't expecting that. I was
(38:11):
hoping I wouldn't have to see that, but I did.
Two more I e d S went off before the
day was out, and the Marines found and safely destroyed
five more. To realize that the Taliban could plant nine
I e d S right under their noses, buried behind
a stand of trees, just two yards from the guard
posts of PB fires. It was a rude awakening. All told,
(38:37):
seventeen men got hit on June twelve. Three went home
with missing limbs and Joshua McDaniels, who they had put
on the metavact bird with a pulse. The guys found
out later he didn't make it. McDaniels had been captain
of his high school football team back in London, Ohio.
He liked to drive around in an old Mercedes Benz
(38:58):
blasting the star spang old banner. He was one when
he died, and he left behind a young widow. As
for the Taliban, they were just getting started. Then after
that we started getting hit, you know, I E d. S.
Fucking bollets started whizzing all over the place. That's when
we realized we didn't really own the place. We couldn't
(39:20):
just walk around like we're freaking invincible. Just three days later,
on June seven, more First Platoon Marines got blown up
in another multiple I e D. Mass casualty. The Marine
started calling it the Curse of June. We'll be back
(39:48):
after the break. The June curse happened before I arrived
(40:13):
in Sangin, so I never met O'Brien or McDaniels. In fact,
I never met a bunch of the Marines who had
been at peb fires before I got there. In July.
Close to half the guys who began the deployment had
been wounded by then, and a lot of them got
sent home for good to recover, including Sergeant Andrew Ski Mattelski,
third Squad's original squad leader. For the ones who were left,
(40:36):
there was only one option. Keep pushing. At first, it's
fucking it's like it just hurts. But then over time,
over time, you get over it, and you just learned
that you have to keep pushing, and you still start
to getting numbed everything. You know, someone gets hit and
it's just someone getting hit. You know, like if they survived,
(40:57):
they're going back to the States. If they're dead, at
least they're not here. The three mass casualty incidents of
the June Curse rendered First Platoon combat ineffective, too shorthanded
and thin on leadership to go into combat, so the
higher ups decided to pull First Platoon back to a
bigger base while they shuffled people around and waited for
(41:17):
fresh bodies from back home. When I got to Patrol
Base Fires in late July, the platoon was reinforced and
back in action, but the lineup was a little different.
Third Squad had two new faces. One of those new
Third Squad faces was Sergeant Jerich Fry, four year old
combat replacement from Irwin, Pennsylvania, who took over for the
(41:41):
critically injured Sergeant Ski as squad leader. If one person
in the team's week or in the squad's week, the
squad will fail. So everybody has to pull their own weight.
Everybody has to know their job, the job below them,
the job of o them. The other new face was
already pretty familiar to the squad, all right, So you're
(42:01):
on faith wonderful all right? So first, just what's your
full name? Michael Joseph Dutcher. Dutcher was originally in first Squad,
but he got transferred to third squad to boost their numbers.
Do you have a nickname in the squad? Dutch? You
could spot him from across the patrol base because of
his dorky standard issue glasses known in the military as
(42:24):
bcgs or birth control goggles. The first thing is why
did you join the Marine Corps? I honestly, I have
no idea anymore. There was something about Dutch that I
was drawn to as soon as we started talking. He
had the warm drawal of his native Ashville, and with
(42:45):
his thick glasses and overgrown buzz, he cut a generer
figure than the other Marines, and he often had a
wad of Frank's red hot buffalo wing flavored sunflower seeds
in his cheek. He passed around the bag to everyone
on patrol, including me. The you have to summon singing
in one sentence to somebody back home, how would you
describe it? I would definitely say keep your eyes out
(43:11):
and turn your ears up, because paying attention to everything
is the only thing you have out here to keep
you alive. Dutch was smart and curious in the ways
that made for a good counterinsurgency marine. He'd even learned
a bit of Pashto from the interpreters. What do you
think the Taliban are fighting for? They call themselves mugaden,
(43:32):
but they're not really that. A lot of them are
doing stuff that doesn't really describe the Muslim way of
life as I've learned about it and heard about it
from locals. Mden is the word for Muslim holy warriors.
They fight and kill whenever everyone else wouldn't. They do
things that Muslims shouldn't and wouldn't do. What's an example
(43:55):
of something that you think that Muslims shouldn't do according
to the rules with the Taliban do their whole murder
and intimidation campaign. They threatened locals and their own people,
who threatened other Muslims. They in place, I e. D
s that can kill children, and they're buying and selling
(44:19):
drugs that in the end killed mass quantities of people
and destroy families. On one patrol, I took photos of
Dutch using a handheld device to collect biometric data from
a middle aged man wearing a turban. The fingerprints, mug shots,
and Irish scans were checked against lists of known Taliban insurgents.
(44:43):
The man's kids looked on from a doorway with curious
smiles on their faces, but the man looked scared. To
have marines bristling with weapons stroll up to your house
and asked to scan your eyeballs had to be terrifying,
no matter how much they promised they were there to
help you. And I knew many locals wish nothing more
than for the foreign troops in the Afghan Army to
(45:05):
go away. Maybe then the fighting would have stopped. I
don't know how much of this went through Dutch's mind,
but he reminded me of myself before I was a journalist,
back when I was an Army National Guard combat engineer.
During my own deployment to a rock in two thousand four,
I learned a bit of Arabic from the interpreters and
(45:25):
tried to get to know the Iraqi soldiers. I remember
wishing I could go into town and order lunch, hang out,
shoot the ship with the locals, but it wasn't a
semester abroad, and it wasn't one for Dutch either, though
we did have plans to go to college. Eventually, are
you going to re enlist? Um? I get out and
(45:46):
you know June twelve, I'm not going to re enlist.
I'm probably gonna do a nine day early out program
and go back to college and get my teaching Newly,
since I've joined the Marine Corps, I have decided I did.
I want to follow my mom's footsteps and become a
teacher because I really like what she does. Right now,
I'm just trying to figure out what subject I want
(46:08):
to teach. In the short term, all you wanted to
do was kick back and relax. The thing I missed
most about civilian life in general is uh, definitely weekends
that I can't wait to go back sleeping and not
have to worry about anything. Unlike Third Squad, I could
(46:30):
return to regular life whenever I wanted. So when my
m bed was over, I packed up my camera gear
and my recorder and flew back to the States. I've
been home from sang In for a few weeks. When
the film from that old school camera came back from
the developer, I couldn't wait to see the portraits of
Third Squad. Scanning the negatives was painstaking, lee slow, line
(46:52):
by line, the marines faces unfurled across the monitor. That's
when a Twitter notification from the Department of Defense popped up.
I clicked on the link. A marine had been killed
in Sangin, a marine from Third Squad. It was Dutch.
