November 13, 2019 • 34 mins
For someone who joined the Army specifically to get into combat dealing with an unseen enemy is more than merely frustrating, it can introduce the insidious notion of pointlessness into your life. When there’s no enemy to fight back against, the best you can do is hold on, be prepared to take care of your buddies and pray you get a chance for some payback.Episode SponsorsBespoke PostNorton360 with LifeLock
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Episode Transcript
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(00:06):
After Ross started shooting, the truckkind of sped up and started swerving and
doing all sorts of crazy stuff.It went off the road and then jump
back onto the highway. For someonewho joined the army specifically to get into
combat, dealing with an unseen enemyis more than merely frustrating. It can
introduce the insidious notion of pointlessness intoyour life. When there's no enemy to
(00:30):
fight back against, the best youcan do is hold on, be prepared,
to take care of your buddies,and pray you get a chance for
some payback. And she said,well, what would you have if you
did that? If you shot atevery vehicle that came close to your convoy?
And he started to cry, andhe said, well, maybe we'd
(00:50):
have two more alive paratroopers. Whatis true bravery? What makes a hero
(01:11):
a hero? Tested by the worriesof what's happening at home thousands of miles
away and the reality of what you'refacing here and now, when your life
is in danger every second and it'seither kill or be killed. An original
podcast from Incongruity Media. This isAnthony Ruzzo and This is War. When
(01:53):
Taylor Ardido was still in high school, he knew two things. The first
was that he wanted to be acop, and the second was that he
had zero interest in going to college. He figured that joining the army would
give him the experience he needed tocredibly pursue that goal without a degree.
Ardido had it in his mind thathe would be a combat photographer, but
that wasn't one of his options,so he enlisted as an infantryman, which
(02:16):
he figured would at least get himinto combat. When the recruiter asked him
if he wanted to add airborne tohis contract, Ardido figured it couldn't hurt
everyone's school. It was easy,it was short. I don't even think
I knew that there were still paratroopersanymore. I thought that was like a
World War two thing. It waspretty easy, and except for the jump
(02:37):
week, which was I don't wantto say hard but exhausting. Jumping out
of an airplane for the first timewas probably the least scared I was jumping
out of a plane, and thenevery time after that it got more terrifying
to me. It was the firsttime I never really knew what to expect
(03:00):
through what it was like, andthen after doing it, I realized I
did not enjoy it. I'm notI don't like heights that much, and
I don't like when you do jumpswith a lot of people going at the
same time. My unit did ajump into Texas for a training exercise,
and right before I went to theground, another paratrooper his parachute went below
(03:23):
me and it took most of myair and I felt pretty hard, hit
the ground pretty hard. And thenas soon as I hit the ground,
the wind picked up and it druggedme across the drop zone pretty far,
and the risers got wrapped around myneck and cut my neck up pretty good.
And also I was moving pretty quick, so I was like my whole
(03:44):
body was just getting drugged through thedirt and my hands were getting them cut
up. As I was trying torelease the risers, I got one of
the risers unhooked, and then theshoot kind of deflated in the wind and
I was okay. Ardido didn't appearto be bound for combat early on,
and army life held no allure.His company leadership didn't inspire the rest of
(04:09):
the troop, so morale was prettylow. He was getting a little out
of shape and fighting just to stayinterested. But before he got his orders
to go to Afghanistan. There wasa shake up at the top. He
got new bosses and a challenge tobring himself back into focus. So I
didn't feel like I had any chanceof being promoted. Ever. I felt
(04:29):
like I was never I was goingto get out of the army as an
EFOCE specialist and not do anything.I had a couple of really good NCOs
coming through the company that I guesssaw potential in me and not just me,
other people, so morale went upreally high. The PT plans were
better, morale was much better.So at that time when they came in,
(04:50):
my PT score was terrible. Mymorale was super low. I wasn't
giving any effort towards PT or eatingproperly. And then my new platoon sergeant
made me a gun team leader.Him and my squad leader were both just
like, hey, you're a teamleader. Now you got to get in
(05:10):
shape. You can't be falling outof runs. They gave me a chance
to succeed, and I couldn't letthem down. So I tried to get
in better shape just to because Iknew that that's what they wanted. And
I finally felt like I had apurpose. I was starting to enjoy being
in that unit for that time,and I felt like a big piece of
ship in a leadership position and justbeing a bad runner. So I started
(05:36):
running on my own. I broughtup my PT score and then I actually
brought it up pretty high. Andright before we deployed, I found out
they were going to send me tothe sergeant's board. While it was really
satisfying to be queued up to becomea sergeant, it was a decision that
was going to have to wait becausethe company was preparing for a nine month
deployment to Afghanistan. It was twentyand sixteen, and the war no longer
(05:59):
was getting the average and the attentionthat it had warranted during the surgeones,
but there were no shortage of Talibanfighters undermining the stability of Kanadahar. Ardido
was excited to get his chance,but he was a little apprehensive as well.
I really enjoyed being a team leaderin garrison life, and I felt
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I was pretty good at it.I was pretty confident. Being a team
leader in Afghanistan, I felt more, i don't know how to say it,
more nervous, Like there was waymore responsibility to it. My unit
was deploying every other year for likethe last ten years. When we're supposed
to deploy, we went on GRF, so our unit didn't deploy for about
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three years. And by that time, most of the guys in the company
who had deployed had either gotten outof the Army or a PCs to another
unit. So when we went in, there was only a couple NCOs in
the company who had deployed, somost of the company that was their first
(07:10):
deployment. I think there was onlymaybe three or four guys in my platoon
who had deployed, had a thirtythe NCOs and my platoon that did deploy,
I had full faith in. Theyknew what they were talking about.
They had all been on several deployments. My platoon sergeant, he had deployed
there, I had full faith in. And then because they were all my
(07:33):
platoon sergeant and the squad leaders,they all knew what they were doing.
