Afghanistan: The Surge

ladies and gentlemen the president of the united states i want to speak to you tonight about our effort in afghanistan the nature of our commitment there the scope of our interests and the strategy that my administration will pursue to bring this war to a successful conclusion and as commander-in-chief i have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30 000 u.s troops to afghanistan if i did not think that the security of the united states and the safety of the american people were at stake in afghanistan i would gladly order every single one of our troops home tomorrow let's go i will the 30 000 additional troops that i'm announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010 the fastest possible pace so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers thank you god bless you and god bless the united states of america until a few weeks earlier none of the men in alpha company first battalion second marine regiment had ever heard of nazad that's the key population center president obama sent them to secure now zad is in helmut province at the time the province was viewed as center mass for the taliban insurgency nazad had been a key population center there had been a bazaar with several hundred shops a street clogged with traffic it even had a pair of three-story hotels after the taliban took the town in 2006 british gurkha and estonian troops later joined by u.s marines drove them out it took three years when it was over nausead was flattened when alpha company arrived what had been a town of ten thousand was a ruin of only a few hundred but the marines arrived for their seven-month tour carrying orders and aspirations the lima 3-4 that was here before really did an excellent job of setting the conditions for us to uh just jump off of their successes and to continue on there's a lot of enemy enemy activity here we know it the locals know what they tell us provide the locals with some some form of stabilization bringing in the population re-establishing the economy getting these people some you know something to do for a living it's going to take a lot to get their trust back i mean we've been here before we've been here before and we popped smoke and made promises that were empty the 180 people with alpha company worked out of combat outpost caferetta at nausead from this dusty windswept base the marines sought to control a small north-south valley their responsibility extended only six miles south to the village of kergey and just seven miles north to kenjakolia a scant eight miles away across two ridgelines was bar nausead everyone from generals to kids on the street knew the taliban ran it the marines were aching to clean it out all the frustrations of the larger war in afghanistan played out in these narrow confines and nowhere were those frustrations more vivid than in ken jack olia all right our mission's nothing more than going up and uh getting nosy we're gonna we're gonna classify as a security patrol up in the area we're gonna go up in there and and uh do some uh engagement with the locals uh and see what kind of information we can grab from uh ken jack olia okay all right ken jackoli is uh there is uh known taliban uh in that area that is uh the same place where uh uh first platoon continues to take uh indirect fire from the 82 millimeter mortars uh there's definitely an ied cell working out of there we're gonna leave uh through the south breach from uh caferetta pulled through into the wadi uh pushed north first light zero four thirty zero five we'll get up and we're gonna push up into uh kenjakolia the marines hadn't even made it to the village when they found the first ied improvised explosive device a mine this one was marked by three rocks probably so villagers wouldn't run over it by mistake moments later 100 yards away you got your metal detector on you see how these rocks are in a circle and then that route is stacked on top of the other one right there see how that earth is disturbed right there in that area there's an ied right in there so we'll step back hey similar he's back here just don't step inside the circle that one turned out to be a false alarm when i'm patrolling through the villages uh what's going through my mind is security uh 360 security and paying attention to all those little things that you can try to see gather that information as quickly as possible assess the situation before it takes place you know learning the populace learning the individuals talking to the locals engaging with the children stuff like that you know biggest thing is you know security and keeping my marines safe no one in the company engaged with locals better than corporal timothy j glover here he is trying out the local dip it's actually just a little uh it looks like a rabbit did they do this no is it too young okay too much for them yeah i'd like to know what's in it though he engages with the locals very well no problem for kids coming up to somebody who who has that humorous personality yeah and then again with a a they give him stuff right off the bat i got a high tolerance for beer so i should be good with this right the guy that owns the donkey actually uh offered us the donkey but we just sat on him instead he was going to trade it for a pen i think his kid was really one of the pen but uh i don't find a way we could take the donkey back so he relates to to children well and that's a lot of the things you know we're taught before coming on deployment is to gain a lot of information from kids kids will do anything for attention and if you just sit down and talk to the kids they're going to eventually tell you what you want to hear and coming from glover being able to he has a quick understanding in there he you know grabs that language barrier really well and he relates that to kids he'll teach them something in order for them to teach him something some of it might be you know censored he's called me that before [Music] [Music] [Music] still harvesting weed for the next couple weeks huh wait a while it looks like that's coming along pretty good those elders are almost like the spokesman of that town it's the voice and by using those elders and gaining the trust of those elders those mullahs you have the ability to really impact those people of that small town the village elders complained that the flares marines fired from mortars at night illumination rounds sometimes set fire to their wheat fields please stop they pleaded yeah we only shoot that alum when the taliban's shooting on us tell them not to worry that we won't do we won't uh we don't shoot we don't shoot on innocent people the sharp crack of a nearby explosion sent marines scrambling was it an incoming mortar or an ied they're gonna try to suck around that way all right okay hey let's see get some dispersion before i come down there and kick somebody's ass so we'll we'll push down here and float i'll stay here then you stay here i'm gonna push with that okay if we flush them out you'll see them start to flush out motorbikes probably if you identify their tubes on their bike just go ahead and shoot them got it roger we're moving towards it now we're sending a force to isolate to the north uh we're about 100 meters to your north uh all right roger call it towards our direction hey in touch with sofa see if uh see if they took me out of your house we see it it turned out to be an ied planted in a wall marines had just walked past it was big enough powerful enough and well placed enough that had marines been there when it exploded many would have died in place leaving a place eod's here they can come up and conduct a post-blast analysis and clear the area uh it had detonated uh and it didn't detonate while we were here which is a good thing but uh the route that we took it appears that possibly we'll check uh for some blood patterns but and possibly very well could be uh somebody's trying to unplace it to target us again uh either on x fill or an infill again and uh it may have detonated on on the uh on the emplacer i'll have eod come up and conduct a post blast analysis on the process was supposed to be that we were able to get another lieutenant but we never did and unfortunately it's paid off for me i love it you know i didn't think i was going to like it at first because i thought there's going to be a little bit more responsibility on that side of the fence than uh than i wanted to deal with it's something that i wouldn't take back for no amount of money nothing nothing in the world would make me change my mind to uh try to get an officer in here you know if it happened we i kept telling the marines throughout the training cycle if we get a lieutenant we get a lieutenant if we get a platoon commander we get a platoon commander and everybody will go back to the rightful place fortunately enough for me and you know based off the hard work of the marines under my charge and the stuff that i've been able to do myself it just never happened so here i am he's been a platoon commander come this may for uh almost about a year and a half now