War Veteran interview-Nick (Part 1)

these [ __ ] aren't taking me out who the [ __ ] are they to take me out they come over they fly our [ __ ] planes into our buildings and kill thousands of people and i'm coming over there and they're they're about to kill me [ __ ] that all right nick nick where'd you grow up where are you from originally uh right outside boston mass i moved all over as a kid what kind of family you had i had a very good family i i'd like to say i'm blessed i i don't know how else to put it yet mom and dad my father uh was a very hard worker he uh instituted that into us at a very young age he was in construction he built houses and he i have two younger brothers as well and uh he brought us to every house he built and uh from the ground up he taught us from the site work to the frame to the finish work and he really instituted the importance in hard work and to this day i thank him for that what kind of kid were you in high school uh i'd like to say i was a jock um it's kind of weird actually because being i was a marine every single sport i played i was defense um i kind of fit right into that groove as us defenders like to call it a seat at the table middle linebacker nose tackle uh for football at least and then uh lacrosse i was defense as well um and uh i dabbled in a little bit of baseball but uh i was a catcher but uh that didn't really get past high school um yeah i had a i had a good childhood that's great and then military how did that come about so i don't want to say the same thing everyone else does but 9 11 hit us no pun intended but i remember i was in sixth grade and no one knew the [ __ ] what was going on um we heard probably five six different stories about what what happened and uh it really just resonated that someone hit us on our own turf and uh it was it was time someone did something about it and and as i said i was in sixth grade that that stuck with me and i remember telling it to my father and he was just not about it um he knew we were in a time of war and he worked very hard to try to get us into college you know and uh we you know we came from nothing and he really came from nothing as well and he just worked his balls off to to try to get us to go to college so we could be successful and we could we could ultimately have a good life that's at the end of the day that's what he wanted he wanted us to be happy and uh i think he just had three boys so we could take care of him at the end of the day he always jokes that uh we'll be changing his depends when he gets older but um yeah so i i think it was 1516. i got into a little bit of trouble i don't remember exactly what it was but i was always kind of a fighter and um i joined a program called the young marines and it was kind of like an rotc program a few my buddies joined as well and uh that really sealed the deal for me it was going to be the marines the tip of the spear the guys on the front lines that's that's that's what i wanted to do and at the age of 17 i by myself no one else i somehow connected with a recruiter told them what i wanted to do and uh i pretty much got to the point where i was about to leave and my father ganked it and he said if you're gonna do it it's going to be 18. you know and uh from 17 to 18 he tried his absolute hardest to convince me not to do it i mean i think ultimately he was scared and didn't want to lose his son he didn't want to lose his son period my father's not someone that gets scared and i'm sure everyone has that feeling about their father um but it was different with him um that's the first time i saw my dad show any kind of emotion really and it it definitely affected me but there was something inside of me that always just told me that the marines was it for me and uh 18 i signed the papers and i went to maps got cleared on the medical side and right after i graduated high school i was i was gone do you think there's something in your makeup your personality that just you're meant to be a marine uh not everybody can enlist and that's true but i don't know i don't want to i don't know how to answer that but i know that it was for me there you go and uh i completely embodied it you know i said i was in sports i would i was a knock around guy you know i was never really good at the skill side of sports but i could pop i could lay a hit and you didn't want to come to my side of the field period but that kind of stuck with me and not to toot my own horn or anything but i did good and yeah i went to boot camp and definitely a culture shock um i did something called the buddy program you may have heard of it but i i don't really have a good story about why i joined or anything i was literally at a house party and uh honestly it was kind of it was like i think it was two weeks out from uh going to actual boot camp and uh my best friend just randomly showed up at this house party and um he uh sat down next to me and he's like he's like nikki uh what's your plans for uh you know after high school cause um i don't think college is gonna work out for me and uh i told him i was like hey mike you know i'm this is what i'm doing and he's like really uh well you know what who's car we gonna take and uh yeah we did it together and um [Music] i gotta say i was absolutely relieved that i had