Watch Combat Diary The Marines of Lima Company.

[Music] what do you want I hope you enjoyed that everybody had a camera and they didn't have it when they got there by the time they left it was there and that's why we got so much video there's sometimes even a firefights you know somebody would pull out their camera stick it on a Ledge and just you could hear what was going on he may not be able to see as well but you get here you get here guys yelling and radio conversations and stuff like that nobody you know told us we really couldn't so we did [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I'm sorry read the final roll there sergeant Anthony L Goodwin 1st platoon leave a company third Battalion 25th breeds killed in action 8 May 2005 and new Beatty Iraq I don't only talk to many people about what happened poor pull Dustin hey there go things aren't the same anymore everything's it's kind of been a lot of things are interesting to me anymore I'm sorry I think it is important that they know what we went through lance corporal Leslie G David all right I don't feel ever be the same anybody that ghosts Iraq and does what and does what we do all right head is ever the same Christopher Dixon first photos leave a company third Battalion what is their parades held an accident [Music] I talked to two Marines from my school one said that he had never fired his weapon when he was over there and the other said he might have fired it once and he said don't worry about it your reservists reading it sent somewhere out of the way where you can't do any damage and you can't do any harm you know and you were just gonna guard something we might walk around the desert for a little while I was just thinking you know we're gonna get stuck on the wire somewhere and just be pulling watched the whole time and not see a damn thing we'd probably sit around run some patrols and eat food and get fat say hi to a new home along the bottom of sweat to the top of the toe for five bucks [Music] youth from our balcony [Music] I dig the dam is built by the Soviets and it's large its cavernous its industrial there's bats that live there that fly out all over the place but at the same time it's home and it's producing electricity about 30% for the country of Iraq [Applause] [Music] the Azerbaijanis control the wire they're providing our security there's Iraqi workers that come in to work there and then you've got us you've got the grunts there and we launch out of that place all the time to do different missions all up and down the Euphrates River and we head out on another nice and not exciting patrol through South dam village we will probably discover we did a lot of little missions little little patrols and stuff like that at first just to get us started I guess probably our first big missions going in and clearing Kadena you've never been in a city like this all of a sudden you know the streets aren't straight that curve and there's little nooks and crannies who knows walls around everything you know not only you have to like get in the outside gate and then you got to get in the inside come on put some muscle into it you know before anybody got hurt it was really exciting and an almost fun you know but it's like a video game it's the most exciting thing you'll ever experience it's the most fun thing ever experience from you getting a firefight it's the biggest eternal there's no drug in the world that could ever jack you up like that so in the beginning it's that's the best thing ever she's awesome you want it every day and then once you know the bad stuff starts happening and you'll have some of the worst days of your life [Music] video before we left for training I mean Dirk and I would always hang out you know on campus at OSU and you know go to parties or anything like that he was just always crazy you just do the crazy stuff I mean jumping bushes making laughs all the time and that's why I like them he's just a great guy to hang out [Music] our mission was to disrupt the insurgents from coming over to this area across the Euphrates called Romana where no one has been no coalition forces have really been right there you've got the Syrian border you know you can see Syria you can see the town over on the other side of the border you had to drive by this town of new you beatty to where the army was building a bridge for us so we could get across to the other side you Betty wasn't the plan at all wasn't even brief everything was flowing smooth so we got close to the river and once we started getting impacts of mortars and machine gun fire we had to identify the threat because if we bypassed it and we left our flanks and our rear exposed they could have literally you know wiped us all out basically we dis matram the tracks under fire we ran to our sectors in the in the town and we started clearing houses there's just chaos you could hear the rounds going off or Pierce tracer rounds and you can see I'm just deflecting off the house the town was just going nuts there is small arms fire everywhere these guys were crazy he would see a cobra swooped down over the town and they would shoot it - damn Cobra staff start doodling he's walking up the middle of the road like nothing's going on you know he's got his American flag you know bandana draped around his neck he's just like George Patton or something it silent like this guy's crazy you know I looked at him in he's like palms could be so I kind of these minors law all right we've been in firefights all day as you can hear we just got word there's four of our first club when one of our docks we don't know about the other three sounds like some of the team leaders we're all freaking pretty pissed off it's getting pretty dark other than that I'm trying make it out of here in one piece tonight my squad was on the house and we were just pretty much told ordered to stay put you hear the rounds going off and they didn't quite know what was going on at first and that's when you knew someone was I got a bad feeling that today we were about a quarter of the way through the town the Sun was starting to down a little bit a lot of fighting that we were here was tapering off and it sound like it was moving further back and we weren't engaging anymore we weren't seeing much we were on what was definitely the last house of the day about to kick the door in and somebody they opened up on with a machine gun lance corporal West kicked in the door and he got shot in both legs and then dergah turned and got shot in the back with an armor-piercing round his face was completely gray and as his eyes were kind of open and fixed and I wasn't sure if he was alive or not we tried to get a