October 30, 2019 • 47 mins
There isn’t one factor that makes combat so transformative. Instead it is a combination of reactions. To external peril and internal aggression, to personal empathy in the face of the horrible, to your expectations in light of your experiences. For Nate Didier, a lot of the transformation came from seeing the world as it was and losing something of a sense of what it could be.Episode Sponsors:ZipRecruiterKeepsNorton 360 with LifeLock
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(00:04):
I was kind of pulled around andpull of security, make sure that nobody's
coming up behind us. And suddenlylike it just opens up, like the
sky just starts ripping open. There'sjust all this enemy fire and it was
just raining down right on top ofus. There isn't one factor that makes
combat so transformative. Instead, it'sa combination of reactions to external peril and
internal aggression, to personal empathy inthe face of the horrible, to your
(00:28):
expectations in the light of your ownexperience. For Nate Didier, a lot
of the transformation came from seeing theworld as it was and losing something of
a sense of what it could be. These forces would like try to just
bum rush closer and closer to us. So it's like these concentric circles of
fighters like working their way close tous, you know, as quickly as
(00:51):
possible. What is true bravery?What makes a hero a hero? Tested
by the worries of what's happening athome thousands of miles away and the reality
(01:12):
of what you're facing here and now, when your life is in danger every
second and it's either kill or bekilled. An original podcast from Incongruity Media.
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com slash this is war zip recruiterthe smartest way to hire? Did her
put off joining the military so thathe could go to college. Many of
the men in his family had served, and his father advised him that he'd
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be happier getting a degree and goingin as an officer. It was advice
his father repeated emphatically the evening ofnine to eleven, as did your wade
the pros and cons of dropping outof college and enlisting. The father understood
that significant life changes weren't the bestcircumstances under which to enlist. It was
a lesson that the sun had yetto learn. It was actually a girl
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I meant in one of my classes, and we started hanging out a little
bit more, and before noon wewere dating. And about a year later,
so maybe a little bit longer,actually proposed, and we were engaged
not quite a year. About sixmonths before our wedding. She was finishing
up her education degree and she wasgoing to do her last student teaching.
(03:53):
I was right before Christmas, Sowe had an apartment together, and we're
gonna have dinner, and then shewas going to go home for miss and
then started her student teaching down there, and she went to lay down for
a nap, woke up, saidthat she was just going to head down
to where she lived, and Inever saw her again. Got a phone
call two days before Christmas, andshe just said that it's something that she
(04:15):
she just didn't feel right going forwardwith, and that was it. Never
saw her again, never heard why. And yeah, kind of like an
emotional state, you know, Ijust kind of thought of, like,
you know, hell, I justplanned my life out for the next however
long and put a lot of thingsthat I wanted to do on hold.
And it's kind of when I startedlooking back on what I did truly want
in life and had that kind ofcome to Jesus moment that if I want
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to be in the military, nowis absolute best time to make it happen.
Both my parents had seen what warhas done to others. They knew
what that cost was. I havetwo uncles that served in Vietnam, and
both of them had a very hardtime coming home. And we were,
you know, as two thousand andfive, begin two thousand and six,
so we're you know, Iraq andand really starting to heat up by that
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point, we were still in Afghanistan, and both of them were concerned,
but they knew that, you know, I was an adult. I was
making my own decision, and theyalways knew that it was something I wanted
to do that so I was.They were very supportive. After having put
service off to develop a relationship thatdematerialized, Didier resolve to at least give
the military a chance. He stillwas barely in his mid twenties and it
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lected to join the National Guard,having spent some time in the workforce.
The discipline wasn't an issue and thephysicality didn't appear to be at first,
but he fractured his ankle early onand worried about being recycled. Fighting through
the discomfort and the occasional backslide preparedDidier for combat better than he knew it
would at the time. It alsomade the final test that much sweeter.
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So we went through our nine weeksof basic training and we had like our
two weeks of our advanced individual training, and the culmination of that event the
last week is you spend the weekout in the field and you live in
a hole in the ground, andyou pull security and you run missions and
you you're basically war game and you'reputting all of your training and everything into
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like a field training exercise an ftxR, and at the very last day
you break everything down, you packeverything up, and then you rock march
all the way back to the mainbase there or Sandhill. So we're marching
through the night at the coolest time, and it's probably still i know,
in the seventies or something at night, still really humid, and everybody's just
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beat down and tired and exhausted.Down at forth Bending, they have a
place called Honor Hill. So asyou finish up that last march, you
you walk up this hill and asyou crest the top of the hill,
they have these giant gates and asign over the top says something like,
um, the finest warriors of theworld has ever seen have gone through these
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gates. And they open up thesedoors and you walk in. They have
these giant palette bonfires, and it'severybody breaks out their canteen and they got
this big jug of grog. It'slike a mix of all kinds of power
aids and all that kind of stuff. Unfortunately there's no alcohol. That had
been awesome. Everybody takes a bigscoop of it. And then you go
out and you say, like yoursoldiers creed and your your infantry creed,
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and then they they pin your covetedcrossed rifles on you. That signifies it
that you have now joined the brotherhoodof the infantry. You've completed your task.
So being able to complete that,like I said, you know,
I had injured my ankle pretty severely, and that was a sign that it's
over and I've made it. Andeverything that I've worked hard for and everything
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I've you know, bled for,and all the pain and everything like that,
has finally been achieved. This iswhat i came here to do.
And now I'm part of that infantrybrotherhood. I've I've earned those crossed rifles.
By two thousand and six, theNational Guard was deploying to more than
just Iraq, in Afghanistan. Didierfound himself on a peacekeeping mission in Kosovo.
He'd begun dating April, the womanhe would eventually marry, and proposed
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pretty much as soon as he gotback from the deployment, which worked out
well because by the time they weremarried, he knew he was headed to
Afghanistan. So in the National Guardit never fails. If you have something
that you're going to plan for nextyear, it will feel fall on a
day that you cannot attended. Wegot engaged and we set a date for
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the next year, and as itturns out, our wedding date happened to
be on a drill weekend. So, you know, all my buddies and
stuff, they weren't able to come. They were already new that we were
ratching up for Afghanistan, so wewere having much bigger drill weekends and stuff
like that. So as we hadthe rehearsal dinner, all the families there
and stuff like that. We hadactually pulled up in front of the house
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after that when my phone rang andit was my platoon sergeant calling me.
He just said, are you guysknowing the thing? Are you home?
In his april there, and Itold him yes. So he's like,
okay, I have to read thisto you. I'm gonna read it word
for word and just act like we'rejust wishing you congratulations, and we you
know, we're sorry we couldn't bethere. So as he's reading me the
warning order that's being put out andthat we are officially being deployed, I'm
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trying to keep my composure and sortof act like, yeah, I'm sorry
you guys couldn't make you man,It's yeah, we'd love to have you
there. We appreciate you, andyou know, just trying to play that
role because because April is sitting rightbeside me, so I'm trying to internally
not panic because the last thing Iwant is for her to find this out.
The very next morning wedding day comes, everybody's kind of rolling in and
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immediately like I got all my guysand my family together and stuff, and
I told him that I was justlike, listen, we officially got the
call last night, and I don'twant anybody to talk about it. So
I just sort of asked everybody said, if you hear anybody, you know,
any scuttle but about anybody talking,I said, just just squash it
for today, like I don't wanther to find out. After the wedding,
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we get everything back from the hotel, we're kind of settling in and
stuff, and I sat her downand said, hey, you know,
I need to talk to you.And then I told her that that we
got the order and what the chainof events are going to look like for
training and when we'd be leaving atthat point, so she was pretty crushed,
but we knew it was coming.Although Diddy or Head had plenty of
communication with April while he was inKosovo, they hadn't had a lot of
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time together as a face to facecouple, and tried to make the most
out of the year that they wouldhave together before he was gone on a
thirteenth month deployment to Afghanistan. Stillsaying goodbye to his new wife was only
made harder by the fact that shewas expecting his daughter any day. As
the last one on the bus,we had the first sergeant yelling at me
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that we need to get going anduh, we'll see her before too long.
But it was really hard. Imean, I my mind was just
focusing on what I needed to gothere, so I was I had been
promoted to sergeant, I had myown fire team. We had found out
that we were going to eastern Afghanistan. So during that whole year I spent
you know, researching, you know, the area of the conflicts, and
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and that happened to be right atthe big Obama troop surgeon to Afghanistan.
So I think April, knowing thatshe was basically gonna be a single mom.
That was really hard too, Butthe day of the send off ceremony
was probably the worst because you know, she was so strong through the whole
ceremony. And then we're outside andwe're taking pictures, you know, and
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we're hugging and getting pictures the momsand the buddies and and all this.
You know, it's kind of thethe happy sad time, and then all
of a sudden, it's all rightnow. Everybody gets your ass on the
bus like we're leaving now, andApril just broke down, and you know,
everybody has their loved one there.Everybody has you know, their mom
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and their girlfriend or their wife ortheir kids. You know, kids are
sobbing and stuff like that, andwe're just trying to to keep you know,
keep it together, be strong,don't show the emotion. And and
I have her, like, youknow, ten months pregnant, just sobbing
in my arms, begging me tonot leave, and and it was it
was truly heartbreaking. It was oneof those things that like you know,
you see the movie of the youknow, the corny like the separation in
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the hands kind of come apart andthe sad music is and like that's what
that felt like, you know,it was it was just it was it
was heartbreaking, but you know it'sjust one of those things that I felt
like as soon as I could turnmy back and get on the bus and
get down the road, like Icould just try to put that feeling behind
me. At that point, nowis I was pretty scared because now I
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got a kid, you know,that day I have to worry about maybe
not coming home too too just kindof I know. It added a whole
lot more to the equation, Iguess. So he kept his emotions in
check and put his head down todo his duty. Didier hoped he would
live to see his daughter April,hoped that he'd return safely. But as
with so many military couples who worryabout whether the person who's being deployed will
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return in one piece, very littleconsideration is given to a whole return.
