45 | Dunning

Justin Dunning wanted to tell the story of guys he cared about who were lost, as many of the people I’ve interviewed for this show have, because he wants it known.Google “Killed in Iraq” or “Afghanistan” and you’ll find thousands of links to thousands of obituaries and each one of them affected the people who served with them. Sometimes in this series we have named the fallen, other times we haven’t our of respect for the wishes of the people closest to them, but what is critical to remember is that their friends and comrades remember their names and keep their stories alive.Episode SponsorsBespoke PostNorton360 with LifeLock

Episode Transcript

(00:10):
Raptor. My pointment had crossed,and he made it across, and I
was like, okay, hey man, on three, you know, catch
me because I was carrying, youknow, a whole bunch of crap and
I was pretty weighted down, andso I was like one, two,
and then on three there was justlike this boom. It was like straight
out of a movie. There wasa giant flash and then that's really all
I remember. The stories we tellare at least as important as the experience

(00:33):
as we've had, because telling thesestories is what helps us make sense of
them. It gives them meaning andcontext that we can hold and share.
Justin Dunning wanted to tell the storyof guys he cared about who were lost
as many of the people I've interviewedfor this show have, because he wants
it known. Google killed in Iraqor Afghanistan, and you'll find thousands of

(00:56):
links, two thousands of obituaries,and each of them affect did the people
who served with them. Sometimes inthis series we've named the fallen. Other
times we have and out of respectfor the wishes of the people closest to
them. But what is critical toremember is that their friends and comrades,
remember their names and keep their storiesalive. I can't here to tell the

(01:18):
story about over and Damas, andjust kind of, like I said,
let their memory live on What istrue bravery? What makes a hero a

(01:45):
hero? Tested by the worries ofwhat's happening at home thousands of miles away,
and the reality of what you're facinghere and now when your life is
in danger every second and it's eitherkill or be killed. An original podcast
from Incongruity Media. This is AnthonyRuzzo and This is War. Looking back

(02:23):
on boot camp as an interesting enterprise. Most recruits are not yet twenty years
old, when they have the experienceand the essence of it can be hard
to capture. Like so many peoplelooking back on themselves as children, there's
a fatness for the past that maybeit didn't deserve. For marines, though,
and especially for combat veterans, eventhe worst days of boot camp are

(02:45):
amusing in retrospect. I just collegewasn't for me, you know. I
went there and I just didn't reallyenjoy it. I didn't feel like I
was getting anything out of it.So I decided to take another path,
and like I said, like Iknew I was going to join the Marine
Corps. I just didn't know when. Yeah, my mom, you know,
she she definitely, you know,was concerned because I told her.

(03:05):
You know, she asked me whatI wanted to do, and I said,
well, you know, I wantto be in the infantry. You
know, I want to go dothat. So she had her concerns and
she was worried, but overall shesupported me one hundred percent. She never
tried to get me to, youknow, not do it or anything like
that. I went to Paris Islandand the first day at boot camp was
actually kind of funny. They dotheir typical you know, screaming at your
getting out the bus, get onthe footprints, all that kind of stuff,

(03:29):
and then they send you through uhyou know, the doors for the
first time. Then you go getyour gear, get your hair cut.
But I remember when I got there, you know, I'm going to get
my hair cut, and they'd goreal fast to uh, you know,
get everybody through. And I remembermy hair was a little bit longer,
and they went to cut my hairand they missed a spot. So I
had a big old patch in theback of my head that they had missed,

(03:52):
and you know, the drove starctorswere kind of like dragging me around
by that. It was pretty funny. You look back at it an owl
and you're just like, man,oh, at the time, was sucked.
You know. I didn't want tobe dragged around with my hair.
You know, they thought it,they thought it was funny. Apparently,
you know, they were grabbing onit, and you know, come this
way and go that way. Andso I had like a little rat tail
for like the first twelve hours beforethey finally fixed it. I had to

(04:15):
cut it off with scissors out ofmy sewing kit. Dunning had signed an
extended contract and listing for five yearsas infantry security forces. It would mean
training beyond the regular school of infantry, but he felt like it would give
him an edge in the post marineworld, where he hoped to get a
job as a police officer. Securityforces often have two years of specialized work,

