45 | Sabins

Control often feels like safety. You have a weapon, some buddies and a mission and feel like the only difference between living and dying is execution, but there’s always also luck, or chance. For Jeffrey Sabins, learning to deal with the lack of control, over both his life and the lives of others was a lesson in humility and patience because even when you’re no longer worried for your own life, you want to live up to your promise to be a protector.Jeffrey Sabins' blog: From Tumor 2 AutismJeffrey Sabins' Amazon Author PageThis episode was sponsors:KeepsNorton with LifeLock

Episode Transcript

(00:07):
And I remember or somebody in thevehicle handing me the radio handset, and
as I bent down to grab it, one of the enemy snipers had gotten
had fired a seven to six twoby five four rim round that had gone
through and it hit me right inthe cavalar helmet. Control often feels like
safety. You have a weapon,somebody's and a mission, and feel like

(00:30):
the only difference between living and dyingis execution. But there's always also luck
or chance. For Jeffrey Sabans,learning to deal with the lack of control
both over his life and the livesof others was a lesson in humility and
patience, because even when you areno longer worried for your own life,

(00:51):
you want to live up to yourpromise to be a protector. And then
as we rolled back out, truckone had a mind roller and their mon
roller. Hey the pressure plate andlike they threw that thing around like it
was nothing. It went through theair, like you're just throwing legos.

(01:25):
What is true bravery? What makesa hero a hero? Tested by the
worries of what's happening at home thousandsof miles away and the reality of what
you're facing here and now when yourlife is in danger every second and it's
either kill or be killed. Anoriginal podcast from Incongruity Media. This is

(01:49):
Anthony Ruzzo and This is War.Jeffrey Shabans didn't want to be a marine
so much as he wanted to dosomething exciting or at least interesting. He

(02:14):
had mostly figured he'd go to collegeand maybe get into wildlife conservation before he
stopped to talk with some Marines whohad set up a recruitment table in the
cafeteria. After that, it wasas simple as signing up. Yeah,
Bootcap was a blur for me.It's just I was used to being alone.
I'm used to like not having goingout to parties, and I wasn't
big on to hanging out with people, you know. I went to school,

(02:37):
did my thing, came home,did chores, and that was that
was my life. Every marine hashis boot camp stories and the things I
always screw up, and I'm nodifferent. I had a short senior drill
instructor and one time, standing upat the quarter deck and getting some field
day work done, he had saidsomething to me and I just didn't hear
him, so I instinctively bent overbecause he was super short, to put

(03:00):
my ear next to his mouth.That didn't go over well either. After
graduating, say, I went toCamp Lajune to three eighth, and there
wasn't much time in between, Likeonce graduating school Tree you get on the
bus because it's just right down theroad from Camp Lajune. You know,
by the time I was picked upand we transferred over, it was already

(03:22):
late in the afternoon on a Thursdaynight. So I nured being dark and
the barracks marines running around doing they'resupposed to do, and then being told
like, hey, you need toget ready, like we're leaving soon.
You know, you got here withnot a lot of time to prepare.
That was that we you know,weeks later, we're going on Christmas.
It went pretty fast. Of course, everyone knew that I was getting ready

(03:42):
to go and I was deploying somewhere. And at that time in two thousand
and five, the news and themedia on Felujah wasn't wasn't the best for
everybody. But you know, againthat's just one of those things like me
and my family, my particular immediatefamily, like we're not the emotional type
or not the hugs and kisses andthe crying. It's just, hey,

(04:03):
this is what they're telling me todo, all right, Roger, go
do it. Okay, see youlater, Like that's just how it is
for us. As a gunner,Sabans was prepared to spend his deployment up
in the turret, scanning for IEDsand potential attacks. The thing was,
while Fellujah wasn't exactly quiet in theaftermath of the Second Battle of Fallujah,

(04:24):
the area was less kinnetic than ithad been in years, which made for
long, mind numbing patrols. Switchingspots was a way to keep everyone fresh
in the absence of the opportunity forrest, and that is how Sabans found
himself behind the wheel of a humV instead of up on the weapon when
he experienced his first IED attack.The Beatoon starmer was like, hey,

(04:45):
Sabans, you know, come dropthe truck for a little bit. Let's
get the driver up in the turret. Let him get some fresh air and
wake up a little bit. Ahum V it's not that hard to just
get in and start, you know, start driving if you can driving on
a vehicle. So then we're talkingabout just the basic hum Vy. You're
not talking about d raps or theMTV. Pretty sure, We're truck four
on a two forty and we werejust driving along and then truck three got
hit right in front of us,got hit by an IOD. But of