Combat changes people, not always necessarilyfor the worst, but the process is
transformative. Neither one of them knewthat when Didier came back he wouldn't be
the same person. In fact,by the time he was in country,
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he had a new job with adifferent mission and approach. Me when we're
a Mississippi and said, hey,this is the program that they've created.
I need to create this team andI want you to head this thing up.
So I was effectively being pulled frommy fire team to now do basically
like an office intel job, andthat really kind of pissed me off,
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just because I'd worked so hard andI'd wanted to be an infantryman and I
wanted to be out there with myguys. I have my own fire team,
and I let him know, youknow, if there's any way that
I could not do it, buthe had already made up his mind and
just basically explained to me, He'slike, you know, I need someone
that can crunch a lot of data, can do a lot of work,
can make it clear concise, sothat I can have that information I need
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and that we can you know,pass that information up. I wanted up
partnering with the other intelligent elements alreadyon calla gooch, and we wound up
forming our own basically pulled ourselves alltogether in one big group so we can
use all of the assets and allthe strength and stuff that we have with
each individual little team. It turnedout really cool because I was able to
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then work with all the platoons thatwe had, and I would constantly go
out on missions with everybody, andI also got to see a lot of
the behind the scenes stuff on whathelps make the decisions and the other intelligence
reports and stuff like that. Soit was something that became very satisfying because
I had a much bigger role thanI ever thought that I would. The
very first day I actually got pickedto go on Advon with the rest of
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the units. It was like myselfin the first art of the Commander and
like just a small group of us, and we landed on Cala Gooch and
I remember getting off the bird inthe helipad and I ran off to the
side and I looked up. Whoeverdesigned and built this base put it in
the absolute worst spot imaginable because wewere surrounded on three sides by mountains that
just towered over the base. Rightaway. I just get off and I
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look up and I'm just like,well, holy shit, why did they
put this thing here? Like ifI'm a bad guy, I want to
take the high ground and anybody that'syou know, got ill will toward us
just going to sit up in thesemountains and watch absolutely everything that we do.
Come to find out, that's exactlywhat they were doing and would continue
to do. Looking up at thesurrounding mountains, Didier could feel the earliest
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inklings of dread. But he waslucky in that he and the rest of
the platoon had too much to doto spend time thinking. Instead, he
was working sixteen hour days between collectingintel at the field and processing it back
at the base. As fighters continuedto pour in from Pakistan, the local
police were concerned about the influx ofpeople and started requisitioning more armaments than they
(15:31):
ever had before. First they claimedthere were forty fighters, then seventy five,
then hundreds. Didier's intel showed noneof this. The problem was either
someone had bad intel or someone waslying. This episode is sponsored in part
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fighting in Afghanistan is fraught with sideswitching. In half truths, Didi had
been reaching out to everyone he couldto discover whether there was a US armed
ambush waiting for them, or whetherthere was an impending slaughter of the Afghanistan
National Police. The CIA said theysaw no signs of a build up,
neither did his opposite numbers in theother camps. Remember, his position was
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established so command could make better decisionsin the field, but when the SOS
came in, it stopped mattering.May twenty fourth, twenty eleven, we
get these frantic calls from this policestation that says that they are underattacked,
that they're attacking the district center,and there's there's hundreds of them. Once
again requests this isr asset, andit flies over, and immediately we get
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back that they are spotting like fiftysixty camp fires in the mountains. That
is absolutely insane. If we seea camp fire, it's maybe three four
or five six guys or something likethat. And now suddenly we have like
fifty We are legitimately looking at probablya couple hundred of these guys. So
we're like, holy shit, likethere is literally something going on up there,
but we still didn't quite know what. We still weren't really buying into
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it. So I went to sleepthat night, get up the next morning
and my company commander, Captain Gingrich, comes haul and asked by He's not
one that ever looks like he's freakingout, and he just looks over.
I mean, he's just the sergeant. Did he grab your shit? We're
going to do app I just feltlike this cold clamminess come over me,
like something must be fucking going down, and we already know that there's a
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ton of people. They're like thisis not gonna be good. Like there's
no area there that you can reallyland helicopters. It's jagged, it's rugged.
If you go anywhere, they're gonnabe above you. Like this,
whatever's going on is not a goodidea to go up there right now.
I kept a journal. Every dayI'd write something in this little journal so
that history nerd in me can alwaysreflect back and maybe passing out of my
kids some day. And I reallythought that this was it. So on
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the morning to May twenty five,twenty eleven, I entered my last journal
entry and I just said, youknow, April and Reagan, you know
we have to go on this thing. They're talking about four or five hundred
guys being there, and I don'tknow what's going to happen, but you
know, I love you. I'mproud of you, and you know,
maybe like the happiest man alive.And I gave it to my buddy Helly.
He was one of my intel guys. I just told him, just
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make sure this gets back to her. I don't carry about anything else,
just make sure this gets back toher. When we were back can Kali
Gooch, my buddy Chris, wewent everywhere together. If he got task
to go on a mission with theplatoon, I went with him. And
if I got task to go ona mission with another platoon, he would
come. When we went to godown in the flight line, he had
come walking by and asked what wasgoing on and I just told him.
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I said, like we're going toDOAB and I said, and it's not
going to be good. And heimmediately took off and called his chain of
command or his bosses or whatever andsaid that that he's got a mission with
Afghan Police that he needs to jumpon, like right away, and just
letting you know that, like basicallysaying, I'm going on this thing.
Here's my head's up. He grabbedhis ship and he met us on the
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flight line, and right before wegot on the bird, he kind of
grabbed me by the back of theneck and brought my helmet to his,
and he just said, we're goingin alive, and we're coming out the
same way. I didn't believe itfor a second, but it was just
sort of that what he needed totell me so that I knew that we
were in it together. The flightline was buzzing with soldiers loading duffel bags
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with ammunition and stacking cases of wateron the helicopters. The mission was still
unfolding, but as he understood it, they were going to pick up some
scouts and see about rescuing the policecommander who'd been calling for help. With
the scouts in their gear, thechoppers were too heavy, so each soldier
grabbed a case of water and asmuch AMMO as they could carry and dump
the rest. They only found outwhere they'd be landing once they were in
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the air. The plan was toput down in the only section of the
valley that could support a helicopter landing. As they approached along the narrow valley,
did to your thought, if theyknow there's only one safe landing zone,
the Taliban must know it as well. As we started getting north,
and I'm like looking out the littlebubble window on the chinook and suddenly like
you can't even see the tops ofthese mountains, like they're just straight up,
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and we were flying through this valleythat shaped like a v, like
there's no room to move in thesethings. I was one of the first
ones on the bird, so Iwas one of the last ones to get
off. As we're flying out theback of this ramp and that thing starts
to take off like it's just acomplete brown out, Like the rotors are
just sucking all this sand and dirtand stuff up into the air, and
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you can't really really see anything butbarely, like the guy in front of
you. That's when I first startedto hear the chirps of rounds starting to
go by. It was hard tosee, but there's a soldier in front
of me. He did this likeweird like kind of giddy up thing where
he just kind of like kind ofclutched, and then he just slammed down
like onto his side, and Iwas like, oh fuck, like like
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they just just shot this dude likeright in front of me, and and
luckily it just turned out there likehe wound up like stepping on some rock
or something, and he blew outhis knee. My buddy Jawad, he
was he was our interpreter. Hegrabbed the mortar bass plate and he carried
that thing around with him the restof the day. The whole time that
we were fighting back, I waskind of pulled around and pull a security
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make sure that nobody's coming up behindus. And every suddenly, like it
just opens up like the it's likethe sky just starts open. There's just
all this enemy fire and it wasjust raining down right on top of us.
We had no cover, We hadnothing that you know, we could
hide behind, because you know,the walls of this valley were just like
almost straight up, like I said, it's this v So they were shooting
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down on top of us, andthere was nowhere that that we could go.
So you would find like a rockor like this little boulder or something
like that, and you'd get awayfrom like the machine gun fire coming from
this way. But as soon asyou screweded your ass around it, then
somebody else from another ang would seeand they'd wound up shooting yet, you
know, and from that way.So it was just a complete sense of
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like hopelessness, like there is nowherethat we can go. We were shooting
at every muzzle flash that we cansee, and they were shooting on in
us and it was like the openingscene of Saving Private Rne, where just
rounds are ripping through the sand andthe soil and everything's just kind of whizzing
by you and everything. We woundup getting some fixed wing aircraft in and
typically, like our escalation of forces, you know, we'd always have them
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come through on like a fly by, just really loud and fasten and scare
everybody. And and so we calledthis fixed wing fighter to come in and
do the show of force to tryto scare them off. And it was
just a trail of AKA and PKMfire at that thing, like they were
trying to shoot down an airplane,a jet with small arms fire. Like
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they didn't care. They were hereto stay and take us out. So
that was a little demoralizing seeing that, like just holy shit, like they're
not even afraid of the aircraft.The sixty or so men made up of
a contingent of the National Guard,the Scouts, and members of the ANA
eventually were able to hunker down ina shepherd's hut and the surrounding goat pen
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taking fire from above and doing theirbest to hang on as they waited for
more support. They would come todiscover that the ambush was part of a
larger tactical plan to overrun nearby FobCallagos. The police commander had coordinated with
the Taliban in hopes of drawing aQRF from Calagush and leaving that base vulnerable.