something something to go with especially him i was nervous as hell but yeah mike went with me and to this day i appreciate that he's always uh been the type of guy to to the stays always have my back and i gotta tip my hat to that kid um mike i appreciate you um i was actually his best man at his wedding um but that's getting off track but um yeah so we went to boot camp and uh as i said it was a culture shock but um [Music] in boot camp everyone has a a job and me and mike uh were the window cleaners and uh when you're at window cleaner i was with uh first battalion alpha company and we overlooked the parade deck and uh the prairie deck is where everyone graduates so every morning we are washing windows seeing everyone graduate and we're in our first couple weeks of boot camp getting absolutely slayed and mikey looks at me and he's like hey you know nick maybe we uh shot the gun a little too early i don't know if uh this was the greatest decision but uh i always calmed down and uh we found a way to make it work but um [Music] something that sticks in my head about boot camp uh probably everyone says in boot camp that you know the drill instructors that that taught them or trained them were cream of the crop the toughest guys around but i wish i could show you the absolute demons that trained us in boot camp because they were guys that had been the first ones in to uh fallujah in iraq and baghdad as well and those guys were absolute different breed of marine at that time [Music] i remember they always told us the story that uh before they went into the the cities the the air force dropped flyers that basically said and it was either pashtun or dari which is the two different dialects of what they speak over there uh anything moving is dead um if you don't get out by this date and uh yeah they call them store stormtroopers anything that move was shot killed bagged and tagged and those were the guys training us there was uh one who was a kill hat there's a kill hats are just the guys that absolutely break you down to nothing and build you up into the man they want you to be and uh i remember hating this guy his name was staff sergeant chambers but he was an absolute animal stud of a marine and uh we this kind of shows you i mean i guess nowadays they would consider this hazing but we didn't do it again whatever it was that uh he was hitting us with but uh we had mail call and anytime mail comes around whether you're in boot camp you're deployed you're in country it's like it's a big deal and uh we had a keg party before we went to boot camp and this was back when instagram wasn't around uh iphones weren't around and uh we just had the polaroid pictures and there were some uh suspect pictures to say the least of us you know doing keg stands just having a good time before we left for boot camp in boot camp you're only allowed to look at mail at certain times and pictures are highly discouraged so mike got his mail and he saw the pictures and he hits me he's like nikki he's like let's go take a look at these and at the time the only time you got a little bit of privacy privacy was uh to go hit the head and the bathrooms and boot camp were open stalls so you literally just had to sit on a toilet take your [ __ ] off and go to the bathroom so me and mike sat next to each other and we're going through the pictures unfortunately uh staff sergeant chambers had uh noticed both of us going to the bathroom together which is a no-no and he followed us in and he saw that we were looking at pictures which was not allowed and we were going to the bathroom sitting down going to the bathroom taking a number two and um he comes in he starts ripping us a new one and he says uh stand up position of attention now and we get nothing on so we stand up [ __ ] twigs and berries out at the position of attention and uh what are you guys doing bob he takes his finger goes in the toilet and takes a scoop of whatever was in the toilet and he puts it on our foreheads and he says uh to mike he's like what's that make you private or abagast and he was kind of confused he was like what what's that naked and uh i piped up i was like [ __ ] sir did i ask you back and forth back and forth regardless we had to go throughout the rest of the day with that on our foreheads and from then on we were private [ __ ] and uh yeah that was uh that was boot camp and now that's probably frowned upon but uh they brought us down down low and made us into absolute killing machines and that's kind of harsh saying that but i gotta say i thank that man today uh he got me ready for the real world maybe not in that instance with that but he got me ready and i'm happy that i had him as a drill instructor um and if he's out there right now i just want to say thank you staff sergeant chambers gunny chambers whatever you are you're an absolute stud thank you you absolutely got me ready for afghanistan so the marine corps is a blur after boot camp everyone goes to their jobs does their training and get stuck with the unit they're gonna go and keep in mind at this time this is when iraq and afghanistan was popping off and that ultimately was the reason my father didn't want me to go and he was dead on with that to this i hate it but that man is always right to this day everything he tells