41 | Vande Hei

Joining the Marines seemed as unlikely as it seemed natural for Casper Vande Hei. He was a small guy who always had something to prove. The thing is, no matter how much fight you have in you, or how much you think you have to prove, if you don’t find a way to keep your anger in check, eventually you’re going to burn out. Episode sponsors:Zip RecruiterHello FreshMyBookie

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
The zombie movies almost portrayed what youwere dealing with over in Falluja, because
all these guys were drugged up onPCP. If you're not putting them down
with headshots to you know, thetea box across the eyes, they're not
staying down. Joining the marine seemedas unlikely as it seemed natural for Casper
Vandy High. He was a smallguy who always had something to prove.

(00:26):
The thing is, no matter howmuch fight you have in you, or
how much you think you have toprove, if you don't find a way
to keep your anger in check,eventually you're going to burn out. I
was in the front, Magic wasbehind me, and I was about to
go into the door, and Magicgrab my jacket or my vest and pulls
me back. Nilss know you're carelesswhen you go in. So he steps

(00:48):
through and he took a forty fourmade him to the chest. What is
true bravery? What makes me hero? A hero? Tested by the worries
of what's happening at home thousands ofmiles away, and the reality of what
you're facing here and now, whenyour life is in danger every second and

(01:12):
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the smartest way to hire. Angerand disappointment always will find their way out
eventually, especially if you're a kidwith a chip on his shoulder anxious to
if you can hold your own nomatter what. From that perspective, finding
his way was always a pretty easydecision for Brad Vandy High. He just

(03:07):
looked for the path of greatest resistanceand followed that. I went to high
school at seventy eight pounds. Igraduated high school at ninety eight pounds.
Everyone always told me I was waytoo small to do anything, So that
kind of gave me that little boostof if you tell me I can't do
something, I'm going to do themost outrageous thing that I possibly can.

(03:27):
You start looking around, it's like, well, military careers pretty much the
hardest thing I could think of asfar as pushing my limits. I really
didn't have the ability to get intocollege right off the bat, so I
was pushing for the Marine Corps becausethat was about the hardest thing I could
think of at the time. Iactually went into the delayed entry program.
My parents had just signed for himbecause I was only seventeen at the time,

(03:50):
because I was already enlisted. Iwas sitting there actually wearing fatigues,
kind of in the mindset of,you know, getting ready to graduate and
go to boot camp. It wasright in the very beginning of school.
I was over in the library andI remember just kind of mozing around,
and all of a sudden, theystarted bringing in the TV sets, and
next thing you know, it wasjust like literally every single room had a

(04:14):
TV on and we were just inthere, glued to them. It's weird
because it seems so short of atime ago, and then you can think
back in it. I mean,it's it's been so long, but you
remember it so vividly, Like Imean, I remember being five feet away
from the TV, just glued toit, and I remember people saying,
they're going, dude, you're goinglike you're you're going there, You're you're

(04:35):
going to go fight. We didn'tknow what was going on, but I
knew for sure that, you know, I was getting prepped up to go
to war. I was definitely stillamped up. It kind of gave me
more of a dedicated goal. Istill had that urge to to serve my
country, still had that urge toto go and show that I had the

(04:56):
ability, even though you know,I was this tiny little rag doll of
a that you know, I couldput a foot forward and I could do
something, even though I was small. After the towers fell, vandy High
switched from the tech centered mos hisparents had approved of to infantry, which
caused a family rift that would takeyears to heal. His mother, who
had been ambivalent about the military careerfor her son before nine to eleven,

(05:18):
became staunchly against his going to fight. She attempted to get him removed from
the Marines, and when that didn'twork, she and his father cut ties
with the recalcilitant recruit, hoping thatthat would keep him from going to combat.
But vandy High was immovable and wasbound for MCRD San Diego as soon
as he graduated. He was determinedto become a Marine or to die trying,

(05:39):
which nearly was the case. Earlyon in boot camp, he fractured
a rib and came down with pneumonia, but decided to push through rather than
be recycled, which was just aswell because when he was given his eagle
globe and anchor. At the endof the crucible, the grueling final boot
camp test, he got to learnsomething he otherwise might not have. We
were all considered marines at this point. So we were walking back down and

(06:03):
I've got a pack on top ofthis fractured rib and as I'm coming back
down it, my drone instructor cameunderneath me and came up and picked up
underneath my arm and looks at meand goes, give me your rifle.
And one of the things you donot do you do not keep you over
your rifle. And I look athim and I'm like, absolutely not.

