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( gunshots ) ( shouting ) they call themselves the "bad voodoo platoon"... >> bad voodoo! >> narrator: ...and they're being sent back to iraq to be part of the surge. >> a lot of these new guys don't know what they're getting into. >> voodoo seven, this is three, over. >> narrator: they will discover that the war has changed... ( sirens blaring ) ( shouting ) >> where you start kicking in doors, taking the fight to the enemy. >> narrator: ...and they must fight new frustrations... >> just got hit by an ied... >> what a way to get blown up, and not allowed to fight back. >> narrator: ...battle through their fatigue... >> tonight is going to be a heavy night. >> we're just running ourselves into the ground. >> dear heavenly father... >> narrator: ...and conquer their fears. >> lord, we come to you to watch over us and all these convoys. >> narrator: tonight... ( explosion ) >> oh, no! >> an ied! >> narrator: ...the inside story... >> slow down. slow down! >> narrator: ...of bad voodoo's war. >> we had an ied det.

( gunshots ) >> whoo! >> yeah! ( laughter ) >> scranton: this is the u.s. military's joint forces training center, camp shelby, in hattiesburg, mississippi. i came here to meet a platoon of national guard soldiers... >> voodoo! >> scranton: ...who were getting

ready to be deployed to iraq. >> three, jab one, right? power-cross two. three is going to be a hook. >> scranton: the first person i met was the acting platoon leader, sergeant toby nunn. >> and then sprawl, you get down, and then you get back up. the whole time, you run in place. the platoon sergeant is the father figure. i'm responsible for the care and welfare of, you know, the 30 guys underneath me. >> one, two, sprawl! one, two! >> scranton: it's may, 2007. >> one. one. one, two. >> scranton: in just a few weeks, sergeant nunn must have the 30 men in his platoon ready for combat. >> one, two, sprawl! >> scranton: they'll be going in at the peak of the surge. >> one, two. sprawl! this is going to be my third real combat deployment, my ninth overall deployment. get them up! but i never thought of myself as a warrior, just a kid from the bush up in canada. i grew up in a large logging

center. i'm a little guy. i wanted to do something with my mind more than with my hands. so, i came to the united states hoping to get a little break on college. and somewhere along the way, i realized that paying for college by yourself is expensive! so, i joined the army, started off as a young private and joined the infantry. kosovo kicked off. i got a sent to the balkans-- the right place to learn about what humanity really has to hold, both good and evil. and then i joined the strykers. that's where i went to operation iraqi freedom i and ii with the tomahawks. then i came to california, and shortly thereafter, i got a letter in the mail. going back. >> scranton: toby's platoon calls itself the bad voodoo platoon... >> bad voodoo!

>> scranton: ...and they are not typical national guard soldiers. >> hoo-ah, hoo-ah, hoo-ah! >> scranton: almost all of the men are prior active duty. ( gunshots ) they're not weekend warriors. >> what they are looking for is distance and direction, all right, so yell out the three d's. i'll yell them back to you. mainly, just shoot [no audio]. >> i'm going to [no audio] some [no audio] up, sergeant. >> alright. we got to watch our cussing. how about, "we are going to decisively engage and destroy enemy targets and combatants?" >> that sounds like a plan. >> scranton: most are highly trained infantrymen... >> we're going to decisively engage enemy targets and combatives. >> scranton: ...and many have already served multiple tours to iraq. >> specialist shaw found out that some of us had been selected to go. he wasn't. and he called me up and was like, "hey, sergeant, you know, do you think i could come along?" >> i'm going to show you how it's done. >> he explained that some of these guys are his friends.

he's like, "they're my brothers. i want to go." >> ba-ba-za! >> ba-ba-za... >> scranton: so jason shaw volunteered to go back to iraq. >> enemy, 9:00, 100 meters! >> enemy, 9:00, 100 meters! ( gunshots ) >> nice! >> good stuff. >> this is my third tour to iraq. in 2003, we did the initial push into iraq from kuwait all the way up into baghdad. we stayed there for a while. we called it "hotel hell." ( laughs ) 2005, we went back, did personal security detachment in baji, balad, tikrit and samarra. five cities. ( gunshots ) >> good shot! >> there's been a lot that's happened, a lot to deal with. ( gunfire ) it makes you not care about anything. you're dead, son! you're dead, son! i did counseling at the va. i saw a psychiatrist and a psychologist. they said i had ptsd. which, obviously, a lot of people have.