(04:35):
but as two thousand and six endedand the US prepared for the two
thousand and seven Iraq Surge, infantrymenwere in higher demand than security force details,
so Dunning and a dozen or soother guys were pulled from the detail
and shuffled back into the regular infantrywith the two eight. They had just
gotten back from my rack and theyhad a pretty crappy deployment when they were

(04:56):
there. So that was another littleculture when we got there as well,
because you know, we had reallynot all the stuff about war that we
knew about we had seen in moviesor documentaries whatever, and these guys had
just gotten back and they had apretty bad deployment. They lost they lost
a bunch of good guys, andthey were eager to train us, but

(05:17):
at the same time they were stilltrying to deal with all their emotions and
stuff like that. So you know, everybody's pissed off, and you know,
you have all these new guys joiningall these boots, and you don't
want to be a boot. Imean, it sucks, but everybody's gonna
go through it. Just hearing thestories and things like that and knowing that
we were getting ready to go dothat too, was like I said,
it's just kind of like, damn, you know, we're here, It's
time to go. So we prettymuch knew we were going to Iraq when

(05:40):
we got to to eight, likewe were slated for that next deployment,
and we immediately started doing the workup. So we knew right away that we
were going to Ramadi. Ramadi wasan extremely dangerous place, you know,
they call it Fellusia number two.Very deadly, very hostile environment. And
that's what we that's what we wereprepping for. You know. We went

(06:02):
over there thinking that there was goingto be fighting every day, it was
going to be hell. But wegot there and not being that, you
know, we essentially just went outand found IDs and we were more like
police officers there than anything else.We were just kind of like a security
force for them, for the peopleof Ramadi. The two eight lost two

(06:25):
guys to an Ied attack during thetransition out, but Dunning was relatively insulated
from the Ramadi he was expecting.It was something of a disappointment at the
time, missing the chance to fightand being relegated to a glorified police patrol,
which ironically was what he would havebeen doing anyway if he hadn't been
in Iraq. Still, he camehome with a sense of unfinished business and

(06:46):
a focus on a long term careeras a marine. I knew we were
going back. I didn't know ifwe were going back to Iraq or Afghanistan,
but I felt more like you know, I'm thankful that, you know,
as bad as it sounds, youknow, we had we'd lost two
Marines, but it could have beena lot worse, I guess in hindsight,
so I counted as a win becausea lot of people they want to

(07:08):
be part of that you know,combat action ribbon club. I guess it's
kind of like a like I said, like a little club that everybody wants
to be part of. But uh, I think everybody would much rather have
their friends here. I was actuallyI was actually ready to go to the
long haul, you know, twentyyears and get out. But nothing ever
goes according to plans, so yep, I'm going to be a lifer.
And I was ready to go,like, let's get this work up so

(07:29):
we can go back. You know, we had a job to do and
we needed a you know, doour jobs. So I was, you
know, we got back, Iwas like, well, let's get ready
to go to the next one.We didn't get told we were going to
Afghanistan until we had just completed ourcombined arms exercise in California. We had
gotten done and we had our littledebrief and they showed up and they said,

(07:51):
hey, you know, we knowyou guys did this whole work up
for Iraq, but uh, we'reactually going to send another unit to Iraq
and you guys are going to Afghanistan. I guess they felt like we were
more combat ready than the unit thatwas supposed to be going there. But
we were grateful. That's what wewanted. We wanted to go to Afghanistan.
We knew if we want to Iraq, we're gonna have another deployment like
we did prior to that. Nobodywanted that. We all wanted to go

(08:11):
and fight the good fight. Youcould say if the Marines were surprised by
how different Ramadi was when compared withtheir expectations, Afghanistan certainly would meet them.
Camp Bastion, a British base inthe Helman Province, still was mostly
under construction in two thousand and nine, and as the Marines were getting acclimatized
to the heat, they were alsogetting a real sense of what it would

(08:33):
be like once they started their missionout beyond the wire. They stuck us
in the very back of the base. We stayed in these giant white tents.
There was really nothing. I mean, it was just a giant base.
And then you know, on theother side, they had a few
things built up. We got onsome choppers and they sent us down to
where the British were at and wemet up with them and they started taking

(08:54):
us out on patrols and stuff likethat. It was cool. They were
awesome. They were really cool people. You know, they had MRAs,
we had MRAs. We'd swap himout, we'd talk, share stories and
it was like hanging out with yourbuddies. You know. They were awesome
people. We were on a nightpatrol with a British and he was sweeping.
He's like, yeah, I gotto hit here. And my point