(05:08):
course, like first time I'm drivinga hum V, first time at the
middle of the night, first encounterof somebody trying to somebody trying to inflict
harm on us, the first thingI did was slam on the brakes.
I mean, what does anybody dodriving a vehicle when something happens unexpected?
And we're the last truck, soyou gotta remember, like if truck three

(05:29):
is getting hit by an I DTruck one and two are past the blast
sight already. It wasn't a directhit on truck three. He was off
to the right side of it,on the flank. That didn't do any
damage, didn't inflict any harm toanybody. But here I am, you
know, PFC or Private Savings,whatever it was at the time, slammed
on my brakes, stopped the middleof the road while the other three trucks

(05:51):
are pushing past it and going ontheir way. The betun startant sitting next
to me. He starts looking atme and screaming in my face, like
go go, go, go,get through the kill zone. And so
I just hit the gas and startedgoing. Everybody else pushing on. They
don't know. We're not driving withlights at the time. We're driving MVG,
so we're all blacked out, soyou don't see headlights. It's not

(06:12):
a good time for someone to freezeup and just sit there. Knowing what
I know now is like as aleader in the Marine Corps and teaching those
tactics like it could have went,It could have went. All kinds are
wrong just from that one thing.You know, it's easy for a machine
gun in the turret. Someone shootsit, you, you shoot back,
You get directed to suppress somewhere.You suppress somewhere. Keep your eyes open,

(06:33):
stay awake. That's your job.But when you start driving and how
you got a truck of five peoplelives in your hands, you gotta pay
attention and know what you're doing.The little things that go wrong during combat
situations, if you survive, tolearn from them, make up the stories
that you can tell after to helpother people, But they also initiate an

(06:55):
increasing sense of weariness. Can youdrive a home v of course, do
you know what to do when thevehicle in front of you gets blown up,
not necessarily. It's this undermining ofcommon, practical, everyday things that
begins to unmake someone who has neverseen combat and begins to build a person
who has. The first casualty inthis transformation is the sense that there is

(07:19):
such a thing as safety during acombat mission, no matter how innocent the
situation appears. I remember coming backfrom a patrol, going back on Camp
Fallujah. A patoon had gotten hitby an ID. A small I hit
the back of one of the trucks, hit the back right tirewell, and
like a little piece of the shrapnelhad gotten through just a thin piece of

(07:43):
metal and hit one of the marineson new just behind the flat jacket.
He was fine, he was smiling, He got on the plane you know
that sent him out. Everything wasgood with him. And then you know,
about two hours later we got thenews that he had died in route.
And so that that's one of thosethings that have always stuck with me,
because you can learn lessons from everything, but you can never take suffer

(08:07):
granted. And like just thinking abouthow you know, an ID goes off
and a majority of the shrapnel getshit by the side of the vehicle,
and one piece somehow gets through,one unarmored piece on the truck and somehow
hits this kid right behind a sappyplate. And somehow, even though he's

(08:28):
smiling and giving you high fives onthe plane out, he didn't make it
two hours later. Like you cannever you always gotta be ready for anything.
You never know what the outcome couldbe. And he always got prepared
for what that outcome may result in. And that's what made it real for
us. You know, you're drivingaround for eight hours a day. You've
see an ID here they or IDsor relatively small. You're not getting hit

(08:50):
by massive IDs. Early into deployment, when you get in a firefight,
you can't see who you're shooting out. They're usually farther away in a sporadic
fire. But that that is whatmade the deployment real, Like, hey,
this is where you're at, thisis what you're doing. It's not
a joke. It's not playtime.You're not just here trying to collect the
paycheck. Like it's the real du. There always seems to be a turn

(09:13):
where a person's training and expectations aboutwhat a combat deployment will be morphs into
practical experience and understanding. For Sabans, it took most of the tour to
get a handle on the gravity,and even then it wasn't very informative.
Sometimes you make a mistake and nobodydies. Sometimes you get everything right and

(09:33):
still lose a person. Everyone wouldrather be lucky than good if given the
choice, but understanding how much beinggood helps stack the deck in your favor
is quite a motivator. It wasn'tuntil they wound up the tour, got
home and started their new training cyclethat Sabans had a realistic view of how
critical training was for preparation. I'mpretty certain that when we got back from

(09:56):
Fallujah within a month, we knewwhere we were going again, and when
it came to Ramani six months later, even though your unit just gets back
from a combat deployment, you can'tjust assume that, hey, we're on
the advanced level. Now, let'sjust go and keep going from where we
left off with Falluja, like youhave to start fresh. We're doing betune
attacks, we're doing hikes everywhere,we're doing live convoy training. The stuff