he's one of the top performing staff sergeants i've ever seen he takes care of his marines i nicknamed him chesty puller he's he's got a great head on his shoulders uh i i i i latched on to him pretty pretty quick um great head on his shoulders great leader um cares a lot about his troops uh is willing to think outside the box i have no problem coming up to him and giving him some ideas and he'll utilize them he's tactically sound he's strong yeah we have to uh you have to get in each other's face uh i think it's to release tension i mean there's so much tension out there and it's when you're out there alone and unafraid and uh away from the fob the main the main hub to turn around and just tactic after tactic and thinking and watching each other's sex and everything else and if there's a minute that you can use down time i'm the guy that'll turn around and bring him back to reality let him know that i'm still there i got to do it i was in the delayed entry program as a young man at 17 years old i wasn't for sure if that's what i wanted to do but what transpired between being 17 up to 24 years old was you grow up some you experienced a lot of things and what had happened for me was that that itch and that desire stayed where it was i continued to look at the marine corps as an option for myself i'm a military child my father was in the army for 28 years so you know that background for military was always there but you know from 17 right around to 24 years old it just didn't seem like it the options or you know what i'm trying to say is it didn't seem right up until this one moment you know and i just i kept that itch and kept that desire and here i am so what'd you do between 17 and 24 try to stay out of trouble like everybody else at 17 and 24. uh you know i i worked some odd jobs directly out of high school i was fortunate enough to work for advanced auto parts for a little while i got hired on through the walmart distribution center i worked for them for a couple years and then i went and worked for a john deere power plant in my hometown i worked there for about two and a half years and you know just didn't seem like it's something i wanted to be doing for the rest of my life was was working that factory type situation i was married two other times before because a lot of times you make decisions when you're younger that just don't pan out whenever you become a mature adult you know and it affects my marriage with my wife now sometimes but she's got the best products she's got and i and i do too i'm a better man based off my experiences from my past and you can't do anything but move forward marines patrolled in armored convoys the convoys were led by vehicles like this one pushing a mine roller in front of it a heavily weighted platform with wheels to set off any buried mines the convoys traveled slowly always on the lookout for mines ieds the seven-mile trip to kenjak-olia for instance often took an hour or two the more vehicles the marines lost the fewer patrols they could mount giving the enemy more access to the villages within the marine ao area of operations so the enemy adapted as impressive as these multi-million dollar goliaths are and as much protection as they provided the marines inside they were vulnerable the enemies stopped engaging the marines in gunfights and relied instead on the simplest of weapons what we've been seeing here in afghanistan in rao is real simple you have a pressure plate uh you have two metal contacts with wires running to each and a battery you close it closes the switch uh ied goes boom real simple uh destroys multi-million dollar vehicles uh real chip to uh manufacturer uh the way they weatherproof them is just with plastic keeps all the dirt the mud and all the elements out of the package so it can go whenever it needs to the explosive that they've been using mainly here is anal ammonium nitrate and aluminum uh real simple to make making your kitchen your basement uh once it's uh it's kind of a wet pro process you throw it in the sun it dries and then you have your explosive and you can throw it in a 40-pound jug and it can cause some serious damage to the vehicles here the other day when the the truck got blown up the 7-ton our intention really is to go out there and first off clear the area make sure there are no secondary ieds in the area and then after that do a thorough post blast assessment that will help us decide what exactly happened the amount of explosive that was used the type of explosive that was used and the triggering system uh of course we went out the other day we did find a secondary ied which causes us to step back and approach it in a different way i suppose uh pressure plate and probably 40 pounds or so of hme when i find a secondary ied the first thing i think of is what not to do i want to find out what it is how it works how to approach it but not do anything wrong at the same time so that's what i do as soon as i find something i clarify i answer all those questions and then uh pull back from there and typically we attack it with the robot if we're able to hey you saw where the pressure plate was right are you driving boating just take a left it'll be jug just drive you or you'll probably be over the jug the pressure plates in front you can't approach anyway it should be uncovered enough that you can get it hey there's also the robot attacked the ied in two ways because the enemy explosives may have been booby-trapped or unstable the robot dropped a small explosive charge near the yellow jug filled with the homemade explosives that the enemy had buried the technicians would later detonate the whole shebang the robot then ripped the pressure plate from the ground and took it back to the technicians like a dog fetching a bone [Music] roger two mics two mics until that nation please pass all stations over uh the four combat tours or so i've probably encountered close to 200 ids that we have defused and taken care of when i'm actually uh out there working on an ied or working the scene i i don't really think about it as far as being scared maybe after the fact or before i think about it i think it's a good fear though you have to you have to respect what you're doing and that's the way i look at it it's not a fear that paralyzes your fear that keeps you from doing your job but just know what you're doing somebody just got lucky honestly i've had a few close calls if you will the other day a couple weeks ago i was pretty close you know 25 meters or so i i was lucky i didn't get hit with anything flying uh the closest i've had was probably in iraq i had a few close calls but with an ied was probably about 10 meters or so away uh a 155 millimeter id detonated and of course it it it threw me pretty far but i didn't get hit so using up easing up some of my nine lives my wife does worry about what i do but we really don't talk about what happens over here when we get to talk or chat on email we don't talk about my work or what's actually happening we talk about family and life and uh what i'm gonna do when i get back not necessarily what happens here uh no reason to worry or more wait until she sees you down on your hands and knees brushing the dirt away from that pressure plate hopefully i won't she won't see that one we'll see i tell her it was staged while the three-man truck crew walked away it would be wrong to say they were uninjured we're running a convoy from eddie to nazad for resupply and rolled down the hill and uh just exploded after the explosion blew one of the uh the tires i believe it's the driver's side right about 350 meters up the hill right back there you okay yeah i'm fine could you lose consciousness uh i don't know i just came down make sure my gunner was okay make sure my driver is okay [Applause] want to do it a third time no no it's not fun part of the job um all three of these guys lost consciousness every one of them uh so when you're dealing with that you're talking about a brain injury of some some shape before i'm not going to tiptoe around that i'm going to medevac them as soon as possible if they need to be seen like yesterday if they lost consciousness i was telling you earlier is when you're interviewing these guys i've developed a relationship where they'll tell me everything everything some things i don't really want to know they'll tell me but so open up and ask them what happened to a complete stranger that's going to bring them back they're going to think about what actually did happen instead of joking around about it or anything else be serious a serious moment and that's when you're going to see a marine actually think about it reality is set in it's like wow that didn't just happen i almost did not that could have been a bad situation just went black and waking up make sure all my marines okay [Applause] that's better scales is a good guy he's tough as nails but you just ask him what happened so you're making him think back to which is how that's the last place he wants to be right now they felt forever it did it really did it felt like it lasted [ __ ] hours but