I had good faith in my peers, the other team leaders, and you
know Joe's But I was a littleworried because I knew I hadn't deployed.
I didn't really know what to expect, and I knew that the vast majority
also didn't know what to expect.Setting aside the fact that many of his
(07:55):
comrades also hadn't been in combat before, our Dedo was broadly speaking excited for
the opportunity to go to Afghanistan.He knew it would be his only tour,
even with the morale improving NCOs hewas fortunate and happy to be under
He had decided that the promotion cultureand the dumb luck that surrounded who was
going to be elevated to command wasn'tsomething he wanted to engage in over the
(08:16):
next twenty years. Besides, hefigured with the Wars apparently winding down,
deployments to Afghanistan weren't going to beas dangerous as they had been in the
past. So I had a friendfrom high school who was in Kandahar.
We ended up replacing his unit,So I talked to him a little bit
and he told me about the areaand what was going on. The whole
(08:39):
impression of being stationed at Kandahar Airfieldwas that it was super safe. There
was not a lot of contact,There was very few directs fire incidents the
occasional indirect fire, so it waspretty safe. The Chiels were super good.
(09:01):
There's a lot of people there,so you have a lot of free
time. So the impression was youeat a lot of good food, and
you go to the gym as muchas possible and pretty much try to get
as big as possible. When welanded, I found out that it was
not going to be how we allimagined it was. Right off the bat,
we were going on missions. Ididn't think we would be going on
(09:22):
missions that often, but we endedup going very frequently. So I thought
when we got there we would havelike a couple of days to settle in
before we started doing Left Sea RightSeat. Some guys were going on missions
the next day after getting there,and it was so rushed. I also
thought Left Sea Right Seat would bea couple of weeks. I think it
(09:43):
was only one week. The mainvibe was from the guys I talked to
is they were just really excited toget out of there. They were ready
to go. They kind of playedit off like it wasn't a big deal
being stationed there. It was prettyeasy. You know, don't let your
guard down, but yeah, youguys will be okay. It's it's not
hard here. It's easy. Idon't know why our experience was different in
(10:07):
terms of enemy activity, because assoon as we got there, the Taliban
was definitely way more active in thatarea. Arddo also discovered that he would
have radically different responsibilities during this tour. His company had been training as dismounted
forces in preparation for the mission,but their responsibilities for route protection and patrols
(10:31):
in the city meant that they wouldbe mounted. During the brief turnaround period,
Ardido trained as a turret gunner,which primarily consisted of learning how to
rotate the turret. They also learnedthat their mission tempo would be higher than
the people they were replacing because theyhad so many fewer troops. Days off
and leisure time at the gym weren'tgoing to be in the cards. Instead,
(10:52):
there would be just a lot ofon the job training and mounted combat
where lives were always on the line. This episode is sponsored in part by
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boxes for guys that give a damnApproaches to effectively running convoys and patrols out
on the open road have changed regularlyover the course of the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan, with the rules ofengagement adjusted depending upon the prevailing attitudes.
(13:31):
During the Hearts and Mind style campaigns, some commanders would allow vehicles to pass
or to get close to Americans outon the road with little consequence, but
the uptick in vbed attacks on Americansafter Ardido's company arrived necessitated a more aggressive
stance. We were driving on HighwayOne, and this vehicle was driving towards
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us, and I was in thesecond truck and my buddy Ross was in
the first truck. And this carcame speeding towards us, like this white
SUV, and Ross started shooting athim. My turret was to the right
and the truck came on the leftside of the convoy, so by the
time I got my gun pointed around, the truck had already passed us.
(14:16):
After Ross started shooting, the truckkind of sped up and started swerving and
doing all sorts of crazy stuff.It went off the road and then jumped
back onto the highway, and itwas pretty scary. I thought. I
thought that if any truck was aV, but it would be this SUV
here. But it ended up justdriving towards us. I don't know if
it was testing us or what.It was definitely not a normal person on
(14:41):
the road. My pl was nothappy with me for not shooting at him.
I made every attempt to. Itried to turn the turret to the
side, but I just couldn't getover there in time. And he said
that was my time to shoot.I should have shot at him. I
should have put rounds through the hood, through the windshield, and he said
(15:05):
if anyone, if anyone deserved todie, it should have been that guy,
and I should have been the oneto kill him. I'm not sure
if that guy deserved to die,But at the same time, I do
think that I felt bad after.I felt like I let my platoon down.
I felt I loved myself down.I felt that I should have been
(15:26):
ready to engage, but I wasn't. Had that been a v bid,
it would have been my truck orthe truck behind me that got hit.
So that was kind of like awake up call, like, Okay,
I gotta be faster, I needto be ready to go quicker. I
need to be able to to killsomeone as fast as possible so that doesn't
happen again. Because luckily it wasn'ta vbid, But if it was,
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I mean I could have been killedor the truck behind me would have.
The thing with vehicle born IDs thatmade them so dange and so effective was
that they hid in plain sight.Imagine a typical road rage that exists on
any major thoroughfare where aggressive driving isthe norm. Now imagine you have to
decide which of these aggressive drivers isjust trying to get through traffic, and
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which is trying to get close enoughto kill you. The rules of engagement,
which earlier in the tour had beenso accommodating as to be dangerous,
had been clouded ever since they losttheir first guys in a v BIT attack
earlier that month. It was thesecond of August. We got there like
in early July, so we werethere maybe a month, probably a little
(16:37):
less. My platoon was on QRFand I was actually on radio guard with
my buddy Hall. We were kindof hanging out listening to the radio,
and we heard we heard over theradio the third platoon platoon sergeant calling over
to our company main saying, hey, we just got hit by an IED.
(17:00):
And Hal looked at each other,We're like, oh shit. I
ran inside from the motor pool,went to my platoon sergeant's office. I
was trying to tell him what Ijust heard. And as I was telling
him, I was I was exhaustedfrom sprinting. He was kind of like
laughing at me. He said somethinglike, spit it out, Junior.