(10:20):
that I should have went through beforeit went to Fallujah, but I never
got the chance to and now I'mlike, okay, so this is how
it's done. This is why it'ssupposed to be the biggest thing was the
IED lanes. Basically, you justyou just take a strip of land and
you know, the EOD guys areout there planting these IDs. That the
way they wire them, so ifyou step on it, you know,

(10:41):
if you step on a pressure plate, you're gonna have an explosion. Well,
the way the I D lane thatwe did had the explosion part of
it pretty far away, so eventhough you stepped in a pressure plate right
there in front of you, anexplosion would go off pretty far into distance,
but it would be enough to letyou know like, hey, you
just messed up. Of course,they would go super hard make it extremely

(11:03):
difficult. So you know, whenwe did these ID lanes, like we
failed quite a bit, and thatstarted to kind of start to worry you,
like, man, I can't dothis in training, how can I
do it in real life? Butthey did it. They made it that
hard for a reason because once youwent into the actual live version of it
in combat, we were actually doingpretty good at finding them and knowing what

(11:26):
indicators to look for. You know, Felujah at this point. It was
just too fast for me to like, you know, it's not going to
be great. It's on the newsyou read and heard about the push they
did, but it's just so fastor so quick of a turnaround time for
me, Like I didn't have timeto get nervous or work up about it.

(11:48):
But now Ramadi something I'm not hearinga lot about on the news,
but I was. I was supernervous about going to Ramadi at this point
because the work was just for thewhole six months of training for that is
like, this is where you're going. This you know, urban urban type
of warfare. This is gonna bereal firefights. You always hear the phrase

(12:09):
it's gone. It's not gonna benothing like Fallujah. It's gonna be a
lot worse. And it just fromthe workup itself. Even though I'm not
hearing about Ramadi on the news everyday, I mean, I am super
like I am I'm scared for thisone. Sabin's concern was justified both by
how high their training tempo was andhow things would be on the ground once

(12:30):
they got to Ramadi. One ofthe reasons the Fallujiah tour had been disproportionately
quiet was that many of the clearedout insurgents had made their way into Ramadi
and we're digging in and waiting forthe Marines to show up. When they
did, it would result in aprolonged conflict with far reaching consequences. This

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(14:41):
ground in Ramadi, the Marines sawthat the mission would be a lot more
difficult than even they had prepared for. This was particularly true because there was
a renewed hearts and minds push thatemphasized making more friends than enemies. They
were supposed to do this while tryingto establish some sort of safe zones in
the city from which they could launchpatrols and call insurgents. It was the

(15:05):
worst of both worlds. There's noone or two months of getting your feet
wet. Like day one, youknow it's time to go. You see
mortar rounds or impacts all over yourcamp as you're doing a turnover. You
know, you got mortars coming inthrough tents and stuff, and there's buildings
all around you. There's no warmingup to it, like it's it's a
game time from the moment you stopfoot on ground, first contact first I

(15:30):
d didn't take long. I knowfor a fact that the first ID that
I was hit by in my truck, we called it like the crap id
because it was buried in apologists trashand it's just nasty. And I remember
getting a mouthful of it, justall in my mouth, just early on
in deployment, and of course theguys are making fun of me for it.

(15:50):
But I remember thinking like, wow, that didn't take long. Like
we we had just started this,and I've already had my truck struck by
an ied big or small. That'snever a fun time. And I got
all this crap in my mouth.I mean, there is no day to
day. It's all just one blurof iods and firefights and snipers and just

(16:11):
it's just NonStop. So like Fallujah, you go out, you find an
IOD, you call an EOD,someone brings them out to you, they
do their thing, they leave you. Push on on Ramadi for our dagger
missions. At night. EOD wentwith us, trucks went with us,
like everybody was with us, becausethere was no how if you find one,
you know you're finding one in theday. The night we call hell
night was because during that dagger mission, our section got hit with five id

(16:36):
s that night. And I'm notsaying like found direct impacts, two vehicles,
Marines getting thrown out of vehicles,trucks getting destroyed five times, and
it was you know, truck gotdestroyed, you hook up, you pull
it back to camp, you takethe gun off that truck, you put
it in the next truck, youput the Marines in that truck, and
then you drive back out. Andthat's just you know, five times in
one night. Are we gonna makeit? Is this to be a deployment

(17:00):
that any of us can actually survivefive impacts on one night? You know,
that's more than we had the entiredeployment Fallujah. Worse than the damage
was the eroding sense of control.Lots of combat veterans talk about the need
to let go of any pretense ofsurviving a deployment as a way to maximize
their effectiveness, and Sabans wasn't anydifferent. Stifling mortal fear isn't a switch