(06:26):
And he looks at me, goesgive me your fucking rifle. And I
look at him, and he reachesout and he takes my rifle, and
I gave him my rifle, andhe continues and he puts his arm under
my pack and he goes give meyour pack, and I'm like no,
He's like, give me your fuckingpack. And he put his arm under

(06:47):
my back and lifted up underneath mypack and he carried me down the hill
back down to camp, and hetook all the weight off my pack and
walked me down to the base ofthe Hill, after the Crucible, after
everything, after everything that you know, we went through, just becoming a
marine, learning how to become amarine, and being torn down, torn

(07:11):
apart, beaten down, you know, being treated like I can't really say,
we would treat like crap. Youknow, we were treated like kids
and then taught how to become men. And then at the very very end,
you're given this little chunk of metal, and then you were treated like
an equal. And not only wereyou treated like an equal, but they're

(07:34):
sitting here and they're treating you likea brother, and they're taking care of
you. And at that exact point, you're sitting here going, this is
what a marine is. We takecare of our own. No matter what
this man is hurting, I needto help him. He is my brother.
He is a marine, just likeme. And even though I'm sitting

(07:55):
here trying to break him down andmake him quit right now, the second
that he becomes one of us,I'll do anything to help him. Understanding
the full implications of what it meansto be a marine didn't remove his drive
to constantly prove himself, but itshowed him for sure that he was part
of something that he had earned hisplace and would be respected for his effort

(08:18):
as well as for his accomplishments.The price was that he would miss the
invasion. Instead of heading out tothe School of Infantry, Vandy High was
required to let his rib heel.By the time he was ready to be
deployed, his unit was already gone, so he was working as supports staff
and waiting for his opportunity to goand fight. Eventually he got it and
was bound for Iraq, going overthere as an augment. I mean,

(08:41):
you're sitting here because you know thatwe already took casualties, so you're replacing
all your casualties. Basically, partof you is sitting here going you know,
I missed part of it, Soyou're going to get feedback because you
weren't there for all of it.But you're getting there for the you know,
the aftermath or the second half ofit, or you know, the
next two of it. Are havingmuch is going to be left. You

(09:01):
already knew that you were going toget some flak because you weren't there for
one hundred percent of it, andwe did. You know, we got
there, and of course it waswell, you're not as good as everybody
else, So it wasn't that bigof a deal, but it was definitely
some issues with that. It wassmooth sailing to get there, and then
obviously you get there and you startgetting you know, spun up as far

(09:24):
as Okay, this is the area, this is the environment, this is
what's going on. You're kind ofyou're always behind the time as opposed to
the guys that are always there.And then my future deployments, you know,
we're always getting the augment, soyou're kind of you're always understanding how
it is for them to be comingin. Having to get up to speed
on your first combat deployment has doublethe pressure. On the one hand,

(09:48):
you want to live up to theexpectations the rest of your guys have on
you, but on the other you'renot really one hundred percent sure what they
are. Obviously you all have thesame training, but you never really know
how you or they are going toreact once the bullets start flying, that
is, until you experience it foryourself. Once you do, it puts

(10:09):
all that training and work into perspective. Gunshots going away from you, like
when you shoot a gun, itsounds completely different than a gunshot coming towards
you. I don't think I'll evermisinterpret a snap. It's undeniable when you're
getting shot at. So I thinkthe first time that I ever heard a
bullet past my head, I knewit instantly. As soon as the first

(10:33):
shot went off, it was rightthere of heading the game, let's do
this, start moving. The firsttime that happened it it was so surreal
because I mean, you're watching everybodymove, You train for this all the
time. We had never really workedwith these guys at all. So you're