I told him, hey, thirdplatoon just got hit by an IED.
Then he stopped laughing, and thesmile completely went off his face and he
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was like, okay, go getthe guys like it went really serious.
Okay, go get the guys ready, and he grabbed the pl and they
went to go find the company commander. I had already had all my stuff
at the truck, so I wasone of the first people back to the
trucks. The meantime, Hall wasturning all the trucks on, I got
in my turret, I put theheadset on. I was monitoring the radio,
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and then then we heard over thenet that there was a couple kia,
so we found out the ied wasway worse than we had expected,
and we were all ready to goin a very short amount of time,
maybe five minutes maybe five minutes.We were all ready to go, and
then we found out that the engineer'stow truck didn't have enough fuel, so
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they were not ready to leave thewire. So they went to go get
fuel, and we were just sittingthere in the motor pool not doing anything
as those truck's getting refueled. Aswe're listening over the radio, they're trying
to set up security and they justreally needed assistance, and we were just
sitting there ready to go, butwe couldn't go. It took between ten
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and fifteen minutes for the engineers toget their act together, which was baffling
and frustrating. The point of beingon a quick reaction force was to have
everything ready to go on a moment'snotice, which meant vehicle maintenance was generally
to be completed at the end ofthe mission, not before it. By
the time they were rolling, evenat top speed, Ardido understood they were
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going to arrive too late to beanything other than a witness to the chaos.
As we're going, the platoon leaderin my truck tells the guys in
my truck, like, hey,just so you guys know, the truck's
on fire. There's some guys trappedin there, you know. Just be
ready to see some of your friendsfucked up. So the smoke had had
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died down quite a bit, Itwasn't smoking that much, but I remember
coming up in the turret and I'mtrying to like assess the scene. My
pl is asking any questions because hecan't really see well out of the truck,
so he was always asking me.I saw the truck, and at
first I didn't even think that wasthe truck. I saw it and I
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was like, Oh, my god, is that is that? Actually it?
It was like a huge shock tome because I couldn't I couldn't imagine
such a large vehicle looking like that, like the Max pros so armored and
its sole purpose as to stop explosions, and I did not think that it
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was possible for that truck to looklike that. And then we get there,
the flame in the vehicle had justbeen put out. It's on the
side of the road and it's completelyblack and it's pretty much not recognizable.
It looks like a like a black, crumpled up piece of paper, and
it is completely off the highway.It's amazing how such like a big and
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heavy truck could be blown off theroad like that so far away and it's
on its side. As soon aswe get there, the Metavac helicopter comes
in and picks up the wounded.We immediately set up security. At this
point, we shut down the wholehighway on both sides. No traffic's coming
(20:41):
through. Cars started getting built upon either side because we're blocking every lane
on the highway. We got thetow truck in there and they flipped the
truck off its side back up right. Once the truck was upright, the
driver and the TC we're still inthe front seats and they had to try
(21:03):
to get the windshield out, andI remember that taken a little while to
like actually be able to get themout of there, and they had already
been dead, so it wasn't really, you know, a rush to get
them out, but it was definitelydifficult. Got them out, got them
ready for transport, and then wecalled in another helicopter to take their bodies
(21:25):
away. Back at the base,there was a morning period with guys keeping
to themselves and quietly going about theirduties, but there was also a mounting
unrest about the rules of engagement,especially on the open highway. As it
stood, firing one's weapon was allowedonly after the offending vehicle had been shouted
or waved at, had Flair's shotin its direction, followed by warning shots,
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and then shots to disable or kill. But their difficulty was as Ardeto
had seen, sometimes there wasn't enoughtime to get through all of that between
the moment you detected a possible ratand the moment when the vehicle was close
enough to detonate a bomb. SoI think a big factor that led to
the low morale was that our handswere tied with the rules of engagement,
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and even after we had two guyskilled, the rules of engagement really didn't
change, so they kept sending usout on missions. We had three platoons
running three missions a day, anda lot of the times we're driving through
Kandahar City on these busy roads,and there was not much we could do
to prevent this from happening again.We had a brief with the brigade legal
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representative the next day after the vbid to discuss what we could do to
prevent this, and nothing got accomplished. During that brief. It was the
legal lady and all of my company, and every time someone gave an idea
and a suggestion as to how wecould prevent this, she would shoot it
(23:00):
down. She shot down everything.A lot of the gunners had stuff to
say, a lot of the gunnershad really good ideas, but she would
shoot it down. Oh you can'tdo this because of that, and you
know, oh, you can't bedoing this. So we pretty much learned
that there was there was nothing thatwe could do, and we just had
to keep driving around and hoping wedidn't get blown up, and that's what
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brought down the morale even more.I think the third platoon pl suggested that
we shoot warning shots at every carthat attempts to get near the convoy,
and then eventually the local people willget the idea, hey, we'll get
shot at if we drive close tothem, so don't drive close to them.
And if they're a threat and theykeep driving close, then you just
(23:45):
shoot them or try to shoot theengine block or the tires disabled a vehicle.
And the legal rep shot that downimmediately. Well, she said,
well, lieutenant, you can't.You can't just shoot at every vehicle on
the highway that gets to you.And he said, well why not,
And she said, well what wouldyou have if you did that, if
(24:07):
you shot at every vehicle that cameclose to your convoy And he started to
cry and he said, well maybewe'd have two more a live paratroopers that
hit made pretty hard. And thenthat's when that meeting was over. The
dragon morale rarely has to do withthe relative danger of the missions or what's
being asked of the troops, althoughthat can be an issue. More often,
(24:32):
though, it is a sense ofpurposelessness that undermines the way people feel
about their duties. This sense thatthere's not enough support from above was really
what started to wear on Ardido.He trusted his NCOs and he trusted his
company commander, but he also feltas if there were a general disinterest in
the mission from above. The senseof urgency was gone, and any pretense
(24:52):
of nation building, which had beenpart of the mission before twenty and sixteen,
was abandoned as the new administration bounced, it was no longer part of
the plan. As twenty seventeen woreon, Ardito felt increasingly purposeless in the
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Norton dot com slash War with nationbuilding off the table and the directive that
(27:04):
the mission was to kill the Talibanand members of ISIS morale continued to flag.