pressure dressing on to his wound which all we could do was hold it on there just hearing things on the radio it was just a shock he said there heard something like that before and all I could do it was pretty much telling my squat from when her on the radio what was going on and then they just seem to keep going on the squad was still going in under fire hit each different room clearly all the rooms it was an empty house and there's where the stairs go up to the roof there's a small closet short one three feet high whatever let's try looking like this closet and just thinking something's off about this closet you know and so I shot some rounds to stuff ended it through the wall in the closet you know in case there's anybody in there - I'm doing open the door to the closet there was a guy waiting for him underneath there and he fired two bursts if that's our good one and it was coming upward and it got him and he went down way is laying it just wasn't quite close enough to like go grab him and pull him out without getting shot I regret that to this day that I didn't make more of an effort than I did but I I tried it as close as I could to him and I was just I tried kind of whisper to him you know where is you know you know where are they he couldn't even really move he just come his hand like that and then I was like oh I don't even know what that means nobody really wanted to leave no we want to leave his body there they didn't want these guys get away I wanted to figure out something to take these guys out and get stuff start going on but they told us they're gonna drop the Jets were gonna drop a bomb so yeah you got a man sleeve they dropped that but I guess it missed it landed out in the open area a little bit away from the house and didn't do a whole lot of damage to it so the next morning they fired some small rounds and then they went in to recover stats on Goodwin's body [Applause] so the next day they took us out into the desert and gonna Hurley came over all the tracks and you know he said that look in his face and you're pretty new pretty much knows what he's gonna say and he's got that feeling you know and he said global Durga didn't make it and that's probably the toughest thing to deal with [Music] I've been in that bar more than I've ever been in bars and while I'm not a bar person I never have been but I don't go there for the quote bar part of it it's a social part of it being able to talk to his friends again yeah laughs listen to music that's my support that helps me get through I have said you know why how many thousands of 160 some thousand troops over in Iraq and you think to yourself what are the chances that would be my son and now it doesn't seem fair it's been difficult it's always there I mean it never goes away you might not think about it every minute but it's always there it's always something it's going to be different without less than being here obviously but I know you would want us to celebrate Christmas in the way that we always have [Music] he was all boy I mean what his GI Joes love football loved his trains cars trucks and he you know as a little kid he always said he was going to be a either a soldier or a fireman and he became both last Christmas Dustin was with us both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day that didn't always happen I remember a very special time in the morning Christmas morning I got up and Bob he gotten up and Dustin was still sleeping and I was making breakfast and I couldn't figure out where Bob went and I went into the side bedroom and he and Dustin were laying in bed hugging and that was a wonderful wonderful thing to see and and I just left them there and said I'm making breakfast and just take your time I'd walk just took me back to when he was a little kid on Christmas morning then I just gave him a big hug one thing I don't wonder about is whether he's in heaven and that was my biggest fear when he died that I would never have that assurance and it's the farthest thing from my mind now Bob and I don't we're not on the same page on that I think he believes differently that and his mind Dustin there was it was his time and he was ready to go almost like it was a good thing but I don't believe that I mean I believe that you know he was taken much too young and he had a life to live and maybe it's just self so my part but I wanted to be there to seem livin tracks are the worst modes of transportation I would ever recommend to anybody it's like somebody running a jackhammer up your ass pretty much you're sitting on a metal bench maybe that much padding and you're hitting the rocks you're doing everything the desert can offer and then if you're not sitting down you're standing up providing security and now you're slamming your fingers on the edge falling over when we start getting hills and everything you're catching exhaust because the genius who invented the tracks put the exhaust pipe right next to your head so everything is blown in your face no air conditioning usually the water is on top and it's already boiling hot by the time you need it insides full of flies and stinky Marines I mean it's no fun [Music] I'm doing security so I'm standing up and I can kind of see you around everywhere this little village you know and I'm driving along or as we're driving you see all these things like families I don't know yards or I'll waving at us and these little kids are all playing they're jumping around and everybody seems to be happy that we're there I'm ever getting like a good real good feeling all right that's a really good sign cuz you know like you know you always hear that you know if you see kids playing nothing's gonna happen [Music] and all sudden I'm looking around I said oh wait this there's no more people around I didn't have my goggles down like I was supposed to you in that I'm gonna pull my goggles down over my eyes I was looking for my gloves they're like fire resistant gloves I was looking for those and I was like and I remember I left him in my I'd left him in my pack on the side of the track so just a little bit after that and on the side and boom first class practice hit her freaking mind and it's written in flames I mean ever rounds cooking off [ __ ] flying out of there and I ran around and I saw Lance Corporal camp stand in there I got thrown back into the track landed on my back like inside of the track and I started staying up my hands and face are on fire and just being like just kind of freaking out so I started hitting myself in the face with my arm you know I got my face off really fast I'll fire I'm trying to get my hands out I'm going like this hitting them they wouldn't go off