(10:54):
sitting here and all of a sudden, you get these shots that come off
and everybody just starts flowing and moving, and you sit there and you think
about it, and it's like,okay, well we know what we're supposed
to do, but these guys arenew, Like I don't know, you
know this guy more than two threeweeks, and all of a sudden,
I expect him to know how I'mgoing to move, how I'm going to

(11:16):
shoot, how I'm going to respond, and every single thing just happens.
It just flows. It's almost likea dance, and everybody already knows exactly
how to move, how to flowwith it, what positions to go to.
It just flows with what you're doingand it's one of the probably the
coolest things to watch. It tookme like this half second just to look

(11:39):
down and everybody's already going as you'resitting here and you're you know, responding
back in. But to look aroundand see it was breathtaking as you're just
watching all the pieces just fall intoplace and then everyone's just moving into contact.
So knowing what's supposed to happen incontact and then seeing it actually happen

(12:03):
are two completely different things. Youknow, we watched ranges all the time,
we do ranges all the time,but actually seeing it under fire as
completely different. The Marines were guardinga medical facility in a Dwinea, and
for the most part, attacks wereinfrequent. They intercut their daily duties between
hiding from the heat and tanning init. Enemy contact was limited to random

(12:24):
pop shots and the occasional ied,but it didn't take long for the sense
of danger to fade a bit,except when it came to dealing with a
really unusual brand of sniper harassment.There was a one specific kid. Almost
every night he sat there and hewould shine our post. We'd sit there
and nobody had a clue of whereit was coming from. For it was

(12:46):
probably about a week and all ofa sudden, you just get this little
laser blast and you'd see the laserand you'd hit the ground. And he
tormented us for the longest time,and finally we sent out an another team
to go and try to circle aroundbehind it, and eventually we went up
and we pinpointed where the laser wascoming from. Winning up to the house,

(13:09):
went to the door, kicked thedoor open, and there was a
lady inside and brought an interpreter withus and said, all right, there's
a laser in here. Is itcoming from a weapon? You know.
They're like, no, no,we don't have a weapon in here,
Like, all right, where isit? And finally she went upstairs came
back down with this little laser pointer. We're like, all right, give
it here, we're done. Thisis over. So she whooped the tar

(13:31):
out of this kid out in themiddle of the street. I mean,
she beat him senseless. It wasquite entertaining. You're sitting like, all
right, let that be a lessonto you. Although there had been less
action than he had expected, VandyHigh already was beginning to see himself as
a career marine. He liked thecamaraderie and the meritocracy. He didn't mind

(13:52):
the hard work, and as heentered his early twenties, genuinely could imagine
a life of regular deployments and training. It made sense to him. He'd
made a bunch of good friends,including a contingent of black guys who dubbed
him Casper for his skin tone aswell as for his stealth. That name
would stick for the rest of hiscareer. As he packed up to go

(14:13):
home, he felt as if hehad all the time in the world to
do whatever he wanted, but asit turned out, what he really wanted
to do was to go back.The feelings of being able to go home
was great. I mean, youknew that it was coming. You started
preparing. You started being able towrite letters home to say, hey,
look, you know I'm coming back. You know when I get back,

(14:33):
you know we're going to do X, Y and Z. This is what
I want to do. I wantto be able to to plan this,
this and this, and you startedtrying to coordinate everything that you could possibly
do. And it's like, youknow, the as soon as I get
home, you know I want youto plan, you know, the biggest
burger for me, or you know, a steak and lobster dinner. But

(14:54):
you always had these these big,elaborate things that never came true because you
know, it was two out there. I didn't really have anything that was
I was coming back to the wholeconcept of coming back from me was just
a matter of getting back home andtrying to get back into normality here.
There was a lot of things that, you know, just from leaving here

(15:16):
to get back. I just losta girlfriend at the time from leaving,
so I was trying to get backhome to potentially try to maybe rekindle a
relationship or you know. So Igot back, I was still feuding with
my parents. So I checked inwith him once I got back home,
and I'd probably called him maybe amonth or two after I had gotten back

(15:39):
home, just to let him knowthat I was back home and that was
safe. But we really did nottalk much at this point. I did
have a good relationship with my sister, so me and my sister talked all
the time. So we got back, we went on post deployment leave,
and then as soon as we gotback from post apployment leave, we got
tasked out to start preparing for Felucia. In March two thousand and four,

