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Burn my face off.
Definitely shortened up the beard hair.
Is that what you replay a lot in your mind,
is that kid?
Yeah, yeah, I replay that a lot,
'cause it's... It's slow motion for me.
Um,
like, I remember thinking,
like, when it happened,
like, I was pulling the trigger on those fucking 203s,
and I was just launching 203s 'cause the snipers
were telling me that they couldn't hit the shot,
but they needed an indirect fire weapon
into the courtyard of this... Of this house,
and so I was throwing 203 after 203
into this courtyard, and guys were screaming
all over the place, like, "Yeah, yeah, fuck yeah!"
And then, I remember pulling a shot,
and yeah... And you can see a 203 grenade
going through the air, you can watch it go.
You can watch it from the time it ejects
all the way to the time it impacts.
- Yeah. - It's an indirect fire weapon,
so it goes, "Ahh," it comes down.
- Right. - And uh...
And I watched it... I watched it happen,
and uh...
And I don't... like, it...
I don't know, man, it...
It was so slow.
It just hung in the air for fucking ever,
and, like, as it was hanging in the air, like,
I see this...
This kid, like, running
across this field,
and it just...
It just impacted, like, right at his feet,
like, as he was running, and just,
Gone.
We had lost so many guys over the course
of a seven-month deployment,
and this was our entire, like,
you know, kinda get...
Get right with yourself brief, and the chaplain walked in
and said, "Let's list all the names
of all the guys that died."
So, we listed all the names of all the guys that died,
and that was it, and he was like, "Okay,
class over," like, "Hope everybody's okay,"
like, "Remember that they served."
Like, we didn't know how to deal with that
because we're all coming back from it,
and everybody was just kind of... Everybody just wanted
to go home and drink booze, and...
You know, as soon as we got home
and people started drinking booze,
you started seeing emotions coming out,
and it was... you know, guys were getting drunk,
hell, me included, we were getting drunk,
and you'd be at a bar, and just start fucking crying,
and you're with a guy or two and you're telling stories,
the next thing you know, you're fucking crying.
♪
My thoughts always went back to 2/4,
when I got out,
and it did make me feel alone,
and I felt like I wasn't good enough
to talk to those guys anymore.
♪
I would see videos and photos of people
being just happy, and houses are going up,
and babies are on the way, and marriages are,
you know, 5, 10 years strong,
and things are going well for a lot of guys,
and it really felt hard to try to contact some of them,
and be like, "Hey, man, I'm...
I'm not doing hot."
And, like, you try not to be a wimp about it,
'cause it's... it's... You gotta keep going.
But, there's a lot of time where you sit there
and think about a lot of the shit that you did,
and there's no one you can relate to,
because you scatter to the winds,
you go back to this world,
and you don't necessarily
find the best ways to deal with it.
And so, instead, isolation becomes an easy thing,
easy.
♪
When you transition,
you're kind of out on an island.
Part of being in a warrior culture
is this ideal of strength,
and anything viewed as less than strength
is a weakness.
If someone has viewed themselves
as a strong team member,
then I imagine the question gets asked,
"Am I the weakest link in that chain?
And if I am, I can't look those other guys in the face
because I'm different now,
and I don't belong, I don't deserve it."
♪
Yesterday I had kind of an interesting run-in
with the law.
Went and harbored up at a site I thought was okay,
then a guy I guess came by, saw me there,
so he called the cops.
So, the cops came by, said, "Hey,
the owner of the land doesn't want you here."
I said, "No problem, I'll move on."
He said, "If you just move about a half mile down,
you'll be good," and I was like, "Oh, okay, cool."
And then, we got into a discussion about
why I was doing this and whatnot.
I guess the cop called him back and said, "Hey, no worries,
just to let you know, like, he's gone."
And, uh, I guess the cop and the owner started talking
about what I was doing, and uh,
the owner of the land
came rushing back out to where I was,
stopped me on the road and said, "Hey, man,
anybody that served our country is more than welcome
to stay on my land for as long as they want,
and thank you for your service."
I thought that was pretty cool, but I was already
down the road a little bit, so I found a new harbor site
and camped there.
Got blisters the size of silver dollars
on top of blisters the size of my entire foot.
But, that doesn't matter.
You just lance 'em, and pack 'em full of powder,
and keep pushing through the pain,
'cause as much as that physical pain is there,
uh, I know a lot of our brothers are dealing with
emotional stress and emotional pain.