If they could kill some Americans oreven better, shoot down a helicopter,
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that was a bonus. The Americansdidn't take the bait, though,
so no quick reaction for US wasinbound. Didier and the rest of the
soldiers were on their own for theduration. We saw a ton of people
moving, which was kind of thescariest because with all this fighting and stuff
going on, and they're just freelymoving, not away from us, but
toward us. We're just like Jesus, these guys are fucking coming across the
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river from us. It was almosta sheer, straight up cliff. They
actually had like caves and pre dugfighting positions built into this cliff. We
would see those guys moving down tryingto get closer and closer to us.
Now our scalpeltoon snipers. These guyswere picking dudes off like crazy, like
running. They had like a Icall it an Indiana Jones Bridge, and
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these guys were trying to run acrossto it, and our snipers were taking
them off as they were trying tomake their way across, and even the
guys back on our side would tryto bum rush us as the Jay tax
and stuff. We're calling in fighters. Everything within six hundred meter radius of
a bomb strike is considered danger close. So we were fighting guys well within
that six hundred meter radius. Soevery time these guys come in to drop
(26:11):
a payload, we need to likehunker down and like hide our asses because
we have a really good chance ofourselves getting schmucked by the own our own
ordinance. We would be firing fireand firing, and we get the call
across the radio that the fighter's inboundand drop this thing, and all of
a sudden we would stop and hunkerdown. Well, every time we did
that, these forces would like tryto just bomb rush closer and closer to
(26:32):
us. So it's like these concentriccircles of fighters like working their way close
to us, you know, asquickly as possible as they know, as
soon as they close that distance youknow, they take away that fighter support
from us. We had a couplereally close ones. We called one right
out the back door is probably aboutone hundred and twenty five meters five hundred
pound bomb, And it's crazy becauseit was so close that when the bomb
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actually detonated, it like sucked thedirt up off the floor or this like
little hut. That was one ofthose blasts that like you could feel in
your chest. And we had thoseall throughout the rest of the day as
these guys would come in, youknow, dropping him at you know,
one hundred twenty five hundred fifty twohundred three hundred meters like constantly, we
were just dropping this ordinance almost righton ourselves. The firefight continued into the
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night, with the enemy inching closerat every opportunity. They ran out of
water and in the brutal Afghanistan heat, thirst was beginning to become a factor.
They already had been on the groundfor close to ten hours. None
of us had been touched like tothis point. We had, you know,
one guy with a blown out kneeand a bunch of guys that got
stuck for dehydration. We're taking youknow, bags of saline. You know,
(27:45):
in the middle of a firefight,you all got a bag of IV
fluid there squishing, you know,up underneath their arm bit as they're firing
at guys in the mountains. Likeit was just it was nuts and it
was relentless. It was the worstpart. It's like there wasn't any breaks.
It was just constantly go go.The only time that there was a
break was when we have a fightercome in and everybody hunkers down and then
they make their bum rush and itjust kept getting closer and closer and closer
(28:07):
like that throughout the entire day.You know, it was it was nuts,
and it was like that all theway up until until dark. So
now there became a pretty big dealin Afghanistan and the powers that be finally
this is something they have to reactto. So, unbeknownst to us,
call goes out that we got anentire platoon pinned down about ready to get
(28:27):
wiped out off the map. Theystarted learning Special Forces to come up to
help provide US assistance. So thegame plan would be that two chinooks full
SF would come in they dropped downwith their Afghan commando counterparts. They would
help us clear out the village andkind of secure the area. But with
them they also bring on the assetof the AC one thirty gun ships.
(28:52):
Typically these assets do not fly duringthe daytime. I actually wound up and
meeting one of the guys that wason this this one thirty gun ship,
and he basically told me that theywere sitting down for chaw their beepers start
going off, and they're like,this can't be right, like it's broad
daylight, what's going on? Andthen all of a sudden, all the
crews beepers start going off, Sothey rushed back to find out what's going
on. They didn't even give thema plan or so, they just said,
(29:14):
get the plane in the air andwe'll brief you on the way.
These guys are on their way tocome help provide us some aerial firepower just
to kind of beat back these forces. So as this starts getting closer to
dusk and these guys arrive on scene, these mountains are so high that they
actually have to fly almost within thevalley itself, and it's so tight that
the plane is flying almost completely bankedon its side. These things carry like
(29:38):
they got all these awesome assets onit and they come in and they just
start pounding the hell out of everythingthey can they can see, and these
guys say, like the censors,the guys that are actually watching all the
enemy movement and stuff like that.So it's just like ants crawling everywhere,
like there's so many people trying toget down to get us that they're just
as soon as they fire out asalvo, they got another one rocked ready
(30:00):
to go, and they're just constantlytaking guys out. So with the gunships
beating back the enemy, the SpecialForces guys were able to help the soldiers
extricate themselves to the village. Thefighting ended at about four am, thirteen
hours after it had begun, butnow there was clean up to do and
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Fortune doesn't always favor the bold,and as the US and Afghanistan Army
(32:05):
made it to the village, thepolice commander had a story ready, but
he hadn't counted on being undermined fromwithin. So the next day, after
everything happened, we went up wewent through the village, found all the
ammunition and stuff like that. Thisguy shows up and this police chief he's
got like this this burn, likehis beard is kind of singe and he's
got like this burn on the sideof his face, and he's telling us
(32:29):
that like we we're shooting at him, and that we tried blown him up
with a rocket and it burned hisface and all this kind of stuff.
And it was just like telling theselies, like all this is your fault,
why didn't you come earlier? Andall this other stuff. And in
Afghanistan, women don't talk to you, like you don't talk to women.
They're not allowed to talk to you. There's never any interaction, like they're
(32:51):
just like people that are there thatjust you know, go about their day.
And this older lady, she lookedlike she was eighty, she might
have been like forty five or something, but she comes right up to myself
in the turp and she just startsgiving us an airpool and I'm like,
holy fuck, Like what's going onwith this lady, Like why is she
for one just talking to us?And I look at Jawad and his mouth
is like gaping open, and I'mlike what and she's just like she's given
(33:15):
me a list of names of everybodyin the city that was fighting you guys,
and she's saying he was leading it, like he was the one telling
people to go do this and godo this and telling them where you were
at. Like she completely dime thisdude out. So we pulled him aside.
There was some nds. It waslike there um the Afghan like CIA
(33:35):
kind of guys like there, there'ssome of their intelligence guys. There was
a couple of like their lieutenants.And then there was like a district sub
governor that showed up and he waswounded too. And these guys are lying
so bad that they're trying to gettheir story straight while we're talking to them,
like it's completely fucked up. Sofinally what happens is the the Afghan
(34:01):
commando like colonel comes in and hetook over the situation and he just basically
said, like, these guys arecoming with us and we will deal with
them ourselves. In the Muslim culture, you know, if somebody dies,
you're supposed to bury the person.Within twenty four hours. We've got bodies
all over the mountain side, andsome of the villagers come and ask us,
(34:23):
you know, can we go retreatthese bodies so that we can start
burying him, And this Afghan colonelsays to him, He says, we'll
allow you to go up and startcollecting these bodies, and we will treat
anybody that wounded that brings back down. But if so much is a shot
gets fired at us, like we'rewiping everything out. I've never really met
(34:44):
somebody that like you could just lookout and you're like, that's a really
fucking powerful dude. But that's whothat guy was. Like it was like,
no bullshit, Like you have onechance, otherwise we're gonna wipe,
you know, this entire village offthe face of the earth. Over the
next few days, they monitored theclean up, treating and detaining wounded Taliband
soldiers, watching over the villagers whowere burying the dead, and preparing to
(35:06):
wind down a long tour of dutythat already had included a bunch of ugliness.
But even though the battle had ended, they continued getting intel about potential
Taliband countermeasures. A shepherd had warnedthem that fighters were still retreating and gathering
on the other side of the mountain. He also told them there was a
farmer not far behind him, carryingalong some wounded children. We send this
(35:29):
guy on his way, and sureenough, not too long afterwards, this
old guy comes down. He hasthese two little kids and both of their
legs are just like mangled and shreddedand just like ripped away from him.
And he told us he's like,your bombs did this. And the men,
like the SF medic and our medicsand stuff are looking at him.
(35:51):
They're like, we didn't, likethat's Those aren't like bomb wounds, those
are bullet holes. And so we'relike, what, like, what the
hell like, we keep asking thisguy what's going on, but he just
keeps saying, like, your bombsdid it, Your bombs did whatever.