me i don't listen of course but he is always right and i'll let you know but i kind of stopped i got to start listening to him because everything he has told me he has been dead on regardless uh i got attached to an infantry platoon pretty quickly i was a field mp that was my job and uh i got attached to second battalion third marines out of k bay in hawaii and uh at the time i was in japan with third marines and uh i had a salty uh i believe he was a corporal or a sergeant at the time uh sergeant leclair at the time chose i think 10 marines to go with him with a on a special little at the time he called it a special mission i don't know how special it was but he said that we were going to be seeing combat right away and uh of course my hand shot straight up and uh they always tell you in in the marines never never volunteer for anything but i gotta say i'm i'm thankful that i volunteered for this and uh to a certain degree because yeah don't get me wrong i'm i'm a little i'm a little goofy now a little [ __ ] up but i made some of the best relationships of my life um so yeah as i said it's a blur man we uh from japan we shot over to hawaii and we got attached with another probably another 10 guys that were motor t infantry guys and uh of course we had com and a couple docks but we were part of a pmt team which is a police mentoring team and uh our mission was to go to a very dangerous area at the time helen in helmand province which at that time was the most dangerous place in the world um and we were tasked with training and going on missions with afghans uh afghan national army which is a a and afghan highway patrol which is their form of police right away in hawaii when we got attached to these guys they let us know that you know this was this was for real this was serious and uh this wasn't just another you know training evolution or or just talk or they weren't gassing us up uh we were gonna see combat and they needed us to be ready period um so right away i was i was always in shape and i was always an aggressive individual so they they put me on the 50 cal uh we did a few ranges and i was always i did very well with the thing and keep in mind the 50 cal is not easy to fire or manipulate or operate period but uh i did very well with it um every range that i was on uh i hit everything i was shooting at oh keep in mind the rounds like [ __ ] this big so but uh that that meant something to me because keep in mind i was a field mp i i was not a machine gunner but they made me one quick and uh ever since that moment of going through those ranges i was vic one's machine gunner which we were mostly running mounted convoys over there um usually four or five trucks and each truck has a machine gun but usually the first truck is always you know the scout vehicle or the first one in like the first one that's receiving contact or getting shot at is the first truck um and yeah that i was the machine gunner for it so uh we shot over to afghanistan and uh instantly uh well there's always a uh a party of like five guys that go there before the team goes there i think it's like pre-deployment or i don't know the exact term for it but uh the moment they got there in the area that we were actually going to be operating in the ao or area of operation they got hit by a suicide bomber this is like within the first week or two and uh we knew it was gonna be real so the rest of the guys get over there and uh usually when you deploy you stay on a base and you run a few operations uh you leave the wire every once in a while we lived off of the base um which was scary in its own right because we were living with the afghans and it was a very unsettling feeling because you really gotta sleep with one eye open with these guys um yes some of them were good to go but the other half of them were somehow related to the taliban um and when you're living with these people that is not something you want to deal with um and there was really nothing we could do about it regardless there was always this weird feeling over there that we were being watched i i don't know how to explain it but the hairs on the back of your neck are always standing up over there i don't care who you are it's just this feeling that someone is watching you and it's very unsettling and uh that's that's how we felt all the time over there um regardless so we had set up this big patrol base and it was actually in the middle of two main roads that over there there's not many roads but these were the two paved roads through afghanistan and uh basically there were main supply routes msrs they basically any convoy that went from base to base carrying goods mail oil weapons would travel on these roads and the taliban was absolutely wreaking havoc with something called ieds uh when i was over there there were three types of ieds maybe four uh there were radio controlled ieds there was pressure plates and there was suicide bombers and then towards the end of my employment deployment uh they came up with something called hme that's what we were calling at the time basically it's a pressure plate ied that they stuff with ball bearings screws rounds anything metal and these things get so hot in the ied when they shoot out they literally go through up armor any kind of armor they [ __ ] buzz