You See, Kenada Har wasn't abattleground in that sense. There weren't
enemy fighters there to kill so muchas there were in the mountains. In
the city, there were only guerrillaattacks. During the nine months of their
tour. Ardido's platoon didn't get intoone firefight Instead, they endured the v
(27:26):
BIT attacks and did their best tomitigate them. I was definitely much more
aggressive. I felt more comfortable shooting. I knew that my leadership would back
me up if I made the wrongcall, but I was also careful not
to make the wrong call. Ilearned a couple of phrases and passed two
so I could yell at them intheir native tongue. I started like actually
(27:51):
pointing my barrel at cars more often, and I found that that works pretty
well, especially with a fifty cow. We were driving Highway four and I
forget the reason why, but themission was canceled or something like that.
We were already halfway to our destinationand we had a turnaround and go back
(28:11):
to base. So we were inthe middle of the highway and we started
turning the trucks around. The firsttruck stopped the traffic, the oncoming traffic,
and then that truck turned around andpointed the other way, and my
truck was about to turn around,so now it was my job to stop
the traffic. And as soon asthe gunner from the first truck turned the
(28:36):
other way, one of the carsstarted driving towards my truck at that point,
I didn't really have time to wavehim down or anything. He was
driving towards us after he had alreadystopped. The first gunner already told him
to stop, and he did so. As soon as he started moving again.
I shot some rounds near his car. Then he stopped immediately after that,
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and then we turned around, andeveryone that was stopped and the highway
got the idea like, Okay,don't don't don't pull up towards these guys
anymore, they're gonna shoot us.Preventing attacks or keeping racalcit in locals in
line was not the same as fightingback, though, and that frustration became
another drag on morale. But evenas morale suffered, there was cohesion among
(29:23):
the enlisted across all of the coalitionforces, and even the locals across the
board. There increasingly was this senseof needing to take care of your own.
But I think I was on amission and we heard over the radio,
Hey, there's there was a vbit on highway for return to base
immediately. So we got the guysback in the trucks. So we head
(29:45):
back, and then I remember theplatoon leader called up on the radio like,
hey, be ready, for asecondary attack. Gunners like be ready,
don't do pen flares, don't wavejump immediately to warning shots like don't
play around, we need get backto base safe. We got back to
base and we were QRF was leavingas we were coming into base, and
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our platoon was on standby getting readyto leave again just in case the QRF
got hit with a secondary attack.And then they called over the loudspeakers on
calf saying if anyone has a positiveblood, come immediately to the Roll three
to donate blood, because there wasa couple injured in a Kia and it
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was me and a couple other guysfrom my platoon. We loaded up on
our little gator and you know,we had like five six guys hanging off
the back of this gator and we'respeeding down the road to the Roll three
and you can see just a tonof people running and other people loaded up
on gators and golf carts and peoplewere riding bicycles and driving pickup trucks with
(30:57):
a bunch of guys in the back. And we get there and there's just
a bunch of people waiting outside thehospital to donate blood. That was nice
to see how many people responded soquickly to donate blood for these guys that
needed it. We made it evenbetter was it wasn't just US soldiers running
to donate blood. It was youknow, us contract civilians, you know
(31:21):
guys that just like mechanics. Therewas Air Force guys running there. There
was other coalition forces, the Romanians, the Bulgarians, but there was like
the civilians that worked at the chowhall. They were coming and running like
local interpreters and linguists. They werecoming like literally every one on that base
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was was coming to give blood.In a deployment with no satisfaction in the
field, it was hardening to seesuch an outpouring to remember that the guys
on the ground were in the endin it together, even if there was
occasional friction. In the nine monthshe was in Afghanistan, between losing his
comrades and feeling increasingly alienated from thechain of command, Ardido was ready to
(32:08):
go home. When he did,they offered him a promotion to sergeant if
he would re enlist, but hehad had enough of the army and spent
his final year applying to police departmentsand getting EMT certified. Still, when
he got out, it was alot different than he expected. I think
that a lot of people transitioning outof the military have a tough time adjusting
(32:30):
to civilian life. I was workingin a kitchen, and I wasn't connecting
with my coworkers the same way Ihad been connecting with my co workers in
the Army. There was a lotof times they would look at me funny
when I said something. I thinkthey didn't get the dark humor that I
was so used to. I don'tthink they liked the way I talked,
(32:52):
the profanity and stuff like that.So I was having a rough time transitioning.
And I always wanted to travel thecountry because I never left the East
Coasts and my whole life other thanthe one time I went to Texas for
a day to do that training exercise. So I quit my job. I
took a month to drive around thecountry and met up with a lot of
(33:15):
my army friends along the way,a lot of guys that also recently got
out. And it was good forme, I think it was good for
them also. The trip didn't justallow them to catch up. It gave
the guys a sense that they stillbelonged and that there were still people out
there for them. For Taylor Ardido, it also signaled a kind of final
(33:37):
end to his service and helped himto start to look forward to whatever his
life was going to be from hereon out. When significant incidents or phases
of our lives come to an end, we always need to find a way
to get a little closure. Weneed to mark and remember the person that
we were before we embark on buildingthe new person we're going to be.
(34:14):
This is War was written by meAnthony Russo and produced by Incongruity Media.
If you like the show, youcan help support us by visiting our sponsors
or by leaving a five star reviewwherever you're listening right now. You can
also follow us on social media atthis is War. You also can find
show notes, photos, and morebackground on each episode at this iswar dot com.