So we have the whole time,we've been monitoring like radio traffic in the
area and stuff like that, sowe've been able to listen and hear some
(36:15):
of the fighters communication and whatnot.And immediately our terms pick up this chatter,
so everyone starts suddenly talking these badguys in these radios. Juad tells
us he's like, they did thisto these guys kids, and they want
us to get him a helicopter.And that's what the guy had been saying,
is like, you need to savemy kids. You need to get
(36:36):
a helicopter here, You need toget a helicopter here. So right away
we're like this isn't you know,something super fishy here? Well as the
guys are like listening to this,you know, wakee talkie communication back and
forth. These Taliban fighters. Whatthey did is they wind up shooting up
these kids and then sent them downto us to force us say that we
did it so that we have tobring in a helicopter to rescue him.
(37:00):
And we eventually did. Luckily thatyou know, no fighting had gone on.
We'd made such a a dent intheir fighting force that they weren't able
to do it. But I wasjust like one of those fucked up things
like how low that they would goto to try to just lure in a
helicopter to attack and stuff like that, like you know, and on top
of you know, the girl thatI experienced earlier in the year, Like
(37:22):
you know, it's just like nowthat just gave me that sense of anger,
like I just wanted to kill theseguys even more, like how could
you do that to somebody? Youknow? So I don't know it just
even to this day, like itstill pissed me off. I hope to
God that whoever came up with thatplan that we wound up killing that day,
because I was just fucked up.The girl earlier in the year was
(37:45):
a different horror story altogether, butit was the first one he brought back
home back in the spring during hismid tour leave, the first time he
got to see his daughter. Ithappened so quick that you're just kind of
like ripped out of that world.And before I know it, like I'm
back home and the wife is pickingme up at the airport and I have
(38:05):
this this child here that I've neverreally met, you know, and like,
oh my god, Like what thehell is happening? Suddenly, Like
we're in the grocery store picking upsome groceries on the way home, and
I'm completely overwhelmed because, you know, the wife's like, yeah, just
pick out a box of cereal,and I don't know what the fuck to
do because there's eight hundred cereal boxes. Like all I ever do is go
to chow hall and grab an MRIor whatever they give me. At the
(38:27):
time, you know, it wasvery overwhelming, and it was also being
hard or hard being home and havinga child. I had no idea what
to do. And there was anincident when I was in Afghanistan. We
had been out on a patrol firstbetween I've been out of patrol, and
they came across to this young girlwho was probably like three. I think
(38:49):
she had been severely burned and thelocal witch doctor had just like basically like
wrapped like a gauze around her likearms and chest and legs. I mean,
this is like horrible burns over likemost of her body. And then
she's just like wrapped up in thisship that has now started to like harden
and crust and like fuse with thisthis burnt flesh. And the mom actually
(39:12):
came and got us so that likethe medic could like look at her and
immediately here like just sent her backto the base so like the big doctor
and stuff can can look at her. So we were like on base and
the commander grasped me. He's like, hey, I need you to go
up to the meditation. I needyou to document, you know, let's
get the story of what would happenedand everything like that so that we can
pass that on. And I'd goneup there and this little girl. The
(39:32):
father and mother are there, andthe father said they left the child alone
in the house and she pulled likethis boiling pan of water down herself.
The whole time, Like this guy'stelling me this, like my interpreter,
uh, my buddy Jawad, andhe's just like something about this isn't right.
Come to find out after he liketalks to the mom that the dad
(39:52):
didn't want to have a daughter.And this father scolded this tiny little child
and boiling hot water and then didn'tkill her. So they just wrapped her
up in this ship. So I'min this aid station staring into the eyes
of this three year old fucking kidthat's screaming her mind off because they have
to remove the bandages. And asthey're pulling this shit off, like this
(40:15):
kid just like locks eyes with me, and that's all I can see.
Man, It's just it's fucking littlekid that did nothing. So I can
just hear those screams. And soI get home and I'm on leave,
you know, and I'm just meetingmy kid, and you know, my
(40:36):
wife is so happy to have mehome, you know that I'm safe and
stuff like that, but you know, she also needs a break too,
and and you know, she wantsto be able to see me jump up
and feed the baby and grab herand this kind of stuff. And the
second that Reagan starts crying, likethat's all I see is this little girl's
face, and I'm like frozen,like I couldn't. I couldn't hack it,
man, Like it was just it'sone of those deals even to this
(41:01):
day, like little kids crying andlike that just really fucking stressed me out
a lot, Like I just Igotta, I gotta leave because all I
can see is that little girl's face. And coming home for a second time
was no less fraud, but atleast Didier was prepared to deal with it.
He knew he would have limitations,and he understood that he had undergone
(41:22):
a transformation. The only difficulty nowwas how he would mitigate it, since
this time he wouldn't be going backto Afghanistan. I'll never forget like walking
back into my house, like Itold my family, said, let's just
give me a couple hours to beat home. I got home, I
had my duffel bag, you know, a min uniform, and I walk
(41:44):
in and I just remember sitting mybag down and our dog came right up
to me, and it was justlike where the fuck have you been?
You know, like like acted likeI'd never been gone. You know.
It just comes up and he's smellingme and like, okay, well you're
back now. And everything felt sosmall like and surreal, like I didn't
feel like it was real. Itwas nice at first, and then it
(42:07):
just kind of get slowly became likeoverwhelming as I would like get out and
about and suddenly, you know,like you're driving down the highway and there's
like some garbage land there you're sittingin like you know, sitting at a
stoplight and you're like in the middlelane with cars all around you, and
you're like what the like why arewe not moving right now? Like those
kind of little things. You know. There was an initial honeymoon period,
(42:28):
you know, for like the firsttwo three, four days, and then
all of a sudden, like youkind of get into this like that stress
that hypers you know, the senseof awareness and stuff kind of starts coming
and he's like, man, thisis just fucking crazy. Like I was
just dealing with a lot internally,and you know, my wife had her
own issues and stuff that she hadto go through and deal with over.
You know when I was gone toothat it was really hard to kind of
(42:51):
get back on that same page.We just sat down and had a long
talk. You know, It's thatwas eight years ago now. I told
April, I was like, becauseher big thing is how I used to
be like, but she used tobe like, you weren't so serious.
You you know, you were thelife of the party. You were this,
and now like you're just kind oflike blah, And I'm like,
is just the type of deal.Like I told her, I said that
(43:15):
that person that that held you inmy arms before I stepped on that bus
died, that that person is nomore. I'm not that guy. I've
seen the absolute fucking worst side ofhumanity and then to come home and just
kind of like shake it off.Like I've been through counseling, I've I've
(43:37):
done a lot to try to,you know, move past some things that
I've struggled with, But I'm nevergonna be that same person that that gave
you that kiss and got on thatbus, and I just I can't.
And I'm sorry. It's one ofthose things that I wish I could still
have that, but I'm not andlikewise, she's also not that same person
(43:57):
that kissed me goodbye. When Alewas broken during basic training, Didier pushed
through because he didn't want to getrecycled to have to start from scratch.
Getting back into your life can belike that, pushing forward slowly and with
a not insignificant amount of discomfort,because the consequences of a painful way forward
are so much more appealing than givingup and hoping for another shot. Didier
(44:21):
may not be the same person wholeft, but that doesn't mean he can't
remake himself into someone that person wouldhave been proud of. I think I
was able to understand that I've beengiven a second chance of life. There's
really no rhyme or reason why weshould have walked off that day. I
mean, like I said, Idon't know how it's even mathematically possible that
(44:44):
not a single one of us waswounded that day when you have four or
five hundred people that are shooting atyou for an entire day and nobody gets
hit. So I look at itas there's a purpose that myself and my
battle buddies were given a chance todo and better things. So for me,
my happy ending is trying to findout what that is and what I
(45:06):
can do for others and how Ican pay that forward. So unfortunately,
you know, after we got home, I've had six I've lost six of
my fellow warfighters to drug overdose suicidesand car accidents and kind of stuff like
that. You know, we burieda lot, a lot more guys than
we buried when we're overseason. Andone of the things, you know,
we we we do for each otheris continue to be there for each other
(45:29):
and work to help others. Youknow, a lot of us have have
done work volunteering and stuff within theveteran community. Um you know, started
businesses and use you know, profitsand stuff from that to help out others
for cancer survivors and other benefits andstuff like that. Them open gyms,
become police officers and firefighters and theEMTs and stuff like that. You know,
(45:52):
I think it's it's my happy endingis is what can I do with
my second chance to to better theworld, better those around me. I
guess at the bottom, what makescombat a thing unto itself is that it
removes any pretense about worst case scenarios. Once you've seen how awful we can
(46:12):
be. To one another. Youcan't unsee it. Worst, you can
get a glimpse at the depths towhich you may be capable of sinking,
even as you fight the good fight. For Nate Didier, it has become
a question of learning to resee aworld where good is more prominent, and
to appreciate the fact that he's alivetoday. Doing that includes the possibility that
(46:32):
maybe he can have a better tomorrow, and that will have to do for
now. Are you a combat veteranor do you know one with a story
(46:54):
to tell? Reach out to usat stories at this is war dot com
with your dates and branch of service, and a brief description of the experience
that you'd like to share. Thisis War was written by me Anthony Russo
and produced by Incongruity Media. Ifyou like the show, you can help
support us by visiting our sponsors orby leaving a five star review wherever you're
(47:15):
listening right now. You can alsofollow us on social media at this is
War. You also can find shownotes, photos, and more background on
each episode at this iswar dot com.