(09:15):
man with him, the guy thatwas doing the sweeping, you know,
the British guy that you know,you could tell they had been there for
a while already because he just goton the ground and just started digging and
prouding away with his little k barthere just to try to you know,
find this ID. And we wereall like, holy shit, what's this
guy doing. He's crazy. Sowe all started backing up and so there
was kind of like a that waskind of like a funny moment. We're
just like, this guy is absolutelycrazy, just trying to prod this thing

(09:37):
there we were just out on apatrol and started seeing things like we started
finding like mortars here and there,and then honestly, we just started getting
shot at and we, you know, we took cover and while we were
there, they would just shoot atyou and then run. So it was
kind of like a game of catand mouse. Shoot at you and run,
shoot at you and run, Andthat was pretty much it for the

(10:00):
deployment. So it was really frustratingthe shooting and running would dominate their entire
deployment, but it was also partof what they expected. Their mission was
to keep pushing out beyond where anyAmerican forces had been and to disrupt Taliban
operations, capturing or killing as manyof the enemy as possible along the way.

(10:20):
What they would discover, though,was that this was a game with
which the Afghan fighters were all toofamiliar. I don't know what the general
idea is for the people in Afghanistan, Iraq or anything like that, but
they're not stupid. They've been fighting, you know, wars like that for
a long time now. And Iremember one time we were actually on a
long range patrol and we were headingback to our base there and we were

(10:43):
close. We were I think wewere like maybe seven hundred meters away or
something. We were really close,and we started getting shot at. The
rounds were hitting super close, likethey had some pretty good precision fire going
on us, and you know,we looked over to our right where it
was coming from, and the sunwas just shining in our eyes, so
we were like, crap, wecan't see anything. So we actually started
banana peeling back towards this vineyard andthere was a giant wall and we got

(11:09):
in there inside that vineyard and theyjust kept shooting at us. And then
we were just like, oh shit, you know, like that was super
close. Made sure everybody was okay. They were like, what do you
want us to do? Do youwant to say, pursue them and you
know, go after them, ordo you want us to come back?
And they're like, no, goafter them. We bounded in this field
it seemed like forever, but Ithink it was because the field was filled

(11:31):
with water and mud and it wasextremely difficult to get through. And here
we are taking shots while trying tobound through this field. And we had
a crossover a couple of canals aswell, just to get to this building
they made their houses out of outof mud. I mean, it was
just a it was just a mudhouse. And when we had cleared it
and made sure there wasn't like boobytrapped or anything like that, they it

(11:52):
was just a giant you know,you open up and there was just a
giant courtyard and you could tell therehad been animals there. I think there
actually were still some animals there,and there are a couple of rooms here
and there, but that was it, I mean, nothing else. We
cleared it out the way were supposedto, and like I said, they
had gone. They had left.So you know, we did all this

(12:13):
work and got over there and they'regone. I mean we found I think
we found a cache in there andI ed materials and stuff like that,
so it was not a total loss. But we had gotten there and like
I said, they had just theyhad gone already. They were out because
to me, I think there wasonly one or two people and there was
probably you know, twenty or moreof us, so they had gotten out
of there. They weren't really setup to you know, fight us.

(12:37):
I think they were just trying toget lucky and hit one of us.
There were a lot of attacks ofopportunity like that, with the Taliban courting
dumb luck and choosing to live tofight another day. As Dunning said,
the people on the ground were usedto this kind of war and used to
being outgunned and out numbered. Ofcourse, it wasn't as if the Marines

(12:58):
didn't have their own levels of expertiseand combat experience, but they also had
a different objective. They were tryingto establish some sort of sense of order,
choosing their targets carefully while dodging trapsand attacks from an enemy committed to
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(15:26):
about pushing out into previously unchallenged enemyterritory is that, with the exception of
firepower, the advantage belongs to theenemy. They already know the territory and
have it laid out. To minimizetheir risk while maximizing the potential for killing
or maiming American and Afghan forces,e O D. We had to take
them out to this bridge that theTaliban have been using to transfer weapons from

(15:50):
one side of the canals to theother. This was like the major canal
between Cowboys and Redskins, the twomain roads, and there weren't a lot
of bridges. They were very far. There's a lot of space in between
every bridge. So once he odhad gotten up on that bridge to bloat
up, they started taking RpK fire, you know, at heavy heavy fire.