i'm the best gunner there is, son. a lot of these new guys who've never been over there before don't know what they're getting into. so i figure if i've been there one, two, three times before, you know, there's something i can do for the good of the cause, so i'd like to go back again and maybe do one more tour. this is it... ( laughs ) so... hey, make sure when you get that first trace on target, you're shooting a little low. >> all right. >> sergeant nunn's the smartest guy i know. >> you feeling this, hamlin? ( gunshots ) >> i feel really safe going with him, more than anybody i've ever been with or wanted to go with. ( gunshots ) >> there you go. there you go. stop shooting the lift and start hitting the targets! >> he gets things done the way they need to be done. >> enemy truck in the open! >> ( laughing ) he's bad voodoo, you know? you can't really mess with voodoo, so... >> i got a nickname back in the balkans through an event where a

muslim and a christian were arguing, and they felt like i might not be neutral. and i told them i didn't care either way what religion they were. it had nothing to do with mine. i told them i was voodoo. >> yeah. >> so, since then, this nickname has kind of followed me. and when the guys were voting on what they wanted to name the platoon, someone nominated "bad voodoo." it was real nice that they chose that, and real flattering for me. but they really are. they live up to it. >> it's kind of hard not to care about these guys. it's actually a good movie. i got this wonderful family of 32 guys. >> come on, honey. let's go. get to the safety briefing. >> get to the safety briefing... >> i'm excited to be part of their experience.

but i'm also a little disappointed that it's coming at the expense of my own family. >> get in there, jeffrey. >> oh, ho. >> oh. >> scranton: toby's family back in california was growing just as he was being sent to iraq. his wife, reagan, was four months pregnant. >> what's in there? >> baby. >> and there's a lot of excitement with that. you know, i feel like i'm being negligent in my duties. last time i came back, my son, he asked me not to go anymore. >> how's that? >> not bad, you got up there pretty quick. he told me, "i'm right here. focus. we got stuff to do." so i was like, "right, you are my focus, and i will stay right here." and then i made a liar out of myself. when my son was just a baby, i got a tickle me elmo.

this is how i rolled last time. ( laughter ) >> that's great! >> that is my little piece of home. that little elmo's been in more countries than the majority of the guys in the platoon can spell. ( laughter ) >> i am an american soldier. >> i am an american soldier! >> i am a warrior and a member of a team. >> i am a warrior and a member of a team! >> scranton: training was over, and the men were headed to iraq. >> i stand ready to deploy. >> i stand ready to deploy! >> scranton: they asked me if we could work together to capture their experiences. >> the enemies of the united states of america. >> the enemies of the united states of america... >> you should record that. >> oh. >> you're not recording. >> scranton: as i did on an earlier film, i set up a virtual embed... >> so, you can mount it on the dashboard... >> okay... >> ...to the side, i mean, you can mount this thing anywhere. >> scranton: ...which involves giving cameras to the soldiers... it's up to you to tell me what's

working for you. ...and establishing a close, two-way working relationship while they're in iraq. >> cam control, manual. night shot, on. >> scranton: yeah, there we go. see? the green night shot... the soldiers would be the storytellers, not just subjects. >> then you can just do a quick little... >> i told them we would tell the story of their war through their eyes, wherever it took them. >> there it is, the silver and white bird of destiny. >> tell me about your going away at the first time on block leave. block leave, by the way, is when you get to go home before you go overseas. you get to spend nine days at home. so, did veronica come down and spend time with you? >> yes, she did. i saw her at the airport. she almost knocked me out by jumping on me. it was the happiest day of my life. and leaving, i cried. i cried. it was very sad. >> hey, you didn't cry yesterday too much. >> i actually did. >> oh, you did? >> i left and went in beside the

building as y'all went outside. >> are you serious? is that why you went outside? >> yeah, dude. i was upset. it's hard. it's the hardest deployment i've ever had to do. >> not really looking forward to this. just don't want to do it again, man. you wonder how many times luck's going to be on your side. >> cool. >> yeah. >> it's an awesome responsibility that i'm being charged with. i've got 30 guys. the smallest thing that ever happens, you know, is going to be hard.