I was kind of pulled around andpull of security, make sure that nobody's
coming up behind us. And suddenlylike it just opens up, like the
sky just starts ripping open. There'sjust all this enemy fire and it was
just raining down right on top ofus. There isn't one factor that makes
combat so transformative. Instead, it'sa combination of reactions to external peril and
internal aggression, to personal empathy inthe face of the horrible, to your
(00:28):
expectations in the light of your ownexperience. For Nate Didier, a lot
of the transformation came from seeing theworld as it was and losing something of
a sense of what it could be. These forces would like try to just
bum rush closer and closer to us. So it's like these concentric circles of
fighters like working their way close tous, you know, as quickly as
(00:51):
possible. What is true bravery?What makes a hero a hero? Tested
by the worries of what's happening athome thousands of miles away and the reality
(01:12):
of what you're facing here and now, when your life is in danger every
second and it's either kill or bekilled. An original podcast from Incongruity Media.
This is Anthony Ruzzo and this iswar. Hiring can be a slow
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com slash this is war zip recruiterthe smartest way to hire? Did her
put off joining the military so thathe could go to college. Many of
the men in his family had served, and his father advised him that he'd
(03:09):
be happier getting a degree and goingin as an officer. It was advice
his father repeated emphatically the evening ofnine to eleven, as did your wade
the pros and cons of dropping outof college and enlisting. The father understood
that significant life changes weren't the bestcircumstances under which to enlist. It was
a lesson that the sun had yetto learn. It was actually a girl
(03:30):
I meant in one of my classes, and we started hanging out a little
bit more, and before noon wewere dating. And about a year later,
so maybe a little bit longer,actually proposed, and we were engaged
not quite a year. About sixmonths before our wedding. She was finishing
up her education degree and she wasgoing to do her last student teaching.
(03:53):
I was right before Christmas, Sowe had an apartment together, and we're
gonna have dinner, and then shewas going to go home for miss and
then started her student teaching down there, and she went to lay down for
a nap, woke up, saidthat she was just going to head down
to where she lived, and Inever saw her again. Got a phone
call two days before Christmas, andshe just said that it's something that she
(04:15):
she just didn't feel right going forwardwith, and that was it. Never
saw her again, never heard why. And yeah, kind of like an
emotional state, you know, Ijust kind of thought of, like,
you know, hell, I justplanned my life out for the next however
long and put a lot of thingsthat I wanted to do on hold.
And it's kind of when I startedlooking back on what I did truly want
in life and had that kind ofcome to Jesus moment that if I want
(04:38):
to be in the military, nowis absolute best time to make it happen.
Both my parents had seen what warhas done to others. They knew
what that cost was. I havetwo uncles that served in Vietnam, and
both of them had a very hardtime coming home. And we were,
you know, as two thousand andfive, begin two thousand and six,
so we're you know, Iraq andand really starting to heat up by that
(04:59):
point, we were still in Afghanistan, and both of them were concerned,
but they knew that, you know, I was an adult. I was
making my own decision, and theyalways knew that it was something I wanted
to do that so I was.They were very supportive. After having put
service off to develop a relationship thatdematerialized, Didier resolve to at least give
the military a chance. He stillwas barely in his mid twenties and it
(05:21):
lected to join the National Guard,having spent some time in the workforce.
The discipline wasn't an issue and thephysicality didn't appear to be at first,
but he fractured his ankle early onand worried about being recycled. Fighting through
the discomfort and the occasional backslide preparedDidier for combat better than he knew it
would at the time. It alsomade the final test that much sweeter.
(05:44):
So we went through our nine weeksof basic training and we had like our
two weeks of our advanced individual training, and the culmination of that event the
last week is you spend the weekout in the field and you live in
a hole in the ground, andyou pull security and you run missions and
you you're basically war game and you'reputting all of your training and everything into
(06:05):
like a field training exercise an ftxR, and at the very last day
you break everything down, you packeverything up, and then you rock march
all the way back to the mainbase there or Sandhill. So we're marching
through the night at the coolest time, and it's probably still i know,
in the seventies or something at night, still really humid, and everybody's just
(06:26):
beat down and tired and exhausted.Down at forth Bending, they have a
place called Honor Hill. So asyou finish up that last march, you
you walk up this hill and asyou crest the top of the hill,
they have these giant gates and asign over the top says something like,
um, the finest warriors of theworld has ever seen have gone through these
(06:46):
gates. And they open up thesedoors and you walk in. They have
these giant palette bonfires, and it'severybody breaks out their canteen and they got
this big jug of grog. It'slike a mix of all kinds of power
aids and all that kind of stuff. Unfortunately there's no alcohol. That had
been awesome. Everybody takes a bigscoop of it. And then you go
out and you say, like yoursoldiers creed and your your infantry creed,
(07:08):
and then they they pin your covetedcrossed rifles on you. That signifies it
that you have now joined the brotherhoodof the infantry. You've completed your task.
So being able to complete that,like I said, you know,
I had injured my ankle pretty severely, and that was a sign that it's
over and I've made it. Andeverything that I've worked hard for and everything
(07:30):
I've you know, bled for,and all the pain and everything like that,
has finally been achieved. This iswhat i came here to do.
And now I'm part of that infantrybrotherhood. I've I've earned those crossed rifles.
By two thousand and six, theNational Guard was deploying to more than
just Iraq, in Afghanistan. Didierfound himself on a peacekeeping mission in Kosovo.
He'd begun dating April, the womanhe would eventually marry, and proposed
(07:53):
pretty much as soon as he gotback from the deployment, which worked out
well because by the time they weremarried, he knew he was headed to
Afghanistan. So in the National Guardit never fails. If you have something
that you're going to plan for nextyear, it will feel fall on a
day that you cannot attended. Wegot engaged and we set a date for
(08:15):
the next year, and as itturns out, our wedding date happened to
be on a drill weekend. So, you know, all my buddies and
stuff, they weren't able to come. They were already new that we were
ratching up for Afghanistan, so wewere having much bigger drill weekends and stuff
like that. So as we hadthe rehearsal dinner, all the families there
and stuff like that. We hadactually pulled up in front of the house
(08:35):
after that when my phone rang andit was my platoon sergeant calling me.
He just said, are you guysknowing the thing? Are you home?
In his april there, and Itold him yes. So he's like,
okay, I have to read thisto you. I'm gonna read it word
for word and just act like we'rejust wishing you congratulations, and we you
know, we're sorry we couldn't bethere. So as he's reading me the
warning order that's being put out andthat we are officially being deployed, I'm
(09:00):
trying to keep my composure and sortof act like, yeah, I'm sorry
you guys couldn't make you man,It's yeah, we'd love to have you
there. We appreciate you, andyou know, just trying to play that
role because because April is sitting rightbeside me, so I'm trying to internally
not panic because the last thing Iwant is for her to find this out.
The very next morning wedding day comes, everybody's kind of rolling in and
(09:20):
immediately like I got all my guysand my family together and stuff, and
I told him that I was justlike, listen, we officially got the
call last night, and I don'twant anybody to talk about it. So
I just sort of asked everybody said, if you hear anybody, you know,
any scuttle but about anybody talking,I said, just just squash it
for today, like I don't wanther to find out. After the wedding,
(09:41):
we get everything back from the hotel, we're kind of settling in and
stuff, and I sat her downand said, hey, you know,
I need to talk to you.And then I told her that that we
got the order and what the chainof events are going to look like for
training and when we'd be leaving atthat point, so she was pretty crushed,
but we knew it was coming.Although Diddy or Head had plenty of
communication with April while he was inKosovo, they hadn't had a lot of
(10:03):
time together as a face to facecouple, and tried to make the most
out of the year that they wouldhave together before he was gone on a
thirteenth month deployment to Afghanistan. Stillsaying goodbye to his new wife was only
made harder by the fact that shewas expecting his daughter any day. As
the last one on the bus,we had the first sergeant yelling at me
(10:26):
that we need to get going anduh, we'll see her before too long.
But it was really hard. Imean, I my mind was just
focusing on what I needed to gothere, so I was I had been
promoted to sergeant, I had myown fire team. We had found out
that we were going to eastern Afghanistan. So during that whole year I spent
you know, researching, you know, the area of the conflicts, and
(10:46):
and that happened to be right atthe big Obama troop surgeon to Afghanistan.
So I think April, knowing thatshe was basically gonna be a single mom.
That was really hard too, Butthe day of the send off ceremony
was probably the worst because you know, she was so strong through the whole
ceremony. And then we're outside andwe're taking pictures, you know, and
(11:07):
we're hugging and getting pictures the momsand the buddies and and all this.
You know, it's kind of thethe happy sad time, and then all
of a sudden, it's all rightnow. Everybody gets your ass on the
bus like we're leaving now, andApril just broke down, and you know,
everybody has their loved one there.Everybody has you know, their mom
(11:28):
and their girlfriend or their wife ortheir kids. You know, kids are
sobbing and stuff like that, andwe're just trying to to keep you know,
keep it together, be strong,don't show the emotion. And and
I have her, like, youknow, ten months pregnant, just sobbing
in my arms, begging me tonot leave, and and it was it
was truly heartbreaking. It was oneof those things that like you know,
you see the movie of the youknow, the corny like the separation in
(11:50):
the hands kind of come apart andthe sad music is and like that's what
that felt like, you know,it was it was just it was it
was heartbreaking, but you know it'sjust one of those things that I felt
like as soon as I could turnmy back and get on the bus and
get down the road, like Icould just try to put that feeling behind
me. At that point, nowis I was pretty scared because now I
(12:13):
got a kid, you know,that day I have to worry about maybe
not coming home too too just kindof I know. It added a whole
lot more to the equation, Iguess. So he kept his emotions in
check and put his head down todo his duty. Didier hoped he would
live to see his daughter April,hoped that he'd return safely. But as
with so many military couples who worryabout whether the person who's being deployed will
(12:35):
return in one piece, very littleconsideration is given to a whole return.