(16:11):
And there was one squad which wasus on one side, and there
was another squad on the other side, and I believe there was also another
squad just ready to go just incase we needed them. So the firing
was actually coming from our side aheadof us, a few hundred meters out,
so we moved up to suppress them. So you know, nobody from

(16:32):
me O D got hurt, andthat's when one of our guys stepped on
the id overa what's actually really crazyabout you know that id is that myself
my point man, and I thinkabout two thirds of the squad had stepped
over it. You know, therewas it was an L shaped kind of
a thing, so like we werepushing up, and then we went right
to get behind this canal, youknow, for a little bit of cover

(16:56):
to set up to you know,shoot back and suppress the enemy. And
right at the part where it turnedright, there was a footbridge that went
left and that's where it was at, and a bunch of us had stepped
over it and not stepped on it. And then I don't know what was
happening on the other side, justbecause everything was going on with us at
the moment, but they knew thatonce they started shooting at those people up

(17:18):
on the bridge, that we weregoing to be moving up and they just
they had an IED placed there.We started taking effective fire. We're in
the middle of this field, youknow, pinned down, shooting back,
trying to figure out, you know, what's going on. And that was
one of the craziest days. LanceCorporal Javier Olvera was the unlucky marine to

(17:40):
have tripped the IED. Besides addingto the chaos of the continuing firefight,
the explosion had the added effect ofincreasing the responsibility on the Marines. On
one front, they had to suppressthe enemy attack on the EOD guys,
and on the other they had toarrange for Olvera's metavac out of the area.
Of course, the appropriate action wasthe same in both cases, dispatch

(18:03):
the enemy, but working to savethe wounded marine heightened this sense of urgency.
Yeah. So we had left therein the middle of the day and
then I think at this point itwas probably like mid afternoon. I don't
know if it was for that attackspecifically, or if they had just placed
it there because they knew we hadused it prior to that little footbridge.
They knew that we had used itprior to that. But it worked out

(18:23):
in their favor because like I said, all hell broke loose and we were
just behind the canal. They're tryingto make sure everybody was okay, trying
to see who was hurt, whoneeded first aid. Olvera was the only
one that was hurt at the time. What's the ID went off? I
remember Judd our Corman had jumped overto him because the ID had flipped Olvera

(18:45):
over to the other side of thecanal. And it wasn't a big canal
by any means it was. Youcould definitely jump across it. It was
just like a tiny little feeder tothe fields. I remember looking over and
you know, there was dust andyou know, rocks that were falling on
us, you know, tiny littlepet bowls and stuff like that. I
remember looking over and seeing Gwynn,one of the guys in our squad,
yelling that you know, Olvera gottenhit or stepped on an ID. So

(19:08):
jud immediately, like with no regardfor himself, just jumped across that canal
and started working on him. Andso they were taking care of him while
we started suppressing the enemy and youknow, taking care of that. So
we could get a chopper in thereto get over out of there. We
saw these guys. They were acrossed an open field probably maybe like one

(19:30):
hundred two hundred meters away. Youknow, once Olvera stepped on the id,
you know, we knew we couldn'tjust sit behind the canal, so
we we got up and you know, we got acrossed into the field and
we were just laying down in thisopen field. We didn't have any cover
at all, but we knew thatwe needed to protect Olvera to get him
out of there. So you know, we were going to do whatever we
could to make sure that that happened. To make sure that the guys that

(19:52):
were working on him we're safe oras safe as they could be. We
started calling in you know, choppersand things like that. That was it,
you know, once they came in. They had taken care of that
situation pretty quick. With the enemydriven back and Olvera evacuated, the Marines
were able to take on a newmission, combing the area for the dispatched

(20:12):
fighters and or their equipment. Yougot a mission to do. You got
to finish your mission, and wehad to go and do our battle damage
assessment. They had sent us outto go and try to get some intel,
find out you know where these guyswere if we could find them whatnot.
So we actually went cleared a wholebunch of houses and villages, and

(20:33):
we were looking for any signs ofpeople building ideas in the area, any
guns that they weren't supposed to have, things like that. So we and
you know at this point where notonly are we tired and all that stuff,
but now we're pissed. I thinkwe went on for like another four
or five hours. During that itwas dark out, it was late,