After Ross started shooting, the truckkind of sped up and started swerving and
doing all sorts of crazy stuff.It went off the road and then jump
back onto the highway. For someonewho joined the army specifically to get into
combat, dealing with an unseen enemyis more than merely frustrating. It can
introduce the insidious notion of pointlessness intoyour life. When there's no enemy to
(00:30):
fight back against, the best youcan do is hold on, be prepared,
to take care of your buddies,and pray you get a chance for
some payback. And she said,well, what would you have if you
did that? If you shot atevery vehicle that came close to your convoy?
And he started to cry, andhe said, well, maybe we'd
(00:50):
have two more alive paratroopers. Whatis true bravery? What makes a hero
(01:11):
a hero? Tested by the worriesof what's happening at home thousands of miles
away and the reality of what you'refacing here and now, when your life
is in danger every second and it'seither kill or be killed. An original
podcast from Incongruity Media. This isAnthony Ruzzo and This is War. When
(01:53):
Taylor Ardido was still in high school, he knew two things. The first
was that he wanted to be acop, and the second was that he
had zero interest in going to college. He figured that joining the army would
give him the experience he needed tocredibly pursue that goal without a degree.
Ardido had it in his mind thathe would be a combat photographer, but
that wasn't one of his options,so he enlisted as an infantryman, which
(02:16):
he figured would at least get himinto combat. When the recruiter asked him
if he wanted to add airborne tohis contract, Ardido figured it couldn't hurt
everyone's school. It was easy,it was short. I don't even think
I knew that there were still paratroopersanymore. I thought that was like a
World War two thing. It waspretty easy, and except for the jump
(02:37):
week, which was I don't wantto say hard but exhausting. Jumping out
of an airplane for the first timewas probably the least scared I was jumping
out of a plane, and thenevery time after that it got more terrifying
to me. It was the firsttime I never really knew what to expect
(03:00):
through what it was like, andthen after doing it, I realized I
did not enjoy it. I'm notI don't like heights that much, and
I don't like when you do jumpswith a lot of people going at the
same time. My unit did ajump into Texas for a training exercise,
and right before I went to theground, another paratrooper his parachute went below
(03:23):
me and it took most of myair and I felt pretty hard, hit
the ground pretty hard. And thenas soon as I hit the ground,
the wind picked up and it druggedme across the drop zone pretty far,
and the risers got wrapped around myneck and cut my neck up pretty good.
And also I was moving pretty quick, so I was like my whole
(03:44):
body was just getting drugged through thedirt and my hands were getting them cut
up. As I was trying torelease the risers, I got one of
the risers unhooked, and then theshoot kind of deflated in the wind and
I was okay. Ardido didn't appearto be bound for combat early on,
and army life held no allure.His company leadership didn't inspire the rest of
(04:09):
the troop, so morale was prettylow. He was getting a little out
of shape and fighting just to stayinterested. But before he got his orders
to go to Afghanistan. There wasa shake up at the top. He
got new bosses and a challenge tobring himself back into focus. So I
didn't feel like I had any chanceof being promoted. Ever. I felt
(04:29):
like I was never I was goingto get out of the army as an
EFOCE specialist and not do anything.I had a couple of really good NCOs
coming through the company that I guesssaw potential in me and not just me,
other people, so morale went upreally high. The PT plans were
better, morale was much better.So at that time when they came in,
(04:50):
my PT score was terrible. Mymorale was super low. I wasn't
giving any effort towards PT or eatingproperly. And then my new platoon sergeant
made me a gun team leader.Him and my squad leader were both just
like, hey, you're a teamleader. Now you got to get in
(05:10):
shape. You can't be falling outof runs. They gave me a chance
to succeed, and I couldn't letthem down. So I tried to get
in better shape just to because Iknew that that's what they wanted. And
I finally felt like I had apurpose. I was starting to enjoy being
in that unit for that time,and I felt like a big piece of
ship in a leadership position and justbeing a bad runner. So I started
(05:36):
running on my own. I broughtup my PT score and then I actually
brought it up pretty high. Andright before we deployed, I found out
they were going to send me tothe sergeant's board. While it was really
satisfying to be queued up to becomea sergeant, it was a decision that
was going to have to wait becausethe company was preparing for a nine month
deployment to Afghanistan. It was twentyand sixteen, and the war no longer
(05:59):
was getting the average and the attentionthat it had warranted during the surgeones,
but there were no shortage of Talibanfighters undermining the stability of Kanadahar. Ardido
was excited to get his chance,but he was a little apprehensive as well.
I really enjoyed being a team leaderin garrison life, and I felt
(06:26):
I was pretty good at it.I was pretty confident. Being a team
leader in Afghanistan, I felt more, i don't know how to say it,
more nervous, Like there was waymore responsibility to it. My unit
was deploying every other year for likethe last ten years. When we're supposed
to deploy, we went on GRF, so our unit didn't deploy for about
(06:49):
three years. And by that time, most of the guys in the company
who had deployed had either gotten outof the Army or a PCs to another
unit. So when we went in, there was only a couple NCOs in
the company who had deployed, somost of the company that was their first
(07:10):
deployment. I think there was onlymaybe three or four guys in my platoon
who had deployed, had a thirtythe NCOs and my platoon that did deploy,
I had full faith in. Theyknew what they were talking about.
They had all been on several deployments. My platoon sergeant, he had deployed
there, I had full faith in. And then because they were all my
(07:33):
platoon sergeant and the squad leaders,they all knew what they were doing.
I had good faith in my peers, the other team leaders, and you
know Joe's But I was a littleworried because I knew I hadn't deployed.