(47:15):
Duchess portrait was lying right there on my desk, next
in line for the scanner. I stared at it in disbelief.
I couldn't stop thinking about how much he'd been looking
forward to getting out, how he planned to go back
to school and move on with his life, hold up
(47:38):
in some leafy college town, to follow the trail of
his curiosity wherever it led, never having to sweep for
I E. D S. Sleep, and not have to worry
about anything. Dutch was so close to getting out of Sangin.
He would have been home in a couple of weeks,
back on leave with his family in Asheville. When I
(48:00):
go back. I'll tell him the good stuff, what we've done,
the friends I've made, what I've done with my friends.
It was Dutch and his friends who were on my
mind that night in Charlottesville. When I was walking past
all those safe and happy people smiling over their expensive cocktails.
(48:20):
I thought about how devastated they must have been to
lose him yet another dead friend, and I could imagine
how they might feel. The list of my friends who
died in the wars in the Rock and Afghanistan kept
getting longer, and I wasn't sure I could handle anymore death.
After Dutch. I was also starting to feel like my
(48:42):
own luck was running out. The fact that I still
have my legs and that my mind and my heart
were still more or less intact. It felt like something
I shouldn't take for granted. I began to tell myself
that it was okay to choose life, so I did.
I never went back to the war, but the feeling
(49:03):
that I abandoned something has always tortured me, like I
walked away from the most important mission I ever had.
It's been ten years and now I know that the
rage I felt that night was masking something deeper. My
profound grief, grief that's heavier now than ever before. Grief
(49:28):
for the dead and for the ruined lives, and over
the new nightmare that's just beginning in Afghanistan. It may
seem like we're right back where we started twenty years ago,
but that's forgetting the mountain of tragedy between the book ends.
For the US, the war at Afghanistan came at a
financial cost of over two trillion dollars, but that's not
(49:50):
the cost that keeps me up at night. I think
about the hundred thousand Afghans who died in the fighting,
and the millions who were forced to flee their homes.
And I think about the tens of thousands of American
troops who came home with physical or psychological wounds, and
the nearly undred who died. I think about Dutch. Earlier
(50:18):
this year, with the tenth anniversary of Dutchess death and
the final withdrawal from Afghanistan looming, I started thinking a
lot about that mission. I abandoned the mission to use
my own experience as a veteran to help Americans understand
what it was like on the front lines of a
forgotten war. I decided it was finally time to go back,
(50:40):
not to Afghanistan, but to the Squad, Third Squad. Their
story is here now, and the war isn't over for them.
It's woven into their lives back home, and for some
of them and their families, the war left holes that
will never be filled. I recently found out the Dutch
(51:00):
had a big plan for when he got home from Sanging.
He was going to ride his motorcycle all the way
from Camp Pendleton on the Pacific coast clear across the
country to his mom's house in North Carolina. I decided
to make the journey that Dutch never got to. I
made a plan to drive from coast to coast and
to track down Dutchess friends along the way, the Third
Squad Marines, to find out what became of them since
(51:23):
we said goodbye and sang it, to talk about the
war and coming home, and to ask what was it
all for? And where do we go from here? Coming
up on Third Squad, I was in my own little world.
(51:43):
But once I felt her embrace, and just like it's
slowly awoken, you know the way I was before I left.
If we don't talk about the killing, we're not talking
about war. So to the extent that you're willing to
talk about it, I would like to go there with
you if you're able to killing Okay, physically, he was home.
(52:06):
I don't think it was really until you know, second
weekning back woke up in the middle of the night
getting choked, and so I was drinking a lot. I
drink a lot, smoke a lot, and when you know,
I just felt like I gave up, or actually I
did give up. It's like, let's just put it all
(52:30):
the way now, let's just put it all away. I
almost want to make a sign it says, do not enlist,
do not enlist? Do you have a chance to die?
I do not believe what they say. They are liars.
I don't want to be a fucking dick, but you're
not a dick. I'm just saying that. I what's gonna
fucking change, right? Maybe nothing? Probably nothing? But you know
(52:54):
what will change if I don't do it? Definitely nothing.
Third Squad is written and produced by Elliott Woods, Tommy Andres,
(53:17):
and Maria Byrne. It's an Heirloom Media production distributed by
iHeart Media, funding support from the National Endowment for the
Humanities and collaboration with the Center for Warren Society at
San Diego State University. Original music by Mondo Boys, editing
and sound design by John Ward. Fact checking by Ben Kalin.
(53:41):
Special thanks to Scott Carrier, Benjamin Bush, Caitlin Esh, Carrie Gracie,
Kevin Connolly, Lena Ferguson, and Nick Ward. If you'd like
to see my photographs from Sangin and from our road trip,
please visit third squad dot com. You can find me
on Instagram and Twitter at Elliott Woods.
Third Squad is a podcast about war. Every episode contains
strong language and descriptions of violence that may not be
suitable for all listeners. I remember this night, about ten
years ago. I was walking down this brick street in Charlottesville, Virginia,
(00:25):
where no cars are allowed, so there are big trees
where there used to be traffic, and there are tons
of bars and restaurants with outdoor seating. It was a
perfect summer night, and the whole place was packed with
beautiful young people out having a good time, people about
my age. Part of me wanted to grab a drink
(00:45):
and join them, but this much bigger part of me
wanted to flip over a table and scream, do you
have any fucking idea? There's a war going on? We
all know how the Afghanistan war ends. Now I've concluded
that it's time to end America's longest war. It's time
(01:05):
for American troops to come home. The Afghan government and
security forces collapsed under a Taliban van. The pandemonium outside
Kabbal airports of Taliban fighters have flooded the capitol. Afghan
officials troops have surrendered Bodroom Air Base to the Taliban.
We just learned that the presidential palace was officially handed
(01:26):
over the Taliban presidents maybe former president now as Traf
Ghani leaves town Taliban fighters behind the desk of the
presidential Palace. I did not, nor did anyone else, see
a collapse of an army that size in eleven days.
Seeing the images of Afghan's hugging the landing gear of
an Air Force C seventeen as it lifted off from Kabul,
(01:47):
it's impossible not to remember the Americans plummeting from the
burning towers almost exactly twenty years earlier, and you can
see the two towers a huge exposure out rating to
pray on all of us get out of the m
and for a lot of people, these images are going
to be the gruesome book ends to America's longest war.
(02:07):
But me, I'm stuck between the book ends. I'm Elliott Woods.
I'm a veteran and a journalist. And there's this one
MBD I did back in two thousand eleven that I
can't stop thinking about. In a part of Afghanistan called Sangin,
with the squad of strung out marines who lived in
mud brick buildings surrounded by barriers, filled with dirt and rocks.