(17:26):
you can throw on and off,though it is a semi permanent decision that
requires reinforcement through repetition. Once youhave it down, it's important to have
people around you to keep you incheck, or at least to tell you
when you're taking unnecessary chances. Wegot a couple of guys with us,
a couple of Special Ops guys withus on a patrol, and we got
into a little ambush from from abovefrom the buildings. And of course,

(17:49):
aren't I team jams right when youneed it to be effective? And you
know, I just I jumped ontop of my truck because it's very hard
to do it from inside the turretand looking up and reaching up to it.
So I jumped on popping my truck. The rounds are impacting all over
the truck and hitting the AMMO can, but I just, you know,

(18:10):
I was able to get up thereand put it back together, and able
to put all my pins back in. Jumping a turret and get rounds off
into an enemy position to cease theircontact. That's what makes or breaks you
like not being able to quickly ormy personal opinion is not being able to
quickly like engage enemies with a massamount of fire, but is when something

(18:36):
goes wrong, how quickly are youable to fix that problem and uh and
get things whether it's supposed to be. The award I got, the Navy
Achievement Medal with a Combat V forvalor was from having to fix one of
those corrective actions on a Mark nineteenin a firefight. But again it was
it is a learning lesson as wellbecause after that day, like, I

(18:59):
don't see that as an award worthycourageous moment on my half, I see
it as a young kid pulling astupid move that he got that I got
lucky with. And fortunately one ofmy leaders also came up with the same
conclusion that I did, like,hey, that's that's not smart to do

(19:22):
stuff like that. So that's whyfor the Martin nineteen gunners, we actual
we started putting up to forty ninein the turret with him. So if
the Martin nineteen was malfunctioning and needto corrective action and you weren't able to
get up there and do it,you had a secondary weapon that could at
least put some sort of automatic firedown down range if need be. The

(19:44):
decision to add additional backup guns wasa reasonable compromise, but it also defeated
the point. The turret weapons purposewas to end the contact, either by
killing the enemies or overwhelming their positionas to make it untenable. Still,
the backups were better than nothing,and they also eliminated the dilemma for turret
gunners torn between standing out in theopen and being ineffective in a firefight.

(20:07):
Eventually, Sabans would come to findpurpose in both as he learned how critical
having a turret gunner could be.Our trucks coming around a corner, coming
off of a side road and goingonto the main road. I remember,
like truck one leading the way andthey got hit by an ied and they
were disabled. Nobody had gotten hurt, They just the truck couldn't move no
more. And so we kind ofwent around them and started setting them security,

(20:30):
waiting on transport to come and pickthat truck up and get it out
of there. And down the roadto the rear of truck one, somebody
came out in the middle of theroad with an RpK and just started laying
rounds into the back of their truck. And so there was playing times Ramadi
where I would fire you know,two or three forty mic mics out of
Martin nineteen and that stuff would justcome apart from the inside out and then

(20:52):
you're done. You have to geta nor weapon or put that thing back
together. I remember seeing that guycome out there and firing from the hip,
just shooting at RpK in the backof truck one and seeing those green
tracers just hitting the back of thattruck. It was just instinct by that
point, and I just turned thehandle on the tur a few turns,
grabbing more nineteen, fired off theweapon and two rounds, two forty mike's

(21:18):
got out of there before it jammedup on me. Both of those rounds
was direct hit to that enemy fighter, and I remember I remember the commander
being there and being like, youknow, a Sabans you just got your
first confirmed kill on a Mark nineteen. That was kind of like the realization
to me that you know, whatdoes it mean to be a machine gunner
in the field of battle? Areyou just another another person filling a gap,

(21:42):
or like, are you doing somethingthat has impacts? And for me
that was the time, that wasthe moment where I was like, you
know, what. Take your jobseriously, be proud of what you are.
Try to hone your skills better everychance you get, because you doing
the right thing could end a firefightand save lives in an instant. Because

(22:04):
you think about, like those tworounds that just so happened to get off
before that weapon jammed, what couldhave continued if I had missed that enemy
fighter and he was just there witha free reign with that RpK to engage
anybody he wanted to. The confrontationdidn't so much renew his commitment as it
confirmed it. It's way easier toask what if about yourself than it is

(22:27):
to ask it about your buddies.In abstraction, if you make a deadly
mistake, you already have it inyour head that you're not going home,
so it seems less dire. Butif you fail, or are late,
or just flat out didn't do whatyou're supposed to do when someone else dies,
that's a lot tougher to contend with. And that, as much as
anything else, is what kept Sabinsmoving forward and so driving down the road,