Combat changes people, not always necessarilyfor the worst, but the process is
transformative. Neither one of them knewthat when Didier came back he wouldn't be
the same person. In fact,by the time he was in country,
(12:56):
he had a new job with adifferent mission and approach. Me when we're
a Mississippi and said, hey,this is the program that they've created.
I need to create this team andI want you to head this thing up.
So I was effectively being pulled frommy fire team to now do basically
like an office intel job, andthat really kind of pissed me off,
(13:18):
just because I'd worked so hard andI'd wanted to be an infantryman and I
wanted to be out there with myguys. I have my own fire team,
and I let him know, youknow, if there's any way that
I could not do it, buthe had already made up his mind and
just basically explained to me, He'slike, you know, I need someone
that can crunch a lot of data, can do a lot of work,
can make it clear concise, sothat I can have that information I need
(13:39):
and that we can you know,pass that information up. I wanted up
partnering with the other intelligent elements alreadyon calla gooch, and we wound up
forming our own basically pulled ourselves alltogether in one big group so we can
use all of the assets and allthe strength and stuff that we have with
each individual little team. It turnedout really cool because I was able to
(14:03):
then work with all the platoons thatwe had, and I would constantly go
out on missions with everybody, andI also got to see a lot of
the behind the scenes stuff on whathelps make the decisions and the other intelligence
reports and stuff like that. Soit was something that became very satisfying because
I had a much bigger role thanI ever thought that I would. The
very first day I actually got pickedto go on Advon with the rest of
(14:26):
the units. It was like myselfin the first art of the Commander and
like just a small group of us, and we landed on Cala Gooch and
I remember getting off the bird inthe helipad and I ran off to the
side and I looked up. Whoeverdesigned and built this base put it in
the absolute worst spot imaginable because wewere surrounded on three sides by mountains that
just towered over the base. Rightaway. I just get off and I
(14:48):
look up and I'm just like,well, holy shit, why did they
put this thing here? Like ifI'm a bad guy, I want to
take the high ground and anybody that'syou know, got ill will toward us
just going to sit up in thesemountains and watch absolutely everything that we do.
Come to find out, that's exactlywhat they were doing and would continue
to do. Looking up at thesurrounding mountains, Didier could feel the earliest
(15:11):
inklings of dread. But he waslucky in that he and the rest of
the platoon had too much to doto spend time thinking. Instead, he
was working sixteen hour days between collectingintel at the field and processing it back
at the base. As fighters continuedto pour in from Pakistan, the local
police were concerned about the influx ofpeople and started requisitioning more armaments than they
(15:31):
ever had before. First they claimedthere were forty fighters, then seventy five,
then hundreds. Didier's intel showed noneof this. The problem was either
someone had bad intel or someone waslying. This episode is sponsored in part
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fighting in Afghanistan is fraught with sideswitching. In half truths, Didi had
been reaching out to everyone he couldto discover whether there was a US armed
ambush waiting for them, or whetherthere was an impending slaughter of the Afghanistan
National Police. The CIA said theysaw no signs of a build up,
neither did his opposite numbers in theother camps. Remember, his position was
(17:56):
established so command could make better decisionsin the field, but when the SOS
came in, it stopped mattering.May twenty fourth, twenty eleven, we
get these frantic calls from this policestation that says that they are underattacked,
that they're attacking the district center,and there's there's hundreds of them. Once
again requests this isr asset, andit flies over, and immediately we get
(18:21):
back that they are spotting like fiftysixty camp fires in the mountains. That
is absolutely insane. If we seea camp fire, it's maybe three four
or five six guys or something likethat. And now suddenly we have like
fifty We are legitimately looking at probablya couple hundred of these guys. So
we're like, holy shit, likethere is literally something going on up there,
but we still didn't quite know what. We still weren't really buying into
(18:44):
it. So I went to sleepthat night, get up the next morning
and my company commander, Captain Gingrich, comes haul and asked by He's not
one that ever looks like he's freakingout, and he just looks over.
I mean, he's just the sergeant. Did he grab your shit? We're
going to do app I just feltlike this cold clamminess come over me,
like something must be fucking going down, and we already know that there's a
(19:07):
ton of people. They're like thisis not gonna be good. Like there's
no area there that you can reallyland helicopters. It's jagged, it's rugged.
If you go anywhere, they're gonnabe above you. Like this,
whatever's going on is not a goodidea to go up there right now.
I kept a journal. Every dayI'd write something in this little journal so
that history nerd in me can alwaysreflect back and maybe passing out of my
kids some day. And I reallythought that this was it. So on
(19:32):
the morning to May twenty five,twenty eleven, I entered my last journal
entry and I just said, youknow, April and Reagan, you know
we have to go on this thing. They're talking about four or five hundred
guys being there, and I don'tknow what's going to happen, but you
know, I love you. I'mproud of you, and you know,
maybe like the happiest man alive.And I gave it to my buddy Helly.
He was one of my intel guys. I just told him, just
(19:55):
make sure this gets back to her. I don't carry about anything else,
just make sure this gets back toher. When we were back can Kali
Gooch, my buddy Chris, wewent everywhere together. If he got task
to go on a mission with theplatoon, I went with him. And
if I got task to go ona mission with another platoon, he would
come. When we went to godown in the flight line, he had
come walking by and asked what wasgoing on and I just told him.
(20:15):
I said, like we're going toDOAB and I said, and it's not
going to be good. And heimmediately took off and called his chain of
command or his bosses or whatever andsaid that that he's got a mission with
Afghan Police that he needs to jumpon, like right away, and just
letting you know that, like basicallysaying, I'm going on this thing.
Here's my head's up. He grabbedhis ship and he met us on the
(20:37):
flight line, and right before wegot on the bird, he kind of
grabbed me by the back of theneck and brought my helmet to his,
and he just said, we're goingin alive, and we're coming out the
same way. I didn't believe itfor a second, but it was just
sort of that what he needed totell me so that I knew that we
were in it together. The flightline was buzzing with soldiers loading duffel bags
(21:02):
with ammunition and stacking cases of wateron the helicopters. The mission was still
unfolding, but as he understood it, they were going to pick up some
scouts and see about rescuing the policecommander who'd been calling for help. With
the scouts in their gear, thechoppers were too heavy, so each soldier
grabbed a case of water and asmuch AMMO as they could carry and dump
the rest. They only found outwhere they'd be landing once they were in
(21:25):
the air. The plan was toput down in the only section of the
valley that could support a helicopter landing. As they approached along the narrow valley,
did to your thought, if theyknow there's only one safe landing zone,
the Taliban must know it as well. As we started getting north,
and I'm like looking out the littlebubble window on the chinook and suddenly like
you can't even see the tops ofthese mountains, like they're just straight up,
(21:49):
and we were flying through this valleythat shaped like a v, like
there's no room to move in thesethings. I was one of the first
ones on the bird, so Iwas one of the last ones to get
off. As we're flying out theback of this ramp and that thing starts
to take off like it's just acomplete brown out, Like the rotors are
just sucking all this sand and dirtand stuff up into the air, and
(22:11):
you can't really really see anything butbarely, like the guy in front of
you. That's when I first startedto hear the chirps of rounds starting to
go by. It was hard tosee, but there's a soldier in front
of me. He did this likeweird like kind of giddy up thing where
he just kind of like kind ofclutched, and then he just slammed down
like onto his side, and Iwas like, oh fuck, like like
(22:32):
they just just shot this dude likeright in front of me, and and
luckily it just turned out there likehe wound up like stepping on some rock
or something, and he blew outhis knee. My buddy Jawad, he
was he was our interpreter. Hegrabbed the mortar bass plate and he carried
that thing around with him the restof the day. The whole time that
we were fighting back, I waskind of pulled around and pull a security
(22:52):
make sure that nobody's coming up behindus. And every suddenly, like it
just opens up like the it's likethe sky just starts open. There's just
all this enemy fire and it wasjust raining down right on top of us.
We had no cover, We hadnothing that you know, we could
hide behind, because you know,the walls of this valley were just like
almost straight up, like I said, it's this v So they were shooting
(23:14):
down on top of us, andthere was nowhere that that we could go.
So you would find like a rockor like this little boulder or something
like that, and you'd get awayfrom like the machine gun fire coming from
this way. But as soon asyou screweded your ass around it, then
somebody else from another ang would seeand they'd wound up shooting yet, you
know, and from that way.So it was just a complete sense of
(23:36):
like hopelessness, like there is nowherethat we can go. We were shooting
at every muzzle flash that we cansee, and they were shooting on in
us and it was like the openingscene of Saving Private Rne, where just
rounds are ripping through the sand andthe soil and everything's just kind of whizzing
by you and everything. We woundup getting some fixed wing aircraft in and
typically, like our escalation of forces, you know, we'd always have them
(24:00):
come through on like a fly by, just really loud and fasten and scare
everybody. And and so we calledthis fixed wing fighter to come in and
do the show of force to tryto scare them off. And it was
just a trail of AKA and PKMfire at that thing, like they were
trying to shoot down an airplane,a jet with small arms fire. Like
(24:21):
they didn't care. They were hereto stay and take us out. So
that was a little demoralizing seeing that, like just holy shit, like they're
not even afraid of the aircraft.The sixty or so men made up of
a contingent of the National Guard,the Scouts, and members of the ANA
eventually were able to hunker down ina shepherd's hut and the surrounding goat pen
(24:41):
taking fire from above and doing theirbest to hang on as they waited for
more support. They would come todiscover that the ambush was part of a
larger tactical plan to overrun nearby FobCallagos. The police commander had coordinated with
the Taliban in hopes of drawing aQRF from Calagush and leaving that base vulnerable.