(02:30):
It was my fourth MBD in Afghanistan in two years,
and I didn't know it at the time, but it
would also be my last, and I could never have
known that I was documenting the final days of one
of those Marines. This is the story of that marine
and his squad, Third Squad, Episode one, Keep Pushing. I
(02:56):
landed and sang in on a V twenty two Osprey
and July two thousand eleven, took an armored gun truck
out to a dusty outpost. That's where I met the
twelve Marines of Third Squad for the first time. My
name is Jeffrey Lopez. Got the catch, We take off.
Brian Sheer, Michael Minor, Taylor Moody, Emmanuel Mendoza, Michael Joseph Dutcher.
(03:22):
They were officially Third Squad, first Platoon, Blackfoot Company from
the first Battalion, Fifth Marines, or one five for short.
They were infantry, the riflemen and machine gunners known in
the core as grunts, and their home base was Camp Pendleton, California,
but they came from all over the United States, Asia,
in California, California and Repid City, South Dakota, North Carolina, Watertown,
(03:47):
New York, Missical, Texas, Home Park, Illinois, Asheville, North Carolina.
Most of them were fresh out of high school, and
I could hardly be leave how young they looked. They
could be sitting in the street that right here, just
waiting for us fucking push out of the opening book
(04:08):
unless you just do the comes over. They were at war,
but they still acted like kids. Sometimes when the guy
is running to the left building left the building seven,
So you're all angry and stuff, do you know, hug No,
I'm going in fucking patient. You're making You're making my
combat recording sound really immature. This is supposed to be war. Guys.
(04:32):
I brought an old film camera with me to take
their portraits, and I also brought an audio recorder, and
whenever we had a break between patrols and sleeping I
try to pull one of them aside for a sit
down interview in one of those stuffy mud brick rooms,
which wasn't always easy. My name is h and Matthew Fort,
and I was born Stone. So from this point forward,
(04:55):
if you guys are gonna stay in here, and you
should make as little noise as possible, Okay, said no?
Bell girl, no farting? Can you handle that? Okay? They
were bone tired and they didn't always know quite what
to make of me or my questions. But they were cool.
(05:17):
I guess I was a welcome diversion. Was fun. Yeah,
it's it's pretty fun. It's kind of fun where it
really wasted one night and you do a bunch of
stupid ship it's fun to talk about. Firefights are fun.
I enjoy firefights. You drop bombs on people and kill
bad man. That's that's what we're here for. Still, it
(05:39):
didn't take me long to see that the excitement barely
covered up the dread. If you could describe saying it
in a couple of sentences, what would you say, Probably
one of the worst places on earth right now. I
could hear the stress and exhaustion in their voices. They
were far from home and in full blown survival mode,
and all they had was each other. Everything you do
(06:01):
out here is fair, fella, Marines in yourself. I love
my Marines. Those are my boys, and I just don't
want anything to happen to them. I want to keep
them as safe as I possibly can. And what I'd
like to consider the most probably one of the most
dangerous place on Earth. Sang In is a rural district
in southern Afghanistan's Helmand Province, which shares its name with
(06:23):
a wide river that forms way up in the Hindu
Kush Mountains. Most of Helmand is a scorched waste land,
but the river cuts a sliver of green from north
to south across the desert. It's a lifeline to Sangon's farmers,
whose main cash crop is poppy, the key ingredient in heroin.
And when Third Squad first showed up and sang In,
the scenery kind of blew their minds. Everybody thinks, you know,
(06:46):
when they think of Ghanistan, they think the Middle East.
They think of some big, giant, hot desert. But like
it's not like that. You wouldn't expect how green it
is when you get out here. It's amazing that you
see flowers blooming everywhere, big fields of green crops and
grass and trees. The reads an hour twelve ft tall,
and there's bamboo that's even duller than that. Like you
(07:06):
just walked across open, huge fields like you would see,
Like been to France before, so those huge open fields
they have there. It's kind of like take that the
swampy ship and mix it together, and yet saying in
Afghanistan it looks like a beautiful country. But as far
as stepping out the wire with all your gears, shitty
o you cash right? Yeah, you can see whatever you
(07:27):
want to ask. That's about it. I can't really explain.
It's all you don't want to be. The situation in
Sangin was terrible. Hundreds of British, Afghan and American troops
have been killed and wounded. The war was in its
tenth year, and what had begun is a straightforward mission
(07:48):
to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden and members
of al Qaeda. After nine eleven had morphed into a
complicated nation building effort in a raging battle against the Taliban.
We'll get into why that shift happened later in the series.
For now, you just need to know that at this
particular moment, Afghanistan was spiraling out of control, and President
Barack Obama had deployed tens of thousands of extra troops
(08:10):
in a bid to turn the war around. The situation
in Afghanistan has deteriorate. This phase of the war became
known as the Afghanistan Surge and third Squad deployed at
its peak, and as Commander in Chief, I have determined
that it is in our vital national interest to send
an additional thirty thousand US troops to Afghanistan. Third Squad
(08:33):
was tasked with carrying out the surge strategy at whatever cost,
but the big picture was barely visible from their perspective.
And that's the perspective I went there to report on
the third Squad. Marines all had their own reasons for
joining the corps. So number one, why did join the
Marine Corps? I joined the Marines because the Marines are
(08:53):
the best. They're badass. This is private first class. Scott mccatchen,
a twenty year old college dropout for Northern California. 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 just wanted a party.
Didn't it care too much about school or think what
(09:17):
I could possibly lose if I were to just do
nothing but party. And sure enough I lost it. But
I fucking manned up and I joined the military. And
here I am saying in Afghanistan. Lance Corporal David Ortega,
twenty year old from southern California, came from a military family.
(09:37):
He was so nervous when he talked to me, his
voice trembled. I would just always look up to the
Marines and I was like, I'm gonna become one of
them someday. I'm gonna keep introducing you to the squad,
but don't worry about keeping track of all the names.
You'll get to know the guys throughout the series. Lance
Corporal Taylor Moody was also twenty years old. He was
from Upstate New York. He was rail Finn and his
(09:58):
hair was trimmed close on the sides, in line with
Marine Corps REGs. But he hadn't always looked like that
back in the States. When I was in high school,
I was just a little punk. I had a mohawk.
I was like a foot long, and I died it red.
I went to conserts all the time, and I used
to brag about how good I was at washing, and
(10:19):
that was pretty good. You know, I did my ship.
You know, washing is right, okay, you know I beat
the ships. Some guys in the mosh pit, but that's
That's not important to me anymore. The only thing right
now that matters to me he is getting home alive
with me. Guys, I can Corporal man Well Mendoza told
(10:39):
me he was a responsible kid who worked three jobs
during high school in the East Texas border town where
he grew up. He was twenty when I met him,
which means he was still in elementary school when eleven happened.