(20:55):
and we had to go back theway we came. So we ended up
going back and going back to base. And from there it was hey,
get your get your shit ready.We got we got posts, we gotta
go on. So we had gottenoff, we had gotten off a post,

(21:18):
and by this time the sun wasup. We all were eager to
find out, you know, ifhe was okay or not. And I
think the majority of us had thoughtlike, he's you know, he's gonna
be fine. You know, he'sgonna be okay, And then to hear
that he had passed was pretty rough. It sucked. The one thing about
that that really stands out was overaanybody who doesn't know him, he was

(21:42):
one of the happiest people you'd evermet. You know, he turned every
shit situation into um laughing and joking. It was pretty funny because they actually
got him to laugh and smile,you know, while they were working on
him. That was like the onememory I have was, you know,
we're in down laying you know,laying down fire and then you know,

(22:03):
everything stopped for just a second.We heard, oh, you know,
you know he has smiled for him. You know, Joe was like,
hey, can you smile for me? And he had smiled. That was
the one like key memory that youknow, I remember from that. It's
hard because you can't let your emotionsget the best to you, you know.
I remember when we found out,you know, I broke down and
started crying and we all like youknow, consoled each other things like that,

(22:26):
and we had to go back towork. Getting back to work meant
getting the area where Olvera was killedcleaned up. As Dunning said, there
was no telling whether the ied plantedthere was incidental or planted specifically as part
of a larger attack. Either way, the odds were that other common passages
now had i eds and that wasn'tgood for anyone. So the Marines patrolled

(22:48):
the area more thoroughly, trying tofind i eeds before the local children did.
A couple weeks later, we gotintel that where there was an ied
over kind of like in that samegeneral area where Olvera had stepped on that
id. So our next mission wasto go there and clear it. You
know, the locals were worried abouttheir kids. We did the best we

(23:08):
could to let the locals know thatwe were there to help and try to
make the area as safe as possible, and that we you know, we
cared because we did you know,we wanted to go there and we all
have kids too, where a lotof us had kids, and you know,
we'd want the best for our kids, so that's what we were trying
to give, the best for themand their families. It was very early
in the morning, I think likethree o'clock in the morning. We knew

(23:30):
that going into this area it waslike the hornets nest of that ao.
We left early in the morning becausewe knew that they would set up for
us if they knew we were leaving, you know, like during the day
or something. And we were crossingthrough a field and we had gone through
this field many times before, andthere was a footbridge there that we had

(23:52):
used many times before. I waslike, you know what, we're not
going to take this footbridge. Timewas of the essence. You know.
We had to get there before thesun got up to make sure that we
were set up. So I waslike, hey, look, we're gonna
halt the patrol here. I'm gonnasweep up me and my pointment are going
to sweep up you know, thecanal to find another place to cross.
We're not gonna use the footbridge.So we halted the patrol where you started

(24:14):
searching for an area where we couldcross. We finally found a place and
we had a lot of people withus. We were taking EO D back
out with us. We had anothersquad with us. There were a lot
of people with us. We hadanp with us, which is the Afghan
National Police. We had a NA, the Afghan National Army, a couple
of those guys, our interpreters,everything, you know, we just had
the everybody there. It was cold, it was dark. We couldn't see

(24:38):
shit, you know, except forwhat we had with our MPGs. So
we had gone up probably about fiftymeters you know, away from this footbridge.
Rapptor my pointman had crossed and hemade it across, and I was
like, okay, hey man,on three, you know, catch me
because I was carrying, you know, a whole bunch of crap and I
was pretty way down and so Iwas like one, two and then three.

(25:00):
There was just like this boom.It was like straight out of a
movie. There was a giant flashand then that's really all I remember.
As Dunning said, it was coldand dark in the early morning, and
there was no scenario where any memberof the contingent was able to cross the
canal without getting wet. Back atthe footbridge, one of the ANA guys
had grown impatient and a little incredulousabout the potential dangers of the footbridge,

(25:23):
especially when weighed against the prospect ofwaiting into freezing cold water. He decided
to take his chances crossing the bridge, setting off an ied with the concussive
power to knock Dunning, who wasfifty meters upstream unconscious, and then came
back too and woke up or whateverthe cases and looked around and it was