right through it and they kill who's ever in the vehicle i gotta say and i i don't want to say that i respected uh the taliban or the enemy over there but these boys could fight uh they adapted to our sops or ttps sops standing operating procedures uh ttps or training techniques and something else i don't know i've been out of the game for a little while but we had to adjust our tactics our fighting style constantly for these guys because these guys would pick up on [ __ ] everything and i don't know if that had to do with taliban being in our camp or just these guys i mean keep in mind these guys fought the russians we start run something that shocked me right away and keep mine we're in a dangerous [ __ ] area we started going on the offense which is i mean to say the least dangerous we start doing mounted convoys up and down these roads and we start being proactive with these guys i mean we're fighting every other day taking contact small arms fire mortars sniper fire um but we're finding these ieds and ieds was their that was their bread and butter that's how they were that's how they were being aggressive over there and that's how they were actually putting a dent in us and i learned quick about where they put these things how they installed them how they operated what to look for and keep in mind [ __ ] afghanistan is littered with trash littered with uh vehicles that have been blown up uh old missiles uh mortar shells uh scud missiles uh it's it's a it's a boneyard so looking for these [ __ ] ieds is not something that's simple and the marine corps tried training us for it but literally is absolutely next to impossible to find these things um keep in mind we're in a mountain convoy going 40 miles an hour down the road and our first line of defense is a mine roller in front of our vehicle and then me up in the gun i have to visually look on the side of the road and keep in mind i'm in vic one so i'm the first one that's calling out these things that we need to look for to be proactive to try to stop these ieds absolutely blowing us to hell um also uh the the leader for us was uh his name was captain donner stag and he was always in my vehicle uh in the shotgun position because he would always be on the comms and reading the blue force tracker and honestly he was the guy finding these [ __ ] ids before i was keep in mind he's in the vehicle i'm up in the gun he's making me look like an absolute chump stopping the vehicle getting us out we're doing five zero fives and 25s which is basically over there the first line of defensive against ieds is zero fives and twenty fives it's uh when you stop and get out of the vehicle open the door you look down you do a canvas or around the vehicle that's zero you go five meters out you go around you're looking for ids and then you go 25 meters out that's how we basically see if there's anything around the vehicle that we're at keep in mind always when you get out of the vehicle you close the door if an id goes off takes you out you don't want it blowing up everybody inside so there's little things like that that you need to be proactive about so yeah i mean we're finding these things we're taking hits but at the end of the day we're being proactive against the taliban we're running usually two convoys a day one in the morning one in the afternoon and then at night the lower ranks private pfc lance corporal we're standing security over the patrol base we were in so we're doing long days um it was about that time that i got into my first serious firefight um i remember it it was around 3 a.m and i was in the rack sleeping and we started getting mortared uh when a mortar drops it's an absolute sickening sound it's like a it's like a hellish whistle almost i don't really know how to describe it with adjectives but you know something big was coming you can hear it you can feel it you can sense it and when it hits the ground everything shakes and it's just what the [ __ ] going on first couple hit instantly when that happens over there you're trained you're jumping out of the rack you're throwing your flak on you're getting your weapon and you run into the vehicle because you know shit's popping off um our radio started going off that one of our patrol bases about i think a couple clicks down uh route one was getting ambushed um these guys planned this [ __ ] out this was i've never i played these video games call of duty all this stuff i've never seen something like this so keep in mind i run in my vehicle i get my 50 up head space and timing good to go i'm so focused on getting my weapon ready and getting everything that we need to bang it out with these guys i realize i'm in my boxers i got my boots on and i got this t-shirt on [ __ ] it our guys are getting hit we need to get the [ __ ] out there our trucks are up we start blowing out there and keep in mind i had never been in a firefight at night before this uh where the fastest i've ever gone in the truck that i'm in going to this patrol base radios are going crazy because afghans can't really speak english so the interpreter is on the radio blah blah blah blah we don't understand all we hear is taliban and going into this thing i i remember feeling like this is it everything i've trained for is about to culminate right now i