I'll never forget September eleven. I'll never forget what happened
in New York. And I'll never forget people, never hurt
people that died. I'll of my country. I'm a patriot
(11:01):
straight up, like even Mexican. I love I love America
because we had a lot of great things in our country.
I have such a great life back home. I got
my family, I had a good education, you know, so
I felt like I needed to pay that dead. The
youngest of the group was nineteen year old Lance Corporal
(11:23):
David rich Boalski from Wailua, Hawaii. I joined the Marine
Corps because I want to go off the island. Mission.
Accomplished mud hut, three ft thick walls of mud. Right now,
it's actually pretty dirty, just because I've been disgusting and
not cleaned it, and uh I got fleas because of
(11:43):
the fucking chickens that run around. The sweltering mud brick
compound where the squad lived was officially called Patrol based Fires,
but everyone just called it fires or PB fires. It
was home to a single platoon of Marines around arty guys,
plus the various people who supported them. The platoons three
(12:11):
squads took turns patrolling, resting, and pulling watch. Southern Afghanistan
was a furnace that July. The heat made my lips
crack and the dry air burned the inside of my
nose when I inhaled. Hygienically, it's there is none. You're
a constantly dirty. Twenty year old Lance Corporal Brian Shearer
was from Rapid City, South Dakota. He wanted to join
(12:33):
the Marines ever since he was a little kid, and
now here he was embracing the suck. You get really
bad transfer from being in uh water all day, and
then you stay in your socks and you can never
get your feet dry or clean. The guys bathed by
poking holes in water bottles and squeezing them over their
heads whenever there was time to rest. They sacked out
(12:54):
on cots and played video games or watch DVDs on
little personal players. When I they were all stoked because
they've just gotten lights, but there was still much to
be desired. The things I missed the most back in
the United States are definitely women, drinking good food, having
the luxury of electricity, running water all the time, just
(13:17):
simple ship going, taking a crap and a fucking toilet.
The flushes um come out here and you lose everything
and then you realize what you really had. Back in
the United States, food was something that guys talked about
a lot, so much that I'm surprised they weren't hiding
copies of bone appetite under their cots instead of nudy mags.
Pickens around the patrol base could be pretty slim. So
(13:40):
what do you eat? I don't know what you like
to what you what you like to eat, Well, it's
not what I like to eat. It's what I have
to eat. And most of the time it's it's just
like a kind of spaghettier, the thing of ramen Newles
heat it open the sun Somewhere. Twenty two year old
Lance Corporal Jeffrey Lopez was small but scrappy looking. He
(14:04):
craved the comfort food of the Jersey Shore where he
grew up. My Miss McDonald's Applebee's all you can eat crabs,
like the base ade buffet. The food at patrol Base
Fires was well, it's sure as funk, was not the
bay side buffet. I didn't notice it at first, but
the other Marines in my squad noticed. Since even other
(14:27):
even other squads noticed, I had lost a ship ton
of weight and you can see yourself that um extremely skinny.
And then I just kept losing more and more weight.
All I could do is think of food, and it's
that's still I do was. I think of food like
on patrol. Will take a quick break every now and
then I'll just be sitting there and thinking, God, I'm
(14:47):
so fucking hungry. It wasn't just the food from home
that they missed. I mean, none of us have seen
our families, and almost a year now none of us
have been back home. And almost a year now. I
told you. Third Squad had been an Afghanistan for four
months when I arrived, but they trained constantly during the
work up period leading up to the deployment, with almost
no downtime. Some of them had girlfriends, wives, even kids
(15:11):
waiting for them back in the States. They were homesick,
but it was more than that. They were worried they
might never see their families again. I'm really looking forward
to getting back home, being able to just relax with
the family and just not having to worry on a
day to day basis as to whether or not you're
gonna get hurt badly that day. So, I mean, civilians
(15:32):
don't wake up in the morning and say I'm gonna
lose my legs today or die today. For most of
third Squad, Sanging was their first deployment, and before they
got there they'd heard horror stories about what it was like.
Their predecessors at patrol based fires were from the third Battalion,
Fifth Marine Regiment or three five, also from Camp Pendleton.
(15:54):
Three five had a horrendous time and Sanging. Over their
seven months tour, twenty five of their marines died and
a hundred and eighty four were wounded. That's about one
out of every five marines and the battalion. It was
the worst casualty rate of any single unit in the
Afghanistan War up to that point. Many of those casualties
were caused by the Taliban's weapon of choice and sang
(16:16):
in the pressure plate improvised explosive device or i e D,
a homemade land mine that detonates when someone steps on it.
Mines and i e d s are ingenious, knowing that
you can step right next to one or sit right
with one between your legs, and you have no ideas
ever there until someone steps on it and dies. News
(16:40):
of three fives bloody tour spread through Camp Pendleton while
Third Squad was training to deploy. It was like every
day seemed like three five was taking casualties, especially Corman.
It seemed like they're losing Corman left and right. Corman
or U S Navy sailors who provide medical aid to
wounded Marines in combat. In the Army, they're called medics
Third Squads. Corman was twenty five year old hospitalman first
(17:03):
Class Matthew for It from the Chicago suburbs. The guys
called him Doc and he wore a few different hats
and also how I yelled part therapist, part fucking nurse,
part counselor for it was a little softer than the Marines,
with a round face and buzzed red hair. He told
me about the handoff with three five. When I got here,
(17:25):
only like two of the original Corman remained. Everybody else
had either have been like blown up or shot or something.
So yeah, when I got here, I was paranoid as hell,
and for it wasn't the only one. Twenty year old
Lance Corporal John Bollinger from Cheyenne, Wyoming had also prepared
himself for the worst. When we first were coming, I
(17:47):
was honestly expecting, like you couldn't you couldn't move without
hitting ninety and all their wear were Taliban everywhere and
everyone's you know, getting shot and blown up. That was
that was my expectation. Was fucking it was going to
be popping off. But when Third Squad got to sang
In and settled into their new home and patrol based fires,
everything was weirdly calm. For the first two months sanging
(18:11):
I didn't really meet my expectations at all, Like we
were just basically just patrolling for the ship of it,
Like nothing happened for the first two months. There was
no fire, there was no shooting or anything. It was
just start up walking around like we owned the place.