like i said when you get on the elevator i just don't go up you feel that like trough no it's i like the hydraulics though hydraulics of a low rider that's all it i'm as was as [ __ ] though i really was the three men were flown to a hospital in the rear next up for second platoon was a three-day patrol in the area of kergey six miles south of nasa two places we're going to be operating the most is a kyrge and possibly bahrain um the big thing is we're not going down there with a whole lot but we're going down there with enough to sustain for a little while before we adjourn you've got to be mindful of some of the new ttps that are in the ao san lamar was killed by an rc ied that was in a tree so stay away from the tree line so i already talked to lieutenant blair he said one of the one of the patterns that he realized he had set down there was the shade trees it's hot right where are we gonna go we we're gonna we're gonna try to find some shade pay attention to where you're going we're gonna push out push down to dehana right now they're saying that uh the route that they cleared uh is clear but there's no overwatch on that route so i'm not taking it and i'll tell you why because we have no support if we if we hit something and blow up a truck we're gonna be sitting for about eight or nine hours because we gotta wait for a record to come from fob eddie okay so my intent is not to break any trucks or hit any ieds for the next 72 hours there was a problem with the new route to kergue it had to cross a dry riverbed a wadi and there were so few crossing points that they became choke points marines worried this one had been mined the marines don't have medics they get corman from the navy this corpsman chief petty officer eric moats had five previous combat tours by far the most combat experience of anybody in the unit this isn't the route we normally take we usually take the route right up by the pass and then come down so they're going to turn around it is choke points that's the choice point poshmark [Music] cautionary i'm on company pack and i got police station you did okay the marines approached kergue the way they approached all villages they parked their heavily armed vehicles a half mile outside of town and walked in this day the temperature was 110 degrees hey pass it back get about 10 or 15 meters dispersion they were especially wary at kergue because three days earlier marines from a different unit had been fired on here remember staff sergeant kesterson's warning about ieds and trees corporal glover spotted a bag in this tree climbed up and grabbed it yeah i like it and then lick it that's what they do off csi no i didn't look at cheeky well why in the hell didn't you not even lick it that's what they did that's what grissom did off csi you want to look at you i ain't licking it you are i was never a big fan of csi just found this hanging in the tree it's a lot of opium oh really smack crystal the good [ __ ] he didn't lick it though so we can't confirm it well i wouldn't hang real like diamonds or anything up in a tree i would we all picked it up yeah i tore it down i didn't know what it was we haven't enjoyed the shade yet though i just want to put that out there you should eat this one chi see now i didn't say eat that's a nick i ain't touching that [ __ ] i tell you about the marijuana plant i found oh the tree they had it's right out there in the middle hey should we take this or what absolutely yeah leave it should we lick it ain't no big deal just leave it leave it all right sweet we're just here to stop did you explain to him about the shade issue not drugs i just got here i can't believe you even spider-monkeyed into that tree well i didn't felt like we were in danger so the heroine that corporal glover found in the tree had been refined from opium grown in these fields that had just been harvested this day marines also found this farmer with a bag of raw opium staff sergeant kesterson radioed instructions for one of the more perplexing parts of their mission roger my guidance is you know if it's a significant amount like the one we found in a day that uh you know a large large amount you can bring it over here to me and i can probably use it as leverage like uh the warhammer 60 other than that uh they still don't want us to be seasoned any poppy uh due to the fact that it's the only way of life for these people to make money right now roger that's what i thought it's a small amount only one bag uh probably about 10 kilos roger you're good if you want to take some photos that's fine uh other than that go ahead and leave it there what's up does he already got enough well what it looks like he had it buried in a hole is this a stash that he has for away for like emergency times if they need money or is he planning on selling this soon i wanted to talk [Music] there's no specific guy everybody who comes here any smuggler who want to buy my coffee so i sell it so the smugglers he's selling it to smugglers he knows he's selling into smugglers uh yeah of course he said there are smugglers to come around okay tell them that we're not gonna take any opium yeah um but uh i do want to uh just cut it and expect it real quick uh what i want to inspect that bag oh yeah okay [Music] okay you got more bags you know they use these to uh these bags to wrap the uh pressure plates yeah i know i saw i can find a lot of water waterproof [Applause] bananas in the courtyard of the finest house in kyrgy the marines held ashura a meeting with village elders thank you for having me uh sit down and talking to me i can tell this place is a little bit more secure than some of the places we've been waiting and from that time till now nobody fire over here the last time was fire when you people were here the two you know like three days ago yeah two or three days ago they're firing it that's it the rest of them never happen in this area ah i can tell that everybody here's uh are good people they're looking me in the eye and you know they're i can tell by looking in their eyes that they're generally concerned with the country and generally concerned with the security of the people in and not only in this village but now zad valley itself just so he knows there's supposed to be uh a lot more police coming to the area in the next four days as the elders made clear this was not good news in the villages the afghan police are widely viewed as incompetent and corrupt the elders said they'd be happier to see more afghan national army but not police i didn't actually know about the marine corps until about towards the end of my junior year in high school i thought it was i thought the army was actually the cool guys i was wrong i i always did want to join the military cause my uncle was in the army he was a helicopter pilot apache you just get such a a fresh start you know right out of high school if you're not sure what you want to do you don't know if you want to go to school hop in the military and everything's just handed to you you know living expenses food and plus you get paid and i mean you're not going to have a lot of bills so it's all going in your pocket i've thought about re-enlisting but i don't know i i joined directly after high school i missed li actually before my high school graduation i missed my high school graduation my high school prom summer after your senior year i missed everything i went straight in early got my diploma early and uh i've never had a life other than you know the marine corps i joined the marines to become an infantryman because well i can't see myself doing anything else you know i can't see myself as pushing papers or doing admin or supply working in a warehouse i've always hunted growing up so i'm pretty good with weapons and uh i don't know i enjoy shooting and i want to kill people i really do i want to kill bad people bad people so i gotta i got an itchy trigger right now it's ready to be pulled the kids love me i think they they love me because they can almost they can almost speak to me like they were speaking to someone else because i learned so much from them by the way by the way they by the way they're talking i can almost tell what they say and then i ask the terp what they said and it just clicks if i hear it again later i'll know what to say back and uh i can just talk with them learn their names write their names in english on the ground they love it seeing their own names in english it's a good time i i really enjoy it because it's just seeing them smile you know they got they got a shitty life i mean what is there to do fun out here in the open desert hmm throw rocks ride a donkey ride a bike uh there's nothing to do out here and to see him laugh have a good time i don't know because those are the guys that are they're gonna they're gonna be i mean most of the taliban that has been killed so far has been in the age of 14 to 18. and those guys are pretty close to that and if we're going to do if we're going to stop this war uh winning them over is definitely probably priority we got because they're the ones that are growing up