literally at that moment seeing i remember just seeing tracer rounds going back and forth and explosions going off i i remember and i'm not trying to be i'm not trying to exaggerate i remember thinking this is what hell looks like uh and weirdly enough and keep in mind i'm i'm i'm [ __ ] up but i got it excited to a certain degree uh this was the test this was this was there to show me if if i was ready to call myself a marine um we are known to be the guys that fight period and it's moments like this that you show your colors and i remember i racked my 50 back just put it condition one and uh weirdly enough i thought of my father i as a kid growing up we always had a song and uh it was it was uh cats in the cradle by harry chaplin chap chaplain or something like that chapin but it more or less talks about a father-son story and uh i didn't i honestly didn't think i was coming back out of this and uh yeah i thought of him i thought you know why the [ __ ] did i come over here why didn't i listen to him i got two younger brothers that i should be helping you know grow up but yeah regardless i remember that that hit me and uh i got angry i got angry and i was like these [ __ ] aren't taking me out who the [ __ ] are they to take me out they come over they fly our [ __ ] planes into our buildings and kill thousands of people and i'm coming over there and they're they're about to kill me [ __ ] that i got furious keep in mind i have the biggest machine gun the marine corps makes in front of me i was ready to go instantly my vehicle starts taking contact i'm talking the guys in my vehicle didn't really see it but instantly to the left flank when we got near this patrol base the whole sky lights up all you really see in an instant like this is muzzle flashes um the rounds weren't hitting our vehicle yet but instantly i started chirping with the 50. and these guys were kind of far out at this point and my captain is like what the icardi what the [ __ ] are you doing and i'm like sorry are you you [ __ ] kidding me right now we're getting attacked and he can't i don't i don't i kind of had to assert to him like like it's time to go and uh yeah so he said [ __ ] it too and we it instantly turned off the road and went at these guys here we go and when you go off road over there keep in mind this was during the summer time and uh the sun bakes these things called wadi's over there wadi's i believe i could be wrong don't kill me on this are the canals where water runs through for their plants so it's like whoops and in the gun don't kill me this on on this either but i didn't i don't believe i had my no i did i did have my gunner's harness on but you're supposed to have a gunner's harness on in the gun but we're going over these whoops and i am absolutely taking a beating yeah it was scary getting shot at but my driver keep in mind whenever i had a driver they've been hispanic and both of them savages they will drive through anything absolutely [ __ ] anything these guys are going through it my drive at the time cervantes he's got our truck pegged as fast as it's going to go keep in mind he's got a mind roller on the front of it which is this big plow type thing which is supposed to take the hit first if we get hit by an ied but he's got this thing pegged and we're going straight at these guys comms are down the rest of our trucks they're they're taking fire as well and they're chirping but i don't know what happened there's this thing called fog of war when shit's really popping off you don't know what's going on and it's extremely scary um regardless the thing that i had at my disposal was my weapons and i was using them i was absolutely blown away anything that shot at us but going through these watties i'm talking at probably 50 60 miles an hour my ammo crate on my 50 cal blew off [ __ ] that's not good my biggest weapon is down and at this exact time we had a vehicle in front of us i don't know how many people can say this but i saw the whites of this guy's eyes um all the other vehicles scattered and this vehicle was trying to get away cervantes was right on his my driver was right on his six i'm talking from me to you and i see in the back seat this giant machine gun and i see which at the time i believe it was a pkm i see the guy in the back mask up and come out the window and just start blasting us and his goal was to come up and hit me and yeah he didn't um i at that time had my m4 and i put rounds in the back of the vehicle and all i saw was a pink mist um regardless the vehicle was still taking fire and i remember on the right side of the vehicle it's just sporadic and on the left side of the vehicle it was a much larger caliber much better shots so it was boom and one absolutely rocked me um hit my kevlar skate my head knocked me back into the vehicle and all the guys in the vehicle like what the [ __ ] just happened and uh and i yeah i thought i told my i think i'm hit and uh like where and i was like i don't [ __ ] know i don't know and then they like button up the top and get the [ __ ] down and uh i remember oddly enough i had a terp interpreter in the vehicle with us and he's like i remember him being scared as [ __ ] and he's and he's like go back up there and i was like the 50s down and he tries handing me a grenade not