Like Gold Star families are dealing with emotional pain
that far surpasses that of my feet.
So, I'll keep walking.
See you guys soon.
The night before the walk I couldn't sleep.
I was so damn excited to go,
so I just left in the middle of the night.
♪
The goal was to get to Camp Pendleton, California,
but it wasn't a straight shot.
Got a lot of people to see, brothers and Gold Star families,
and I actually ended up walking north
even though my first direction was to head south to Florida.
♪
I sold absolutely everything I owned.
If it could get me a dollar, I sold it.
♪
It was heavy.
It was really heavy.
♪
I was scared, and uh,
that was a big piece of the first night,
was, like, constant questioning of myself, like,
"Why are you doing this? Are you sure you wanna do this?"
Like, "It's 3:00 in the morning now,
you've been walking for an hour, like, are you sure
you really wanna do this?"
♪
Coming out of the Marine Corps was not as I had
suspected it would be.
♪
They lose part of themselves when they go to war,
and we just hope that we can help them
get all those pieces and parts back together.
♪
Jonathan was a sweet kid,
and very tender hearted,
and feelings were hurt easily.
But, he was obstinate, you know, if you told him one thing,
he would do the other.
There was one year in high school where that child
was grounded for just about every day of the year.
My pops was the executive officer
on a submarine, and he was constantly gone.
I think there was one year he spent almost 300 days at sea.
Crazy amounts of time that my mom running,
you know, these two boys in the house
that are just railroading her.
♪
Yeah, I don't think he was out of high school
a week, 10 days, he was on the bus.
On the bus, and on the airplane, then the bus to Paris Island.
♪
I wasn't happy with who I was in high school.
I think ultimately the basic level
of why everyone joins
is to change something about themselves.
♪
Hey, uh, what I need you to do, I'm pulling back
leaving three right now...
How fucking rude.
Go, go, go, go, go, go, go.
Go, go, go.
Yeah.
April 6th, first time I ever fired my weapon in combat.
First time I've ever really been in combat.
We never... all we did was train.
And they were literally
from me to you.
Four of 'em ran up around the corner
and my buddy and I just stopped that
right then and there, and...
They were on the ground.
And he says, "They're still moving."
So, I shot 'em in the head.
Stopped that, and then,
moved, and then we just...
There was people everywhere, everybody surrounded
just two of us.
And then, six others
about maybe less than football field length away,
and then two others all by themselves
somewhere else.
And it was up close and it was personal.
It was a fight, it was a fucking fight.
♪
When you take a life, that last little bit
of innocence is lost, and uh,
in the heat of the moment it feels fine,
because you've dehumanized the enemy enough
to the point where they're not even human,
they don't have a... They don't have a wife or a kid,
or anything else, they're just pieces of shit,
and you're gonna just wax all of them.
And that's the way to do it, the dehumanization of the enemy
needs to happen.
Combat will take that last little piece,
that piece that you thought as a kid,
"The world is kind of an okay place,
and not everybody's bad."
Combat takes that from you, and you'll never get that back.
Spread out, squalors, spread 'em out!
The most lethal experience in Iraq was Ramadi.
Not Fallujah, not Al Qunun,
not Baghdad.
And so, we didn't have tanks,
we did not have artillery, and we did not have airplanes,
because we didn't wanna break the thing
that we were trying to save.
And so, combat was carried out
by two sides, two groups of men,
armed almost exactly the same.
♪
We're fighting Ramadi, you know, the enemy, you know,
they don't wear uniforms, we don't know
what they look like, they look like anybody else,
and on top of that, you know, the area's populated.
You've got, you know, women, children,
everybody's there in the mix of everything,
and just always a confusion of, you know,
civilians, you know, who's innocent, who's not.
The enemy can be anybody.
♪
Get down!
Woo, yeah!
Go, go, go, go.
I kinda just figured that I was gonna die.
When you're there, it seems kinda like a cliché thing,
but no shit, like, I was more concerned
about those idiots over there than myself,
you know what I mean, like, I wanted to do
the best job that I could to make sure they all got home
to their families.
In the beginning, it feels surreal.
There's just a minute where it's almost slow motion,
it doesn't feel like it's happening to you.
Thinking about sitting down and talking to you
the first time I was just, like, I didn't even know
if I could do that, 'cause it's so hard to describe.
