this are hearing 11 fatalities at this stage. much more coming up on bbc news. in 2007 the bbc film a group of us soldiers in baghdad and is now a decade after they returned from iraq, our world tracks them down to find them still struggling to adjust to life back home. the programme contains some graphic images of war you may find upsetting. in 2007, an intense struggle was taking place in one of the most violent areas of iraq. the us army was fully engaged. as a bbc correspondent and cameraman, we watched them fight their lives. i was positive i wasn't coming home. i knew it, just because we were losing guys left and right. the sergeantjust stopped bleeding. there wasn't anything left in there to bleed outwith. he was gone.

now more than a decade later, we wanted to look at the effect of the iraq war on those who we met. it was like out of nowhere. i could barely hold on, i had to run into the woodland, just crying. what is wrong with me? coming home was odd. there is a switch you are supposed to be able to, you can't shut it off. the sleep was bad, and it was like, man, the slightest noise i would wake up, and it was constantly like that. i am mark urban, and this is a story about how war changes people. why they go, how it binds them, and how life afterwards is never quite the same. the men of second platoon gator company 212 infantry came from the heartlands. places like oklahoma, texas and pennsylvania.

we have tracked them down, a plainspoken sample of the nearly 4 million americans who served in iraq and afghanistan. a distinct cohort of society that now lives with the consequences of what was called "the war on terror". i had a little bit of the post—9/ii fever, a little bit of bitterness, hostility towards the people who carried out the attack. i think ijust wanted a little bit of adventure. and i got it. it is kind of one of those things that had been tugging at me ever since i was a kid anyway. and then i kind ofjust had that opportunity. i said i wanted to do the stuff they did on the recruiting videos. he said, that'd be infantry, and i said yeah, why not. this is coming up on post, gator. and their imagined war collided with reality in a place called dora. shouting.

in 2007, the islamic state in its first incarnation was trying to seize this southern suburb of baghdad. the americans opposed them by putting an outpost right in the middle of dora market. as the insurgents did everything they could to dislodge the americans, cameraman mark macauley and i embedded with them and witnessed the fighting. time to rock ‘n' roll. you coming out? ieds in the streets. a couple of small firefights. machine—gun fire from elevated positions. getting shot at while in the truck. sniperfire. i got hit by an ied. we have rpgs, rockets coming in. we found in the second platoon a group of men who are open and philosophical about the business at hand.

when you see your generals, you think they have a grasp of what is going on down here? they are able to project what they want to. you know? they want it to look stable so they walk around and project stability. i am sure they are well aware of the situation. team one, first order of movement. dorian perez was the first sergeant, a father figure to the platoon, he was indelibly marked by its experience. so i am dealing with these depressions, i'm dealing with sometimes i am really happy, on top of life, everyone sees this big smiley guy running around, having a great time. and then sometimes in the middle of the night, i wake up at 2am and, so... what now? no sleep, no rest, you do that for periods of time, up to a month maybe. that dinged off my helmet yesterday. i love this, i am going to make

a necklace out of it. it's gonna be right here. it will be my good luck charm. nick mazzarella, then 20 years old, survived several bomb strikes. now back in florida, he is working in a hospital. we had an objective and i feel like we accomplished our objective, but i am always going to be bitter about the lives that we sacrificed to accomplish that goal. there's always a hook in the vice, no matter what. that's your kind of fly fishing voodoo? yeah, it is like voodoo. straight up voodoo. so that way i have to come back and tie it, that is my thing. cody edmondson was already a graduate and a father when he went to dora. we got hit with everything you can think of. we got rpgs, rpks, more rounds, it was nuts. it was all like ten minutes, i was like, my eyes, i was like, "oh, this is going to be a bad year. we have a truck blow up a few weeks ago, and two of my friends