That's Taylor Moody again, the mosh pitt Menace telling me
what it was like when the squad first started going
(18:32):
out on patrol. When we first got here, the people
wouldn't even come out to us because the previous unit
was pretty rough on him. Then we started doing the
COIN operations and just talking with the people, you know,
getting to know what was going on, asking him questions,
looking for the enemy so we can exploit what they're
doing against him. Point that Acrony and Moody just used
(18:57):
stands for counterinsurgency. The basic idea of COIN is to
drive a wedge between insurgents and the civilian population by
delivering humanitarian aid things like new roads, medicine, and schools,
basically trying to buy the local people's love so they'll
reject the insurgency, in this case, the Taliban and support
the legitimate government instead. Coin is supposed to be more
(19:21):
about protecting the people than killing the enemy. Back in
the Vietnam War, they called it winning hearts and minds.
Sounds good in theory, but during the surge in Afghanistan,
it was young frontline troops like Third Squad who carried
out most of the work, and they didn't really have
the training or the resources to do it. They were grunts,
(19:42):
not diplomats. Are typical days, you know, wake up very early,
probably earlier than the average American. Trap on a flak
that weighs thirty pounds because it's got bulletproof plates in it.
On top of that, put a pack on your back.
You have rounds that weigh a law. You have a rifle.
I carry my rocket long, sure, the weigh thirty pounds,
So I carry a lot of weight. Patrol all day, walking,
(20:04):
walking through creeks, mud canals, water rivers, tall grass, corn fields,
and it just gets really tiring carrying all that weight
and body armor, weapons and ammunition. Gave them a firepower
advantage over the lightly armed Taliban, but it beat the
ship out of their bodies. A twenty year old marine
can look like he's thirty maybe not not maybe maybe
(20:27):
not in facial features, and like some people, some of
us can't grow full beards and stuff. But our knees
will be so jam packed and the carloads to be
ripped up in our feet will be callous, like I
don't know, like some dogs feed or something like the
little paths or whatever. Those grueling foot patrols were third squads,
(20:50):
only real opportunity to talk to the local people, one
of the most critical elements of counterinsurgency. But the Taliban
were out there too, hiding in the green fields and
tree lines surrounding PEP fires, waiting to ambush the Marines.
Sometimes the enemy fighters and lookouts would hide in plain sight.
Dressing him up to match the population is like crazy
(21:13):
smart because you don't know who they are, and they
could be watching any point. They could be shaking your
hand at any point. My first afternoon at PB fires,
I went out on patrol with third Squad in their
platoon commander. Almost as soon as we left the compound gate,
we were hip deep in a canal. The cool water
(21:33):
felt good in the heat, but as soon as I
climbed out, I was conscious of every step. There was
a marine at the front of the patrol with the
metal detector sweeping for I U d S, and another
one behind him marking the cleared path with a can
of blue spray talk. I stayed glued to those blue streaks.
(21:54):
Eventually the patrol stopped to talk to a farmer who
had knee high corn in his fields and a few
cows tethered by nose ranks. Traffic to start right now,
getting a lot of goodents all over. They were trying
to gather information about the Taliban. The tree brought us.
They are living tour, yeah and pish at the end
(22:14):
of there is a compound. The end of the compounds,
they are living. The man told them through an interpreter
that the Marines were not the only ones visiting his
home coming, but the ninth Taliman. Okay, so the night
to Taliban com It was risky for the man to
talk to the Marines. Anyone caught helping the Americans could
be punished by the Taliban. The Talibans not two people.
(22:38):
Don't there. The longer the squad stayed, the more likely
they'd be spotted by the enemy. They were walking the
fine line between doing their jobs and putting people in danger.
They hold him, don't him come back here, because we're
talking to this guy, and if this guy gets same
with someone, he's gonna get in trouble. To stop that kid.
Don't let him back here yet, We'll come to him.
It was a lot of responsibility for the Marines, but
(22:59):
the I E. D. S that had devastated the previous battalion,
we're still out there. And they did more than damage flesh.
They severely inhibited the Marines movement, making it almost impossible
to do counterinsurgency. They had to find them. Then we
solved the two Taliban out here where they planted nineties
(23:19):
today we saw two of them in the tree line.
And that's sometimes the intelligence gathering paid off Roger and
we cannot be break a bone. We found a secondary
about ten ms to the southwest of the first one
we found. As we're pushing back, they saw it. They
(23:45):
found a cluster of I E. D s and detonated
them safely. Oh my god, goddamn, I'm glad I didn't
go off. It was a small victory in the bigger war.
Out on patrol, everyone in the squad looked more or
less the same. They all wore desert camouflage uniforms and
(24:06):
kevlar helmets and wrap around sunglasses, and they wore body
armor weighed down by ammunition pouches and first aid kits
and water. But each person had a slightly different job.
The radio operator maintained colms with the patrol base, and
then there were the riflemen and the machine gunners. The
assaultment carried things like rocket launchers and the corman cared
(24:27):
for the wounded. Then there was the combat engineer, the
one who walked up front with the metal detector to
scan the path for i e d s. This job
was called sweeper and it was one of the most
dangerous jobs in the entire war. Those guys, you know
they're gonna get Like if you sweep, you're gonna get
hit eventually, Like you don't want to get hit, but
there's a good chance to get hit. On patrol, everybody
(24:51):
walked single file behind the sweeper, following his exact path.
He moved real slow. You pretty much moved with the sweeper.
Space can't any faster than a corporal. Michael Miner from Seagrove,
North Carolina, was the oldest member of third Squad. He
had two deployments to a Rock under his belt before
sang in. Miner told me the Taliban didn't just wait
(25:12):
around for the Marines to step on i e d s.
The hiding tree lines, white forest shoot as that way
they'll try to draw. Since I E d s. The
danger the Marines confronted outside the patrol base was extreme
and it came with a heavy dose of fear. So
how often do you think about your legs and your
feet every day. Tell me about that. You think about
(25:35):
it and you're walking around, You're stomping through all the
corn fields and the freaking weeds and the tree lines
and the canals, and you're just thinking, damn, that could
be an I d right there. Do you ever? I mean,
this is kind of weird question, but I'm only asking
this because when I've found out that I was going
to be coming to sang And several months ago, I
started thinking about it more and more and more. And
(25:57):
every time I go for a rounder, i go for
high creaking on my bike, I'd be looking on my
legs thinking I really like running, I really like biking,
I really like walking. I mean, do you ever imagine
what life would be like without legs? Yeah? I do
all the time, but right now we just make jokes
(26:18):
about it, you know, like you can you see it
all the time. You know, people lose their legs and
you have to help them out, and then you know,
you think about yours, and just like man, I can
just imagine going back to leather Necker, going to Germany
and getting surgery and then finally I'm all healed up
and they get my little tink tink legs. That's what
we call them, our little metal legs. We talk about jokes,
(26:41):
and you know, like I think smoothing be so much easier.