(22:51):
once again, truck one gets hitby an ID. This time the
driver, Dustin Gross. He gotbanged up pretty good. One of his
legs were pretty smashed up. Mytruck weren't around his truck on the right
side, trying to set up securityand protect that front edge of him,
and we were facing kind of at kind of a t intersection in front
of us, probably about four hundredfive hundreds of just road in front of

(23:17):
us with buildings on either side andthen a t intersection on the end there.
And so that just turned into justan epically long firefight of just at
least two hours of just rounds backand forth, them engaging us, US
engaging them. I've been told thata drone had gone over top of us

(23:37):
during that time and had just seena massive amount of enemy fighters around us,
and we were stuck like Truck onecouldn't move. We had a wounded
marine. They had to take himinto the building. And of course,
the recovery vehicle that was coming toget Truck one after we had gotten hit
and we called for kure F gothit by an ied, So a secondary
recovery vehicle had to come out toget the first recovery vehicle, and so

(24:00):
we were we were just out there. We were stranded. I remember just
I had a fifty kel on thatday, and I just remember putting rounds
down range. People were turkey peekingaround the walls on that t intersection down
the road and just laying down massiveamount of fires, and like for the
first time, I remember like callingto my vehicle commander like hey, I

(24:22):
need more AMMO. Reload, reload, and then just throwing cans of AMMO
up at me constantly. And Iremember or somebody in the vehicle handing me
the radio handset just because there wasso many handsets everywhere and they kept grabbing
the wrong handset, so they werehanding me the handset just clipped to my
flat so I would be out ofthe way and it wouldn't bug anybody.
And as I bent down to grabit, one of the enemy snipers had

(24:47):
gotten had fired a seven to sixtwo by five four rim round that had
gone through somehow like pinpoint accuracy,had gone between the truck in the turret.
It was like a three quarter inspace between the turret and the truck,
like the bar on top of thetruck, and it hit me right
in the cavlar helmet where the likewhere the plate would be or MVG mount

(25:11):
through the Cavlar blew out the backand just took me out for a little
bit. I remember hearing the shot, and that's it. I remember hearing
the shot, and then I remember. The next thing I remember is like

(25:33):
waking up to one of my buddies, Brian Pop, like shouting at me,
like to wake up, shaking me, like just trying to get me
to wake up. And then I, you know, I wake up wondering
where I'm at down inside the truck, wondering why I'm not in the turret
so like like the it's sound,like the sound of it was like an
ND had gone off, Like Ifelt like I heard an ND go off.

(25:56):
But then I wake up in thetruck with you know, one of
the marines trying to get me towake up, and somehow, like we
don't know how to this day,but like with my mother and my father,
like they had gotten told somehow througha reporter or some type of messed
up information, but they were bothtold that I was killed in action.

(26:18):
When I called my mother a fewdays later in the hospital, like she
she thought she was talking to aghost. Like they're both told that I
was I was the school that Igrew up in I went to like announced
that I was that I had beenkilled. Like, I don't know how
I got messed up, but that'sjust the way it happened. You know.
The Marines had been traveling with anembedded reporter and it's as likely as

(26:41):
anything else that When there were reportsthat Sabans was shot in the head by
a sniper, rumors of his demisebegan circulating. For Sabans, though,
the worst part at that time wasbeing kept out of the fight. This
was during a transitionary period for braininjury diagnoses. Eventually, getting blown up
by three i ds over a shortperiod of time would be enough to get

(27:02):
a person sent home, but forSabans, staying was still an option,
and there was really no chance hewould have opted to leave early. Even
just staying in the hospital long enoughto be diagnosed was really hard on him.
You know, I hated it.I don't even like telling people like
would you get your purple heart forand like saying, you know, I
got shot in the head like that. To me, it's like a fake.

(27:23):
It's like a fake badge of honor. Like there are some people in
the hospital that got hit pretty rough, you know, and they deserve to
be there, and they have theirscars and their wounds to prove it,
and so I I wanted to getout of there as soon as possible and
get back into the fight. WhenI got back to Ramadi, a lot
of people or a lot of thecommand was wondering why I was back,
and I actually wasn't allowed to evengo out and patrol no more. I

(27:47):
stood radio watch for the rest ofthe deployment for about a month. I
wasn't allowed to do anything. Iwas. I was pretty much done.
There's nothing worse than hearing a sectionof yours that you've been with and fought
with through two to employments go outthere and have some stuff happened to him
while you're sitting there in a radioand you know you should be with him.