you know corporal clobber he's uh another one of the characters in the platoon corporal glover's a lot of fun he's got a great sense of humor it comes from a strong family he's got a i'm pretty sure he's got a boxing background so he's tough as nails doesn't back down from anybody he is the epitome of a young marine uh corporal glover he's got he's a good kid great kid i'd do anything in the world for him man is he green behind the ears i wouldn't trade corporal glover for anything maybe [Laughter] i don't know what he was thinking when he went up in that tree he's been briefed on those bags too uh you know that's an enemy ttp right now putting things in trees not to touch stuff in trees booby trapped ieds he knows it's just one of those things again he doesn't listen and takes upon himself to say hey what's this it was like a five mile pump into that town under a microwave and i i just found that tree i was excited to find that tree and uh i know he went spider-monking up into it and i probably should have gotten up but i was i was dead ass tired he came down with the rock and it was interesting he [ __ ] up my shade that's what i thought the heroine thing now that i think about it was completely stupid you know that could have easily been blow me up but i seen a bag up there it didn't didn't see no wires nothing like that so i climbed the tree ripped the bag out and uh turns out it was a fist full of heroin just shitload of it it didn't occur to you that that could be a booby trap it did after afterwards it definitely occurred to me that hey maybe if i pull on this something would happen but i don't know just in my mind i can't get out of the mindset of nothing's gonna happen to me i'll be fine you know i can't get out of that it's starting to kick in after i keep seeing loads of friends of mine getting hurt and everything happening around me and it's starting to kick in a little bit but i don't think i'll ever be able to get out of that nothing's gonna happen to me i'm invincible kind of thing the marines wanted to keep a better eye on ken jack olia and this 200-foot hill was perfect except the marines were sure the enemy had planted a minefield to clear a path through that minefield the marines launched a rocket and that rocket laid down a 350-foot white rope of explosives nearly a ton in all that blast cleared a path 100 meters long and about eight meters wide but that didn't quite reach the top rock and roll so the marines humped smaller versions of the rocket launched explosives up the hill to blast a path all the way to the top clearing this hilltop here okay arizona just so we can make a nice base to observe the enemy i mean they've been watching us so it's time for us to watch them up here at the top uh anti-personal obstacle breaching system it's uh 55 meters long uh pretty much composed of decor and 108 uh fragmentation grenades yeah sure used them a couple times it's just you gotta do it quick really i mean get out of the way it's just a nice nice bang it was a big adrenaline rush too because you know you got so many seconds to get out there if you trip or anything you know you're screwed so you know pulling that pin and running is a big priority here we go the marines had stayed all day in one spot out in the open by late afternoon they'd become an inviting target for a mortar team in kenjak olia as we were leaving we started taking idf from the city uh kenjakolia looked over and heard this noise and i saw this big old cloud of smoke and i guess about the same time i saw it other people saw it so i yelled out we were taking water fire and uh we had positive identification of the enemy as they were going in there you could see smoke coming from the tree line so we started opening fire on the tree line then everybody started shooting towards where we took mortar fire from and then called 120s 120 millimeter motors dropped and then i guess howitzers also got in on it and just the city got pretty banged up [Music] and he is in fact firing at ken jack golia out copy i want to just ensure that you know where our friendly position is and where the enemy position is over marines fired back with 120 millimeter mortars from an outpost about two and a half miles away bro those rounds exploded on the far side of the village yeah we're deep we're deep sir hit that whole point eight zero zero oh yeah dude that was right to the left of it one more for jesse uh everyone should stay in place because the one five 155 millimeter artillery rounds fired from a different base about 14 miles away exploded right in the heart of the village village kids won't be throwing around sucks to live in that village [Music] good the marine artillery fire killed three men an old woman and a small girl it wounded another two men and five more children even though it had been marines who shelled their village the villagers loaded some dead and wounded into cars and drove for help to the marines somebody only get this guy he's [ __ ] gone [Applause] [Music] let's go [Applause] [Music] the marines raced the wounded to the helicopter landing zone at nausead so they could fly the villagers to military hospitals at the landing zone the chief and others worked to save lives until the helicopters arrived is i need [ __ ] tape [Music] well we've got more articles i'll give you more here in a second cut that tape come on there you go [ __ ] can of man what do you got a pulse that's good how much you need what you need that's good that's good hold on stop i ain't that enough he's gone body bag him get him out of here hey we got another one body bag get out of here hey take them over what's this guy one shot move to the bells to the pelvis hey harris harris harris let's go you got him yeah that's a little boy they get the little boy let's go let's go let's go if you don't have a litter let me know where's that litter you gonna grab the other litter hold on no they got it [Applause] two mics out ten bucks out got it [Music] in the midst of this chaos sergeant javen roberson and an interpreter began interviewing an elder from ken jack olia what was lost in translation is just another measure of the barriers to success the elder named the four men who fired the mortars at the marines including the name of their commander but that's not exactly what sergeant roberson gets from his interpreter his interpreter's native language is dari one of afghanistan's two major languages the other language is pashto and the interpreter's pashto is poor the elder speaks pashto note the differences between what the elder says and what the interpreter tells sergeant roberson so how many people were shooting from the garden motorcycle four [Music] [Music] you know him he said no i haven't seen but somebody told me that he's been correct the guy who was firing the mortars yeah the they know what's going to happen they know if they shoot us we shoot back at them there's going to be kids there there's going to be innocent people there you have to help us get these people these bad guys this taliban so this won't ever happen again [Music] [Applause] um foreign [Music] to shoot you guys know what you're doing doing right standby this is war this is what happens in war this is war and that's the first thing that people need to understand we had a situation where we were taking indirect fire up to six rounds of indirect fire 155 battery was cleared hot when ready and they fired and they had four rounds that went a little long of uh their targets when those rounds leave the tube you can't really control what happens after that uh we had some you know civilian casualties and right away we took care of that situation there's always going to be collateral damage it's always going to be that innocent bystander that gets hurt in the middle of it our job on the medical field my core minimum and me we don't deal with politics we don't wear pants big enough to deal with politics and we don't have the time to [ __ ] around with it we'll treat the casualty leave everything on the field get into the next echelon of care everything we can do but you know they're letting the taliban shoot us from their city it's their own damn fault in my opinion if you're a pro taliban city you deserve to be wiped out completely what good are they doing you that's you know what i mean came back after if1 uh second transportation sport battalion asked for me again um to go out only this time lead the corpsman into that fight that was during the fall of fallujah i lost a lot of boys in that one uh we actually went over there not expecting too much uh based off the first trip out to iraq we didn't really see that much we got in ambushes here and there but all in all it wasn't that big of a fight went over the second time leading out the corpsmen as a second class and we had our asses handed to us the iraqis caught on really quick that the slow-moving green trucks were great target practice um they hit us with everything from ieds to mortars to small arms fire heavy arms fire lost a lot of boys in that one after that i went with a special boat team 22 deployed