a little long and it's good comp is really it was really nasty you know and looking around and I see sergeant Bella stand off and he's just kind of like this everything was completely black I couldn't see and I started to feel the heat coming from the fire that started instantly and I started feeling around for the emergency latch released for the ramp the latch open it was kind of like an avalanche no bodies falling out through the true patch and when I rolled over and looked up off of my back the next person I saw coming out was completely on fire I remember hearing PFC Dixon yelling to me from inside the track okay okay help me out no I can't crawl down pick myself up crawled in and I'm staying really low because there's you know a munitions popping off and explosions going off and stuff so I'm trying to keep really really well and you know I'm pretty scared but I'm just thinking you know this kid it's got to be a lot more scared than I am and you know what I don't Dixon he was in my fire team originally I always kind of looked after his stuff he's pretty young and everything pretty much younger than that just about everybody else or talking to him and listen I was like I'm I was like my hands are all fried off and the scans all falling off and my hands and I was just like this and I was like I'm pretty weak right now let's like see you gotta help me get you out cuz X I can't do it by myself and he's just like alright alright getting almost out of track down pulling as hard as I can and all of a sudden it's like any little explosion it kind of blew me back and I got up again I'm grabbing anything I can his clothes his flat Jackie I'm trying to grab it for him by his helmet at one point and I'm trying to talk to him he's not responding anymore so I'm jolly basically grabbed me and started pulling me off out of the way the helicopters just kept comment in common I mean there was mass casualty you know emotionally it was just draining because you know you find out that I he was alive when he got put on the bird but then at least as what I heard that he was alive but just barely and then he ended up not making it David's was alive when he left he found out he didn't make it and you find out like that's corporal grant just got moved to first quad so he would have normally been on our track he was on the other track so that it bothers you PFC Dixon and that kid is just fresh out of high school Monday 149 p.m. hey everybody this is Chris just called hey guys and good alright and I'll be alright alright so you on mission very much like here's what to the cane and I get all of these much as I can all of you guys I got up on a Friday I took off went to the store to get more things for a care package and as I came back pulled in the driveway there was no van out front there was nothing here I had no clue Marines was here in our house the neighbor lady came out and she said I was getting the stuff out of the truck and I she said Becky you need to come in here and I said what's wrong and she just had me around the shoulder so tight and she said you need to come in here and I said is it Chris she said you need to come in here they was standing at the door he was crying I walked in and there was a marine to the top of the steps there was two Marines her living room and when I walked in i said not chris and he said yes ma'am I'm sorry Tara four of you but they had told Dave that they wouldn't leave until I had come home from the store to tell me the news they said if it takes two hours we'll stay here because they says I can't tell her that news and that he made him take the van down the road to where I wouldn't see it when I fold in this still is his room and it's you know he's gone but it's just I can't put everything away right now I'm not ready for that and I feel close to grass in here that's why I haven't taken anything to him not yet it might not never get changed not for many years but I come in here and this is his stuff you know it's what he where he got to in 17 years before he left for the Marines in 2000 and we're both living in the same dorm at Ohio State just happen like that so find me late five years later we're all together I know you love to shop more get excited I actually got back in two states in May but I was in the hospital she actually she came down and see me when I got there you know I I didn't look so hot she's very sorry I thought you look good you know baby I love the air which would be with your hair down would be very nice yeah and then you could still I mean we have a lot of we've had our ups and downs but him you know coming close to dying made me really realize what's important in life you know and that's you know your family and your loved ones you know things are meant to happen and I think we're meant to stay together even though everyone thinks our crazy we haven't made any arrangements yet because he's still finishing school and I just graduated and you know college students were broke so but um we're just gonna take it step by step probably get married in the next year settle down I'm kidding hopefully don't want kids baby [Music] [Music] well for a while there right after Matador I was paranoid I did not want to get back in a track I thought about you baby about you know assaulting houses I remember going over it and going over and going over and what would I do I mean the only answer I came up with is probably the same thing those guys did cuz they didn't know it was pretty scary if you really don't know what to expect it could clear a thousand houses but you never know what's in that one God is righteous and whatever he does and uh I didn't know why that happened but I know that he did and when it's your turn to go you go you know part of me wants to say you know God has a plan and everything will work out for the best then part of me says things don't always work out for the best things just happened the primary mission was that different towns at different locations in the late night there were cell group meetings that may or may not be occurring so we were to work our way into a town during the dark hours and conduct a court in search of that area the dogs and country people may kind of snicker and laugh at the dogs are vicious I would probably rather cross paths with a bear than an Iraqi dog but this dog was awakened by a squad of Marines walking right next to it so it panicked and attacked I was standing maybe five feet from the Marine when he shot the dog he had no choice in the matter that kind of woke up the neighborhood I think as I understand it the squad was out in the middle of the street and when the firefight broke out first dog was you got