the time regardless that that was the most intense thing i've ever done in my life uh thank god none of us were hit we had no casualties i don't know how but uh we did a brief bda which is like an assessment after a firefight and we went back to our patrol base um i remember afterwards after something like that we all clean weapons and it's quiet and everyone's still in this odd shock um and then all of a sudden it breaks and everyone's just like holy [ __ ] did you see icardi [ __ ] take one and everyone was just going back and forth telling their stories about what happened and it was almost like a family i don't i've there's certain feelings you get over there that you never feel again and that right there i gotta say i have never felt the adrenaline from a moment like that ever again um not that i want to but god damn so as i said we uh worked with a a and ahp um we had one incident that went down we got into a a brief fire fight and we ended up chasing down a vehicle down route 606 and we thought it was just full of taliban fighters but we ended up ramming it off the road flipping the vehicle i think the guys inside died but we ended up getting close to 50 60 kilos of raw heroin and keep in mind this is how the taliban this is the taliban's bread and butter they grow it in helmand and they ship it to pakistan or that's that's what we learned and that's how they get their weapons their money whatever they need to fight us regardless this was very tense keep in mind the afghans i mean i i know poor from boston you know people don't have money where i'm from these guys are poor um they walk around with their belongings a weapon their rags a toothbrush which is odd but every person that i've searched or had to go through their belongings they have a toothbrush very nasty toothbrush and a chai cup teacup that's what they own regardless they are poor um when we brought this heroin back to our patrol base afghans were laying down their weapons and stealing the kilos and leaving which keep in mind i'm 20 21 i have no idea what the [ __ ] is going on uh but this put a very insecure feeling for us the guys that we're training fighting with are quitting and stealing the heroin that we just got from the taliban so i don't know what the [ __ ] going on there and basically we all felt extremely uneasy and we doubled the security at our patrol base and we attempted to hire and do ahp a a and at that time i could be wrong about this but this is when rambo came into the picture rambo was an ex-mujahideen soldier and i don't know if you know and keep in mind i don't know much about the mujahideen but what i do know is they were freedom fighters and they were the ones that fought the russians and some of them went taliban some of them kind of did their own thing but these boys could fight and uh i had the privilege of meeting one individual named rambo and this was the real rambo this was no hollywood sylvester stallone this guy killed people and he walked around constantly probably slept with it pounds of ammo on his chest for his big pkm machine gun that he carried with him everywhere a very intense individual they talk about marines having a thousand-yard stare from firefights they get into and different things they do you looked at this guy and you know he's been places and he's seen things regardless captain comes in and he asks for a couple volunteers to go out to a patrol base uh down i believe it was route one and keep in mind whenever they ask for volunteers to go to a patrol base hand was always shot right up in the air because you were your own boss there was no higher leadership out there sergeants corporals lance was privates ran the show and that's how it should be regardless me and a couple of my buddies went out this patrol base so there was probably five six marines maybe less and probably ten afghans uh and rambo rambo went out there with us so uh the first instant that i had with uh with rambo we get out to the patrol base and this thing was ragtag basically a couple hesco barriers sand mounds it wasn't fit for a defensive position uh it needed to be built up so we brought some more haskell barriers some constantine wire which is this badass barbed wire and uh a shitload of sandbags so we take half the afghans and we go on a dismounted patrol through the local town to try to meet the towns that's the first thing you do when you get to a new area you go out to the town you talk to the people you show respect uh you let them know that you're gonna be in the area and you have one goal kill the taliban and help them you gotta throughout my life i stand on you you gotta give respect to get respect period and it served me well regardless rambo was in charge of the afghans out there so i tell the interpreter hey you guys need to fill a bunch of sandbags we're going to go on a patrol build this [ __ ] up a little bit and uh we'll be back in a couple hours so we go on our patrol nothing really happens we come back and keep in mind our patrol base is on a main road i come back and there's probably 40 cars lined up stopped at a standstill rambo's on the main road with his pkm stopping these guys so they're not going anywhere and everyone's out of their car fill in sandbags so instead of them doing it they pull over a bunch of