during a severe drought of left fall visit without a home this. and what does it take to be a good soldier. american veterans who discovered the elements of that coming face to face with the brutality of rule that's next on. i'm going to let on this moment found. 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 damn good soldier and to be in combat and to the fan and comity. than i managed that's where you blown. and that's the southerner in me in time of war that's where you belong. thing.

i had left must be. probably due on my junior year because of the anger i had to go it out i needed to get out of necessity probably want to settle and. i came up to you ben arbor michigan to work on the harvest and 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 i believe i believe. i haven't found peace in you me. this is a cotton mill area there were five textile mills for and i want to run for about two months and was looking for a job and finally. one of the old neighborhood greats had been around for years had very i get a job in the cotton mill. i went straight to the army recruiter. and i'm coming.

i mean i'm ready to go. by group and trailer park i grew up in a little small town called apparently in texas that's near galveston i remember sitting on the couch 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 seeing how quick the women and the reply afterward and from the liberated beaches. also great to be an american i had filled the we had lost the ghosts of vietnam i remember sitting there on the cal said i and think unless you want to go into you know to go into the military.

we got married on the thirtieth of december ninety six the fire. show and i left on january third of nineteen sixty six go on a vietnam so i gotta spend more on a moment in vietnam all. we want from bonk out to bin while we're at daycare for what they call red tape here and 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 every not. and after my first briefing i

went back to my bed and i just couldn't sleep i. think i was going to be. happening. somewhere at about three four weeks we had an operation where they had helicopters i was circling waiting to go in this. landing zone to put the combat assault in. and i heard the radio and the power of the one of the red flight said this is red lead were taken and. now i try to relax and i try to forget about it. and it would scan right by this paralyzing kind of fear of knowing that i had to stop and. you have both hands full. is to.

clear. the surroundings. flashes and you know that people are shooting. at you. from that point. i think i realized that it is possible to. get a. bunch of thirty guys in a two and a half ton truck put in. place. and we couldn't find the division. we finally found it in the first thing they said to us when we got there i remember that. there was no. being a replacement which is the most god awful curse you can have on a human being. you're going to come that you don't know anybody and they don't care

about you and they were scared to death you were going to do something stupid and lift your head 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 like a bunch of cowboys shooting the place. we went into the rashid. there was an actual military compounds in a huge military compound we pulled in there was an abrams tank that was parked at one of the entrances. and 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 or anything like that and he said no they they're just down there said and you know chant and yell and i go behind my home beat and tear open an m.r.e. and all sudden i hear a gunshot i step out from behind mom be. as soon as i step out from behind the mom ranger discharging their weapons and the demonstrators so on sling my weapon and i pick the the stock up and. the blood 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 do you 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 the weapons they were wearing traditional. jalap bows 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. you know. how did we know. so when after we arrived. we didn't know that we had built

a basic out. days complex toddles. so we would lose people almost daily by sniper fire or at times of mortar fire. or 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 blood but to me know it's a lie you you can smell it

i remember early on i think it was then 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 bride pajamas and it saw at and we had an hour and in that short period that we were there that everything in black pajamas was in a me so we opened fire on them. we were able to go and physically look at them and they had no weapons and they looked to be teenage children young very young. so you have that doubt in your mind when

one reality hit you you know. what did i killed that i kill innocent kid i was a call of course and that's never answered how. it looked. that experience should be fired if i had to stop. unnerving so i. asked to be transferred to the army. because they never stop a shoot rockets and machine gun which. 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 thanks people move. and seeing. women and children go into a house and being told that this is an enemy location. you have to i. had 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 shooting tape. but i think it it presents a problem for most people if you think about taking a gun and shooting some. most people can't. a soldier has to be trying to do it so. initially it was pretty tough i tried to.

not see or to hope that it didn't hit anybody or you only saw the building explode you didn't see the people. the day i got hit the weather was exactly like yours it was cold it was dead it was foggy was damp it was september in northern france. we left for a gun that morning we were to cross the moselle we were 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 michele in my hand in and suddenly i was flying through the air like

a huge huge sledgehammer to get me thrown me way into the air and i didn't know it has come back to the ground going up and up and up and then suddenly i fell back. put my hand up and i felt the peace of some in my head and then i looked at my hands and they would just scarlet with blood and i looked at my back at my butt and my butt was that you could see the white fat in this huge hole in my but i remember i was lying there and. the medic 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 on hawkeye 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 under see here and they drilled with a drill to start taking all the stuff on 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 he's being treated with to move enormous tenderness and. sometime in made of sticks this way. neighborly general my company was sent 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 the moment we had been out for quite a while on this patrol and hadn't seen anything so we relaxed. all i want some bad kong stepped out of the bushes. and it's thought of him to see us there that startled me and. he was firing and i didn't how my weapon was on the died or my way up. so i managed to get. hang grenades off my belt. cost a couple grenades. now the to put

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

his brains actually fell out as well we were we were moving in. the still i still could. and remember it said in that corridor on i was. a grown man let it is a it sounded hollow. but it was easier to go black in kilmore that's part of what what drove me. was very day and.

least sleep sleep. sleep. sleep sleep. sleep. sleep sleep. sleep. sleep. sleep some people loved i loved all animals. deer moose sail. 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 trained to do. 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'd only last so long and the high comes to a load after wears off it felt to me like everything was just muddy dark waters was like swimming you know in a big well we've referred to in the marine corps as a ship pull and. you find yourself. looking forward to the next. mission or for role.

you get all right it's like oh. i don't know why you do it but it's first kill is. same hard you should think about especially. if you have to kill a close quarters. it up and you know where i killed with. weapon i. might hate but 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 and it turned into something i said. that i hate that i had had growing up in the solve i think had expanded. because of what was happening and 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 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 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 beers 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.

sailors called it the canary due to its high pitched. this may sound. to trying to say. how can we do come to mind when. the sequence of.

events that statement has actually caused the death of a holiday generation of young gay men in america skeptics challenge traditional theories behind aid as thousands of scientists and politicians gather in vienna to discuss how to prevent the spread of the disease. and the week's top headlines here on t.v. russian security services break up a suspected terrorists in the southern republicans. which includes a link to the deadly moscow metro attacks earlier this year. and a radio nuclear scientist who claims he was kidnapped and held by the cia in the u.s. for more than a year returns home the mystery still surrounds the story with american media reporting he was spoiling for washington. and his russian remains in the sweltering grip of a heat wave we report from regions where there is never without ahau.