to get out the street sergeant Winberg squad was just behind me that building there clear it it didn't matter where we were at or what we were doing or how bad it looked at the time he was always on top of things he was Superman if the world was falling apart he could hold together just by his mere presence the only thing I knew was it probably took a whole army to take him down but there was a carrot behind the door I [Music] mean it could be that this thing was something that was nothing more than a dog and these guys didn't know who was out there killing their dog I didn't even know they might not even know to his US Marines out there were US forces they might have just saw somebody shot their dog and they shot through the wall to protect themselves who knows I do know one thing out of all the firefights and all the engagements over there that's the only time I know of was second Platoon that the people we fought that morning or only Iraqis [Music] the Iraqi people really don't care whether we're in control or the insurgents are in control and it's really frustrating to know that okay I'm here in your country in your town risking my life for us basically for you and you you don't want to help me in any way so our next big mission about the day before they walked out and said hey we're getting some Iraqi Special Forces and you're gonna be their handler I'm like their what they're like their handler you're gonna get like four or so Iraqi Special Forces and I'm like okay I don't speak Iraqi you know at first I didn't want it you know I was like there's no I don't even want to do this you know I don't want to be here you know not we know we're not Lima Company they just look like they grabbed them off the street and handed them an 8k and so here you go buddy you know go fight a war and I'm like great you know can I trust these guys or are they going to be bad guys we go into this town and go to knock on a door and I go to step up and you know knock on the door and the first thing that they do is push me back we were doing like mass searches for looking for weapons they went to certain spots other things they were just completely not even check looking in a freezer and digging through to see if there's weapons stored underneath all the meat and vegetables of stuff I'm going out and digging through stuff in the backyard stomping up and down on the floors to see if they're Hollow just all kinds of weird stuff and bam when they're done they'd look at me and go good and out the door we go they knew what they were looking for they knew it's their country one of them came up with a CD player some marine gave it to him and he wouldn't know if I could burn him some Britney Spears so I had to dig through the archives but I found some Britney Spears they liked the hip-hop music you know rap and they weren't too into country music because they said it was too slow but when I started playing the hip-hop stuff they'd like oh yeah once we start to get more on a personal level with when we start to get more nicknames you know we called one guy we called him Venus because he looks like Phoebus from beavis and butthead we call another guy old-school because he was he looked like he was 90 years old and I would learn about them you know they're married how many kids they had I mean wives they had you know if they had anyone and then the rest of Tommy were just joking around you know even though they were speaking her every guy was starting to pick up on some of the phrases and they one learn English so I was teach them you know I was teaching him good wholesome American English somebody else was teaching him to cuss I don't know who that was it wasn't me we'd get a lot of flack from some of the guys you know I can't believe you guys hang out with these people you know yeah I mean these are Iraqi people and but we go out with them on patrols we leave the wire with them I mean we're out there and if something goes down these guys have our back and you know we have theirs in the same in the same thing so to me every one of those Iraqi National Guardsmen that was willing to do that made up for a hundred of the civilians who just didn't care because that's a civilian who is taking action he's trying to do something he cares about the country [Music] I think it is a stress relief I think it's a healthy stress relief - you know I'm just shooting at targets I mean it can't be how many rounds I put downrange with the Marine Corps so it's just this all those things you just get back to my rack we carry a weapon with us all the time it's uh and the other thing is just you in practice you know the more you shoot the better you're gonna be out and we actually get to the range so like sets the stress relief it's kind of getting a golf ball you know you picture your boss's face on a golf ball and smack it all over the golf course I don't care where it goes you just keep hitting it so I'm not saying I'm shooting my boss or anything never seen my balls in the years [Music] that one got away from me a little bit it's my favorite thing to do shoot [Music] [Music] the company went up to operation spear parabola I wasn't to the stage you know at that point where I just wanted to go murder everybody but I knew that place is full of them foreigners and I knew that they would come out and I wanted to be a part of that we were told our mission was to find evidence that foreign fighters were coming in we had to go on a long track across the desert to get to this place and we stayed off of the roads because they're all mined and their IDs on them and so forth but we got there they were firing off these lying charges it's almost like a fire hose with a rocket on the end of it shoots through the air and it drags this line charge behind it when it lands it blows up and what it does it blows all the mines and all the bombs out of the way and that was our signal to launch into the attack helicopters were strafing the city with their guns and so you know already hear explosions starting off and they're telling us your rules of engagement have changed anybody that's in the city is bad we're using tanks we're using the Trax 50 cals we're blowing through walls we're not using front doors [Music] we also had intelligence that there was lots of car bombs so we're authorized to take out any car on the road hates that we blew that city to pieces [Music] I was with the Iraqis those were my guys and my squad for five months was my Iraqis we found a lot of weapons aks and RPGs but we were running up the middle then we started taking fire you know for insurgents who run across there over by the mosque two of them get taken out by kilo three to