(16:00):
four Blackwater contractors had been killed andtheir bodies strung up on a bridge outside
of Fallujah. Operation Vigilant Resolve wasconceived both in retaliation and as a way
of clearing insurgents from the city ofFallujah altogether. The attack failed, and
the US, Iraqis and British preparedto roll out Operation Phantom Fury and all

(16:21):
out attack aimed at driving insurgents fromthe city for good. Drying Hello Fresh
Meal Kits actually was my wife's idea. We try and cook it home most
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(16:44):
practically every night of the week,every week of the year. You get
to the point where you're essentially pickingout recipes at random and hoping for the
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off, and it did, butwe enjoyed it for more reasons than that.
When the box came we decided tolet our kids choose and prepare the

(17:06):
meals. My kids are older andhave some cooking experience, but following this
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ever had attempted before. So theygot to show off a little bit.
One of the dishes they chose wasa grilled cheese and veggie jumble from the
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(17:29):
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(17:52):
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(18:22):
High was stoked for his second deployment. He and the rest of his platoon
would participate in Operation Phantom Fury,aimed at completely pacifying the city of Fallujah.
After a first deployment that was ratherbland, he was ready to get
into the fight and to be init from the beginning. From the second
of the Marines landed and started fortifyingCamp Baharia. There was a different vibe

(18:44):
for the entire deployment. We evenhad people that were sunbathing up on the
rooftops the first deployment. You know, he'd go up there and we would
go and get sun tans up there. The nice thing about Fallujah was that
they went through and they actually contactedeverybody inside a fallution and said get out.
If you don't want to fight us, get out, and if you
want to fight us, get in. They encouraged everybody to come over that

(19:06):
wanted to fight a marine and wantedto take a shot at us, and
that was it. Like it was. It was a battleground totally different dynamics
from the first deployment to the seconddeployment. Going from a couple of pop
shots here and there when you don'tsee anybody too, you know, getting
mortared, when you know you're walkingto the bathroom and all of a sudden

(19:26):
you hear a whistle and you knowyou're diving for cover. Totally different type
of firefights. You can't defend yourselfagainst mortars, so we're we were sand
bagging all the rooftops, we weredigging out pits to make out bunkers.
We had UM a lot of hescoesthat came in UM, so totally different

(19:48):
type of protection that we had UMas opposed to what we had in Iraq
the first time. It was alot of you know, room clearing and
just jumping from house to house,and we brought everything with us. If
it moved, it died. Ifit didn't move, you blew it up
or burned it. So you tookaway the entire enemy's support, so that
if they tried to get behind youagain, there was nothing there for them

(20:11):
to use. I mean, itwas a clean sweep all the way through.
If you got into enemy contact.You could blow up the entire block
and then just keep moving. Thezombie movies almost portrayed what you were dealing
with over in Fluja, because allthese guys were drugged up on PCP.
If you're not putting them down withheadshots to you know, the t box
across the eyes, they're not stayingdown. You know. You'd have guys

(20:32):
that were coming up from downstairs,upstairs, and you'd shoot them, they'd
hit the ground, they'd get backup, You'd shoot them again, they'd
hit the ground, get back up. And we're not talking, you know,
one or two shots. You're talkingan entire squad unloading on them,
you know, getting hit twenty thirtytimes, all drugged out. As the
Marines moved from house to house,they were executing the battle planet every opportunity,

(20:53):
taking down buildings when they could,but clearing them room by room when
that wasn't possible. It's hard toimagine the chaos here. You are in
this alien place, running through thestreets and into houses that are often fortified
or booby trapped, with bullets flyingall the while. But beyond the danger
and the loss, there was thatsense that Vandy High had noticed the very

(21:14):
first time he took fire. Heand the rest of his platoon were well
coordinated and could trust one another tomove predictably. But of course not everyone
in the battle was part of theplatoon. We were in a building.
It was a compound, so you'vegot all these walls, probably ten feet
tall eight feet tall. Tank rolledup in. What they were going to