If they could kill some Americans oreven better, shoot down a helicopter,
(25:04):
that was a bonus. The Americansdidn't take the bait, though,
so no quick reaction for US wasinbound. Didier and the rest of the
soldiers were on their own for theduration. We saw a ton of people
moving, which was kind of thescariest because with all this fighting and stuff
going on, and they're just freelymoving, not away from us, but
toward us. We're just like Jesus, these guys are fucking coming across the
(25:26):
river from us. It was almosta sheer, straight up cliff. They
actually had like caves and pre dugfighting positions built into this cliff. We
would see those guys moving down tryingto get closer and closer to us.
Now our scalpeltoon snipers. These guyswere picking dudes off like crazy, like
running. They had like a Icall it an Indiana Jones Bridge, and
(25:48):
these guys were trying to run acrossto it, and our snipers were taking
them off as they were trying tomake their way across, and even the
guys back on our side would tryto bum rush us as the Jay tax
and stuff. We're calling in fighters. Everything within six hundred meter radius of
a bomb strike is considered danger close. So we were fighting guys well within
that six hundred meter radius. Soevery time these guys come in to drop
(26:11):
a payload, we need to likehunker down and like hide our asses because
we have a really good chance ofourselves getting schmucked by the own our own
ordinance. We would be firing fireand firing, and we get the call
across the radio that the fighter's inboundand drop this thing, and all of
a sudden we would stop and hunkerdown. Well, every time we did
that, these forces would like tryto just bomb rush closer and closer to
(26:32):
us. So it's like these concentriccircles of fighters like working their way close
to us, you know, asquickly as possible as they know, as
soon as they close that distance youknow, they take away that fighter support
from us. We had a couplereally close ones. We called one right
out the back door is probably aboutone hundred and twenty five meters five hundred
pound bomb, And it's crazy becauseit was so close that when the bomb
(26:56):
actually detonated, it like sucked thedirt up off the floor or this like
little hut. That was one ofthose blasts that like you could feel in
your chest. And we had thoseall throughout the rest of the day as
these guys would come in, youknow, dropping him at you know,
one hundred twenty five hundred fifty twohundred three hundred meters like constantly, we
were just dropping this ordinance almost righton ourselves. The firefight continued into the
(27:22):
night, with the enemy inching closerat every opportunity. They ran out of
water and in the brutal Afghanistan heat, thirst was beginning to become a factor.
They already had been on the groundfor close to ten hours. None
of us had been touched like tothis point. We had, you know,
one guy with a blown out kneeand a bunch of guys that got
stuck for dehydration. We're taking youknow, bags of saline. You know,
(27:45):
in the middle of a firefight,you all got a bag of IV
fluid there squishing, you know,up underneath their arm bit as they're firing
at guys in the mountains. Likeit was just it was nuts and it
was relentless. It was the worstpart. It's like there wasn't any breaks.
It was just constantly go go.The only time that there was a
break was when we have a fightercome in and everybody hunkers down and then
they make their bum rush and itjust kept getting closer and closer and closer
(28:07):
like that throughout the entire day.You know, it was it was nuts,
and it was like that all theway up until until dark. So
now there became a pretty big dealin Afghanistan and the powers that be finally
this is something they have to reactto. So, unbeknownst to us,
call goes out that we got anentire platoon pinned down about ready to get
(28:27):
wiped out off the map. Theystarted learning Special Forces to come up to
help provide US assistance. So thegame plan would be that two chinooks full
SF would come in they dropped downwith their Afghan commando counterparts. They would
help us clear out the village andkind of secure the area. But with
them they also bring on the assetof the AC one thirty gun ships.
(28:52):
Typically these assets do not fly duringthe daytime. I actually wound up and
meeting one of the guys that wason this this one thirty gun ship,
and he basically told me that theywere sitting down for chaw their beepers start
going off, and they're like,this can't be right, like it's broad
daylight, what's going on? Andthen all of a sudden, all the
crews beepers start going off, Sothey rushed back to find out what's going
on. They didn't even give thema plan or so, they just said,
(29:14):
get the plane in the air andwe'll brief you on the way.
These guys are on their way tocome help provide us some aerial firepower just
to kind of beat back these forces. So as this starts getting closer to
dusk and these guys arrive on scene, these mountains are so high that they
actually have to fly almost within thevalley itself, and it's so tight that
the plane is flying almost completely bankedon its side. These things carry like
(29:38):
they got all these awesome assets onit and they come in and they just
start pounding the hell out of everythingthey can they can see, and these
guys say, like the censors,the guys that are actually watching all the
enemy movement and stuff like that.So it's just like ants crawling everywhere,
like there's so many people trying toget down to get us that they're just
as soon as they fire out asalvo, they got another one rocked ready
(30:00):
to go, and they're just constantlytaking guys out. So with the gunships
beating back the enemy, the SpecialForces guys were able to help the soldiers
extricate themselves to the village. Thefighting ended at about four am, thirteen
hours after it had begun, butnow there was clean up to do and
a reckoning to be had. Thisepisode is sponsored in part by LifeLock.
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Fortune doesn't always favor the bold,and as the US and Afghanistan Army
(32:05):
made it to the village, thepolice commander had a story ready, but
he hadn't counted on being undermined fromwithin. So the next day, after
everything happened, we went up wewent through the village, found all the
ammunition and stuff like that. Thisguy shows up and this police chief he's
got like this this burn, likehis beard is kind of singe and he's
got like this burn on the sideof his face, and he's telling us
(32:29):
that like we we're shooting at him, and that we tried blown him up
with a rocket and it burned hisface and all this kind of stuff.
And it was just like telling theselies, like all this is your fault,
why didn't you come earlier? Andall this other stuff. And in
Afghanistan, women don't talk to you, like you don't talk to women.
They're not allowed to talk to you. There's never any interaction, like they're
(32:51):
just like people that are there thatjust you know, go about their day.
And this older lady, she lookedlike she was eighty, she might
have been like forty five or something, but she comes right up to myself
in the turp and she just startsgiving us an airpool and I'm like,
holy fuck, Like what's going onwith this lady, Like why is she
for one just talking to us?And I look at Jawad and his mouth
is like gaping open, and I'mlike what and she's just like she's given
(33:15):
me a list of names of everybodyin the city that was fighting you guys,
and she's saying he was leading it, like he was the one telling
people to go do this and godo this and telling them where you were
at. Like she completely dime thisdude out. So we pulled him aside.
There was some nds. It waslike there um the Afghan like CIA
(33:35):
kind of guys like there, there'ssome of their intelligence guys. There was
a couple of like their lieutenants.And then there was like a district sub
governor that showed up and he waswounded too. And these guys are lying
so bad that they're trying to gettheir story straight while we're talking to them,
like it's completely fucked up. Sofinally what happens is the the Afghan
(34:01):
commando like colonel comes in and hetook over the situation and he just basically
said, like, these guys arecoming with us and we will deal with
them ourselves. In the Muslim culture, you know, if somebody dies,
you're supposed to bury the person.Within twenty four hours. We've got bodies
all over the mountain side, andsome of the villagers come and ask us,
(34:23):
you know, can we go retreatthese bodies so that we can start
burying him, And this Afghan colonelsays to him, He says, we'll
allow you to go up and startcollecting these bodies, and we will treat
anybody that wounded that brings back down. But if so much is a shot
gets fired at us, like we'rewiping everything out. I've never really met
(34:44):
somebody that like you could just lookout and you're like, that's a really
fucking powerful dude. But that's whothat guy was. Like it was like,
no bullshit, Like you have onechance, otherwise we're gonna wipe,
you know, this entire village offthe face of the earth. Over the
next few days, they monitored theclean up, treating and detaining wounded Taliband
soldiers, watching over the villagers whowere burying the dead, and preparing to
(35:06):
wind down a long tour of dutythat already had included a bunch of ugliness.
But even though the battle had ended, they continued getting intel about potential
Taliband countermeasures. A shepherd had warnedthem that fighters were still retreating and gathering
on the other side of the mountain. He also told them there was a
farmer not far behind him, carryingalong some wounded children. We send this
(35:29):
guy on his way, and sureenough, not too long afterwards, this
old guy comes down. He hasthese two little kids and both of their
legs are just like mangled and shreddedand just like ripped away from him.
And he told us he's like,your bombs did this. And the men,
like the SF medic and our medicsand stuff are looking at him.
(35:51):
They're like, we didn't, likethat's Those aren't like bomb wounds, those
are bullet holes. And so we'relike, what, like, what the
hell like, we keep asking thisguy what's going on, but he just
keeps saying, like, your bombsdid it, Your bombs did whatever.