>> scranton: by mid-summer, tapes from iraq were streaming in. toby and his guys were a couple of weeks into their tour... >> that's the north end of tikrit right there. >> scranton: ...and they had their cameras up and running. >> saddam hussein's hometown. believe it or not, this is farmland. ( laughs ) not quite the irrigated, green pastures of america, but still pretty good. an iraqi checkpoint compound. there's my dash cam, which is filming me inside the cab.

there's my pov cam filming the road in front of me. >> scranton: the bad voodoo platoon was spending a lot of time on these roads. the army had based them at camp virginia, in kuwait, just south of iraq, and assigned them a primary mission of convoy security. >> the mission of our platoon is to secure military and non- military elements to go into iraq. we pick them up in kuwait, and we escort them to their destination within the theater of iraq. all right, so here we are getting ready to cross the border. leaving the wire. wherever that equipment- personnel need to go, that's where we take it. today, we are taking a convoy of tankers. the surge has brought so many

forces and so much equipment back into the theater. >> voodoo seven, this is three, over. >> it takes a lot to get it to where it needs to be. >> roger, on out. looks like there's a southbound convoy coming down, over. >> scranton: the convoy missions that bad voodoo leads take them all over iraq, all the way from kuwait up towards the turkish border. they can be on the road for weeks at a time. >> go ahead and pick up convoy speed to four, five, copy. >> scranton: for combat infantrymen like these, being stuck in vehicles was frustrating. >> a lot of our guys don't like this mission. i'm one of them. we're used to having our boots on the ground, kicking in doors, taking the fight to the enemy, as opposed to having the fight brought to us and just kind of dealing with it. he's got [no audio] nothing but push them off the road.

push them off the road! get off the [no audio] road! the guys have been joking, you know, "this is not convoy security; it's convoy survival." ( sirens blaring ) it's hotter than before. >> get on the hard ball. get on the hard ball. slow down. slow down. slow down. >> we're taking on a lot more action. we're being attacked more. [no audio], dude! the focus of the enemy is to shut down some of these logistical lines. >> oh, [no audio]! it's blowing, it's blowing. okay, meier, force people back. force people back. >> it doesn't take much to slow us down. we're very limited by our avenues of movement. the government that is within, you know, iraq itself, has been able to dictate things to us, that we don't have the freedom of movement that we had before when, you know, we were calling the shots. >> scranton: among the iraqis the bad voodoo soldiers must work with are the police and highway patrol.

the roads that they travel every day are strewn with checkpoints manned by iraqis. ( laughter ) toby and his men count on these iraqis to help keep them safe. >> we're from bravo company, 160th. we're a small element that represents a large element, and, you know, we're here to have this dialogue so that, you know, we can better the relationship. >> i told myself last time, i wanted to train the iraqis the best i possibly could because it was my ticket home. that we could turn this over to them and that we could allow them to do it. it is important that, you know, we have a better relationship. but here i am, three years later, saying, "will the iraqi security forces enforce anything out there?" when you have an ied and you're trying to cordon it off to block... every time i talk to these guys, you know, my trust meter isn't

reading in the green all the time. you know, you go through these checkpoints; how many of these guys are counting the vehicles, taking notations of, you know, how we're doing things? it's not that i think you're the enemy. i think you just might have some unsavory elements within you. it's a different military climate. we're rolling around in armored

vehicles, waiting to get blown up and not allowed to fight back. we're here to do a job, and we just want to do it. and when we're getting blown up and they're not doing anything about it, it kind of asses us up. >> scranton: the tapes take about a week to get from iraq to our office here in new hampshire. "so, where on the outskirts of baghdad were you hit?" with im and phone calls, though, i'm typically aware of what's happening to them as it unfolds over there. >> what's something that's, you know, weighing on you...? >> scranton: we're always talking about what's going on, and how they can capture it on tape. >> what about being on the road all the time? like, our non-stop missions? >> scranton: not just what's