I didn't really know what to expect, and I knew that the vast majority
also didn't know what to expect.Setting aside the fact that many of his
(07:55):
comrades also hadn't been in combat before, our Dedo was broadly speaking excited for
the opportunity to go to Afghanistan.He knew it would be his only tour,
even with the morale improving NCOs hewas fortunate and happy to be under
He had decided that the promotion cultureand the dumb luck that surrounded who was
going to be elevated to command wasn'tsomething he wanted to engage in over the
(08:16):
next twenty years. Besides, hefigured with the Wars apparently winding down,
deployments to Afghanistan weren't going to beas dangerous as they had been in the
past. So I had a friendfrom high school who was in Kandahar.
We ended up replacing his unit,So I talked to him a little bit
and he told me about the areaand what was going on. The whole
(08:39):
impression of being stationed at Kandahar Airfieldwas that it was super safe. There
was not a lot of contact,There was very few directs fire incidents the
occasional indirect fire, so it waspretty safe. The Chiels were super good.
(09:01):
There's a lot of people there,so you have a lot of free
time. So the impression was youeat a lot of good food, and
you go to the gym as muchas possible and pretty much try to get
as big as possible. When welanded, I found out that it was
not going to be how we allimagined it was. Right off the bat,
we were going on missions. Ididn't think we would be going on
(09:22):
missions that often, but we endedup going very frequently. So I thought
when we got there we would havelike a couple of days to settle in
before we started doing Left Sea RightSeat. Some guys were going on missions
the next day after getting there,and it was so rushed. I also
thought Left Sea Right Seat would bea couple of weeks. I think it
(09:43):
was only one week. The mainvibe was from the guys I talked to
is they were just really excited toget out of there. They were ready
to go. They kind of playedit off like it wasn't a big deal
being stationed there. It was prettyeasy. You know, don't let your
guard down, but yeah, youguys will be okay. It's it's not
hard here. It's easy. Idon't know why our experience was different in
(10:07):
terms of enemy activity, because assoon as we got there, the Taliban
was definitely way more active in thatarea. Arddo also discovered that he would
have radically different responsibilities during this tour. His company had been training as dismounted
forces in preparation for the mission,but their responsibilities for route protection and patrols
(10:31):
in the city meant that they wouldbe mounted. During the brief turnaround period,
Ardido trained as a turret gunner,which primarily consisted of learning how to
rotate the turret. They also learnedthat their mission tempo would be higher than
the people they were replacing because theyhad so many fewer troops. Days off
and leisure time at the gym weren'tgoing to be in the cards. Instead,
(10:52):
there would be just a lot ofon the job training and mounted combat
where lives were always on the line. This episode is sponsored in part by
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boxes for guys that give a damnApproaches to effectively running convoys and patrols out
on the open road have changed regularlyover the course of the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan, with the rules ofengagement adjusted depending upon the prevailing attitudes.
(13:31):
During the Hearts and Mind style campaigns, some commanders would allow vehicles to pass
or to get close to Americans outon the road with little consequence, but
the uptick in vbed attacks on Americansafter Ardido's company arrived necessitated a more aggressive
stance. We were driving on HighwayOne, and this vehicle was driving towards
(13:52):
us, and I was in thesecond truck and my buddy Ross was in
the first truck. And this carcame speeding towards us, like this white
SUV, and Ross started shooting athim. My turret was to the right
and the truck came on the leftside of the convoy, so by the
time I got my gun pointed around, the truck had already passed us.
(14:16):
After Ross started shooting, the truckkind of sped up and started swerving and
doing all sorts of crazy stuff.It went off the road and then jumped
back onto the highway, and itwas pretty scary. I thought. I
thought that if any truck was aV, but it would be this SUV
here. But it ended up justdriving towards us. I don't know if
it was testing us or what.It was definitely not a normal person on
(14:41):
the road. My pl was nothappy with me for not shooting at him.
I made every attempt to. Itried to turn the turret to the
side, but I just couldn't getover there in time. And he said
that was my time to shoot.I should have shot at him. I
should have put rounds through the hood, through the windshield, and he said
(15:05):
if anyone, if anyone deserved todie, it should have been that guy,
and I should have been the oneto kill him. I'm not sure
if that guy deserved to die,But at the same time, I do
think that I felt bad after.I felt like I let my platoon down.
I felt I loved myself down.I felt that I should have been
(15:26):
ready to engage, but I wasn't. Had that been a v bid,
it would have been my truck orthe truck behind me that got hit.
So that was kind of like awake up call, like, Okay,
I gotta be faster, I needto be ready to go quicker. I
need to be able to to killsomeone as fast as possible so that doesn't
happen again. Because luckily it wasn'ta vbid, But if it was,
(15:52):
I mean I could have been killedor the truck behind me would have.
The thing with vehicle born IDs thatmade them so dange and so effective was
that they hid in plain sight.Imagine a typical road rage that exists on
any major thoroughfare where aggressive driving isthe norm. Now imagine you have to
decide which of these aggressive drivers isjust trying to get through traffic, and
(16:15):
which is trying to get close enoughto kill you. The rules of engagement,
which earlier in the tour had beenso accommodating as to be dangerous,
had been clouded ever since they losttheir first guys in a v BIT attack
earlier that month. It was thesecond of August. We got there like
in early July, so we werethere maybe a month, probably a little
(16:37):
less. My platoon was on QRFand I was actually on radio guard with
my buddy Hall. We were kindof hanging out listening to the radio,
and we heard we heard over theradio the third platoon platoon sergeant calling over
to our company main saying, hey, we just got hit by an IED.
(17:00):
And Hal looked at each other,We're like, oh shit. I
ran inside from the motor pool,went to my platoon sergeant's office. I
was trying to tell him what Ijust heard. And as I was telling
him, I was I was exhaustedfrom sprinting. He was kind of like
laughing at me. He said somethinglike, spit it out, Junior.
I told him, hey, thirdplatoon just got hit by an IED.
Then he stopped laughing, and thesmile completely went off his face and he
(17:26):
was like, okay, go getthe guys like it went really serious.