(28:07):
I mean even to the point towhere you know they had taken an
RPG through one of their windshields,and my truck, the truck that I'm
normally in, took an RPGU tothe windshield. The window kind of caved
in and somehow contained the blasts RPGUto where nobody was hurt. But after
then coming back and seeing that,like I was so frustrated with everything that

(28:29):
I just I didn't even know whatto do myself. I was just so
frustrated. I kept trying to getback out there and get back with him.
The docks wouldn't clear me to goback out, and I was pretty
upset about the whole or deal.Back home, Sabans caught a bit of
a break. He met Kelly,whom he would eventually marry, and was
assigned what would turn out to bea non combat deployment as part of the

(28:51):
Marine Expeditionary Unit. He spent twoyears away from combat, but it took
a different kind of toll on him. When the tour ended, Sabans would
have to decide whether he still wantedto be a marine and reckon with the
implications of having more responsibility but lesspower to act. This episode is sponsored

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(31:00):
how the transition from military life tocivilian life can be tough for people who
have served, but there also canbe a transition difficulty for people who drastically
change their deployment tempos. Going fromconstant fighting and training to less dangerous duty
took a bigger toll on Sabins thanhe would have thought. All of a
sudden, the physical trauma started tocatch up with his body and the lack

(31:22):
of adrenaline started to wear on hispsyche. That whole two years was nothing
but change. I quickly learned thatslowing down and like not deploying was not
the best move for me. Couldn'tsleep, I was putting a lot of
weight on medication, talking to doctors, you know, just couldn't get used
to the slowing down and just beingsettled. Before I knew it, I'm

(31:45):
actually like getting medically retired for eightypercent from everything. And then it took
a star major to pull me inhis office and just kind of talk to
me and like not the typical Italk, you listen, but kind of
like the heart to heart, likehey, let me just give you what
I'm thinking and then you take whatyou want with it. That's when they
told me, They're like, hey, just so you know, like months

(32:05):
ago you were put in for andyou actually have. We just got told
that you won the two thousand andnine Carlo's Heathcock Award, like one marine
a year wins that pretty prestigious award. But you're you're going down this path
of no return. You could becomepretty great depending on how you react from
this one thing. So between allthat and then having a new child,

(32:29):
still being a newly wod like youdon't you don't learn everything there is about
marriage in a year and a half, especially when six months of that is
is deployed. So yeah, thattwo years was interesting for us. So
we appealed the eighty percent to befull duty and stay in. As soon
as that got approved and I said, yep, we'll let you stay in.

(32:51):
I got orders to Advanced machine Gunscourse and to three to nine,
so when I got there, wewere starting to work up to go a
Marjah in Afghanistan. Sabans had beenan asset teaching machine gunning at the School
of Infantry for a while and hehad a sense that he would be really
effective as a machine gun section leaderon the ground. Sure, Afghanistan was

(33:13):
going to be different from Iraq,but it promised to be an ied heavy
deployment and Sabans was confident that hecould help his guys start at a higher
level than he was able to duringhis first deployment. We didn't even know
we're going to have trucks until wegot in country. Like I didn't train,
we didn't work up for trucks.Like I had brand new machine gunners
I picked up from Soy that Idid the best of my ability to train

(33:36):
them prepare them for a combat situation. And then we were like, hey,
by the way, they got eighttrucks. You all have to figure
out what to do with them.And then the commander was like, well,
Sabans like you did this made deploymentsas a turret, Like you shouldn't
know how truck section works, andthat's how that's how it went. Like
here you go, here's four trucks, here's thirteen dudes, like go go

(33:57):
do good things. Oh it's completelyfrightening. I mean completely because you know
twenty eleven you talk about the rulesstarting to kind of crack down in two
thousand and six with drive, liketwo eleven, there's no bending that,
like you will have people to havehumby driver's license driving vehicles, and so
for us, we didn't plan anticipatehaving trucks. So like I have machine
gunners driving vehicles and I have mortarmenlike up in the guns, like I

(34:22):
have like the Frankenstein of mobile sectionsout there doing what we can. But
I knew that, like for thatfirst firefight, however, I reacted and
what I did with those marines watchingme would be the start of everything from
from what we did from there on. Now, you show no fear,
you're quick to react, you holdtheir well being high in a priority list.