twice to iraq with them special boat team we transport special forces any soft unit via river transport into the battle we hot insert hot extract and we patrol the rivers um carry all the all the gucci toys we had the fleas and all the great weaponry that you can have on there seal team actually i went over there as strictly support but we lost our corpsman in that one um so i ended up doing all the other operational stuff with them got to play i got back from seal team seven three weeks later i'm in afghanistan with one two alpha chief chief moats is one of those odd breeds that you find that doesn't uh he doesn't rest on his laurels he doesn't find himself if i go to bas to find him i might find him there giving guidance to the young corpsman but i can often time find him out there doing something for this company he has a large wealth of experience he's strong he's bold he's aggressive he's not afraid to you know address higher he's not afraid to address young marines or sailors words can't express chief motes to me sometimes he's out of control he's funny he's yeah you never know what's going to come out of his mouth when he speaks i would give him that i think as far as authority goes and [Music] i i don't have a problem with authority as as long as they listen to me and they agree with me we're fine my father was uh was a corpsman with one nine uh first marine yeah one nine first battalion marines uh when he he went to vietnam he he turned around and volunteered twice so he did two tours with vietnam talking to my mother i she said that she sees a lot of sees a lot of him and me before he left unfortunately 1-9 had a high mortality rate a lot of deaths he did not come back the same man that he left i found him after yf1 and uh got to know him a little better about kicking my ass after he found out i joined the navy to become a corpsman uh got to find out a little more about his history what happened there i think there's some part of me that does worry that i'll end up being like my father i there's um there is there's some part of me that does worry that um i get back and of course the boys invite me over to the bar and you know i catch myself about three four drinks and that's enough when i gotta go home it does worry me uh to a point but i know i yeah he is my father but we're not the same person yes i have been married um fortunately six deployments and marriage usually don't go hand in hand she was a navy nurse yes it hurt it stung a lot but um i i don't i don't feel that it was fair for her either looking back on it it wasn't fair for her um i'm not that that chief that likes sitting back in an ac eating cheesecake if if there's somebody else out there that wants me to go i'm gonna go in a heartbeat no there's no woman in my life i haven't been to the right strip bar the worst thing that's happened to me in the navy uh was my first casualty um before i left with second tsb i i got really close with my marines really close with my marines i i knew all their names [ __ ] i could probably tell you half their zodiac signs and i remember uh one of them came coming up to me for their smallpox vaccination just before we deployed introduced me to his wife who was two months pregnant at the time and uh invited me over for dinner and uh great kid went to iraq just about two days before we crossed the berm in iraq he was him and three other marines were taking shade by uh an iraqi tanker and the sand shifted it came down on those boys got out there and saw that one was pinned under the fork of the 25 ton tanker i came around and i saw one boy that was half underneath it he was trapped underneath the sway bar still alive um was taking care of him he didn't want me taking care of him he wanted me to take care of the boy at the fork who i knew was dead i just looked over and it was that boy the one i gave the smallpox to i i still open crystal clear that boy looking at me haunted my man haunted me for quite a long time that was my first casualty with the marines four days after maureen shelled ken jack olia sergeant javon roberson led a patrol back into the village in the fields outside the village the wheat was ripening nicely don't go too far it wasn't the only crop doing nicely it was to be one of the few light moments of the day oh yeah the village could not have seemed more normal or peaceful but the people who live there were seething they said the area around this pond is where the marine artillery landed this man muhammad wanted to know where his six-year-old daughter was she'd been wounded in the shelling the marines had treated her and put her on a helicopter he hadn't seen her since sergeant roberson told him she was at a hospital in kandahar their own base and ken are in good care when they get when they get when they're done they'll send them back to themselves he's saying that you don't give information about my kids i just told them they're they're came to her he goes down to nazareth talk to the district governor they'll put him on the plane on the hilo and he'll go get his kids at like at a kandahar all right hopefully this man too had been wounded in the shelling he got injured during the mortar blast i don't know if it was shrapnel or if it was a bullet one and they stitched him up and apparently he didn't want full treatment because he didn't want to lose his leg and this stitch is ripped open and now it's like terribly infected whereas when i opened the dressing i could smell the dead flesh nothing to come to california with motorcycle i cannot come and there was no there's no way he can get it right there now he's probably gonna lose his leg regardless of what we can do for him while the patrol continued sergeant roberson held an impromptu shura in the middle of the road maureen said two of the dead men had been taliban probably members of the mortar team [Music] [Music] did you believe those people when they said the two dead men were local and not taliban well actually about myself is my personal idea i don't believe it because actually the taliban are from the locals and the old old guys cannot do anything but young guys are mostly joining to tell about it they are actually told in a large garden area on the outskirts of kenjak olia this farmer knew where the taliban had set up their mortar but while he would point the way he was too frightened of reprisals to lead marines to the site it looks like it looks like a spot pressed down right here too it's a good opening too yep right in it and just to remind the marines that they were in kenjak olia you can see smoke from the explosion in the distance bigger than the ones we saw the other day but we just get hit by 82's that sounded like an ied sofalo sofa to bravo do you have any uh essay on what just happened with that explosion what the marines later figured out a villager on a motorcycle had run over an ied all right right now uh second platoon four squads getting ready to push up north of kentucky sofla we got some intel late last night that uh one of the ied facilitators one of the main persons responsible for a lot of the ieds in this area is up there so we're going to go up there according to area off and hopefully snag this guy and bring him back huh yep we're [ __ ] leaving hopefully we don't [ __ ] this up kenjak sofla was a village adjacent to a marine outpost and one of the safest villages for marines to patrol so it was all the more remarkable that it harbored someone helping make ieds hey wayne i want you in front just tell me which one it is i want you in front let's go hey tell him i need one more to come with me the marines spread out in practiced form and surrounded the compound where they believed the suspect lived be nice if we catch this guy they had little more than a name muhammad israel and a description they had no photo no fingerprints they worried they wouldn't be able to identify the suspect this man assured marines there were no other men in the compound just women while his marines were rounding up the afghan men staff sergeant kesterson found three bags of suspicious fertilizer in a garage you know and i i don't know if this is uh ammonium nitrate or not or the [ __ ] that they're allowed to use 40 nitrogen oh and it looks the same too got this down here i'm not for sure if it's the stuff that they're legally allowed to use or now or not uh i think the other stuff's supposed to come in purple we got a water we can test it you can yeah field test like we also found four bags of ammonium nitrate which is illegal we gathered a field test and we just dump it and pour water on it so they can't use it in the future ammonium nitrate is one of the leading ingredients in ieds and it's definitely illegal in this country and all the farmers here know it this was the man who came closest to fitting the description of mohammed israel staff sergeant kesterson was prepared for a long interrogation he worried he wouldn't be able to establish that the man was their wanted suspect i don't know this guy don't look just don't look like him what's your name my name is mohammed israel