got killed. that was a big explosion, that was a real bad one. this was benjamin jones' first operational tour. he was 2a when we first talked, and he is now 35. soldiers and marines have to be trained to go through a firefight and make the right moves and the right decisions without totally losing it. but they can't make it so that you can necessarily properly deal with it later on, after you have had time to internalise it. nick mazzarella left the army eight years ago, returning to fort myers florida and the support of his family. his kids are at school there, and a key part of what keeps him grounded. 91. nice, that is an a. 90 or above is an a. tell me about your day buddy. you know i don't like burgers, so i had fish. but he feels it is too early

to tell them what he did in iraq. he has been dealing with the psychological scars of that tour ever since his platoon got back from dora. i had quite a few nights of drinking a lot to try to numb the pain, and as my wife will tell you, she had to sit there and listen to me bawling my eyes out, pretty much blackout drunk, talking about the guys i lost and all the pain i was going through. nick mazzarella has his own way of unwinding, keeping the memories in check. even though i hated it when i was in the army, i have a rucksack in my garage and i like to strap it on and walk over the bridge, or walk

around the park for hours, miles and miles, with a little bit of music in my ears, that is really therapeutic. benjamin jones returned to pennsylvania, a few miles from where he grew up. like nick, he took advantage of educational opportunities after the army, and that helped him get a job with the police. but a decade ago, like most of the married men in the platoon, he found his relationship in a downward spiral. i don't know if it was because i had changed or she had changed or we both did. but we weren't the people we had been. and itjust didn't work any more. it was a long road home

for cody edmondson, back to his roots in oklahoma. he works in construction, like he did before the army, putting life back together after his first marriage and his ambition to be an army pilot collapsed. but even getting back from dora years ago, he knew things were wrong. so they've set up an all—new routine, and you're kind of like, oh, your kid doesn't recognise you for the first two weeks or whatever, so it is a difficult position to be in. but the marriages didn't fare well. after the army, dorian perez studied agriculture. he has been working with farmers, encouraging better practices in north carolina. he was married at the time of dora, but he is single now.

i came back, i assumed everything was the way it was when i left, and actually she realised that she no longer had those feelings for me. i remember that put me into a bad spot, but i didn't get hateful or anything. for dorian and the others, troubled relationships heralded further battles — struggles of the mind that loomed just around the corner. dorian has gone to the vietnam war memorial in washington. his father is a veteran of that war and perhaps it was his example that led dorian into combat. but people who have experienced battle know that it can leave a bitter legacy in the mind — post—traumatic stress disorder. my original position was ptsd is full of shit, it's not real, this is something people are using to try to get some money from the va.

i went out walking with a unit because i was part of a training command, and someone throws a flashbang, because that is how you demonstrate an ied in a training environment. and just out of nowhere, i was like, i could barely hold on, i had to run into the woodland, i'm crying. what the hell's wrong with me? what's up, brother? how you doing man? it is nearly ten years since ben and dorian met. but the former first sergeant has travelled up to pennsylvania to put that right. this is great because i have a long distance, and for close quarters i have a 45 degree offset. both of them have suffered from their experience of violence. but both of them find in firearms comfort, and a hedge against the anxiety that iraq has left them with. i get out of the army

and i have my pistol, my a5. and i guess that was my comfort, you know? it's like — you get so used to sleeping with your weapon within arm's reach, you know? my pistol started off at my nightstand. and i don't know how, but i ended up sleeping with it under my pillow. my hypervigilance went up as time progressed. i wanted it closer and closer. this is not like a pistol with a cold chamber, it is locked and loaded, ready for someone to come to the door. for nick, this bar has become a place to switch off after work at a nearby mental health clinic. but like many an old soldier, he has not found his relationship with alcohol easy. his mother told me she's worried about his tendency to isolate himself and drink. she can tell that i have ptsd and heavy drinking don't help that. it is pretty detrimental.