across the way and we know we wounded one of them we thought he was in the mosque to go inside a mosque it's it's pretty big medicine machine you have some higher-up saying that it's all right and so we called up to higher we said are we cleared to go in I get a call to radio from from major toll and says hey I need to bring the Iraqis up here we're gonna salt the mosque you good we go in I step foot inside and let them do all this weekend we find nothing inside I was looking around the outside around the courtyard and a couple Iraqi Freedom Guard they're saying something back and forth peeking around this corner and I walked around the side and there's a guy under the tree laying there with an 8k in his left I thought he was dead so I start walking up to him and as I walked up he [ __ ] his leg and he names in on me and so I start shooting him and then the two Iraqis just unload on this guy that was the closest I've been to an insurgent from me to you was how about how close we were and after that then you get hit with the reality like man I could have just got shot right there [Music] from those two individuals the one in the mosque and the one over in this alley that sergeant Hoffman squad killed we found you know lots of money on them they were loaded for bear that more ammo than he'd shake a stick at they drugs on them and grenades and everything else and we found an ID from Syria and that's what we came up there to prove is that Syria was pretty much not controlling the borders or letting people come in and so we've got pretty good evidence that there's foreign fighters in these towns no we're at just go north up the road hang a left after the mosque and when you see the human leg in the road that's where we are okay good it go blue sticks out [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I got place on my cell from all starting tumors you want to place an Fillmore don't want to play Santa Claus tomorrow yeah actually being five somebody starting uh Murray you know I love the snow I love the cold but this year I just can't get used to it you know I walked out the door this morning and the first thing in my mind was at least it's warm in Iraq it's like 80 degrees outside I'm like you know be nice to have some sand right now we're over there you could talk to somebody you could say a few words they knew what you wanted and you could get it accomplished here you got to expect it to be a lot slower pace now you're with your girlfriend's like alright I'm hungry let's go to dinner it's like okay and then two hours later what she's still putting makeup on and you know Leamas legacy from their deployment is going to be that we lost a bunch of people and not everything that we did over there and yeah it was important we lost a lot of people when those people need to be remembered they do but our accomplishments as well because they were their accomplishments to they should be right there side by side you know bar wanna was like wild wild west when both but you know we were there like a you know a few times cleaning it up and not there's a huge line of people going to vote and they said a statistic on one of the big news channels that Al Anbar in the last election had 10% voting in this election at seventy five percent and it's like that the time between that election was us you know I mean from 10 to 70 percent that's a huge jump I mean we couldn't really ask for much more than that the Americans don't vote seventy percent the insurgents had put out the word that anyone coming into heat we're a diet fiery death so when it came down that we were going to go into heat ya know some concern this urgent network had support their major support money they would hide them they would broadcast messages for them over the loudspeakers from the mosques so they had a major support network in he and we had to shut that off they had a Edie's improvised explosive devices one way into town they had like 14 or 17 or something like that the road going into town and we went in there and it wasn't a whole lot of shots fired wasn't much of a fight [Music] so far up to that point and all of the operations that we had conducted we had swept and pushed so in other words we swept through the city cleared every house cleared every yard cleared every chicken coop and then once we were done and we felt good about it we would push on to conduct another operation or back to our base to refit for this one we did not we did a sweep and hold we held operating bases inside the city of Heat and we conducted a patrols security patrols safety patrols whatever you want to call and ensure that the people knew that 325 was going to be there and we're there to stay what they say there's like 30,000 people in that town something like that yeah you know we're out there patrolling it at all hours I would say it was tense once it was peaceful walking through the streets the marketplace this place is insane because there's way too many people and there's no reason we should be here what we're doing anyway [Music] we work out a lot of the interns to take the city back we're gonna allow them to influence the Iraqi citizens anymore and then that's when they started coming back in they didn't want to just walk away from the city they had caches they have weapons they have communication assets and that's it they did not want to give up they started creeping back and sneaking in and setting in explosive devices on the roads right here some nitride to blow us up the insurgents used IDs because they they can't fight us toe-to-toe it's their only means in which to actually bloody our nose per se [Music] anything could be an IE d anything and you'd do one of two things either you can you can freeze and do nothing and pray to God that you know you're not standing on top of the thing or you can go out and carry out your mission on that particular day they were on their way back from a two-hour patrol they had gone out to our furthest limit and they were making it back they were on the back side of the mosque and there was an explosive device right behind the mosque against the fence line the wires went through the wall and led back to the mosque when ID detonated he immediately killed an Iraqi soldier and the fragmentation also struck two other Iraqi soldiers then also corporal foot and document within five minutes I was at that position we stopped the bleeding I thought we might be able to save his leg in his foot and he was giving me advice as the corpsman gonna you're touching in the wrong place you know I'm like look just shut up you know and his last words to me were hey tell the guys I will be back don't get another corpsman for the