I mean, I... I'm struggling with it now.
♪
I think Jonathan was walking down past AP Hill
and he called me.
He goes, "Mom, I don't know what I'm doing.
I don't know why I'm doing it, whom I'm doing it for.
Is it for me, is it for anybody else?
You know, I just... I just feel like I should...
You know, I should quit."
He was so upset.
He was... he was so lost.
She was like, "I can come pick you up right now,"
'cause what took me two weeks to walk,
she could come get me in about, oh, three hours.
He was just in tears, just in absolute tears,
and my heart just wrenched, and I was like,
"If that's what you wanna do, if you wanna come back home,
I will pick you up this evening."
I said, "Or if you want, you can go to Virginia Beach,
you know, be with your guys, and then go on from there."
And I said, "Jonathan," I said, "This is your walk."
It is what you will make it.
♪
There's just not much great that happened over there,
and it kinda sucks.
I mean, there is, but I can't see it.
All I see is...
the death, and I just bring it out in anger
and sadness.
♪
There's many days I don't even get dressed.
Some days I don't even brush my teeth,
I'm just so...
given up on life at times.
I mean, it just takes your will to fight.
♪
I go to sleep thinking about people I shot,
or screaming friends,
and with that exactly on my mind,
as soon as I'm still laying in bed trying to roll out,
I'm just thinking about dead friends,
or death.
It's just death 24-7.
♪
And it's weird, I think more about death than life
and living.
Can't figure that one out.
♪
- Yeah. - Oh, shit.
- Oh, man. - I had a big dick...
Well, let me... Let me finish speaking.
"I had... I had a big dick."
I had a big dick drawn...
- It was spray paint. - All right, there we go.
- This can we show? - I had a big dick once.
Um, yeah, as we were going into Kuwait,
I had a big old dick drawn on me...
- Did you? - With spray paint.
- Nice. - And then, "69" or something
on me in spray paint, and walking into the showers
in Kuwait, all these army people,
there's a bunch of spray painted dicks on me,
and they're like, "What the fuck's wrong
with you guys? Like, there's something fucking wrong
with all of you."
And we're just like, "Hey, go fuck yourselves."
Marines get together and show each other their penises.
- It's weird. - It is very weird.
We do that so often.
Like, why is that part of this culture?
How did it begin, and how do we end it?
Honestly, like, yeah, right, how do we...?
How do we quit that?
That place was interesting.
That place... that place was very interesting.
Why are we in this fucking place again?
- Everybody's killing us. - Everybody's fucking killing us.
It is crazy.
- What are we doing here? - We need...
Just give me 10 minutes, guys, I need to fucking breathe.
I need to go jerk off in the port-o-shitter
and fucking align my qi.
- Yeah. - A lot of
- interesting times there. - I learned a lot.
Yeah, I learned a shit load
about a whole lot of things that I didn't really know
that I needed to know.
So far nothing has helped in the real world.
Right.
It's like, if I do any of what I learned there,
I go to jail for a long time.
Not sure I want to enjoy that.
So, I get to be pissed off and not do anything about it
- for the rest of my life? - Great.
That kinda sucks.
- Ugh. - That's why walking's kinda
- been a cool thing for me. - Yeah.
Just allows you to be in those memories and...
But you're still pushing through 'em,
and you're actively walking so you're expending energy
in a... you know, with a goal in mind,
and you get to think about those memories,
but you also get to come to, like, places like this,
and come to other people and create new memories.
And that's where it's at for me.
- Fuck yeah. - Like, I got all
the old memories, I got 'em.
Doesn't mean that they're bad,
but you give 'em so much due diligence
that at the end of the day you're like, "Fuck, man,
like, all I think about is the bad shit."
Yes.
You think you, like, hold out
from actively doing the work on yourself
because sometimes beating yourself up
- feels fucking good? - It does.
I thrive under stress and pain.
That's how the Marine Corps taught you to live,
so when things are going smoothly,
it doesn't feel normal,
and even though that would be great,
but yeah, I think I tend to beat myself up
just because I need to feel
- glutton for punishment. - Right, yeah, you're like,
"Fuck it, I need to... Oh, this shit's going okay?
I need to screw something up."
- Yeah. - "I need to throw a wrench
in this system right now."
"I'm having a great day, let me beep at this person
to piss him off to get me pissed off."
- That's... yeah. - "So, fucking ruin it all."