Okay, go get the guys ready, and he grabbed the pl and they
went to go find the company commander. I had already had all my stuff
at the truck, so I wasone of the first people back to the
trucks. The meantime, Hall wasturning all the trucks on, I got
in my turret, I put theheadset on. I was monitoring the radio,
(17:48):
and then then we heard over thenet that there was a couple kia,
so we found out the ied wasway worse than we had expected,
and we were all ready to goin a very short amount of time,
maybe five minutes maybe five minutes.We were all ready to go, and
then we found out that the engineer'stow truck didn't have enough fuel, so
(18:11):
they were not ready to leave thewire. So they went to go get
fuel, and we were just sittingthere in the motor pool not doing anything
as those truck's getting refueled. Aswe're listening over the radio, they're trying
to set up security and they justreally needed assistance, and we were just
sitting there ready to go, butwe couldn't go. It took between ten
(18:33):
and fifteen minutes for the engineers toget their act together, which was baffling
and frustrating. The point of beingon a quick reaction force was to have
everything ready to go on a moment'snotice, which meant vehicle maintenance was generally
to be completed at the end ofthe mission, not before it. By
the time they were rolling, evenat top speed, Ardido understood they were
(18:53):
going to arrive too late to beanything other than a witness to the chaos.
As we're going, the platoon leaderin my truck tells the guys in
my truck, like, hey,just so you guys know, the truck's
on fire. There's some guys trappedin there, you know. Just be
ready to see some of your friendsfucked up. So the smoke had had
(19:15):
died down quite a bit, Itwasn't smoking that much, but I remember
coming up in the turret and I'mtrying to like assess the scene. My
pl is asking any questions because hecan't really see well out of the truck,
so he was always asking me.I saw the truck, and at
first I didn't even think that wasthe truck. I saw it and I
(19:36):
was like, Oh, my god, is that is that? Actually it?
It was like a huge shock tome because I couldn't I couldn't imagine
such a large vehicle looking like that, like the Max pros so armored and
its sole purpose as to stop explosions, and I did not think that it
(19:56):
was possible for that truck to looklike that. And then we get there,
the flame in the vehicle had justbeen put out. It's on the
side of the road and it's completelyblack and it's pretty much not recognizable.
It looks like a like a black, crumpled up piece of paper, and
it is completely off the highway.It's amazing how such like a big and
(20:18):
heavy truck could be blown off theroad like that so far away and it's
on its side. As soon aswe get there, the Metavac helicopter comes
in and picks up the wounded.We immediately set up security. At this
point, we shut down the wholehighway on both sides. No traffic's coming
(20:41):
through. Cars started getting built upon either side because we're blocking every lane
on the highway. We got thetow truck in there and they flipped the
truck off its side back up right. Once the truck was upright, the
driver and the TC we're still inthe front seats and they had to try
(21:03):
to get the windshield out, andI remember that taken a little while to
like actually be able to get themout of there, and they had already
been dead, so it wasn't really, you know, a rush to get
them out, but it was definitelydifficult. Got them out, got them
ready for transport, and then wecalled in another helicopter to take their bodies
(21:25):
away. Back at the base,there was a morning period with guys keeping
to themselves and quietly going about theirduties, but there was also a mounting
unrest about the rules of engagement,especially on the open highway. As it
stood, firing one's weapon was allowedonly after the offending vehicle had been shouted
or waved at, had Flair's shotin its direction, followed by warning shots,
(21:48):
and then shots to disable or kill. But their difficulty was as Ardeto
had seen, sometimes there wasn't enoughtime to get through all of that between
the moment you detected a possible ratand the moment when the vehicle was close
enough to detonate a bomb. SoI think a big factor that led to
the low morale was that our handswere tied with the rules of engagement,
(22:12):
and even after we had two guyskilled, the rules of engagement really didn't
change, so they kept sending usout on missions. We had three platoons
running three missions a day, anda lot of the times we're driving through
Kandahar City on these busy roads,and there was not much we could do
to prevent this from happening again.We had a brief with the brigade legal
(22:37):
representative the next day after the vbid to discuss what we could do to
prevent this, and nothing got accomplished. During that brief. It was the
legal lady and all of my company, and every time someone gave an idea
and a suggestion as to how wecould prevent this, she would shoot it
(23:00):
down. She shot down everything.A lot of the gunners had stuff to
say, a lot of the gunnershad really good ideas, but she would
shoot it down. Oh you can'tdo this because of that, and you
know, oh, you can't bedoing this. So we pretty much learned
that there was there was nothing thatwe could do, and we just had
to keep driving around and hoping wedidn't get blown up, and that's what
(23:22):
brought down the morale even more.I think the third platoon pl suggested that
we shoot warning shots at every carthat attempts to get near the convoy,
and then eventually the local people willget the idea, hey, we'll get
shot at if we drive close tothem, so don't drive close to them.
And if they're a threat and theykeep driving close, then you just
(23:45):
shoot them or try to shoot theengine block or the tires disabled a vehicle.
And the legal rep shot that downimmediately. Well, she said,
well, lieutenant, you can't.You can't just shoot at every vehicle on
the highway that gets to you.And he said, well why not,
And she said, well what wouldyou have if you did that, if
(24:07):
you shot at every vehicle that cameclose to your convoy And he started to
cry and he said, well maybewe'd have two more a live paratroopers that
hit made pretty hard. And thenthat's when that meeting was over. The
dragon morale rarely has to do withthe relative danger of the missions or what's
being asked of the troops, althoughthat can be an issue. More often,
(24:32):
though, it is a sense ofpurposelessness that undermines the way people feel
about their duties. This sense thatthere's not enough support from above was really
what started to wear on Ardido.He trusted his NCOs and he trusted his
company commander, but he also feltas if there were a general disinterest in
the mission from above. The senseof urgency was gone, and any pretense
(24:52):
of nation building, which had beenpart of the mission before twenty and sixteen,
was abandoned as the new administration bounced, it was no longer part of
the plan. As twenty seventeen woreon, Ardito felt increasingly purposeless in the
army. This episode is sponsored inpart by Norton three sixty with LifeLock.