(34:45):
They'll follow you anywhere, you know. And so they set out every
day Rodley speaking. The mission wasto drive the Taliban from the area as
part of a concerted push to clearMouritia. They were to find IEDs one
way or the other and engage theenemy during the ensuing fight. So another
section i'd been hit by an iedand then we had to go do like

(35:07):
a quick reaction to them. Iremember us going down this road and then
there's a body of water to ourleft and a pickup truck came out of
nowhere on the right side, andlike had fired an RPG at us,
and whatnot. All of my guyswere freaking out. All of them were
just didn't know what to do.And I purposely, like in my head,
told myself, okay, stay calm, don't have like us a big

(35:29):
deal talk calm and radio, becausethat's one of the biggest I mean,
that's the biggest way to judge aleader is like when something happens, how
did they talk on the radio?Are they screaming at coc and like begging
for help? Are they talking calm, cool and collective on the radio.
And that's the biggest thing. SoI made it a point to like to
stay calm, talk in a normalmanner, and just try not to act

(35:52):
like that RPG that just got shotat us and missed us wasn't a huge
deal, and like quickly had oneof my guys like put weapons aimed at
that pickup truck and like that wasthe biggest thing, was me trying to
stay calm and making sure I'll portraythat. After that, we got called
out for a curef we got inlike the camp, the small camp got

(36:14):
under attack at that time, likewe're we got the ISKI there. So
like you always got this film,like these guys, these are a bunch
of dudes that were like arm bandson their arm. They're supposed to be
on your side and helping you out, fighting for their own cause and fighting
for their country. But like youalways feel like, you know, there's
times when they take off those bandsoff their arm and all of a sudden
they're they're no longer on our side. But we had gotten to we had

(36:35):
taken them taking some contact from oneof the side of our camp, some
pretty heavy contact, and so wegot in our vehicle and we ran out
there, and I actually had alleight trucks with me that time, Like
the other section leader jumped on board, He's like, let's go, And
I had all eight trucks with me. We went to the point of origin
where the where the contact had comefrom. So my front trucks were taking
heavy contact, and one of theone of the vehicle commanders, was called

(36:57):
back to me, like what doI do? What do I do?
And basically, as you know,you can see much more and have better
judgment than anybody, like what doyou feel like you should do? And
he like, I think we shouldreturn fire, And I'm like, well
you made the call. I gotyour back no matter what, Like if
somebody's shooting at you, you feellike you need to shoot back, like
you do you and I got yourback. Sabans was confident in his men

(37:19):
and in their abilities, but hewas still trying to balance the desire to
be in the fight with the understandingthat his primary job was to coordinate the
attacks and defenses more than it wasto personally engage. But as the attack
intensified, he got his chance toboth lead and fight. And then after
that happened, you know, westart taking fire from behind us, and

(37:39):
I got the commander on the phoneon the radio like telling me like,
hey, we see this guy onthe g boss, like we can see
him on camera. First of all, let me point out, like this
is the most regrettable moments of mylife, like the one time as a
marine that you have a chance toactually employ a grenade the way it should
be employed, and I did nottake the opportunity, Like total failure on

(37:59):
my bar. So this dude islike peeking around and firing out our truck
and the guide that's up into Martinnineteen. Like remember I'm like, I'm
a Martin nineteen gunner. Well,this young marine up there just could not
get the Martin nineteen to work.And I mean he's getting blasted in his
turret, like he's taking full burstof AK fire to his turret and he

(38:20):
is just freaking out, not surewhat to do. Like, I had
to make a decision and end thiscontact, and so I reached up and
grabbed this marine and ripped him outof the turret and just put myself up
in that turret in harm's way toget to Martin nineteen in the fight,
realized that the mart nineteen was totallylike totally out of commission, could not
work, and so I just pulledup an M sixteen and engage this guy

(38:44):
with my M sixteen through the turretwith rounds hitting the turret. That made
a huge impact on my marines,and like to show like I'm willing,
I'm willing to put myself out thereand put myself in harm's way for you,
and never doubt that I would neverdo that for you, you know.
And so that that's how you leadmarines, especially as a new unit

(39:04):
not really cohesive yet, not reallyhaven't really trained together that long. You
have to just show them with actionand not just speak loud words, you
know. Most times though, Sabinswas making calls from inside the truck that
he would have hated to have madeif he was on the outside, but
it developed him as a leader.And gave him a little more insight into
being in command of marines who won'tstay down when they're hurt. We had

(39:29):
run supplies to one of the newlybuilt patrol base. It was still really
small, but the only problem withthat patrol base there was only one road
in, one road out. Andthen as we rolled back out, truck
one had a mind roller and theirmind roller hit the pressure plate. The
id was massive, like it wasa huge id, that mind roller.