Absolutely.
♪
I know I should have spoken to people
a long, long time ago.
♪
I may never figure it out.
I hope I do, I really do,
or else I'm gonna have a wasted life.
So, I gotta figure it out, like, really soon.
♪
And once I do, I'm gonna feel great.
I'm gonna feel great,
'cause I'm pretty sure he's feeling
pretty great right now.
You know, sometimes you... You just don't wanna
upset somebody else with your own bullshit.
You know, it's not bullshit, but, you know,
I sit back and go, "Well, you know,
What if they're not willing or not...?"
They're always willing, you know,
"What if I put them in a bad place
just from talking?"
And you know, that thought's there,
and it's real, but it's stupid,
because they're gonna say, "Just call, shut up,
and just call."
I know, but don't all and fucking get in this
doom and gloom shit.
Life sucks, man, it's hard.
But, we keep doing it.
I love you, too, I'll talk to you soon.
I'll see you in California in fucking December, motherfucka.
- All right. - Hell yeah.
Hey, uh, call me... Call me tomorrow
let me know everything's cool, okay?
- All right. - All right, brother.
Bye.
- He's having a tough night. - Who's that?
Uh, Trevor Croswell.
He wants to be a dad and...
And just, you know, I mean, sometimes life gets to people,
and it just... Just hits 'em hard,
and they try to... They try to navigate it, man,
and like, you know, I'm glad that...
I'm glad that he reached out versus just sitting
in the dark sulking.
You know, the funny thing is I heard a bunch of years ago,
it's like, if everybody sit in the circle
and threw their problems in the center
so they were all open and out in the open
and you knew what everybody's problems were,
you'd want your problems back.
It's just one of those things you had to be there for.
You... you see that number and you gotta answer it.
It's not... there's no if, ands, ors about it.
You see a phone call from a Marine Corps brother,
you answer the phone, and you say,
"Hey, I'm gonna be there for you,
and then through thick and thin, I'm there."
This is a brotherhood that no... People don't even understand.
You know, if you're a veteran and it's hurtin',
you know, you fought with some of your brothers,.
You know, call 'em.
You know, this guy's not doing so well,
is there anyone near by that maybe can go have
a fucking steak with them or something, you know.
Look, suicide is an important thing.
Maybe there needs to be more shrinks.
There's suicide hotlines, I'm your suicide hotline.
♪
You know, guys from other company I didn't know,
and you're hearing that they fucking offed themselves,
and like, obviously you can't fucking, uh...
Obviously you can't fucking help those guys
'cause you don't know 'em, you know.
It just sucks to hear about it, but you know,
the fucking pain for those guys doesn't go away.
It's just transferred to fucking everybody else.
That shit is so fucking selfish.
Just fucking answer the goddamn phone, man,
or reach out if you're having a fucking tough go at it.
We've all been there.
It's not a fucking sign of weakness
to pick up your phone, and just be like,
"Hey, man, I'm having a hard time."
You know?
It's fucking... that's strength.
That's fucking strength.
♪
Man, after I started this walk,
a guy that I've never met before
who was dealing with some really hardcore things,
he, uh... he lost that battle.
So, I met that family,
and just immediately fell in love with 'em.
The mom's just too sweet.
So, bottom line is...
Is she asked me if I would wear his shoes,
and I was in need of a new pair of shoes,
and uh, man, I said, "Hell yeah,
if they fit, I'll totally rock these."
So, I've been walking with Mikey Simon's boots.
So, he's gonna carry me all the way to the end
in Pendleton.
♪ Life flag down, act like a fool ♪
♪ Imagine me, now imagine you ♪
♪ Racing hearts be criminal ♪
♪ What are we, just animal ♪
♪ When the lights go down and there's only shadows ♪
♪ And the chaos forms in the depths of your bones ♪
♪ Lonely hearts ♪
♪ Breed lonely souls ♪
♪ Look for me like you did before ♪
♪ And I'll find my way through the broken door ♪
♪ 'Cause no one knows ♪
♪ This heavy toll ♪
♪ Hey, carry me through these lonely days ♪
♪ Carry me through ♪
♪
♪ Hey, carry me through these lonely days ♪
♪ Carry me through ♪
♪
♪ Yeah, you carry me through these lonely days ♪
♪ You carry me through ♪
♪
Remember, don't fear noises in the night,
because things that wanna kill you
will stalk you silently, have a good day.