platoon I will be back everybody's worried about dr. Elam but until we hear that he's been stabilized and that he's going to be okay oh how worried he's gonna lose a foot feeling a little tune was all right awesome he's alive he's going home we get relieved in heat and we're looking forward to trying to get contact with the Youngblood once we get back to the dam we have a little ferret communications doc Jenkins says Youngblood died and I just look at him and he's a he looks back at man like [ __ ] doc then you know that's true he died because of some internal internal damage from the ID blasts after I found out Travis had passed I wrote a letter to his wife because not only did he leave behind a young son she was pregnant with the daughter that she delivered in September and you know I wrote to her and I told her you know I know that your son had a limited time with his father he's a young kid it's a fight three years old and I know that your daughter will never know her father but I want to tell you what I thought of him as a man and hopefully when her children get to be an age that they can appreciate it she'll let them read those letters and know that their father didn't die in vain that he saved lives many lives not just Marines Iraqis - and he meant the world to us so thank you three five who were in the treasure box who promised me a star today every year we're going to camping trip as a family no I wasn't looking forward to can't take pregnant better how do I knit go so July 13th I flew in and never left just two days after I got here someone came by and told me what happened to Travis Travis was one of those guys that no one could not like he had to like try this you couldn't get mad at him I know is talk about his comic relief for the blue tuna and half they're ever gonna do a movie that Drew Carey would for him he loved you know just being a fool you know you just wants to make people laugh he pants on come here he says I'm hilari it's just like my daddy was on ER where is hunter where is hunter hunter are you you're outside hunter okay I'm gonna go to the toy store and I'll um I'll make sure I don't get anything for you I'll get something for your sister I'm a head of days and nights confused for a long time I know I know it's bad when I start screaming out for Travis what is this is a story I don't even learn to change a diaper to help me five years old I would never take his childhood away from I love her enough to know that I can't do it about myself right now so my parents took her for a month and she'll be back in April I got a place to stay I got a three-bedroom house to rent and we're gonna have a place to call home for now and then we'll be a family again [Music] well I'm not part of it right now but about the fire fight about 25 meters off to our left it's pretty sweet Siegel was a town that we were going to do a coordinate search hundreds and hundreds of times we've done it and it was not a really heightened threat level about halfway through the town first quad they come across a house that when corporal Williams went up to knock on the door I was told he raised his hand to knock in his hand never struck the door we heard an initial burst of rounds then there's a gap that just says getting ready say something my radio man about we need to work our way over towards first squad numerous rounds started fire it was an amazing fight those guys in cichlid never buried in them house was pretty good and they were they're pretty good at setting the trap you know trying to get a marine down and then you know trying to lure people in you know supposedly if we took fire from houses not a warrant going to rush the house or you just pull back and drop it and that didn't exactly happen the firefight had already started with Chris Kwan first wire had already been engaged but we had not yet then we heard from the roof that they saw a guy coming they were running away from where corporal Williams had been killed and running towards us trying to get out of the city advice this is 30 shoot around into a house last couple lines was radio operator for our squad so he was talking to Cathy Brown trying to get an idea of what was going on corporal hunter he was a third squad leader he said they saw where the enemy went to the building that we were talking about was a building it was partially under construction I said okay then what we'll do is in the after facts of the main gun round you'll be able to go ahead and take your squad and secure that building we fired five main gun rounds into that building was dead nobody could survive a tank shooting through this house that many times like three or four times there's nobody that could be alive there's an impossibility so much rubble from the tanks not to the walls down and the bodies were underneath the rubble we found a blood trail from where we had shot one of the guys and the blood trail led onto the yard and we lost it there we were missing one guy one body we couldn't find my body myself and lines went to the left someone from Jackson's team said hey you know pain you know he called it the crapper house you know watch the crapper house every other time except for then I've always been the first man in the door anytime my team has to clear a room because I don't expect him to do anything I'm not willing to do but for some reason lines was just one step ahead of me I immediately knew that rounds were hitting the blinds and there was no way possible that I could have made entry to that room cocaine came running back around screaming that appliance was down he was my prayer buddy I mean him were really close and it just had a baby daughter Ella and we really wanted him to get home to see his daughter they told a the tank platoon commander to run over the wall and knock it over on the enemy that was still inside when the tank backed up he was trying to crawl his way out of the debris to get to a weapon and when he was crawling towards that weapon he was shot again by at least three different people you just hear magazine get beat into him another magazine getting emptied into him and the guy still kicking and screaming underneath the rubble his aunt still moving trying to reach for a weapon later I found out that in the initial house they had found vials of adrenaline and the subtype of a drug that it could have been a crystal meth a PCP cocaine something something who seriously gave these guys a heck of a lot more than a normal human being would function at his body wouldn't go into shock the guy finds blood out stop [Music] those guys don't play around it's hard to take them down when they don't feel pain hey baby girl how you doing daddy