(25:45):
just shit was nuts again, youknow. I looked over and googe whatever
guys that had gotten hit in theface with shrapnel and all I saw was
a flashlight on him and there wasblood everywhere, and jud was standing there
next to him trying to calm himdown. Jo was screaming, I'm sorry,
Googe was screaming. And then afterthat, it was just like the

(26:07):
injured started piling up. Like Isaid, there was chaos again. We
didn't get shot at or anything likethat, but there were a lot of
people hurt. There were a lotof people injured. So we started getting
accountability, making sure it is okay. And then we found Damas, and
Damas he was dead. I don'tknow exactly what happened that killed him,
but something from the ID, youknow, obviously killed him. After that,

(26:32):
like I said, the injured justkept going up and going up.
It was crazy. The MP thathad stepped on the ID, we found
him about one hundred meters away andthe only thing left at him was pretty
much this torso. And I rememberCoacher, he was our squad leader,
you know at the time. Coacherand somebody else had picked this guy up
and it was just his torso.You know. We found this guy's face,

(26:53):
you know, on body parts allover the place, so we had
to put him in a body bagand carry him back. Four of us
carried him back, and then uh, yeah, we had to get a
chopper in there, you know,to get our wounded out of there,
you know, Googe and Williams hadgot sprayed in the face and he couldn't
see. He got peppered in theface pretty good, which dirt and trapnel

(27:14):
and stuff like that. And thenobviously we had to get damas on there
as well. So yeah, wehad we had to get a chopper in
there. And so the mission continued, I mean myself, coacher, and
when they told us that we neededto go back because we got knocked out
by this, I d you know, unconscious. So we went back to

(27:34):
the FOB and the rest of theguys continued on with the mission. The
anxiety of being out of the fightwas tough on the three Marines recovering from
their injuries, and it only heightenedafter the company lost another marine. Dunning
was relieved to get back with hisguys doing patrols, ferreting out IDs,
and finally working with the Marines whohad come to replace them so they could

(27:56):
head home. We're definitely ready tobe done now, you know. We
lost a lot of guys, alot of awesome guys, and everybody just
wanted to to just go home atthis point, you know, every we
had our job to do, butyou know we were ready to You're ready
to go. It's starting to winddown, and you're starting to get a

(28:17):
little anxious. You know, youhave two months left and a month and
you're just like, fuck, it'sgoing by so slow. Now. The
last couple of days were actually probablythe hardest because being in like a leadership
rule, you had to go andgo on the next patrols with the unit
that you're you know, is replacingyou. And now you're just like fuck,
you know, we're going back outthere, and all the other guys

(28:38):
are staying back, you know,to continue to get their stuff ready to
go home, and here you aregoing back on on patrol to show everybody,
you know, this is this area, stay away from this area.
It's even more tense because now you'relike, man, I've made it this
far. You know, I don'twant to get I don't want to get
fucked up on the last patrol.You know. I remember on one patrol

(28:59):
we had started taking fire and thisguy just was like he kept poking,
you know, standing up and showlike that, trying to find out where
they were coming from him, andwe're like, get the fuck down,
you know, We're like grabbed him, like threw him like behind cover,
Like what the fuck are you doing? Just get the fuck down and we
will get you know, we'll getan adder rack and take care of this
threat. But he was just likestanding there and just kind of like dumbfounded

(29:22):
at what was going on. Soit's like I said, it's when you
go out on patrol with these guysthat are replacing you, a lot of
them are. They're not combat hardenedat all. They're just like how we
were when we got there. Youknow, we'd not any scene, really
any combat. We were brand newto this. And I always give the
analogy that we were now at thebeginning, you know, when I told

(29:42):
about that British guy who was juststabbing at the ground trying to find this
ied, that was us and wewere there the new guys looking at him
going oh my god, he's fuckingcrazy. As they headed home, Dunning
was beginning to feel a little ambivalentabout his career as a marine, but
with the excitement of getting back tothe US, the future was still a
hypothetical. He had no idea howquickly the future would become the present,

(30:06):
though, and what he would haveto face before he could settle with his
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(31:37):
at Norton dot com slash War Nortondot com slash War. The pageantry of
the homecoming ceremony dull the culture shockthat would eventually become a regular part of
Dunning's life. Not long after gettingback home, he decided not to re

(32:01):
enlist, a decision he said wasmade in the heat of the moment rather
than with a dispassionate pros and conscalculation. He wished it had before too
long. His marriage was over andhe was facing a brand new start without
the direction to which he'd become accustomed. Transitioning into the civilian world, you
know, from the military's the hardestthing in the world. That's not easy.