but she is a really great mom and she reaches out to me all the time just to ask how i am doing and if there is anything she can do, and just to remind me that she loves me, and that's one of the key components of me functioning very well right now. nick's ambition is to become a psychiatric nurse dealing specifically with veterans. he's all too aware of the burden they all share. all of us came home with life changing injuries, you know? i mean, we all — we all got banged up and tossed around to the point that we're not the same anymore. for many, there are recurring dreams and agonised thoughts about what they might have done differently. for nick, those thoughts often dwell on a lost comrade, and thoughts it could have been him. it kind of stings a little bit because could have been me.

it was him. one of the biggest things that i struggled with is survivor's guilt, feeling like he died and i should have done more to stop it. if i had, you know, gone this way instead of that way, if i had done this or that — that kind of stuff runs through my head on a daily basis. this is staff sergeant jarred fontenot — glympsed during ourfirst embed, he was not there for the second. he was shot in october 2007. some of the guys grabbed fontenot and dragged him into our humvee, cut off his vest and tried to stop the bleeding. i was trying to cpr and keep him alive but he was totally unresponsive. they got him to hospital,

but too late. the adrenaline wore off and the emotions came flooding in. we sat down and had a smoke. some guys came up to wash the blood out of the humvee and — and that was that. he was gone. while they had been trying to save fontenot, an apache helicopter arrived to take out the sniper who shot him. seeing one man pass a rifle to another over a wall, they engaged a car with three people in it. i have watched that a billion times.

should it make me feel good? i don't know. i don't know if that's right or not. but it does. it at least lets me know that the guy that pulled the trigger and his getaway driver were not going to do that to another soldier or marine or civilian. the effects of ptsd are now blamed for a national epidemic in veteran suicide. in the year after dora, none of the second platoon took their own lives. but following their next tour in afghanistan, one soldier did. so nearly 4,500 american troops were killed in action in iraq. but between 2005 and the end of this year, the figure of veterans lost to suicide will reach 100,000. those are people who served

in various conflicts, but what's startling is the number — 22 a day. so the thought, of course, should ijust die, you know? i am sure, i don't know, i'm going to say that crosses everybody‘s mind. maybe that's not true. it's crossed my mind. do i really need to still be here, type of thing. but i have never been that point where i consider myself at risk. seven months later, we were embedded again with the second platoon to see what had changed. we are pushing into dora, which is a district in the south of baghdad. we witnessed a remarkable transformation. they put up walls to shut out sectarian death squads, and a local militia, many former insurgents, were recruited to help keep the peace. it's like before, we go in, and it is like,

oh, that's the americans here. now it is like hey, the americans are here, how you going? it was an extraodinary change. but for the a0 men deployed with britain, three had been killed, and more than a dozen wounded. it was hard won and these soldiers were not sure it had been worth it. no. not even close. it wasn't worth a single one of them. i know that the soldiers that we lost out here died for a reason. i'm not exactly sure what that reason was. today, that issue still resonates. i remember nick saying in the old videos, i wouldn't one of his guys for any of those people. and part of me feels that way, yes, for sure. but we also sign the dotted line and said we would do what was needed.

so for me, partially, part of that was, yes, ok, that is what i signed up for. if i said it wasn't worth it, then i feel like i would be saying that all my friends died in vain. and i can't get myself to that point. i think at least for a few years what we did in the dora district made it so that people who would live a shit life would be able to look back and say, i remember there were good times. maybe that made it worth it for something. you know, in those ten years, we have had maliki, we've had isil, the defacing of all those ancient artefacts. we'll never get those back. and that is because of a pocket that policy created. so now, ten years later, i don't know if it's worth it any more. i hope that we've learned our lesson when it comes to trying to fix other countries and not focusing as much on our own.

i feel like we look outward a little too much, if you like. there is a lot to do here on the home front. it is interesting talking to the soldiers about where they have emerged politically as a result of their life experience and their service. a couple of them feel really there is nobody now who represents them politically in the american setup. one of them is a keen trump supporter. but the thing that unites all of them is a strong feeling that america should no longer be the world's policeman, and should be focusing on problems at home. in oklahoma, cody has his own release in hobbies, most of all deer hunting with his brother. he makes his own bullets and built this rifle.