I'm making this recording here for you I know your birthday's coming up here you got about 15 16 days or so and I hope that you have fun and you guys have a real big party and everything get a whole bunch of cool presents that he really couldn't send you too much from over here because they ain't really much I can buy around this place so I thought I'd draw you up a little picture of you and take a few pictures and make a little reporter for you to say happy birthday and let you know that daddy loves you very very much he'll be home very soon that about I don't know two and a half three months so you just keep being a good girl and helping mommy out that it be home before you know it I'm going to bed stop recording this because I don't want to know too much more to say it's probably a lot of stuff that you don't wanna hear nothing about but you keep being a good girl or daddy loves you very very much happy birthday okay I hope you enjoy this along with everything else that I'm sitting that squad was tight and they were just as close as you can imagine and I mean it wasn't just the stress of combat forcing them close and everything else I mean they just liked each other and they're all characters absolutely dragon [Music] the haircut [Music] the iron was just silly that kid you know like calling Pigpen because he always looked like you know I just rolled out a mud [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] we sift went as I was always getting people coming up to me and saying check out yours what a sharp kid what was smart guy and he was I mean just kind of exuded it he's the one in grad school just smart as a whip so composed and he was not foul-mouthed like the rest of us he's a classy classy individual dollars Oh penny I'd save right Warnock a baby rate with his goofy Harry Potter looks throughout the whole deployment you know he was my best friend and and Randolph was sleeping above me every night from the beginning he didn't swear he didn't drink it in chili and smoke he read his Bible and we changed him on the first we had a group of six snipers that were attached to 325 they were inserted approximately two o'clock in the morning they made their way to their position we can only assume that they were observed because insurgents ambushed them as they were setting in [Music] already planned at that time though was up was the operation itself operation quick strike the regiment had moved a lot of assets from all around the country into position to conduct operation quick strike unbeknownst to a lot of the Marines on the second we found out that they had found Bosco's body on the other side of the river and now everybody is just out for blood you know but we weren't really happy about the way that we were approaching that mission basically we sat there for a day and waited we weren't sneaky they knew we were coming and we knew they were waiting got up it think of this four o'clock Aaron Reed woke me up popped in a two together and went down the tracks everybody was sleepy [Music] a little bit before we were about to take off major toll and called down to me and told me we were switching the tracks and I just looked at the guys honestly you know catch you on the flipside and that was the last thing I said doing [Applause] we got everybody loaded into the different Amtrak's I was in the first one I had sergeant Hicks and my radio man Lance Corporal Williams and we were off the road with parallel to it we're driving south we were going cross-country in the desert the problem was now we have Iraqis with us and I don't have the lifts in my tracks to put their soldiers on board with us so we have to take their vehicles with us well their vehicles can't go cross country we tried it and after about 15 minutes there their trucks got stuck pretty bad so we're sitting out there in the desert I got battalion screaming at me Regt screaming at them to get inside that town so my XO calls me up and he said hey tanks cleared that room earlier this morning so I said okay I called the tank company commander up good guy you know trust his opinion you know he said sir we proofed that road it's clear for you said a Roger that got an lar unit sitting right at the intersection they see no movement no activity so I make the decision all right you know with the information I got let's go down the road we got on the road and we take a ride into the city of bar 1 and where we were gonna get out and start clearing the town and right after I took that right probably about I don't know 50 75 meters maybe 100 meters there's a massive explosion it was so big that I thought for sure and it hit my Amtrak and I called it in immediately I made an ID had an ID and I looked back and I couldn't tell what the hell happened I mean it's just the most unbelievable sight I was just like I don't know lay alive and then the first thing went in my mind was what squads that we ran over there as soon as we could and that's you know things start to get blurry at that point the vehicle had been blown up and flipped and this is a huge like 30 times vehicle it had been flipped onto its back and everybody had been blown out and every direction the carnage of the scene was was it was bad it's something I'll never forget and the odd things it was just it was it was really bad on the way there that's when I realized what squad it was because I found a pack that had a name name tape on it and it was it was support this I got up on the roof and I was looking back at the accident site and and I saw the guys go out there with blankets to cover up cover up the body parts and yeah that's I went into a room and just started throwing everything around and then I got up on the roof and all I wanted to do was shoot anything that was moving if it wasn't in desert Kami's you know it was going down and I got up there I stayed up there you know just crying [Music] the closest guys that I've ever had as friends are all dead when we came back from that mission everybody still had all their things laying out my rack mate Eric firm Holtz yeah he even had a letter that he forgot to mail before he left and you know I saw that stuff and I saw I saw people's dirty laundry laying out and you know I I just lost it again there's pretty much getting kicked over and over and over and for a while there everywhere would go I would think that I was seeing these guys you know I'd catch a glimpse of someone and say hey that's you know that's Reid [Music] when I first got back I was drinking you know heavily just to go to sleep everything after August 3rd happened so quick and next thing I knew it I'm back home you know I'm signing back up for school and I'm