happening in the field, but what they are thinking and feeling. >> this mission is by far a lot different than any other one i've had, in different ways. it's not combat anymore. it's, like, i want to say a game. 2003 was totally different. >> we just received some of these pictures. this shows the height of the combat... >> 2003 was all-out. you saw on the news, just combat. >> ...again, we have some fresh pictures of the fighting for the baghdad airport... >> scranton: during the invasion of iraq, jason shaw was part of the battle for the baghdad airport. >> the hangers that they had to take one by one. >> our bradley got hit by a tank over there. >> ...but it is clear this is about as much activity as we have seen... >> so, we pulled out the javelin gunners, and we started getting shot at by the tanks from both sides of the overpass. ( explosions )

and we blew up all thr before he died, and got to see her once. and now i'm uncle jason, so i moved to california just to pretty much help out and try to get everything back together. so, i don't want to have to go through that again, though. it's really hard to deal with, so... it's not going to happen this time. i won't let it happen this time. when i lost all of my buddies, i just kind of lost hope.

i used to be kind of religious. my last deployment totally made me think otherwise. you know, you pray all the time i don't know. i really think it's pointless,w in my mind. so it's kind of sad, but it's everybody else noticed a big change in my personality. i have a really bad temper with things. i get angry very, very easily. just hoping that when i come back from this deployment, i don't do that to my girlfriend or friends or anything like that. but going out every single day gets really stressful. you could have five missions or so, six, nothing happen. go a month without anything happening.

and all of sudden... ( sirens blaring ) hey, get in the truck! get in the truck! ( sirens blaring ) >> just got hit by an ied. >> where they at? where they at? we were on a regular mission. came over the radio, "ied, ied!" looked over in front of us, a huge cloud of smoke. right there. [no audio] hurry up! just a fire covering the road. there's where it was right there. go through it. first thing i thought is, "nobody made it out of that." i thought for sure everybody was burning up. i thought it was the vehicle. go right, go right. trunk flew off. but as we got closer, we noticed it was just the trunk. ( distant siren blaring ) blew off the whole back end of his trunk. thank god everybody's all right. >> look at this [no audio]. >> goddamn [no audio]. >> blew straight through the [no audio] back. not a scratch on one of these

joes. >> [no audio]! >> these guys are [no audio] lucky. >> scranton: with one of their vehicles disabled, the soldiers are under orders to sit and wait for kbr-- kellogg, brown, and root, a private contracting firm-- to arrive and recover them. >> right now, we're waiting for kbr pick-up. it's a nice, hot day. it's about 130 right now. it's hot as heck. it's a sit-and-wait game now. >> we've been here now eight- and-a-half hours. kbr has still not shown up, so we took it on our own selves to get ourselves out of here after eight and a half hours of standing out here in the sun. it's now almost dark. >> scranton: they had waited all

day for kbr, until a passing u.s. military convoy came to their rescue. >> luckily, this convoy came by, is helping us out. that would be the old tire. done, gone. we are ready to roll. we are rolling with half of a humvee. that's awesome. it was a pretty scary day. it's kind of scary to know that all of your friends could be up there, you know, getting blown up by an ied or efp. it's really scary not knowing what going on. so, you know, take every day like it's your last and try to make it as it is.

>> when i was in iraq last time, we had a soldier named sergeant jake demand. great guy, father of two of his own boys and then a little girl that he had adopted. he was one of my friends. and he cared for people in a way that, you know, not many people ever have, especially with what it took for him to leave thiss earth for some of us to stay. i haven't talked about that very often, so... the guy took 18 rounds on the ramp of a stryker, bled out on the scene so everybody else could get on the stryker. not many people do stuff like that. 90 seconds, eight magazines.

he was a real hero. not many people know that, you know? i couldn't help but think about these two little boys and this little girl that will never really know what their father experienced over there. and i don't mean the harshness; i mean the sweetness. how he cared for his guys and was always good for a laugh and a great broiled salmon. and, you know, these are the stories that are important. the guys, the face that actually goes out and does what people can't imagine. he's just a regular guy. we are people, and people forget that. >> so what are you going to do for your birthday today, sergeant? >> i'm going to drink this, the whole thing. i'm going to celebrate. i'll talk to you later, all right? i need privacy. ( laughter )