We just attached paddles to our little metal legs, you know,
and get those fucking those balanced legs. We see on
TV all the time that guys have just run a
little faster. You know. It's it's all about making jokes
out here. If you don't make jokes, and it's just
(27:02):
gonna be gon'll be too grim. Yeah, it wouldn't be
any happiness there. Third squads first months at pb fires
were unusually happy. It was calm enough that the Marines
started to wonder if they had missed the war. But
(27:25):
this was the cruelest of deceptions, and the calm was
shattered one day in June. We'll be back after the break.
(27:51):
We were here for three months, and I was just like, oh,
we're good, we're getting out of here. This place is
done well, three five security, We're golden. And then I
was sitting in this exact same room and then all
of a sudden we heard a big boom and then
my squad leader started as he comes running in and
(28:11):
says one two got hit. It was June nine, two eleven.
David Ortega and the rest of Third Squad were at
Pep Fires when they got the news that another squad,
Second Squad, had suffered a casualty. Lance Corporal Nicholas O'Brien
was a rifleman, but he'd been filling in for the
(28:32):
engineer that day. He was sweeping for I. E. D.
S when he stepped on one and was killed, and
I was just like fuck. I didn't even know what
to think. O'Brien may not have been in Third Squad,
but that didn't matter. He was part of first Platoon,
one of the forty odd guys they had trained with
(28:53):
at Camp Pendleton and had been living with at Peb
Fires for months, and the whole platoon was tight. O'Brian
was someone that anybody could be friends with him best
personality in the world, always making people laugh, and he
was just a great person to be around, and he
was to always have your back no matter what. Every
day I noticed his absence, it's hard to see that
(29:15):
he's gone. O'Brien had a reputation around the patrol base
for being generous with his care packages. He was also
known for his outspoken North Carolina pride. He just turned
twenty one, and his death rattled the younger guys who
were on their first deployment. Even for Michael Miner, who
had been to combat before, it was a wake up call.
(29:37):
You've been around. Yeah, you're years old, so you're fucking
granddad compared to these kids. It's basically what I'm trying
to say. So, what's it like seeing some of these,
you know, young kids go through this when you have
as much experience as you do already. I came to
this already knowing what to expect a little bit. These
guys had no idea Minor and O'Brien had bonded over
their shared North Carolina roots. He death forced Minor to
(30:01):
remember a lesson he learned back in a Rock Get close,
but not too close the way you have no emotional
attachments to anybody around because you never know when their
time is so filling. Wise, don't meant to come off
as a cold hearted montherfucker, because I really don't see
the difference. It would be wildly wrong to say that
(30:32):
Third Squad hadn't taken the threat and sang in seriously
before O'Brien died They all knew how badly three five
had gotten hammered, and there had been casualties elsewhere and
sang and since they arrived, but they weren't close to
those guys O'Brien. Though O'Brien was their brother. His death
made ship very real, but it wasn't like they could
(30:54):
sit around and dwell on it. We just one of
those things. It's got to keep going no matter what.
A tway maybe bad, but just keep pushing, keep pushing.
It was the only option. Three days after O'Brien died,
third Squad headed out from PB fires to help another platoon,
third Platoon from a nearby patrol base. They got the
(31:17):
Taliban held in a building and they were there for
over a day, just in a shootout with them, and
we were going up to re supply them. Everyone had
full packs, main packs of water and chow. We're going up.
They've been in contact pretty much all day and they're
obviously out because you get the firefly for that one.
You run our rounds and you get thirsty, and we
(31:38):
all started pushing up, pushing up. A few guys made
across the bridge. We're a crossing a bridge that we
crossed every day. We're just walking along everyone. It was
just a normal patrol. Everyone was just bullshitting and talking.
And we were about two outside of fires the only
blind spot from that post, and and uh, there's just
(32:06):
the idea went off and it was just a smoke cloud.
I was like in the back of which all when
we first heard the explosion. I saw this big ass, huge,
sixty ft mushroom cloud just shoved in the air. Mc
daniels struck the first I D. Lance Corporal Joshua McDaniels
was third squads combat engineer. He was up front sweeping
(32:27):
when he stepped on an I E D that launched
him straight up into the air. The blast hits several
of the other marines around him, including David rich Bolski.
It's about the ideas, maybe like fifteen ms away from that.
One just knocked me on my ass. As the dust cleared,
the deafening boom gave way to screams. It was the scariest,
(32:48):
scariest moment, as well as the worst moment in my life.
That's definitely the scariest moment. The squad scrambled to respond.
The first thing I did, I just spread towards the
front of the patrol. I got up. I started putting
out turn kids. The tourniquet is a belt that slips
around a limb and can be cranks super tight to
(33:09):
stop arterial bleeding, a common cause of death after an
I e D strike. Everyone carried tourniquets on patrol, not
just the Corman ground up over there, and I started
trying to work on him, but he was straight up
blown in half. I used probably about just gone, like
his whole half of his body was gone. So it
(33:30):
wasn't really much places to put a turn kit. So
I just started talking to him because he was screaming
and uh, how was like holding his hand. They tell
him I was gonna be okay, And that's what Lance
Corporal Eliott stepped on the second I D. In the chaos,
Lance Corporal Cody Elliott and machine gunner who floated between squads,
(33:51):
stepped on another I E D. The blast took down
everyone around him, including rich Bollski. I blacked out after that.
The Corman dock for it, also got hit as he
was rushing up to treat casualties of the first id D.
When I got blown up, I stumbled for a little bit,
(34:14):
like like I lost my hearing for a couple of seconds,
I kind of felt straight to my knees. I ain't
black out, but I just kind of sat there confused
for a couple of semes, just wanting what the hell
was going on. When the dust cleared, they died. The
dude who was in from the Lance Corporate Elliott, I
just saw his entire face was just covered in blood.
First thing I did, I just looked down to make
(34:35):
sure I was still okay and make sure I still
have my legs and arms, and then I just went
straight to McDaniels. McDaniels was for its first real world casualty.
When I got to him, his legs were gone almost
at least the flesh round his legs were gone, almost
up to his waist pretty much like I would say,
six inches below his hip was like where it had stopped,
(34:56):
and everything else below that was just bone. I tried
getting the turni uets on him, even like the metom.
I had a little bit difficulty just trying to get
on because it was like slipping off his leg almost,
And I like I applied like three Turner kits on
his right leg and one metal one his left leg,
which had a little bit more flesh on it than
(35:17):
the other one. For it completed about a year of
specialized training to get ready for that moment, but no
amount of simulation could have fully prepared him. I was
just basically like constantly saying to myself, fuck my life,
over and over again. He worked frantically over the gaping
hole below McDaniel's waste. I just began stuffing it was
(35:38):
as much gauze and combat cause that I had, just
trying to get the bleeding stopped, but it wasn't working.