(32:22):
I remember when I had just gottenout. I came home and I
came back to my mom's house justso I could get up on my feet,
you know, I find a placeto live. And I remember waking
up at like seven thirty the nextday, after driving home from Le June
and thinking like, oh shit,I misformation. But I was out,

(32:43):
you know, and I didn't haveanything to do, and I just I
remember standing up and like what amI going to do today? Like I
don't have anything to do. Ihad no idea what to do with myself.
And I think that's one one ofthe problems that people have once they
get out, is they don't knowwhat to do with themselves. It translates
to bad things, you know,usually happening drinking or you know, other
things. But you just gotta wanna, you know, transition and surround yourself

(33:07):
with the right type of people andset a goal for yourself and go and
do it. Yeah, I know, it's just it's just how it is,
like, you know, the thingsthat you don't do anymore, you
have to come out and do themyourself, like pay taxes and you know,
in the military to do them foryou and just all this other stuff.
And it's just it's like trying tolearn how to be a human again.

(33:29):
Dunning had set aside the notion ofbecoming a cop and just kind of
drifted, not really taking the kindof care of himself he knew he should.
The thing was, he had beengood at being a marine and needed
something else to focus on. Hemostly just drank while he was waiting for
an idea or an opportunity to presentitself. It took a night of over
drinking and hearing his brother Derek washeaded to Afghanistan to put him back on

(33:52):
the right path. Obviously, whenyou get out, you know, you
go party with your friends that youyou know, you had prior to leaving.
And then I found out that,you know, all the people that
I used to hang out with beforethe Marine Corps. Not that I didn't
get along with them anymore, it'sjust like I felt like we didn't have
anything in common anymore. I justI felt like I couldn't mesh with them
very well. The night that Ifound out my brother was going to uh

(34:15):
Afghanistan, you know, we wereactually at a bar called Smedley's. It's
a Marine Corps bar. So Iwas there with my brother and we were
just drinking, hanging out, shootingsome pool, you know, just a
typical night out with my brother andyou know, our friends and stuff like
that. Nothing crazy. And that'swhen he told me. And like I
remember, this like breaking down,like and I drank way too much that

(34:37):
night, and that was like thenight when I was like, I can't
do this anymore. You know.I woke up and you know, found
out that they had to like prettymuch carry me up the stairs and put
me to bed because I just drankway too much and I didn't want to
ever have to put anybody through thatagain. So that was a night I
was like, you know, fuckthis, I'm not doing this anymore.
I can't. I can't do thisanymore. And that's when I started getting

(35:00):
into the gym and stuff like that. So I decided to just go out
on my own and get back intothings that I wanted to do. Dunning
got back into shape, connected witha high school girlfriend, got married,
and started a family. He hasa good job now and can provide for
his family, and he even hashis eyes on the possibility of getting a
degree, but that is in thefuture. For the present, he's happy

(35:22):
right where he is. Just aswith so many of the people who have

(35:43):
reached out to us over the lasttwo years, Justin Dunning really wanted to
honor his friends who didn't make ithome. As we bring this show to
a close. I would like tothank all of the men and women who
have shared their stories with me.The interviews that make up this show often
run between two and three hours,and I felt a genuine bond with each
of the people who has been kindenough to share some of the darkest moments

(36:07):
of their lives with me and withyou. I'd also like to thank all
of the people who I interviewed butwhose stories were beyond my ability to tell.
Finally, I'd like to thank allof you who are listening right now.
It's been a privilege to be partof your podcast experience, and I'm
humbled by the enthusiasm so many ofyou have demonstrated for this show, especially

(36:28):
my friends and colleagues add Incongruity tothis point, This is War has been
my life's work. Thank you formaking that possible. As you listen to
this, I'm already working on mynext show for Incongruity, so please stay
subscribed to be among the first peoplenotified. It will be different from This
As War, but hopefully nearly ascompelling. If you'd like to stay in

(36:50):
touch with me or are interested inmy other work, I'm at by Tony
Rousseau on Twitter thanks again, it'sbeen an honor and