>> combat's just kind of something that happens on the battlefield. >> sidwa wants to know what you get somebody for their 75th birthday? ( laughs ) >> who said that? >> the fellowship with the other guys, that's really what the experience is. >> happy birthday. i came back just for your birthday. >> whatever, dude! >> we've been [no audio] worried about you. >> you'll never find friends like you've been to war with. >> this is you, last night. >> let me have a drink. >> ( high pitched voice ): "you guys left me, so i'm gonna go to chow without you guys. i hate you guys!" >> somebody you trust with everything, your life, which isf the biggest thing there is. ( imitating german accent ): ho, ho, ho! look at me. i'm zee american fun boy. i see sergeant baker's schnitzel von haufen dorfen! ha, ha, ha, ha! that's why i volunteered to go this time. i do it for the guys i'm with, you know? not for anybody else, you know? now it's getting old. everybody needs to come home.

i'm having an awesome time. it's great. i don't like the whole reason that we're over here. i love iraq. there's not much going on out here, again. nothing goes on here, except for when we blow up. that's about it. it's ridiculous. i hate it. you know, when are they going to start bringing guys home, you know? >> scranton: as the weeks and months rolled on, it became obvious how much the grind of their mission was wearing down toby and his men. >> it's about 5:00 in the morning, and we are getting ready to go out on what we like to call a "lettuce and tomato

run." that's our smart ass way of saying, you know, "carrying nothing of military significance." you know, a lot of times, you're taking stuff that you know an american soldier will never touch or see, and you are just doing it to hook up some, you know, private contractor. it's frustrating at times to constantly be doing this stuff. >> all right, we'll be right there in a minute... >> the leadership above us, they don't grasp, you know, the big picture. all they see is "we've got to get this many trucks from point a to point b." they don't think about what effect that has on the vehicles, what effects that has on the soldiers. you are driving on the road for hours and hours and hours and days.

it's very monotonous. you try to be hyperaware. hey, tell your tail gun truck and advise the rest of your gun trucks that, that black mercedes pulled in at the southbound lane and was kind of following us up a little bit. we're going to battle-hand them off to you so you can maintain eyes on. constantly looking at every possible little thing. is this guy trying to kill me? is this guy pacing me? is he counting how many men i got?

it takes a toll on you. 17a, you're going to have a white toyota truck pulled up against the guardrail, sandwiched up against... when i get done, i just want to close my eyes. my body's not physically fatigued, but my eyes are fatigued. and when you're moving large numbers of personnel and equipment around, you don't get a lot of rest. the people that are planning the mission, they look at a map of what it's going to take to get from point a to point b, and how long it's going to be. but they don't take in consideration what could happen on the road. >> scranton: it was clear what was making bad voodoo's missions so long. attacks like this one, at a base in kirkuk, where the convoy was briefly resting and refueling,

could keep them trapped in place for hours. >> it's code red right now. as soon as we were leaving the tent, an explosion went off-- which probably means indirect fire-- and then the alarms went off. "code red" means everyone needs to get inside and take cover. unless it goes down to yellow, then we're not going to be leaving. >> it's getting worse! >> what should take a couple of hours ends up being an entire day. so we eat when we can, sleep when we can, drink fluids by the gallon and hope to say awake. there's a challenge, though, to drinking fluids by the gallon. guys come down with urinary tract infections because they've been holding it in for so long. kidney stones because they've been drinking too much red bull.

we're just running ourselves into the ground. for me, that's been the hardest part to manage. i'm worried about my guys, and i'm always constantly looking at what they're doing and making sure that they're getting rest and eating well. right now, i'm out here... ( laughs )... talking to you while they're inside sleeping because i can't sleep. can't rest, you know? this time is a lot different for me. you know, last time i had a battle, a guy i could look to, share and confide in. and this time, i got you, i guess, my camera. folks at home, maybe they'll

understand, but i won't feel your compassion, sympathy, empathy. >> scranton: by the fall, messages from toby were getting a bit more sporadic and unpredictable. their missions were getting longer. in late september, toby sent word that they were heading north again. he said that things were only getting hotter and that their odds of getting hit were getting worse. >> well, here we are. it's about 2:30 in the morning on the 2nd of october. we have been on the road for a while. we are currently at anaconda, or other known as the balad airbase, a long ways away from home.