he has remarried and believes that's turned his life around. i met my new wife, miranda. she really got me, she understood me. she totally, she said hey look, man, you need to get your act together, let's do this. so she did. she kind of kicked my butt into gear and i started working again, successfully. dorian, on his own, still craving adventure and a challenge, is moving to alaska to work with farmers there. why alaska? it's the last frontier. a degree of it is internal peace. i do — ifind comfort, sometimes being around people, mostly when i am out in these places where i have experienced what i feel is the presence of god. places like standing on top of a mountain at sunrise. # eidelweiss, eidelweiss...#

in pennsylvania, benjamin jones, meanwhile, is remarried, has a newjob at the police, and is raising his kids, one of whom he has named gibson, a reminder of william gibson, who was killed in dora. everyone says oh, he was named after the guitar. i say no, he's not named after the guitar, he's named after one of my friends who died in iraq. i feel if we forget, if we forget our fallen brothers, that we are invalidating them. because if we don't remember them, and if we don't tell their stories, and talk about what kind of men they were, who is going to remember them? and if they are not remembered, was what they did, was the sacrifice that they made, even worthwhile? there are countless reminders

of the ways in which the second platoon is still fighting. and their experience now marks the next generation as well as their own. after a mild first half of autumn, the weather has been turning more wintry. over the next few days, we will keep a cold theme but not as cold as it was on saturday and we will see a mixture of sunshine and showers around. sunday, the winds will be coming in from

north—easterly direction. there will be fewer showers around then we had during the day on saturday and we may well start with some icy problems across scotland and eastern england where we had showers and freezing ground overnight. the chilly start a sunday morning, showers on the east coast of scotla nd showers on the east coast of scotland and england, also the south—east corner and the channel isles but for the bulk of the country, relatively dry. still a brisk north—easterly wind. temperatures, a degree of two less cold than on saturday. aides to ii degrees, feeling cooler way you are stuck in the breeze. it will feel closer to four or 5 degrees on sunday afternoon. as we move through sunday afternoon. as we move through sunday evening and overnight into monday, most of the showers and east will ease away, heading back towards the coast. with clear skies, it will bea the coast. with clear skies, it will be a cold start the day on monday but lots of sunshine, two foot.

mostly dry, one or two rogue showers in the east and across scotland they may be snow across the mountains but rain at lower levels. most places staying dry. as we look through monday night into tuesday, noticed this the area of low pressure across central europe, that will bring snow across the alps, rain across parts of france and moving towards is our visitor the uk. tuesday, we see the rain affecting south—east in men and east anglia two. planning over from the east, temperatures below what we would expect this time of year. towards a miller the week, tuesday night into wednesday, low pressure will move up the north sea sarah to be cool conditions through the course of wednesday. the change in wind direction means a more southerly influence to the weather meaning things will turn less cold through the middle portion of the week. still on wednesday, chilly

conditions to start off with but things will turn milder. 13 degrees also in london. colder in the north and thursday still holding onto the colder conditions across western scotland, northern ireland two. further east across the uk, more cloud and outbreaks of rain working their way northwards. temperatures still below average. later next week let's look at the jet it is undulating, north and then going south. that will dry in low pressure systems from the elan tick. it means a mild spell of weather. what we will see is low pressure driving in on the undulating jet stream from the atlantic. by the time we get to next weekend, things won't be as cold as they have been. goodbye for

110w. this is bbc news. i'm martine croxall. the headlines at 10pm... the helicopter belonging to leicester city's owner crashes outside the club's stadium — it's not known if he was on board at the time. 11 people have been killed and six injured in a shooting at a synagogue in the us city of pittsburgh. former england footballer and manager glenn hoddle is taken to hospital afterfalling ill. and at 10:30pm and again at 11:30pm we'll be taking an in—depth look at the papers with our reviewers susie boniface from the daily mirror and the broadcaster penny smith.