He had lost too much blood and he was starting
to go into unconsciousness and starting to lose a pulse.
For it stuck McDaniels with an EpiPen and the last
ditch effort to boost his heart rate, and then we
got him on the grid. Mc annuals still had a
(36:00):
pulse when the Marines loaded him onto a Metavac helicopter.
M Meanwhile, the walking wounded started picking themselves up off
the ground. When I came to, I was just laying
face down in the sand. It's like in a poll
of blood. Rich Volsky had been knocked hard by the
(36:21):
second I e d, so had Brian Sheer. There was
just nothing but smoke, and I I walked out of
the smoke, I saw that I still had all my limbs,
and I just it's just instinct. I just turned around
and ran right back in. And that's when I saw
rich Volsky laying there in the in the hole, and
(36:44):
I turned him over and he was bleeding from the
side of his face, and I checked to make sure
he wasn't bleeding underneath his flak to where I could
see Sheer Lance Corporal Sheer rolled me over and he has, hey, man,
you got all your limbs, got your legs. I don't
know how you did it. I was like, you can
(37:04):
be okay, And I was like what, because like I
had a severe concussion. UM, I just got knocked straight
retarded and he started dragging me out. He was out
of it. He was really out of it, and I
didn't want him walking off or anything. So I grabbed
him and I pulled him back across the back, across
the bridge and got him back to UM got him
(37:28):
back to safety. I had a piece of shrapnel about
the size of a dime lodged in my temple, and
I had some more for just fragg and stuff in
my shoulder and pretty much the whole right side of
my body was like road rash. So I just fell
on his skateboard slid for about ten ft. My face
(37:50):
is just like a burger, like nasty burger. While all
this was going on, Mane Well Mendoza pulled security to
make sure no one tried to ambush them, but he
still caught glimpses of the carnage. I wasn't expecting the blood,
uh bones dangling everywhere. I wasn't expecting that. I was
(38:11):
hoping I wouldn't have to see that, but I did.
Two more I e d S went off before the
day was out, and the Marines found and safely destroyed
five more. To realize that the Taliban could plant nine
I e d S right under their noses, buried behind
a stand of trees, just two yards from the guard
posts of PB fires. It was a rude awakening. All told,
(38:37):
seventeen men got hit on June twelve. Three went home
with missing limbs and Joshua McDaniels, who they had put
on the metavact bird with a pulse. The guys found
out later he didn't make it. McDaniels had been captain
of his high school football team back in London, Ohio.
He liked to drive around in an old Mercedes Benz
(38:58):
blasting the star spang old banner. He was one when
he died, and he left behind a young widow. As
for the Taliban, they were just getting started. Then after
that we started getting hit, you know, I E d. S.
Fucking bollets started whizzing all over the place. That's when
we realized we didn't really own the place. We couldn't
(39:20):
just walk around like we're freaking invincible. Just three days later,
on June seven, more First Platoon Marines got blown up
in another multiple I e D. Mass casualty. The Marine
started calling it the Curse of June. We'll be back
(39:48):
after the break. The June curse happened before I arrived
(40:13):
in Sangin, so I never met O'Brien or McDaniels. In fact,
I never met a bunch of the Marines who had
been at peb fires before I got there. In July.
Close to half the guys who began the deployment had
been wounded by then, and a lot of them got
sent home for good to recover, including Sergeant Andrew Ski Mattelski,
third Squad's original squad leader. For the ones who were left,
(40:36):
there was only one option. Keep pushing. At first, it's
fucking it's like it just hurts. But then over time,
over time, you get over it, and you just learned
that you have to keep pushing, and you still start
to getting numbed everything. You know, someone gets hit and
it's just someone getting hit. You know, like if they survived,
(40:57):
they're going back to the States. If they're dead, at
least they're not here. The three mass casualty incidents of
the June Curse rendered First Platoon combat ineffective, too shorthanded
and thin on leadership to go into combat, so the
higher ups decided to pull First Platoon back to a
bigger base while they shuffled people around and waited for
(41:17):
fresh bodies from back home. When I got to Patrol
Base Fires in late July, the platoon was reinforced and
back in action, but the lineup was a little different.
Third Squad had two new faces. One of those new
Third Squad faces was Sergeant Jerich Fry, four year old
combat replacement from Irwin, Pennsylvania, who took over for the
(41:41):
critically injured Sergeant Ski as squad leader. If one person
in the team's week or in the squad's week, the
squad will fail. So everybody has to pull their own weight.
Everybody has to know their job, the job below them,
the job of o them. The other new face was
already pretty familiar to the squad, all right, So you're
(42:01):
on faith wonderful all right? So first, just what's your
full name? Michael Joseph Dutcher. Dutcher was originally in first Squad,
but he got transferred to third squad to boost their numbers.
Do you have a nickname in the squad? Dutch? You
could spot him from across the patrol base because of
his dorky standard issue glasses known in the military as
(42:24):
bcgs or birth control goggles. The first thing is why
did you join the Marine Corps? I honestly, I have
no idea anymore. There was something about Dutch that I
was drawn to as soon as we started talking. He
had the warm drawal of his native Ashville, and with
(42:45):
his thick glasses and overgrown buzz, he cut a generer
figure than the other Marines, and he often had a
wad of Frank's red hot buffalo wing flavored sunflower seeds
in his cheek. He passed around the bag to everyone
on patrol, including me. The you have to summon singing
in one sentence to somebody back home, how would you
describe it? I would definitely say keep your eyes out
(43:11):
and turn your ears up, because paying attention to everything
is the only thing you have out here to keep
you alive. Dutch was smart and curious in the ways
that made for a good counterinsurgency marine. He'd even learned
a bit of Pashto from the interpreters. What do you
think the Taliban are fighting for? They call themselves mugaden,
(43:32):
but they're not really that. A lot of them are
doing stuff that doesn't really describe the Muslim way of
life as I've learned about it and heard about it
from locals. Mden is the word for Muslim holy warriors.
They fight and kill whenever everyone else wouldn't. They do
things that Muslims shouldn't and wouldn't do. What's an example
(43:55):
of something that you think that Muslims shouldn't do according
to the rules with the Taliban do their whole murder
and intimidation campaign. They threatened locals and their own people,
who threatened other Muslims. They in place, I e. D
s that can kill children, and they're buying and selling
(44:19):
drugs that in the end killed mass quantities of people
and destroy families. On one patrol, I took photos of
Dutch using a handheld device to collect biometric data from
a middle aged man wearing a turban. The fingerprints, mug shots,
and Irish scans were checked against lists of known Taliban insurgents.