we just got another change of mission, and we are going to go even further north. we are going to go into the tikrit region. wasn't too excited to get this change of mission. the stretch of road between anaconda and speicher is known as "ied alley"; it's probably one of the worst stretches of road in theater. eight ball, voodoo seven. every time that we've taken it, the people in front of us and the people behind us have both been struck, and always with casualties. >> go ahead, seven.

well, here we are. it's about 1:30 in the morning. we're all the way in tikrit right now. we'll be leaving here in a little bit, and it looks like we're going to be going this route alone again. eight ball, voodoo seven. there are two air force airmen driving the vehicle in front of me. bird dog, voodoo seven. >> bird dog and this kid named rev.

rev, the kid that is actually driving, is very spiritual, very religious, leads us in prayer before each mission that we go on. >> here we are. it's 4:30 in the afternoon. we drove down from tikrit early this morning. we're just north of baghdad. fob called taji. we're very fortunate. we were the only people on the road last night other than a route clearance team, and they got hit, we didn't. you know, we've been real lucky the last three days. the last three days, you know,

mentally and emotionally prepared for the worst, so when we got into our tents, you know, this morning, i just... you know, i don't want to show too much emotion in front of the guys, but i just... i could go hug each one of them and be like, "ah! we made it." you know? well, i'm going to get some rest. i'm tired. i got to go out in a couple more hours, and tonight's probably going to be a tough haul, so i'll sign off with that and see you guys soon.

>> come on in. put your hands on your fellow brother. dear heavenly father, lord, we

come to you this evening, especially tonight, to watch over us and all these convoys, no matter where they travel, to watch over us. we ask you to keep your hand over us; keep us protected. keep us awake; don't let us get complacent. keep our eyes out there. let us see everything that you see. lord, give your strength to the c2's and the gun trucks for everything they do is good. and all good comes through you. lord, we ask you to be with us as we travel these roads and as we push up north. we ask you to just keep your kind hand over our families back home. make sure they know that we're okay, and just to keep their worries away. just wash them away, lord. we ask you to just to keep over us. in your heavenly name we pray, amen. >> amen. there had been some damage to a bridge.

we had a temporary bridge in place, but we only had it over one lane. go left. we had to share the northbound lane; we were southbound. let's see what we got here. let's see what we got here. a group passed in the opposite direction, and we waited for them to come over. >> we jumped over to the northbound lane. >> eight ball, bird dog. >> send it. we were just coming off that bridge and getting ready to come up to speed when...

>> oh, oh! >> ied! the smoke was heavy. the vehicle's burning.

bird dog and rev, they made it through, luckily. because it went off right underneath them. blew the whole ass of their vehicle off. you are trying to figure out what's debris, shrapnel, what's not, because an ied is typically an initiator for a greater action. it's to sucker us into another event... ...be it a complex attack, a secondary device. the biggest thing is you want to maintain that calm. you got to look for them

shooting as well as scan every inch of ground that i possibly can to find out if there is secondary devices. they didn't just put one bomb, they put many. but we knew where they had come from. the bomb had been placed in the road, in a pothole, and someone had just put that out.

bird dog, you see that median? because the time from that element coming northbound, and us getting across that single lane bridge going southbound, was ten to 15 minutes at the most. >> iraqi army vehicle just after the bridge. ( explosion ) >> the bomb had blown up right at an iraqi police checkpoint, meaning that the people at the checkpoint are the ones that emplaced it. here we are, 4 october. we just got hit by an ied. i want to point out the blast hole. if i could get you to come at this angle, i want you to see that there's an iraqi checkpoint right behind us. they put shrapnel in the ground, in this pothole.