civilian afghans and they're filling the sandbags that's that's kind of how they do business so i wasn't really mad at him but you know whatever got the job done who cares so next day we receive a little bit of contact this is kind of a iffy risky story to tell about we receive a little bit of contact some guys shooting at us from uh maybe a football field away and uh we bunker down and exchange a little back and uh you can see rambo amping up and he's really getting aggressive and he actually leaves cover and keep in mind once we exchange back and forth usually they run away uh rambo goes out there and actually shoots one of the guys goes up to him and kicks his weapon away and puts him down and we're all like whoa like i mean you can't really do that and so i'm yelling at him what the [ __ ] get back here he's not really listening so we all get back it settles down then the night gets there and anytime that we get into a serious situation over there even though these afghans they they don't have anything they feel the need to eat with us supply the meal for the night um so they somehow get some kind of meat i don't know what exactly it was but uh and uh gnome or bread afghan bread which actually was pretty good um everyone sits in a circle and rambo comes around with a basin of water and washes everyone's hands he puts the food in the middle and everyone eats we eat together i'm 20 21 in the most dangerous part of afghanistan or one of them and me and my boys my doc doc sanchez my driver xavier one of my drivers and a couple other guys in the most dangerous position we could be just eating with these guys and uh we have an interpreter with us and i remember wanting to keep in mind rambo after we're done eating he brings out this wicked huge hookah and over there they they smoke ash that's like tobacco to them and he wants us all to smoke with him and one of the guys that i was with uh was no no no no i can't do it or whatever and rambo looks at him in disgust and uh he looks at the interpreter and he's like rattles something off to him and the interpreter laughs and he's like why you be [ __ ] we uh we out here we fight together we we dine together we smoked together and uh he was kind of almost offended and i told him pay no mind you know whatever but i countered rambo and i was like hey guy why the [ __ ] did you go john wayne earlier and absolutely disregard me and not listen at all and uh as i said before rambo has this look about him and uh he gives and i talk to the interpreter and he gives me this look and he rattles off this 10-15 minute story to the interpreter and the interpreter i'm looking at him he's just like and he looks at me and he's like here we go so apparently rambo was a wealthy landowner back when the russians came into afghanistan uh that's when i believe the taliban established themselves as a shadow government over afghanistan and they were literally going to everyone's farm or house that they could occupy and turn into a defensive position or just anything that they could use to benefit them so they went to rambo's house and i believe he had daughters and a few wives according to rambo they said this is ours now everything here is ours and [Music] we'll be coming back and i guess rambo said no uh according to him and i guess the taliban came back shot him so he he couldn't defend his family and they raped and killed his family in front of him uh he said to me aft after this i kill any taliban that comes near me period and i couldn't i couldn't question him that story resounded in me i i if i were him i'd feel the same way yeah that's that's my rambo story i can't i'm i'm pretty sure after we left afghanistan rambo got killed but i need to try to keep that guy's story alive there's certain individuals that you meet that are not that you need to keep their memory alive period and that's one of them so yeah that's rainbow as i said uh my captain and my driver took a pretty serious ied hit on a patrol we went on and after that the that absolutely took all the wind out of our sails it was just absolute they were the spirit of our team and i know a lot of guys have it much worse you know when we were over there ieds were absolutely decimating people double amps uh they were absolutely creating carnage for our a lot of marines so we definitely had didn't have it bad as a lot of people but the man i looked up to the most and who saved my ass on more times than i can count took a serious hit by an id and it was not a not a good day for us um i want to say kevin donner stag thank you for everything you did for us over there um a day doesn't go by that i don't think about you and uh yeah thank you you made us men over there and you kept us alive true definition of a leader you embodied that to the fullest and we all recognize that and i'm sure i'm not the only one that feels this way thank you you

Channel: Soft White Underbelly

Views: 391,393

Keywords: soft white underbelly, swu

Id: EW2m_m2vkxo

Length: 60min 4sec (3604 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 18 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/IsaacB1]

Is there a part of this we're specifically supposed to watch or is it just to view in general, its an hour long

[u/15thMEUSOC]

🤔

[u/TheRealCluckMcDuck]

….interesting