you're forcing desperate farmers to see the state's state's wards rather. now what does it take to be a good soldier meets american veterans who discovered the answer after coming face to face with the brutality of war that's next on our t.v. . to be a soldier was a very important thing in a young man's life and to be not just a soldier but to be a good soldier and to be in combat and. that's where you belong. and that's the southerner in me in time of war that's where you belong.

the officer said. probably go on my. because. i needed to get out of mischief probably would have. been arbor michigan to work on the harvest and that work i couldn't do i couldn't make money at it so i came back and while i was in jackson i want to live the induction center there and signed up. this is a cotton mill or there were five textile mill sure and i want to for about two months. looking for a job and finally. one of the whole neighborhood around for years said perry i get a job in the cotton mill. i want straight to the army recruiter i'm.

from trailer park i grew up in a little small town called pear land texas near galveston i remember sitting on the calcium and watching. the first gulf war. two hours ago allied air forces began an attack on military targets in iraq in kuwait and watching it on the television and seeing how quick that it went and the hoopla afterwards from liberated to be true to who we are so great to be an american i had felt the we had lost the ghosts of vietnam. i remember sitting there on the couch said knight and thinking to myself you know you want to go into you know you go into the military.

and we got married on the thirtieth of december of ninety six if i. so and i laugh on january third of one thousand six to six going to vietnam so it was why a guy spent mana moment in vietnam of all. we want to try. to been walk where they are for what they call or in taishan period you know to get used to the climate and to actually get used to the sounds of war.

the first couple of weeks i was terrified ever not. and after my first break and i want back to my bed not i just couldn't sleep. all i could think of going to be they're going to shoot me more because the next day nothing happened. and then somewhere after about three or four weeks we had an operation where they had thirty helicopters i was circling waiting on my turn to go in this l.z. or landing zone to put the combat assaulting up. and i heard the radio and the power of the one of the red flight said this is red laid we're taking fire and all i could hear in the background was. and i would try to relax and i try to forget about it and it would just come right by this paralyzing kind of fear of knowing that i had to stop and be shot in. the helicopter pilot you have both hands for show your gut instinct is to try to. hide. but

there's no place to hide you're looking through a clear with plexiglass wonder at the surrounding woodland and you see little flashes and you know that people are shooting to describe they don't hit you. from that point. i think i realized that it is possible that. we were about a bunch of thirty guys in a two and a half to on trucks put in as replacements no real training and we couldn't find the division. we finally found it in the first thing they said to us when we got their armor why did you take so long there was no welcome. being a replacement which is the most god awful curse you can have on

a human being. you're going to comrade you don't know anybody they don't care about you and they were scared to death you were going to do something stupid lifter it at the wrong time fire at the wrong time anything to attract fire that would get them killed. by january two thousand and three. i found myself sitting in the kuwaiti desert waiting to invade iraq. i told myself you know hey we're here to fight a war this is it you know this is so tough and this is what eleven years of training and you know has accumulated to my main goal was making sure that my men came home alive hello to me care about i had to say it but i

didn't really care about anybody that was outside of my platoon. once we crossed into iraq we were roll into these towns been like a bunch of cowboys shooting the place. we went into the rashid. there was an actual military compounds and a huge military compound we pulled in there was an abrams tank that was parked at one of the entrances. i started asking me what was going on because there were some demonstrators down the road and. i asked him if any of them at any weapons and he said no. and so what do you think the.

you know they're going to stage a coup against sister anything like that and he said no they they're just down their set and you know chant and yell and i go behind my home beat and tear open an m.r.e. and all a sudden i hear a gunshot i step out from behind mom b. . as soon as i step out from behind mommy my marines are discharging their weapons and the demonstrators so on sling my weapon and i put the the stock up and. the butt of the rifle stock up on my shoulder and i start firing and i'm hitting i'm hitting the demonstrators no i am. and of course i'm aiming at the head i mean we. center mass but i don't know who called cease fire all i know is it was colic simultaneously and we all just stopped firing. the lieutenant he comes up

to me and he goes what the hell happened. i don't know you tell me sir you're the lieutenant. i said i do know i heard a gunshot that went over our heads and i said did you hear he's heard and i said well who opened fire. i don't know. where when we did the reconnaissance and as we're driving by. as we're driving by the bodies i'm looking down at the at the ground and not seeing any any weapons they were wearing traditional. jalapenos and. course they were soaked in red blood. now i thought to myself for a split second i said. you know these people didn't have any weapons we just shot at a bunch of the norm. protestors. and

then a little voice and then your head goes off in the service well that's war. that's what happens in war. i just. chalked it up. i really did i chalked it up to you know. how did we know. so on after we arrived. we didn't know that we had built

a base scout above these complex of toggles. so would lose people almost daily by sniper fire or at times of mortar fire. our felt that we had everything going against us where there was just the viet cong. creatures of nature itself the snakes. their spiders. i don't know it's a different smile. it's basically you win battle i know i've heard many people say you can't smell bull but to me that's a lie you you can smell it

i remember early on i think it was an april. sixth the sixth we were out in noble woods and. it was people in a rice feel that we didn't know what they were the ad on the bike pajamas and it saw a hat. and we had our and and that sharpie or it that we were they added everything in black pajamas was the enemy so we opened fire on them. we were able to go and physically located at them and they had no weapons and they looked to be. teenage children. very are. so you have that doubt in your my one

while reality hit you you know. what did i did i kill innocent kids i was a call that base of course and that's never answered how. it looked. that experience of being fired while i had to stop. the rise unnerving so i. asked to be transferred to the armed helicopters because they never stopped they shoot rockets and machine guns. i don't think i really thought about what your job was. but. at some point. you come upon a situation where you see people that you have to. and you have

a machine we call it because it looks like a conscious brain. seeing people move. and seeing. women and children go into a house and being told that this is an enemy location. you. have to aim. at this building and you have to far be the rockets from machine guns and if you're far enough away it's still not quite like shoot people. but i think it presents a problem for most people if you think about taking a gun. and shooting since. most people can't. a soldier has to be trying to do it. initially it was pretty tough.