(21:36):
do is they were going to shootand put a hole into the wall so
that we can go through the holein the wall instead of the doorway,
because doorways can be booby trapped.They passed the word, hey, we're
gonna shoot, bangun firing. Thatallows us to all open up our mouths,
plug our ears. So we're sittinghere waiting and nothing happens. Hey

(21:56):
disregard we're moving. So we getto call of the radio. Hey go,
we get up. We all stackover on the doorway. We start
going. Next thing, you know, T. One hundred comes around the
corner. We've got one guy who'sabout to kick open the door across the
street into the next courtyard. There'shim, there's myself, and then there's
a guy right behind me. Andthen the tank goes off. I am

(22:19):
probably fifteen feet to the right ofthe main gun, and then about fifteen
feet in front of the main gun, the concussion the fireball lifts me up
off the ground. I'm in midstride, lifted me up off the ground and
set me about three feet to theright of me of where I was.
It felt like my entire inside wasjust pulled all the way apart like a

(22:41):
rubber band, and then just letgo and just it snapped right back together.
It was one of the worst mostpainful internal feelings that I think I've
ever felt. We allays just kindof collapsed at that point because we all
just were in a tremendous amount ofpain. The thing about Operation Phantom Fury
was it was completely relentless. TheMarines fought until they were out of light

(23:03):
or good options for hunkering down,and then they caught a couple of winks
before moving on for Vandy High.The simplicity of the plan of attack made
the days clear, if not easy. If it moved, it died.
If it didn't move, you blewit up or burned it. But the
plan only worked up to a point, and when things got ambiguous, they

(23:23):
got even more dangerous. They wereusing kids to lure us in because they
knew that we wouldn't kill kids.So they had sent a kid over and
he was twelve years old. Andas he came over, myself and my
best friend at the time, we'reup in the front. We were running

(23:45):
double point. We called back,told our lieutenant that he was up there.
We had authorization to shoot him atthe time, chose not too.
Joseph follow him instead. He wentinside of a building, so we followed
inside. We were told to doa soft clear, find the kid,
get him outside, So we wentinside, started clearing. We had weapons

(24:07):
down. Myself and Magic were infront. We started clearing, got up
to the stairs, started going upstairs. It was still a soft clear.
We got all the way up tothe top of the stairs. We did
the first set of doors on theright and came up to the second set
of doors. I was in thefront. Magic was behind me, and
I was about to go into thedoor, and Magic grab my jacket or

(24:27):
my vest and pulls me back.Mills, now you're careless when you go
in. So he steps up,he throws his leg up, acts like
he's about to walk in. Heputs his gun around the corner. He
reaches down, grabs a piece ofbrick, throws the brick in, simulates
it like a grenade. Nothing happens. He turns around. He's left handed,

(24:48):
so he steps through and he tooka forty four magnum too the chest.
It's the fact that they were waitingthat is so chilling. A squad
of marines outside, dozens more inthe streets below, rockets, tanks,
and bombs. Whomever fired that gunhad no illusions how it would end.
They just wanted to take at leastone marine with them. Vandy High set

(25:11):
to dragging his friend out of theroom. I had his vest, I
pulled him out. Trent Thomas hadmy vest, he pulled me back.
The gun shot was extremely deafening becausewe were all inside of the room.
My heart was just insanely pounding.We ended up pulling everybody out, and
our squad leader had run across.As we went to go clear, our

(25:33):
squad leader got caught on the otherside. So now we knew that there
was somebody inside that room, andwe still had to get our squald lead
back across. So we ended upthrowing incindiary grenades in there, lighting that
entire room up on fire. Gothim back across. Tanks came over and
blew out the supports, and thenwe pulled out to the other side.