(44:43):
The man's kids looked on from a doorway with curious
smiles on their faces, but the man looked scared. To
have marines bristling with weapons stroll up to your house
and asked to scan your eyeballs had to be terrifying,
no matter how much they promised they were there to
help you. And I knew many locals wish nothing more
than for the foreign troops in the Afghan Army to
(45:05):
go away. Maybe then the fighting would have stopped. I
don't know how much of this went through Dutch's mind,
but he reminded me of myself before I was a journalist,
back when I was an Army National Guard combat engineer.
During my own deployment to a rock in two thousand four,
I learned a bit of Arabic from the interpreters and
(45:25):
tried to get to know the Iraqi soldiers. I remember
wishing I could go into town and order lunch, hang out,
shoot the ship with the locals, but it wasn't a
semester abroad, and it wasn't one for Dutch either, though
we did have plans to go to college. Eventually, are
you going to re enlist? Um? I get out and
(45:46):
you know June twelve, I'm not going to re enlist.
I'm probably gonna do a nine day early out program
and go back to college and get my teaching Newly,
since I've joined the Marine Corps, I have decided I did.
I want to follow my mom's footsteps and become a
teacher because I really like what she does. Right now,
I'm just trying to figure out what subject I want
(46:08):
to teach. In the short term, all you wanted to
do was kick back and relax. The thing I missed
most about civilian life in general is uh, definitely weekends
that I can't wait to go back sleeping and not
have to worry about anything. Unlike Third Squad, I could
(46:30):
return to regular life whenever I wanted. So when my
m bed was over, I packed up my camera gear
and my recorder and flew back to the States. I've
been home from sang In for a few weeks. When
the film from that old school camera came back from
the developer, I couldn't wait to see the portraits of
Third Squad. Scanning the negatives was painstaking, lee slow, line
(46:52):
by line, the marines faces unfurled across the monitor. That's
when a Twitter notification from the Department of Defense popped up.
I clicked on the link. A marine had been killed
in Sangin, a marine from Third Squad. It was Dutch.
(47:15):
Duchess portrait was lying right there on my desk, next
in line for the scanner. I stared at it in disbelief.
I couldn't stop thinking about how much he'd been looking
forward to getting out, how he planned to go back
to school and move on with his life, hold up
(47:38):
in some leafy college town, to follow the trail of
his curiosity wherever it led, never having to sweep for
I E. D S. Sleep, and not have to worry
about anything. Dutch was so close to getting out of Sangin.
He would have been home in a couple of weeks,
back on leave with his family in Asheville. When I
(48:00):
go back. I'll tell him the good stuff, what we've done,
the friends I've made, what I've done with my friends.
It was Dutch and his friends who were on my
mind that night in Charlottesville. When I was walking past
all those safe and happy people smiling over their expensive cocktails.
(48:20):
I thought about how devastated they must have been to
lose him yet another dead friend, and I could imagine
how they might feel. The list of my friends who
died in the wars in the Rock and Afghanistan kept
getting longer, and I wasn't sure I could handle anymore death.
After Dutch. I was also starting to feel like my
(48:42):
own luck was running out. The fact that I still
have my legs and that my mind and my heart
were still more or less intact. It felt like something
I shouldn't take for granted. I began to tell myself
that it was okay to choose life, so I did.
I never went back to the war, but the feeling
(49:03):
that I abandoned something has always tortured me, like I
walked away from the most important mission I ever had.
It's been ten years and now I know that the
rage I felt that night was masking something deeper. My
profound grief, grief that's heavier now than ever before. Grief
(49:28):
for the dead and for the ruined lives, and over
the new nightmare that's just beginning in Afghanistan. It may
seem like we're right back where we started twenty years ago,
but that's forgetting the mountain of tragedy between the book ends.
For the US, the war at Afghanistan came at a
financial cost of over two trillion dollars, but that's not
(49:50):
the cost that keeps me up at night. I think
about the hundred thousand Afghans who died in the fighting,
and the millions who were forced to flee their homes.
And I think about the tens of thousands of American
troops who came home with physical or psychological wounds, and
the nearly undred who died. I think about Dutch. Earlier
(50:18):
this year, with the tenth anniversary of Dutchess death and
the final withdrawal from Afghanistan looming, I started thinking a
lot about that mission. I abandoned the mission to use
my own experience as a veteran to help Americans understand
what it was like on the front lines of a
forgotten war. I decided it was finally time to go back,
(50:40):
not to Afghanistan, but to the Squad, Third Squad. Their
story is here now, and the war isn't over for them.
It's woven into their lives back home, and for some
of them and their families, the war left holes that
will never be filled. I recently found out the Dutch
(51:00):
had a big plan for when he got home from Sanging.
He was going to ride his motorcycle all the way
from Camp Pendleton on the Pacific coast clear across the
country to his mom's house in North Carolina. I decided
to make the journey that Dutch never got to. I
made a plan to drive from coast to coast and
to track down Dutchess friends along the way, the Third
Squad Marines, to find out what became of them since
(51:23):
we said goodbye and sang it, to talk about the
war and coming home, and to ask what was it
all for? And where do we go from here? Coming
up on Third Squad, I was in my own little world.
(51:43):
But once I felt her embrace, and just like it's
slowly awoken, you know the way I was before I left.
If we don't talk about the killing, we're not talking
about war. So to the extent that you're willing to
talk about it, I would like to go there with
you if you're able to killing Okay, physically, he was home.
(52:06):
I don't think it was really until you know, second
weekning back woke up in the middle of the night
getting choked, and so I was drinking a lot. I
drink a lot, smoke a lot, and when you know,
I just felt like I gave up, or actually I
did give up. It's like, let's just put it all
(52:30):
the way now, let's just put it all away. I
almost want to make a sign it says, do not enlist,
do not enlist? Do you have a chance to die?
I do not believe what they say. They are liars.
I don't want to be a fucking dick, but you're
not a dick. I'm just saying that. I what's gonna
fucking change, right? Maybe nothing? Probably nothing? But you know
(52:54):
what will change if I don't do it? Definitely nothing.
Third Squad is written and produced by Elliott Woods, Tommy Andres,
(53:17):
and Maria Byrne. It's an Heirloom Media production distributed by
iHeart Media, funding support from the National Endowment for the
Humanities and collaboration with the Center for Warren Society at
San Diego State University. Original music by Mondo Boys, editing
and sound design by John Ward. Fact checking by Ben Kalin.
(53:41):
Special thanks to Scott Carrier, Benjamin Bush, Caitlin Esh, Carrie Gracie,
Kevin Connolly, Lena Ferguson, and Nick Ward. If you'd like
to see my photographs from Sangin and from our road trip,
please visit third squad dot com. You can find me
on Instagram and Twitter at Elliott Woods.
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