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Norton dot com slash War with nationbuilding off the table and the directive that
(27:04):
the mission was to kill the Talibanand members of ISIS morale continued to flag.
You See, Kenada Har wasn't abattleground in that sense. There weren't
enemy fighters there to kill so muchas there were in the mountains. In
the city, there were only guerrillaattacks. During the nine months of their
tour. Ardido's platoon didn't get intoone firefight Instead, they endured the v
(27:26):
BIT attacks and did their best tomitigate them. I was definitely much more
aggressive. I felt more comfortable shooting. I knew that my leadership would back
me up if I made the wrongcall, but I was also careful not
to make the wrong call. Ilearned a couple of phrases and passed two
so I could yell at them intheir native tongue. I started like actually
(27:51):
pointing my barrel at cars more often, and I found that that works pretty
well, especially with a fifty cow. We were driving Highway four and I
forget the reason why, but themission was canceled or something like that.
We were already halfway to our destinationand we had a turnaround and go back
(28:11):
to base. So we were inthe middle of the highway and we started
turning the trucks around. The firsttruck stopped the traffic, the oncoming traffic,
and then that truck turned around andpointed the other way, and my
truck was about to turn around,so now it was my job to stop
the traffic. And as soon asthe gunner from the first truck turned the
(28:36):
other way, one of the carsstarted driving towards my truck at that point,
I didn't really have time to wavehim down or anything. He was
driving towards us after he had alreadystopped. The first gunner already told him
to stop, and he did so. As soon as he started moving again.
I shot some rounds near his car. Then he stopped immediately after that,
(29:02):
and then we turned around, andeveryone that was stopped and the highway
got the idea like, Okay,don't don't don't pull up towards these guys
anymore, they're gonna shoot us.Preventing attacks or keeping racalcit in locals in
line was not the same as fightingback, though, and that frustration became
another drag on morale. But evenas morale suffered, there was cohesion among
(29:23):
the enlisted across all of the coalitionforces, and even the locals across the
board. There increasingly was this senseof needing to take care of your own.
But I think I was on amission and we heard over the radio,
Hey, there's there was a vbit on highway for return to base
immediately. So we got the guysback in the trucks. So we head
(29:45):
back, and then I remember theplatoon leader called up on the radio like,
hey, be ready, for asecondary attack. Gunners like be ready,
don't do pen flares, don't wavejump immediately to warning shots like don't
play around, we need get backto base safe. We got back to
base and we were QRF was leavingas we were coming into base, and
(30:10):
our platoon was on standby getting readyto leave again just in case the QRF
got hit with a secondary attack.And then they called over the loudspeakers on
calf saying if anyone has a positiveblood, come immediately to the Roll three
to donate blood, because there wasa couple injured in a Kia and it
(30:32):
was me and a couple other guysfrom my platoon. We loaded up on
our little gator and you know,we had like five six guys hanging off
the back of this gator and we'respeeding down the road to the Roll three
and you can see just a tonof people running and other people loaded up
on gators and golf carts and peoplewere riding bicycles and driving pickup trucks with
(30:57):
a bunch of guys in the back. And we get there and there's just
a bunch of people waiting outside thehospital to donate blood. That was nice
to see how many people responded soquickly to donate blood for these guys that
needed it. We made it evenbetter was it wasn't just US soldiers running
to donate blood. It was youknow, us contract civilians, you know
(31:21):
guys that just like mechanics. Therewas Air Force guys running there. There
was other coalition forces, the Romanians, the Bulgarians, but there was like
the civilians that worked at the chowhall. They were coming and running like
local interpreters and linguists. They werecoming like literally every one on that base
(31:45):
was was coming to give blood.In a deployment with no satisfaction in the
field, it was hardening to seesuch an outpouring to remember that the guys
on the ground were in the endin it together, even if there was
occasional friction. In the nine monthshe was in Afghanistan, between losing his
comrades and feeling increasingly alienated from thechain of command, Ardido was ready to
(32:08):
go home. When he did,they offered him a promotion to sergeant if
he would re enlist, but hehad had enough of the army and spent
his final year applying to police departmentsand getting EMT certified. Still, when
he got out, it was alot different than he expected. I think
that a lot of people transitioning outof the military have a tough time adjusting
(32:30):
to civilian life. I was workingin a kitchen, and I wasn't connecting
with my coworkers the same way Ihad been connecting with my co workers in
the Army. There was a lotof times they would look at me funny
when I said something. I thinkthey didn't get the dark humor that I
was so used to. I don'tthink they liked the way I talked,
(32:52):
the profanity and stuff like that.So I was having a rough time transitioning.
And I always wanted to travel thecountry because I never left the East
Coasts and my whole life other thanthe one time I went to Texas for
a day to do that training exercise. So I quit my job. I
took a month to drive around thecountry and met up with a lot of
(33:15):
my army friends along the way,a lot of guys that also recently got
out. And it was good forme, I think it was good for
them also. The trip didn't justallow them to catch up. It gave
the guys a sense that they stillbelonged and that there were still people out
there for them. For Taylor Ardido, it also signaled a kind of final
(33:37):
end to his service and helped himto start to look forward to whatever his
life was going to be from hereon out. When significant incidents or phases
of our lives come to an end, we always need to find a way
to get a little closure. Weneed to mark and remember the person that
we were before we embark on buildingthe new person we're going to be.
(34:14):
This is War was written by meAnthony Russo and produced by Incongruity Media.
If you like the show, youcan help support us by visiting our sponsors
or by leaving a five star reviewwherever you're listening right now. You can
also follow us on social media atthis is War. You also can find
show notes, photos, and morebackground on each episode at this iswar dot com.
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