(39:49):
It threw that thing around like itwas nothing. It went through the air
like you were just throwing legos.I just knew that everybody in that truck
was gone, there was no questionabout it. And so like immediate panic
and like fear was just inside ofme. I somehow had enough restraint to
be like, all right, dismount, do your V sweeps. Don't just
go running up to that truck becausethere's still could be secondary iads. And

(40:14):
that was the longest ten minutes ofmy life, was like v sweeping up
from our vehicle, and like mestaying in the vehicle and having to put
my marines out in harm's way toV sweep because I had to call the
reports and get people here. Youhave to get recovery vehicle here. I
want to get EO D out here, get a chopper on on station in
case we hadn't met it back anybody. Like I'm used to being the guy

(40:35):
out there throwing lead towards people andputting myself in harm's way. I mean,
that was that was a long longperiod there. They finally got up
there and I was able to getout of the truck and get up there
with him, and like the Marinesend up being okay, except for the
driver, like he had took atook a pretty big hit and was had
a pretty massive concussion from that.Seeing him kind of like yeah, you
know, I'm okay, I'm okay. And then when I watched him get

(40:59):
up and start to walk, becausewe had to we had to go get
our stuff, you know, likejust because the minority got hit, and
like we have tires and stuff andand gear thrown over the road, Like
we just don't leave it there.You have to go get your stuff.
And watching him start to walk andlike I could see him not walking a
straight line, and then I lookedin his eyes and you can just kind
of see his eyes and see theway his eyes look and the way his

(41:21):
pupils are and like it's just likeyou know what, man, hey man,
sit down, like we we needto make sure that you're gonna be
okay. And I already had achop round standby, like I did my
duty and had him on standby justin case, so they were already there.
The lesson learned from Fallujah, youknow, like when you think something
is not that serious, but thatthat marine ends up not living. So
at this point, like my buddyRodney has his section there now to help

(41:44):
us out. Like he heard thecall. He got his four trucks out
there. And Rodney comes up tome and he's like, hey man,
like I'm here, what do youneed? And I'm just like, hey,
bro, like can you go setup an l Z. I'm gonna
get a meta back in here.We got him out of there, and
you know, that's that's how itshould be done. Helping coordinate during larger
attacks required Savings to sit tight,sometimes in a way with which he wasn't

(42:06):
comfortable, but it did give himperspective, which was something he would absolutely
need to rely upon as he headedhome and faced an existential threat for which
he had no response. We hadthe birthday of ball coming up, and
I was on the sword detail.So we were coming down the stairs that
morning. I had to go topractice early that morning for the ball and

(42:28):
the carter was just at the bottomof the stairs. I guess what you
would call the definition of lethargic.And so Kelly and her stepfather, her
stepdad took carter to the Naval Hospitalto the er and that's when she called
me and said that after doing acat scan and stuff for the r like
they had found, they found abrain tumor in his head and he was

(42:52):
about to get life flighted to UNCChapel Hill. Unfortunately for me, I
shut down, you know, likewhen there's nothing I can do and I
just I don't know, you justwait to the next moment, and that
first like getting like getting there,getting a family there. We finally get
to UNC. We still we gota three month old at this time,
like we have a newborn child stilland he has to go on that first

(43:15):
brain recection surgery. I mean,I can't tell you anything from that,
Like it's just out of body experience, Like I just don't, like what
do you do? Like you justsit there and you wait for updates,
and there's there's no training or fightingor tactical decisions you can make to change
the outcome. After more than amonth of operations and recoveries, Carter was

(43:37):
clear to go home. He wasdiagnosed with autism by the time he was
five and spends about twenty four hoursa week in different physical and cognitive therapies.
Sabans, who was slated to headback to Marja, successfully applied to
the School of Infantry, where heintends to close out his career. Training
marines about how to fight, butalso about how to live with the ambiguities

(43:59):
of purple ful inaction, learning towait and to stay strong so that when
you're ready to act, you're alsoable to. In his spare time,
Sabans writes a blog about his family'sexperiences with Carter's diagnosis to help other military
families find their own ways through.He also publishes fiction based on his experiences

(44:20):
in Afghanistan and Iraq. It takescourage to expose yourself to enemy fire in
the line of duty, and ittakes fortitude to live in a world where
inaction is the best alternative you have. But it takes time and experience to
learn how to parse the two.This is War was written by me Anthony

(45:05):
Russo and produced by Incongruity Media.If you like the show, you can
help support us by visiting our sponsorsor by leaving a five star review wherever
you're listening right now. You canalso follow us on social media at this
is War. You also can findshow notes, photos, and more background
on each episode at this iswar dotcom