just a regular college kid now and it's weird you know it's weird hopping hopping from getting shot at in the desert to just walk into school I guess I just feel like I'm not really ready to fit back in to society yet yeah right now I need to be with people who have the experience you know all three of us that live in our house or combat vets and you know right now that's what's helping me is having them around having them close actually you had a bite I guess right now I can't settle with just saying hey it's over you know one time I want revenge and I want to be there you know for my friends when they go back Jason he asked me all the time hey are you sure you want to go back are you ready and you know I don't for sure I don't know if I'm if I'm ready to go back but once you're in you know it's a family and and especially with us we're I mean we're exactly like a family and I know for a fact if something happens to my friends over there and I'm sitting back here I just don't think I could live with that [Music] we lost a lot of guys a lot of great guys but it really would have disrespected their sacrifice it didn't go forward or I think that you know in the reserves you're not prepared you're not prepared mentally a lot of times for combat to see death and then even us as a nation as Americans you know we forget that when you go to war the end result will be somebody or several people dying and you know it's the only thing we could do was kick him in the ass and keep pushing them as emissions keep coming you start wondering when is your ticket gonna be open you know we've fought our way through some of those hellacious places in Iraq of maan and it was as if you just wanted to go find whatever HQ is making these decisions and just start smacking people what more do they want what more can we give you know if they want the whole company you know I guess that's what they'll get after me hit so often you start feeling that resentment towards those who are trying to kill you and it doesn't go away every time you put on your flak and Kevlar and start loading up for a mission you start feeling that feeling I told a step back I kept the door open and inside there was two women and a male 16 years old and this kid just looks at me and I brought my weapon up and we the people in the house were bad you know they they were terrorists and I told myself that I wouldn't I thought to myself I'd kill anybody inside that house my team's behind me and pull them out and I'm so close I'm so close to shooting it but I don't it's not right it's not I make me no better than the people were trying to fight over there up to that point I wanted to stay in Iraq and I realized that I needed to I needed to leave I needed to get back home I'm wide [Applause] we are awaiting the arrival of Lima company that is the big reason we are here today [Music] just the Welcome they are just immense there are so many people out there on the road and took us maybe you know I would have to get from the airport turtle site which isn't very far there's so many people one said welcome home [Music] you should have seen the tears of the Marines eyes when they saw the people with manners and flags and there were people out there they didn't agree with the war there were people out there that that had lost family members that didn't appreciate what their marina was lost for but they appreciated the sacrifices of the Marine unit from Columbus Ohio and that said everything to me [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] I feel like killing these girls attention was because well officer kill and that's how I feel but I mean we've if we all came back safe Bobby happened there would have been anything for us you know I'm sure you know they've been proud of us but we would have had a parade would have had this and when I get interviewed so I mean it's it's a mo - I don't appreciate this stuff I mean I just want people know about my friends there's only I can do it so they're great people and they died in the most horrifying way I mean I don't know people don't disrespect us not at all but you know I just want them to remember for what they did to 3rd battalion 25th breeze killed in action 8th May 2005 a new debate Iraq purple Dustin a Durga 1st platoon Lima Company 3rd Battalion 25th Ruiz killed in action 8th May 2005 first I think that I really understood is that being here forever you know yeah at 18 I thought that same way too that I'm invincible and that I'm gonna live forever 10 feet tall and bulletproof Christopher the lion and I walked away seeing men who had when I lived for 24 years 25 years 26 years had already changed the world through the people they had touched and the lives they had touched Dixon first Platoon Lima Company 3rd battalion 25th parades held in action 11 May 2005 in romana Iraq Lance Corporal Michael J support s third Platoon Lima Company 3rd Battalion 25th greens killed in action 3 August 2005 in Bowater Iraq I don't be mad about anything I don't have time to mad about anything I enjoy waking up every morning and I just you know I feel lucky to be alive and I guess is how I put it everything I do now I'm doing for the guys can come back [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] let's go let's go let's go we went through a lot it's over it's the past we won't remember what we did for the new guys to teach them we want to remember our fallen brothers but there comes a time when we need to just put that aside we've got to start training now for the next deployment and I think a lot of that a lot of guys are like you know still filling that yeah they get over if they get over the governance alone someone brings it back up you know they don't want to do that they want to push forward and I guess that that right there would be would be great if everybody could understand that no doubt in my mind I would go back to combat with this unit these guys are Marines and it doesn't matter if it's a reserve unit our active duty all the things that we did know active duty unit could say they accomplished as much as we did [Applause] [Music] at ease thank you [Applause] you

Channel: surjono tedjokusumo

Views: 1,284,666

Rating: 4.7759967 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: CCAvAp5IrNk

Length: 89min 57sec (5397 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 13 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/dmaster3]

Good watch. Tough, but good. War is fucking hell.

[u/derkman96]

Thanks for sharing this. It was very interesting.

[u/Figsak]

I think most ppl skipped this because of it's length, but that's unfortunate, because this is a pretty powerful documentary.