(25:55):
As the tanks were blown up thesupports. We were up there and we
were shooting from the rooftop. Asthey were coming out. The kid led
us into the room. It wasa dad, somebody else the same age,
and then the kid was in there. The magic identified all three room
in there. At this point,everybody inside the room or inside that house

(26:17):
was hostile. And we heard targeton top of the roof and the kid
came out. I put two roundsinto his chest. I tried to stop,
and I squeezed the third trigger andput one right into his head.
And as soon as I did that, I heard the dump of a two
or three grenade launcher. That wasmagics because the forty four magnum stopped in

(26:40):
his vest. So he pulled outand he got up on the roof with
us, and he shot a grenadeand that grenade hit that kid in the
chest. There was a puff ofsmoke. That kid was gone, and
the tank fired one more time andthe entire building went down. And I
watched the entire thing through a fourby scope, and you can sit there
and you can shoot somebody as manytimes as you want. But when you

(27:02):
watch a puff of smoke kin kidat four power scope, I don't know.
There is so much that sets combatapart that it is almost not worth
remarking upon. But it does bearsaying that no matter what happens, there's
no stopping, there's no resting.Magic happened to survive, but if he

(27:22):
had been killed, they would havepressed on immediately. There's no taking stock,
there's no time for reflection. Beforethe dust even settled down the house,
Vandy High and the rest of thesquad were off again in support of
a team that was pinned down nearby. Everything happened all at once, all
the time, and it didn't stopuntil the city was cleared. So day

(27:45):
to day there you really didn't havetime. I mean, you're only getting
two to three hours of sleep andsome of that's broken even you're doing a
sixteen seventeen hour push, you know, from before the sun comes up to
you know, as long as youguys can possibly going me, you don't
have time to think. You know, there's there's absolutely no time to sit

(28:07):
there, and you get done andthat your your head hits whatever makeshift pillow
you created, and you're out,and then as soon as you close your
eyes, someone's waking you up forsomething. You know, Hey, wake
up, here's grenades, wake up, here's you know, you got firewatch?
Wake up, Hey, it's timeto go again. It's starting your
day at four o'clock in the morning, five o'clock in the morning, ending

(28:30):
you're clear eight o'clock, nine o'clockat night, and then pulling, you
know, an hour of firewatch,and then you still have to do round
counts, get resupplied. Um Itry to get a baby wipe, shower
in there, someplace eat, youknow, there's so much to do still,
and then try to sleep in there. And you do that every single

(28:52):
day until finally the clear is over, and then it starts getting stable and
you start getting you know, sixseven hours, just eight hours of sleep
again. With the mission complete,the Marines headed home, handing the city
to security forces and to the army. Vandy High was ready and happy to
be headed home, but if thepoll to return after his first tour was

(29:12):
significant, the poll after his secondwas nearly irresistible. So I'm still stationed
in San Diego A lot more excitedto get back home from this one had
some meaning to getting home to thisone had a girlfriend to come home too,
So I was excited about that.I had a little bit more purpose
and had a little bit more waitingfor me coming home. It was sweet,

(29:33):
it was nice. But on thesame note, we started trying to
do the math to figure out howwe could stay longer. You have deployment
dodgers, these guys that will literallytry to dodge deployments, so whenever they
hear of a deployment coming up,those switch units and they'll try to avoid
deployments. When we were coming back, they asked if anybody wanted to extend,

(29:55):
so we started trying to do themath. We're like, well,
if we extend and stay with this, that's going to be here. We
can stay here for another, youknow, four months, and then we'll
go back to our units. They'llbe swinging up to go and then we'll
only have to work up for likethree months. We've come back here.

(30:15):
We almost became addicted to the adrenaline, and then we were literally trying to
do the math to try to figureout how we could stay deployed for the
longest amount of time. Possible,instead of staying at home for the longest
amount of time possible, instead oftrying to avoid deployments, we were trying
to avoid home. We loved therush more than anything else. Came back

(30:37):
to leave again, and then wewere right back in the shoote to get
orders, and we drew Flujah again. On the face of it, it
should have been an easier deployment,and in some ways it would be.
Vandy Hi would head up a PSDsquad running personal security detail for big wigs
and members of the command who werein transition between control base. But as

(31:00):
it would turn out, the jobwas a lot more dangerous than it looked
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account to claim the bonus bet winget paid. Vandy High and the rest
of his platoon headed back to Fallujahto do personal security detail. The hope
was that running convoys between bases inand around Fallujah would be safer than going

(32:49):
house to house inside Fallujah. Butof course, in the wake of the
battle, scattered in surgeons still wereplanting IEDs and launching post attack assaults.
Are PSD unit became combat and effective. Our so our major got wounded.
Almost everybody on that one got injured. It was got to the point where