So we have the whole time,we've been monitoring like radio traffic in the
area and stuff like that, sowe've been able to listen and hear some
(36:15):
of the fighters communication and whatnot.And immediately our terms pick up this chatter,
so everyone starts suddenly talking these badguys in these radios. Juad tells
us he's like, they did thisto these guys kids, and they want
us to get him a helicopter.And that's what the guy had been saying,
is like, you need to savemy kids. You need to get
(36:36):
a helicopter here, You need toget a helicopter here. So right away
we're like this isn't you know,something super fishy here? Well as the
guys are like listening to this,you know, wakee talkie communication back and
forth. These Taliban fighters. Whatthey did is they wind up shooting up
these kids and then sent them downto us to force us say that we
did it so that we have tobring in a helicopter to rescue him.
(37:00):
And we eventually did. Luckily thatyou know, no fighting had gone on.
We'd made such a a dent intheir fighting force that they weren't able
to do it. But I wasjust like one of those fucked up things
like how low that they would goto to try to just lure in a
helicopter to attack and stuff like that, like you know, and on top
of you know, the girl thatI experienced earlier in the year, Like
(37:22):
you know, it's just like nowthat just gave me that sense of anger,
like I just wanted to kill theseguys even more, like how could
you do that to somebody? Youknow? So I don't know it just
even to this day, like itstill pissed me off. I hope to
God that whoever came up with thatplan that we wound up killing that day,
because I was just fucked up.The girl earlier in the year was
(37:45):
a different horror story altogether, butit was the first one he brought back
home back in the spring during hismid tour leave, the first time he
got to see his daughter. Ithappened so quick that you're just kind of
like ripped out of that world.And before I know it, like I'm
back home and the wife is pickingme up at the airport and I have
(38:05):
this this child here that I've neverreally met, you know, and like,
oh my god, Like what thehell is happening? Suddenly, Like
we're in the grocery store picking upsome groceries on the way home, and
I'm completely overwhelmed because, you know, the wife's like, yeah, just
pick out a box of cereal,and I don't know what the fuck to
do because there's eight hundred cereal boxes. Like all I ever do is go
to chow hall and grab an MRIor whatever they give me. At the
(38:27):
time, you know, it wasvery overwhelming, and it was also being
hard or hard being home and havinga child. I had no idea what
to do. And there was anincident when I was in Afghanistan. We
had been out on a patrol firstbetween I've been out of patrol, and
they came across to this young girlwho was probably like three. I think
(38:49):
she had been severely burned and thelocal witch doctor had just like basically like
wrapped like a gauze around her likearms and chest and legs. I mean,
this is like horrible burns over likemost of her body. And then
she's just like wrapped up in thisship that has now started to like harden
and crust and like fuse with thisthis burnt flesh. And the mom actually
(39:12):
came and got us so that likethe medic could like look at her and
immediately here like just sent her backto the base so like the big doctor
and stuff can can look at her. So we were like on base and
the commander grasped me. He's like, hey, I need you to go
up to the meditation. I needyou to document, you know, let's
get the story of what would happenedand everything like that so that we can
pass that on. And I'd goneup there and this little girl. The
(39:32):
father and mother are there, andthe father said they left the child alone
in the house and she pulled likethis boiling pan of water down herself.
The whole time, Like this guy'stelling me this, like my interpreter,
uh, my buddy Jawad, andhe's just like something about this isn't right.
Come to find out after he liketalks to the mom that the dad
(39:52):
didn't want to have a daughter.And this father scolded this tiny little child
and boiling hot water and then didn'tkill her. So they just wrapped her
up in this ship. So I'min this aid station staring into the eyes
of this three year old fucking kidthat's screaming her mind off because they have
to remove the bandages. And asthey're pulling this shit off, like this
(40:15):
kid just like locks eyes with me, and that's all I can see.
Man, It's just it's fucking littlekid that did nothing. So I can
just hear those screams. And soI get home and I'm on leave,
you know, and I'm just meetingmy kid, and you know, my
(40:36):
wife is so happy to have mehome, you know that I'm safe and
stuff like that, but you know, she also needs a break too,
and and you know, she wantsto be able to see me jump up
and feed the baby and grab herand this kind of stuff. And the
second that Reagan starts crying, likethat's all I see is this little girl's
face, and I'm like frozen,like I couldn't. I couldn't hack it,
man, Like it was just it'sone of those deals even to this
(41:01):
day, like little kids crying andlike that just really fucking stressed me out
a lot, Like I just Igotta, I gotta leave because all I
can see is that little girl's face. And coming home for a second time
was no less fraud, but atleast Didier was prepared to deal with it.
He knew he would have limitations,and he understood that he had undergone
(41:22):
a transformation. The only difficulty nowwas how he would mitigate it, since
this time he wouldn't be going backto Afghanistan. I'll never forget like walking
back into my house, like Itold my family, said, let's just
give me a couple hours to beat home. I got home, I
had my duffel bag, you know, a min uniform, and I walk
(41:44):
in and I just remember sitting mybag down and our dog came right up
to me, and it was justlike where the fuck have you been?
You know, like like acted likeI'd never been gone. You know.
It just comes up and he's smellingme and like, okay, well you're
back now. And everything felt sosmall like and surreal, like I didn't
feel like it was real. Itwas nice at first, and then it
(42:07):
just kind of get slowly became likeoverwhelming as I would like get out and
about and suddenly, you know,like you're driving down the highway and there's
like some garbage land there you're sittingin like you know, sitting at a
stoplight and you're like in the middlelane with cars all around you, and
you're like what the like why arewe not moving right now? Like those
kind of little things. You know. There was an initial honeymoon period,
(42:28):
you know, for like the firsttwo three, four days, and then
all of a sudden, like youkind of get into this like that stress
that hypers you know, the senseof awareness and stuff kind of starts coming
and he's like, man, thisis just fucking crazy. Like I was
just dealing with a lot internally,and you know, my wife had her
own issues and stuff that she hadto go through and deal with over.
You know when I was gone toothat it was really hard to kind of
(42:51):
get back on that same page.We just sat down and had a long
talk. You know, It's thatwas eight years ago now. I told
April, I was like, becauseher big thing is how I used to
be like, but she used tobe like, you weren't so serious.
You you know, you were thelife of the party. You were this,
and now like you're just kind oflike blah, And I'm like,
is just the type of deal.Like I told her, I said that
(43:15):
that person that that held you inmy arms before I stepped on that bus
died, that that person is nomore. I'm not that guy. I've
seen the absolute fucking worst side ofhumanity and then to come home and just
kind of like shake it off.Like I've been through counseling, I've I've
(43:37):
done a lot to try to,you know, move past some things that
I've struggled with, But I'm nevergonna be that same person that that gave
you that kiss and got on thatbus, and I just I can't.
And I'm sorry. It's one ofthose things that I wish I could still
have that, but I'm not andlikewise, she's also not that same person
(43:57):
that kissed me goodbye. When Alewas broken during basic training, Didier pushed
through because he didn't want to getrecycled to have to start from scratch.
Getting back into your life can belike that, pushing forward slowly and with
a not insignificant amount of discomfort,because the consequences of a painful way forward
are so much more appealing than givingup and hoping for another shot. Didier
(44:21):
may not be the same person wholeft, but that doesn't mean he can't
remake himself into someone that person wouldhave been proud of. I think I
was able to understand that I've beengiven a second chance of life. There's
really no rhyme or reason why weshould have walked off that day. I
mean, like I said, Idon't know how it's even mathematically possible that
(44:44):
not a single one of us waswounded that day when you have four or
five hundred people that are shooting atyou for an entire day and nobody gets
hit. So I look at itas there's a purpose that myself and my
battle buddies were given a chance todo and better things. So for me,
my happy ending is trying to findout what that is and what I
(45:06):
can do for others and how Ican pay that forward. So unfortunately,
you know, after we got home, I've had six I've lost six of
my fellow warfighters to drug overdose suicidesand car accidents and kind of stuff like
that. You know, we burieda lot, a lot more guys than
we buried when we're overseason. Andone of the things, you know,
we we we do for each otheris continue to be there for each other
(45:29):
and work to help others. Youknow, a lot of us have have
done work volunteering and stuff within theveteran community. Um you know, started
businesses and use you know, profitsand stuff from that to help out others
for cancer survivors and other benefits andstuff like that. Them open gyms,
become police officers and firefighters and theEMTs and stuff like that. You know,
(45:52):
I think it's it's my happy endingis is what can I do with
my second chance to to better theworld, better those around me. I
guess at the bottom, what makescombat a thing unto itself is that it
removes any pretense about worst case scenarios. Once you've seen how awful we can
(46:12):
be. To one another. Youcan't unsee it. Worst, you can
get a glimpse at the depths towhich you may be capable of sinking,
even as you fight the good fight. For Nate Didier, it has become
a question of learning to resee aworld where good is more prominent, and
to appreciate the fact that he's alivetoday. Doing that includes the possibility that
(46:32):
maybe he can have a better tomorrow, and that will have to do for
now. Are you a combat veteranor do you know one with a story
(46:54):
to tell? Reach out to usat stories at this is war dot com
with your dates and branch of service, and a brief description of the experience
that you'd like to share. Thisis War was written by me Anthony Russo
and produced by Incongruity Media. Ifyou like the show, you can help
support us by visiting our sponsors orby leaving a five star review wherever you're
(47:15):
listening right now. You can alsofollow us on social media at this is
War. You also can find shownotes, photos, and more background on
each episode at this iswar dot com.
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