yeah ahmad israel is right yeah israel [Applause] no this is our guy he said his name was muhammad israel right off the bat first question what's your name muhammad israeli well hell that was easy right we used the x-spray sprayed him with it checking for uh explosives and uh ammonium nitrate he popped positive for it i'm tired tell him to stand up don't face me tell him to stand up and face me hey i gotta get out of the sunlight we use the uh batson height system which texts the retina and the fingerprint you got a match his fingers and iris are a 50 match to somebody else and he'd already popped on that somewhere prior uh somewhere down the road that's him you don't think that's him that's him shave the beard and get rid of the [ __ ] hair it came up as an alias not as the same name so he's definitely guilty of something you can't lie from the bats and hides that's for sure they try to tell secrets we'll be bringing one detainee back uh and i'll do that detainee package whenever i get back there how copy but catching him and keeping him are sometimes different things that x-ray kit that proved the suspect had handled explosives a marine left it behind in the compound so marines told the suspect that without that evidence they couldn't hold him he was free to go wounded civilians weren't the only medical concerns the marines faced foreign remaining archangel all right games with live mangrove roger oscar mike to the clinic they also worked with the clinic run by the afghan government so this is the clinic but the civilian clinic had a lot of problems this is their pharmacy slash lab i mean they're literally doing the best what they can with what they have what they need is electricity they need a bigger lab they need an x-ray they really don't ask for much it's like i want to give them supplies medications you need a lot more medications yeah they need immunizations but they don't have a reefer to cool them with they have no electricity this is nal's dad's only trauma room this is it they've been at war for 23 years this area especially has been hit with iuds like going out of style this is their trauma room your supplies are limited half their supplies are expired no electricity no ac tuberculosis is huge in this area um leishmaniasis is huge they don't have any way of preventing that these a lot of people are dying here are dying from stuff that are preventable i'm not trying to sound like [ __ ] bono or anything but i mean it is what it is females the culture issue here they're not going to talk to a male unless you're part of their family or you're part of the husband's family they won't even acknowledge you they won't come to see me at all they'll see the midwife and they may see the doctor it's 50 50 chance females is really hard unless it's trauma trauma they'll come to see anybody pregnancy issues here also 70 of them is documented 70 of them they they die in child birth or the child dies we're relying a lot on the fed team the female engagement team but now the female engagement team doesn't have a female interpreter so trying to get a female to talk to a male interpreter is slim to none it's not going to happen so there's challenges every which way in dealing with females in this country it's just a pain in the ass we're trying to get him out of that waiting room that's back there and make carbon monoxide in a dirt area so my guys and i turn around this used to be a storage room just garbage in here so we cleared it all out put up the walls put up the trauma bed made a little cleaner area for the females here hopefully i'll start using this for a female treating area and waiting area give them some privacy away from the men [Applause] boneyard here the vehicles uh that have been hit throughout the deployment this vehicle was hit in the beginning of our deployment damage to the front end took both wheels off medium-sized ied no casualties to the crew or the driver or the vc you got a seven ton here one of the reliable vehicles another mrap damage to the uh the engine block caused by a fire another uh hem rap damage to the left side no injuries to the crew is there as well got another uh four-bar this vehicle was hit uh about the second or third week into the deployment rear damage right real wheel uh medium size ied we hit this ied about a week and a half ago damage to the left driver's side front didn't do anything but take the wheel off no casualties no injuries to the crew this is uh mrap six spot it's a pretty reliable vehicle this vehicle was hit again i think the first or second week of our deployment passenger front will taken off no casualties to the crew or the driver or anybody inside this is uh matv one of the new vehicles the marine corps has got uh outstanding vehicle as you can see no nothing more than uh taking off the rear uh driver's side of the vehicle did some damage to the cargo to cargo space but as you can see the cab's still intact no injuries from this vehicle as well it is a it is a pretty large predicament um what we usually do is we pull from other other platoons in order to meet the mission uh work hard as you can see the mechanic here he works his tail in off in order to get these trucks back up and run and get him on the road as fast as possible so there's not as much downtime or turnaround for that vehicle to get back on the road but again it does impact the mission and then you know marines will over you know adapt and overcome and what we'll do is either we'll we'll either ball trucks from another platoon or we'll walk and if we have to walk then we'll just hoof it and and uh hit the area in the villages in order to patrol on foot the first time i got blown up it was april 14th we were doing a push down through a place called salon bazaar all hell was breaking loose we had idf we're receiving small and heavy arms fire my armored vehicle started pushing forward assaulting the enemy an matv went flying by alone and unafraid and it got about halfway up the road and it either hit an ied or it got hit itself by an rpg we hit an ied i woke up in the back seat in the fetal position i had felt something running down my face i wiped my face and looked at my hand it was covered with blood and i went back out again i went running up there see if there's any casualties and of course i open up the back door and there's that 500 pound redneck about ready to fall out of the out of the matv i shut the door before he fell on me and then there'd be two casualties the next thing i can remember is my door opened up and there was two corpsmen there to get me out it was a chief motes and doc gotcher and uh they got me out of the truck they asked me if i could walk and somehow i said uh it can't be no worse than being drunk if i can walk drunk i can walk like this he couldn't recount where he was or anything else like that so that's that's a grade three concussion got to the ambulance climbed up in the back of it laid down on the stretcher took my kevlar off and uh i went back out again he was in and out of consciousness he was going into shock we put him on o2 iv about ready to give him morphine another idf went off he panicked freaking out it's something to try to keep a 500 pound redneck under control so we hit him with the morphine um had pretty quick reaction to that him being the redneck he is and a marine he produced a camera wanted me to take a picture of him on o2 and everything else like that i'm trying to entertain him so i take a picture of him uh giving back his camera and he wants me to pose for a picture of me so i entertain him the best i can i was in and out of shock and i wouldn't shut up about a picture i had of my niece and nephew the only picture i had of any of my family back home and he kept asking for the picture of his niece and nephew which is in this matv at the time and he repetitively kept asking for this picture i got it i'll take care of it i'll get that picture for you chief kept on trying to calm me down and everything and finally he i grabbed my anchor off my collar and grabbed his hand smashed in his hand had a little blood got his attention and i told him this is the deal that if i brought his anchor back to him he would find that picture and make sure that i got it i went back to the vehicle after all the contact was done vehicle was destroyed had a working party out there it took us an hour to find the stand pitcher i keep the picture with me all the time right here she's like 110 over 90. it's real faint when the district governor had chest pains he didn't go to the afghan clinic he came to the marine battalion aids station the bas where's the problem [Music] if he does have the pain going on keeps going on pain down the side of his neck down his arm he needs to get in here i need to see him we'll hook him up this makeshift clinic with blankets hung to provide privacy and treatment areas drew a steady stream of afghans with a variety of problems that couldn't be treated at the local clinic while it could be a pretty grim place it could also at times seem like an episode of mash the humor was rough even when