people don't understand what shrapnel really is. this is like a spearhead coming through you, coming at you at 50 miles an hour. you know, when it hits your vehicle in an explosion, you know, it just showers and sprays. it's like going through a hailstorm. ta-ka-ka-ka-ka. that's probably the [no audio] right there that blew it up. the warrior in you is telling you to go over there and whack every single one of them. engage them. let them know that you know that they're the enemy. but then, you know, the leader and politician in you is saying, "this is not going to help the cause. this is not going to win their hearts and minds." you know, i understand. you know, this is their country. they don't want to see sergeant nunn and his bad voodoo wheels of death rolling through their backyard everyday. i got it.

the secondary devices did not go off, so we were very fortunate. and instead of shooting at the iraqi checkpoint that blew us up, i gave them a little smile and a wave. and i even saluted them, you know, so that perhaps they knew that i knew. and it didn't work, so touché. >> i see him. here he is. yep, there he is. >> he's where? there he is. there he is. >> yay, toby! ( cheers ) >> oh! my boy! >> scranton: in late october of 2007, toby came home to california on a 15-day leave for

the birth of his baby daughter. >> how are you? for me to come home and be with my wife as we have our little girl, you know, it's just amazing. >> jeffrey, come get in the picture. >> scranton: but in the days we spent filming him, toby had a hard time relaxing. >> all this joy and, you know, overwhelming sensation is going to end abruptly, because i have to go back. >> she just threw up a little bit. >> too much of that mama's milk. >> say, "i'm a baby, i'm going to do that." >> there is guilt. you know, i have two sons and a daughter here. i have 34 sons there. oh, that's my little girl, right here! it's my little baby girl! it's such a double-edged sword. oh, you having a hard time with the milk there, wild child? it really pulls at you and separates you.

trying to flip that switch is very, very hard, because they are still in danger. huh? i'm still responsible, you know, and that's not going to end until everyone's back here and it's over. >> scranton: toby and jason shaw both returned from leave in mid- november.

this deployment's had a big impact on my relationship. it's hard on the both of us, because i always have to worry about what's going on back at home, or at least i think i do, and she's always having to worry about if she's going to lose me the next day. everything's pretty much gone downhill. right now, we're not together anymore. we're trying to take a break and take it easy, and hopefully everything works out for the best. >> scranton: by christmas, the bad voodoo platoon had been deployed for more than six months. >> all right, stockings. there should be one for everyone, right? right now we're at the halfway point.

mick? >> are you the only chris here? >> everyone's in the mid-tour slump. somebody promoted you to specialist... >> whoo! >> ...so maybe santa did come. but everyone's relatively healthy. we got a bunch of bad knees and backs right now; the guys are busted up and broken down. but we have all our fingers, all our toes, and we still have all our joes. well, enjoy christmas today. you guys have a down day tomorrow, unless you're doing maintenance on a vehicle, cool? and then the following day we go to cedar, check? on a platoon mission. >> scranton: the men are still running convoy security missions throughout iraq. >> i'm going lights out. >> lights out. we got to get on the right hand side.

>> they're at about 300, 400 meters. they're still firing at me right now. >> firing! >> reload! >> get down more! >> handcuff charlie, this is bravo 211 gulf. we are receiving small arms fire north of checkpoint 22-alpha. >> scranton: they are scheduled to return home this may. >> this story continues on our web site, where you can watch the full program again... follow how things are going for the men of bad voodoo... >> it takes time, and it takes a toll on you. >> through their personal blogs...

>> folks at home might be able to understand... >> an explosion went off, which probably means indirect fire, and then the alarms went off... >> find out more about the making of this film from producer deborah scranton. take a peek inside the world of military bloggers, and then join the discussion about this program at pbs.org. captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

>> frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. with major funding from the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation. helping to build a more just world. and additional funding from the park foundation. with additional funding for this program from the

corporation for public broadcasting. >> this is pbs. announcer: "fizzy's lunch lab" at pbskidsgo.org. the only place on the web where fun recipes, videos, and games are always on the menu! announcer: only at pbskidsgo.org--org./lunch--

it's pbskidsgo.org/lunchlab! clifford's tasty tummy yummies. all you have to do is follow the recipe. add two cups of flour, one jar of peanut butter, a squirt of mustard, a mint chip ice cream cone, some marshmallows, add pepper to taste

and bake for 30 minutes. they're done. what do you think clifford? achoo! maybe too much pepper.