(33:09):
our PSD unit got completely disbanded,and then our weapons platoon, our CAP
platoon took over. It was definitelynot our best deployment for US. We
lost stassainar plower, and we lostmorow and mirrors, and there was a
patrol. I did not go on. Our platoons aren't had died. My

(33:30):
sling wasn't working when I had gottenthere, and he gave me his personal
sling off of his rifle. Heput his enforceling on that he was issued
and gave me his personal M sixteensling and goes here. You know,
make sure you give me this backwhenever we get out of the deployment.
I still have that personal M sixteensling that he gave me because he didn't

(33:52):
make it out of that deployment.You know, that man was like a
father to me. He treated melike a son, and it means a
lot when you lose somebody like that. But I wasn't there on that because
my vehicle was completely destroyed. Iwas gone out of the platoon now,
so I'm sitting back at the foband all of a sudden, the next
thing you know, somebody comes runningup to me and catches me before the

(34:15):
unit comes back in, and theytold me that he didn't make it.
And then it was like, Ithink it was the next day somebody came
out to me and they're like,yeah, you need to go clean that
truck out, and they try tomake me clean all the blood and brain
matter and everything from that hum vyAnd I've never hit somebody so hard.

(34:40):
When you see the leftover of whatthat causes, it's and Swiss cheese is
a perfect example of what military grademunitions can do to armored hum vies.
Something changed for Vandy High after thelong slog of a PSD to Interac,
and for the first time since ithad listed, he wasn't itching to go

(35:04):
back to combat. It wasn't justa relentless nature of the deployments, although
that was part of it. Itwas that he felt locked and loaded all
the time, and he knew hecouldn't maintain this operational tempo and still finish
out his career. I mean,I lost my religion in Flujah and then
after this one, like I lookedat my first round, I'm like I

(35:28):
can't do this, like I gottado something, and he goes, well,
have you ever heard of I andI? And I'm like, I
don't know what that is. Orhe hooked me up with orders down to
Texas to go to I and Iand I trained to reserve us down there.
But it was basically a two anda half year break for me to
go down and just train marines.That was my reset time. But then

(35:50):
you start looking at a lot ofthe other stuff. It kind of screwed
me too, because on I andI, you do all of the funeral
details. Every person who passes away, you know, at eighty years old,
one hundred years old, and getsmilitary honors. I'm out there doing
their sort of detail and doing theirtwenty one gun salute, which is a

(36:14):
great honor. But every single timeI'm doing it, I'm hearing all of
these, you know, memorial songsthat bring me right back to where I
was. And I'm sitting here doing, you know, a twenty one gun
salute, and here I am atsomebody's figure roll that you know, is
ninety years old, and I'm sittinghere balling like a little girl because all

(36:36):
I can think about is all theguys that I just lost funeral duty asside.
Vandy High returned to combat duty readyto go. He drew another PSD
assignment, this time in Afghanistan,but the years were already starting to take
their toll on his body, andthe violence he witnessed was starting to grab
a foothold as well. Right asour mine rollers about to hit it,

(36:59):
you can clear yearly see that there'sthis section that looks like it's been dug
up. You just hear this deafeningboom and immediately just goes dark. I
got knocked unconscious for it. Mydriver got knocked unconscious. My gunner stayed
conscious. I came back to consciousnessas the dust was almost completely settled.

(37:23):
It was a fifty pound I edit blew up our mind roller. So
this is my second explosion in aweek in Marsha. I got out.
I started crawling around the outside ofmy vehicle. I checked for damages.
They took the mine roller and thenthey hooked it up to the back of
my vehicle so that we could selfrecover. So you've got chains and you

(37:44):
hooked up the mine roller again.It's in pieces, so it's attached and
it's kind of swinging on the backright side of the truck. Like most
deployments that probably anybody's ever heard of, you always have the kids that run
by and they try to follow theconvoys, trying to get you to throw
free stuff out, you know,water, candy, food, whatever you
can. There was two little girlsand I think it was a baby boy