to hope that it didn't hit anybody or you only saw the building explode you didn't see the table. the day i got hit the weather was exactly like this it was. it was it was foggy was damp it was september in northern france. for done that morning we were to cross the moselle on one side of the river and you were being destroyed by artillery shells coming the other way. i was digging a hole. in the dirt because we knew we were going to be attacked by artillery and i was had my shovel in my hand and inside me i was flying through the air like

a huge huge sledgehammer that hit me and thrown me way into the air and i didn't know it has come back to the ground. and suddenly i fell back to. put my hand up and i felt a piece of some in my head and then i looked at my hands and they were just scarlet with blood and i looked at my back at my butt and my butt was. if you could see the white fat in this huge hole in my butt i remember i was lying there and. the many came over and he tried to fix me up and he was leaning over me and i watched the tip of his nose disappear a piece of shrapnel cut off the tip of his nose and then the blood from his nose merged with my nose and the next thing i knew i was in

a stretcher i still don't honk yet because i was still paralyzed on my right side and then i had the operation on my head and what i still remember i gritted my teeth is he i didn't have any honesty here and they drilled with a drill to start taking all the stuff out and i can still remember it felt like i had put my head on a railroad track and the train had run on. what i remember is being treated with the most enormous tenderness and. sometime in may of six this way. a burly general my company was flat out.

we were like can a pig where we were to be hit and the cop unaids were converging and wiping the enemy out. there was a bright night you could. see long distances by them all we had been out for quite a while on this patrol and hadn't seen anything. we relaxed. all i want some bad kong stepped out of the bushes. and it's dog over him to see australia and that startled me and. he was firing and i didn't how my weapon was but on the die i'd blow him away ok draw. so i managed to get. hagrid aids off my belt. cost a couple grenades. dealt with it but our guy. then we could

see as far as we could see there would be a call that was coming up to our parameter. and we called in for and are ready to fire and couldn't get it we called in for permission to return we couldn't get in because my comment was getting over wrong. so welcome on the tollers you just try to find a place and spend the night there. we told the marshy and he was on the one that was kill and one on a bomb crater and we sat there on night. eventually the mechanized unit came in and we load it democracy on.

his brains actually fell out as well we were we were moving in. the still a still good bit surreal and remember it said in that corridor on i with. aggro on them that it is a it sounded hollow. but it was easier to go back and kill more that's part of what what drove me. was very day and.

sleep. sleep. sleep. sleep. sleep sleep. sleep sleep. sleep some people i loved on animals. deer move for sale or whatever whatever suits their fancy. but i can also tell you that there is no other feeling in the world that comes close to hunting another human being. that's what you're trying to do. and the drawback to it is the fact that you want to do it again. because you enjoy it.

it's almost like a drug and you become addicted to it but after a while like with any like with any addiction. you know series you're fired and you get that first burst of enjoyment. they don't last so long and the high comes to a load after wears off it felt to me like everything was muddy and dark waters was like swimming you know in a big well we've referred to in the marine corps as a shit hole and. you find yourself. looking forward to the next. mission or for combat role.

you get all right it's like oh. i don't know why you joy but it first kill is the same heart you should think about especially. if you have to kill that close quarters. it up and know where it killed with. a weapon i. might hate what it would build in our forty's people and i wanted to kill. i felt good at the time when i when i did it bother me if i. didn't

get a chance to kill someone it went beyond a certain a call of duty it turned into something i said. that i hate that i had had growing up in the solve i think it had expanded. because of what was happening in vietnam because so knows and people. i feel i've become an animal i. feel no remorse. i literally saw young men turn into psychopathic killers. but the great thing about the marine corps is the training process that the young men and

women go through gives them all the ability to kill at least one time to put that their warrior ethos in effect and then once you've done it then it's on you. so many things happen in a war that put you at all odds with your sense of right and wrong. i've seen things that would be described as is war crimes. the sergeant who had the ring of ears who. is not a secret i mean he's walking around with a big wiring with human ears pushed through the low been there all hanging on the ring these are people he has cut off their ears to try to get information.

shooting civilians. you don't really call it it's not like you're shooting a scene. it's like. collateral damage.

with the latest headlines on the week's a top stories in to dowse little threats members of two terrorist cells have been arrested on suspicion of plotting its hands on russia says he's both groups are believed to have links with global terrorism. so clings to to six or three decades at twenty five million deaths and dave the sixteen million infections . that the international aids conference would stop today. kidnap the confusion that the u.s. media claims that on a rainy and scientists who says he was abducted by american secret services was like. drying up record high temperatures and rupture of causing widespread crop.