the patient was an infant with a cold what she's just got a fever and what else what else is going on with her other than the fever yes all you're telling me is that she has a fever how old is she how her age is so he doesn't need viagra he's good on viagra she's crying she does have a little congestion going on and then it explains the fever this will drop the fever and this is also good for the congestion sometimes for 15 days i'm feeling really bad pain in my stomach area yeah it's hurting me a lot and also sometimes my blood pressure is going very down of course can i get in my haircut too has he gone to the clinic to see this for the hairpin they are charging us a lot of money the clinic's charging you money yeah because they're selling the medication for them uh he said i don't have that much money to go i'm not supposed to charge this is for him he takes two of those now you're all excited you know what this is wait till we finish that tuesday yeah excited it's not viagra this is for your diarrhea he's going to take two now and then one later on how many how many kids does he have that's what's wrong with your damn heart okay stop having kids stop tell them to stop having kids it's not medically sane it's not a nine it's actually a total 12 but three of them passed away he has nine right now he needs to stop that [ __ ] it's not medically it's not medically sound he said i'm old now i cannot beat him that's a year old tell him to start using his hand that's why he needs a lotion uh i'm trying to get another wife also too you hi yeah look at that one none of the medical staff had ever seen a tumor like this and over eight years it's gotten this big what they're gonna have to do is you're gonna have to cut this out right to the scapula and that that requires like major major surgery because the growth could have already started to hit the nerve endings no i'm sure i think it's huge it's almost night unfortunately there's it's not life-threatening so i can't medivac them out [Music] but there were times when even the chief couldn't find any humor this infant boy was 11 months old near death because his parents hadn't been able to get him to eat i can't make out these guys the story i know that that child's malnourished severely dehydrated and it's probably got an underlying infection i i don't know i know i want to put my fist through his skull he said he took him to a clinic once i'm like once in 11 months that was my child i i'd be standing outside that [ __ ] hospital with my child i'd be going ape [ __ ] he's got a medevac we're not equipped for that i can't even get in heavy excess on them this is out of my realm i'm just dealing with with wounds trauma adults not pediatrics one yep i don't know what else to do the best the chief and his team could do was to get the baby flown to a military hospital warmer maine warhammer maine is valkyrie on this tour in afghanistan i i recovered like 25 vehicles i got about 25. you know happens all the time every normal thing recover blowing up vic [ __ ] everyday thing i've done i've been blowing up one time don't say i think the lord you know i've been blown up once in process of recovering another vehicle all right i was like where am i it was nothing but dust this desk all in there i got after i woke up i think i would pass out about two seconds two or three seconds just like wow i didn't know what happened i didn't know what to think it's a hard question what did i think i don't know when i realized what happened i don't know i was scared of [ __ ] i thought i supposedly been dead khan muhammad the father of one girl wounded in ken jack olia was about to find out that her face was badly scarred and she'd lost her left arm all right so i just wanted to know if this is his daughter tell them kandahar they took a picture of the daughter [Music] tell [Music] [Music] i don't know if i can print that picture for him yeah if you would print be really happy even he would take it to home and show it to her mom and other family members that's awesome it's awesome for his wife [Music] we asked the father if he was happy that the marines had taken care of his daughter roja what is eighteen days after marines shelled ken jack olia they paid another visit one of the reasons was to check on six-year-old roja the girl who lost her arm she's all good but uh she lose her voice she lost her voice yeah can we uh oh can we can we see her can we check on it i got a doctor got my doctor here you can check it out [Music] her voice loss would prove to be temporary the result of a tube down her throat in the hospital we lost a truck to an ied strike today and a mine roller to an ied strike today uh fortunately no one was injured in both those strikes but what it's going to do is going to set our ability back a couple of days in order to push the enemy back because we've got some long distance patrols scheduled in the near future due to the fact of losing that truck and that mine roller is going to cause us to push those patrols to the right the marines seldom patrolled at night ieds were hard enough to spot in daylight this patrol on the first night of ramadan was in one of the safest villages in the marine area of operations we are in the wadi just outside of uh the village of shangrak where sure this sucks we don't have a [ __ ] interpreter abdul hayek yes he's got he's got a light which is makes them kind of legit they're gonna turn it off when they get to the ied site let's go yeah i'm gonna go run their names push in they're just gonna push west we'll just kind of cruise around through the alleyways for about 45 minutes see if we can't bump into a few people hey delta rashad oh swing it right all right i'm sorry double back hang a left real quick let's put his hands up he's probably just taking a dump have a good night sorry to bother you huh hey go ahead and let him push make sure he goes into this compound uh if you ask me i feel kind of like a failure because farming season is long gone there's no [ __ ] reason guys should be walking around with a shovel but there ain't a goddamn thing i can [ __ ] do about it so as far as i could tell at least three inds were probably placed tonight uh i don't know kind of upset about it but what are you gonna do the doctors here decided not to use the women's women's clinic uh the midwife refuses to use the women's clinic we spent close to three weeks building it we took uh this old dump it used to be used for storage nothing but old storage [ __ ] because the midwife refuses to use it uh the doctors in there refuse to use it because it's set up for a woman's clinic it's just sitting here collecting dust there's so much corruption in this area um the midwife is married to one of the local nurses here he's double dipping with the d minors so you have the midwife that makes more money than the doctor does here the legitimate doctor the nurse that's married to the midwife that's double dipping and then coming to me asking me for meds on the side so he can sell him on the sly so there's corruption everywhere in this area that's that's the core of the problem you get rid of the crush and then you can move forward while the armored vehicles protected marines and increased their mobility their vulnerability to ieds ultimately reduced the range marines could cover as the end of their seven-month tour approached the marines weren't patrolling as often or as long they hadn't truly secured kenjakolia to the north and kergue to the south was only slightly better most frustrating to the marines they never had enough vehicles or manpower to clear out a known taliban stronghold barr now's add a mere eight miles from their headquarters at nausead when i started i had about 50 vehicles i think total vehicles lost uh due to ied strikes during this deployment it's right up just shy of 30 vehicles well the vehicles always allow you to reach out a little bit further they bring a heavier load to the fight with heavy weapons ammo resupply so it has set us back but it hasn't limited our ability to affect the enemy if there was one place i could have gone that i i didn't make it to during this deployment it'd probably be north bar now is that they're the enemy is there we know they're there it's a hub it's a sanctuary for the enemy it's a shadow government power seats for them and by occupying owning that piece of ground you would ultimately be able to essentially almost cut the head off the snake if you will taliban succeeded in in reducing the number of our vehicles they're smart that's the biggest mistake coming in here is thinking that taliban are a bunch of monkeys they're uh third world country we have one mind roller one yeah we came out here with a lot of my rollers and without mine rollers the marines didn't go anywhere now seven months ago uh january like you said the first family to move back was january you couldn't walk through here without engagement through the bazaar uh there was about no [ __ ] sir about a 300 meter ring outside the cop that that's all you had wow look at that's some good looking eggplant