(38:08):
that started following my truck, andas they started trying to run by it,
they got right up next to myside, and then when they realized
that they weren't going to get anythingfrom me, they stopped. As they
stopped, they weren't looking, andthe mine roller was coming up behind.
The mine roller caught a bad bouncein the road and it snapped to the

(38:32):
side and it ran over all threeof them. We literally watched the blade
of the mine roller just take themcompletely over. So the sand is decently
soft, but those mine rollers areinsanely heavy. And as I saw the
kids completely stopped, I watched itin my mirror, and I know my

(38:52):
driver was watching it as well.I watched the mine roller just take them
out. We slammed on the brakes, threw open my door, I jumped
out. My corman is right behindme, he's in my second vehicle on
the passenger's side, so he jumpedout as well, and we both met
at the kids. The youngest wascompletely lifeless, was just frozen, and

(39:17):
the oldest just stood up like nothingever happened. But by the time we
had gotten there, we started tryingto take care of the kids, and
another local national just walked on up, picked up the baby from us,
took it from my corman and justwalked inside. Didn't say a word,
didn't do anything, just walked inside, and then somebody else came by,

(39:40):
picked up the other ones, andthey walked away. The girl was all
banged up. I am almost guaranteedthat the baby is dead. Not sure
of the condition of the next youngest, but they never let us do anything
to to try to help. Itwasn't long after that when Vandy Hides started

(40:04):
losing time. He would forget havingbeen in meetings he'd attended, and sometimes
he would yell and even punish hisguys for things they hadn't done couldn't have
done. When he started to addresshis concerns about his memory, lost a
laundry list of injuries that had occurredover the last several deployments, started stacking
up. The final diagnosis was thathe was no longer able to serve as

(40:25):
a marine. He fought the decisionvigorously, but it was one of the
first fights that he was destined tolose. Right from the outset. As
Vandy Hide prepared to re enter civilianlife, it started to become clear that
his issues were deeper than the damagedbody and a little bit of memory loss.
So even as I was getting out, I had a lot of anger

(40:46):
issues, And by anger, Ithink the most drastic thing that I had
to deal with. I was havingvisions that were just playing over and over
in my head of how could Ihurt somebody? And it wasn't something that
I would actually ever act on,but it was just thoughts of, you

(41:07):
know, how can I take thisobject and do damage to that person?
If I can take this paper clip, how many ways can I hurt somebody
with a paper clip? But itwas getting out of control, you know,
it was getting to a level thatI wasn't comfortable with anymore. So
I went and I spoke with somepeople from church that I was very comfortable

(41:28):
with, and they came with meto the Wounded Warrior Battalion and went in
on Monday, and on Wednesday Iwas off to go get treatment. So
I went to a thirty day inpatient for anger and PTSD. Those images
that were twenty four seven, everysingle minute of the day going through my

(41:52):
head of how can I hurt somebodyor how can I hurt something? How
can I damage something? Those havenot crept back back up. Once you're
there, it's so smooth, it'sso easy to do. You know,
you're there for a purpose, Youthere for a reason. And after having
all that hate, at the endof that treatment, at the end of
that thirty days, I had somebodyget up in my face and trying so

(42:15):
hard because it was his beginning daysand he was trying to pick a fight
with me, and I had aboutthree or four guys there. I looked
at him and I think I putmy hand on his shola. I'm like,
it's all right, Buddy'll be allright, you know, like you'll
make it through. And that wasit, Like, I mean, all
the all the hate, all theanger, everything, just it was gone.

(42:37):
There was no reason to be upsetanymore. And it's still true to
this day, like there's just there'sno reason to be angry Today, Casper
Vandy High lives in a military townwhere he trained service dogs and still has
lots of opportunities to connect with servicemembers. He set his anger aside,
but he's not set aside his drive. He understands now that he really doesn't

(43:01):
have to prove anything to anyone excepthimself, and as long as he remains
as tough as critic, that shouldbe enough. Next time on This is
War, I think that's where everythingjust really started getting messed up, because
we had we'd made a promise thatwhen we left we were coming back with
everybody, and we didn't, AndI can remember just being pissed off because

(43:23):
it's like, how dare we promisesomething that we can't keep