over there actually captain wilkinson was right one area of real progress was now zad's bazaar in june it had been a forlorn place maybe a dozen shops no traffic but as the marines prepared to head home the bazaar had been reborn shops that had been abandoned were open more than 100 of them in june the arrival of the first commercial truck in years had been big news jingle trucks they're called they bring the goods that supply the shops by summer's end the shops were well stocked the bazaar was reborn because of improved security and cash incentives americans paid to shop owners to return reopening the shops in the bazaar was important because taxes on those shops is a major source of revenue for the district government the division headquarters brass was impressed yeah what's happening here is definitely a success i think it's definitely one of the models you can't always replicate what happens here now is that everywhere else because every valley is different every community is different but the fact that you have people that are that are out here together the local economy is thriving people are not afraid to come out and being seen in the open being seen in the open with coalition forces uh being seen cooperating with coalition forces even the fact that they have people that are working a usaid project that aren't intimidated by the taliban to go away that's a sign of success if life in nasa had improved for afghans so too had life for marines as their seven month tour neared its end living conditions for marines had become by marine standards luxurious no more hand laundry in an empty ammo can now there was a laundry service no more water bottle showers many days they could take a real shower with hot water this is too [ __ ] hot i feel like a million dollars right now to be honest with you that feels good it's the best feeling of the day after you get a shower you only get one take one every you know a few days it feels pretty good how often when was your last well my last one was actually about a week ago but i've been busy for fun marines did what marines have always done [Music] [Applause] and now they were air-conditioned tents if you weren't on duty that's where you hung out because there was no place else to hang out that wasn't 110 degrees tent conversations frequently involved frivolous stuff the thing is it's more alcoholic than any other beer natty that'd get you [ __ ] up way quicker but there was a fair amount of talk about the war and those talks showed a broader view of the war than grunts are usually suspected of harboring it was in those bull sessions in the air-conditioned tents that the frustrations of the tour spilled out we have a box we have to stay in it's only this big so i don't know about it i don't know about that you know the government i still have my free opinion all right and i'm i'm proud to express my own opinion of the situation and we all see it you can't you can't say you don't right yeah the unless we're going to keep a [ __ ] force right here but on top we'll go back on top of that the force would have to be everywhere because obviously we're not par now's that we're not in king jack oh yeah and it sucks it's only where we're at it gets any better and then you leave have the best people to you know we can't just make it you know afghanistan over time it can change do you think we can change do you think we can rid the taliban look at the way that iraq is there's less than a thousand marines in iraq you know it's stable now it may not stay that way but you gotta think we did lose a lot of guys but what have we accomplished we lost like what is i mean our company's not gonna this night you're not gonna see results off of just one deployment it's a whole group yeah we'll all build it over one eight who will continue to build even after public relations we still took idf from that city it's pro taliban and i don't think it'll change it don't matter i mean you do that push through marjah we do the push through now is that if you do all that [ __ ] you leave it's gonna go right back the way it was i mean it's not like we we've lost all these guys but we have not changed a damn thing for the friends that we've had injured here right yeah you know now it's like rivers got killed right for what you know really i want to look back 20 years from now and not have to see my my children is going to be crazy enough to join the marine corps probably back over here did we fight a successful counter-surgery i think we did we took an extremely kinetic place and made it pretty docile we have more people coming to us within the last two months now instead of us finding the ids we have local nationals pointing out ieds to us we have local nationals starting to secure their own villages that's starting to turn away from the taliban and it's not that this wasn't a taliban focus because the entire district shadow the shadow government is in is just pretty close to us it's that we are now receiving you know some pretty significant reliable source reporting that the taliban is moving out of this area because they no longer have anything to offer the local populace could i have used an entire a whole other company here of course i could the and counter insurgency you know comes down to almost pure numbers the more people that you have the more ground that you can secure the more security you can have to the people it's a sheer numbers game we've moved a lot throughout the battlefield we've gained some ground north we've gained some ground south we've set the stage for another unit to come in to rip with us and and hopefully they'll be able to continue that progress that we've established i'm fortunate enough as a staff nco in the marine corps to be a commander in a combat environment the big picture i can't really focus on that it's really not you know it's not up to me but you know if you want my opinion i believe sooner or later it'll catch on you just got to conduct it in the right manner do what's right establish that presence show the locals teach the locals influence the locals influence the government you know show that government have to establish their presence and hopefully the people will catch on you know it takes a long time no doubt it's going to take some time i want to say we got a lot accomplished i want to say that my heart i want to say that we got a lot accomplished but in truth i don't think we accomplished much it's got to start with the people the people have got to want to change if they don't want to change and they're happy and content with where they are then they'll put on a face that they're changing and the minute we leave they're going to go back to where it was and that's what's going to happen here on the medical aspect we succeeded in saving lives will that make a bit of difference that's the only thing that keeps me going is maybe that kid will turn around and remember that american that that did something to help him or her later down in life do i think they will i don't think so we're not going to change this country this country's done this too many times in the past it's in the history books we lost thanks to our extraordinary men and women in uniform our civilian personnel and our many coalition partners we are meeting our goals as a result starting next month we will be able to remove 10 000 of our troops from afghanistan by the end of this year and we will bring home a total of 33 000 troops by next summer fully recovering the surge i announced at west point may god bless our troops and may god bless the united states of america [Applause] heroes [Applause] [Music] stand-by [Applause] ten months after keith kesterson came home he and his wife marcia had a baby girl his next assignment to be a marine recruiter [Applause] tj glover who broke up with his girl just before his deployment married her nine months after he returned a week after he got out of the marines they're expecting a baby [Music] alex morgan is still in the air force he did another tour in afghanistan but he's been blown up enough he complains of headaches and says his short-term memory has gone to hell i like the hydraulics though russell scales and tyler dido the two guys who were blown up in their seven ton truck neither returned to duty both suffered severe traumatic brain injuries and both have been rated nearly totally disabled while scales and dido never returned to duty justin shaw finished his tour but he came home suffering severe headaches memory loss ptsd and anger issues he's being discharged with a near total disability rating the chief is based in gulfport mississippi teaching young corpsman the facts of life get it up there cole you're dead he did a four-month combat tour during the libyan uprising and now awaits orders for his next deployment it will be his eighth combat tour in 13 years i want become you

Channel: Robert Hodierne

Views: 975,978

Rating: 4.8432655 out of 5

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Id: ZvZj3u1Eenw

Length: 116min 48sec (7008 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 25 2020