So, everybody's posted videos
of summer
and fucking sun,
and I'm over here, like...
Son of a bitch.
I pull into a gas station, and uh,
feet are kinda thrashed, so I walk in
and grab myself a Gatorade
and some Gummy Bears,
and there's a dude behind me
that gets in line in front of me,
and I'm like, "Hey, bro, I was in line."
And he says, uh,
"How are you gonna pay for that?"
I was like, "How am I gonna pay for what?"
He said, "How are you gonna pay for this...
How are you gonna pay for this?
Homeless people don't have any money."
Lot of, uh... Lot of reflection today.
Have a good day.
Ah, dude, I missed the shit out of you, brother.
- Fuck yeah. - How you been?
Good, bro, good, just doing it, you know what I mean?
Good, hell yeah.
Getting a little red in the face in the sun.
I know it, dude, I know it, I know it.
Hi, guys, how are you? I'm Jon.
- Hi. - Name's Michael.
Hi, Michael, Michael, you look beautiful.
Get down.
I remember the shock that it all just happened,
and it took a while for it to set in, like,
if me and Powers are gonna switch, like,
you know, would it have been me, or what?
- Right? - It's...
That's the hardest one I fucking think about all the time.
Yeah, we had to put you guys to bed, man.
We were like, "Go home, go home."
You guys relieved us, we went back to Snake Pit
and everyone back, and I listened to that song
- "Bro Hymn" from Pennywise. - Yeah, yeah.
I... it took me,
fuck, almost 10 years to be able to sit down
- and listen to that song. - Listen to that song, yeah.
'Cause any time that song would come on, I'd start crying
and I'd fucking get violent as fuck.
Yeah, dude.
There it is, that's the view of the ghetto
from the Snake Pit.
Fuckin' right.
When I got out of the Marine Corps,
I moved into here,
and like, I was going to the VA, and the only thing they wanna do
- is give me pills. - That's it, that's it.
I didn't want their pills, I wanted help,
and they just kept trying to give me pills, give me pills,
give me pills, and fucking finally I had
the "fuck you" match with the wizard up there,
- and never went back. - Right.
Then, I just... I started drinking a lot.
A lot, a lot, and I was kinda going nowhere.
Then, a buddy hooked me up with a job,
but there was no... It was a good job,
I mean, it was a great job, good money.
- Right. - But, it just wasn't for me.
It's like, I spent my youth overseas,
so now I'm trying to do my college days.
- Well, I'm not 18, I'm 23. - Right.
You know what I mean, so I... Four or five year party
and just kept going, and got deeper in the bottle,
and there was a few times where, like,
you were talking about the pills,
there was a few times I had pistols
and all this other shit around, and I was like,
"Ah, I could eat this."
Now, I get a phone call that someone else had did it,
and it's... it would hurt more,
and it was one of those like, "I can't do that shit,"
you know what I mean, like, fuck that.
- Yeah. - I'm not gonna be a statistic.
I didn't realize what he had actually...
What you guys had actually, like...
She thought I was always an asshole.
No, no, no.
But, I didn't... I had never fathomed,
like, what it actually... Like, what you guys
actually went through, what actually happened,
and then watching the news and they explained it, like...
I was like, "Holy shit."
It was a lot worse than he had let on.
- You know? - Sure.
'Cause I mean, like I told you, he doesn't really...
- Right. - Talk about it.
Another day anyways.
- Wow. - Semper Fidelis.
Thank you, and thank you.
Always faithful, always.
♪
Not one guy came home from Ramadi unchanged,
unscathed, unscarred.
I left and went to a new field
that delved me deeper into the world of the enemy,
and I learned about them.
I fought them on an intellectual
and physical level.
That changed me even more.
♪
I think that a lot of what Jon did
in the part of his career where he was an interrogator
probably made that PTSD a lot worse,
because he had to compartmentalize it
and shove those emotions away for so long,
and in such a disciplined fashion.
You can only do that to the human psyche so much
before things start going haywire.
Having served with both Jon and Robin in CI,
at the other side of the table as a clinician,
I can understand how people that have experienced
what they experienced in the military
would be reluctant to tell somebody
that's a civilian, because they don't feel like
they would understand the context.
You're raiding torture houses,
and you're investigating kidnappings,
and you're stopping cells from putting bombs in the roads,
and stopping sniper cells, and on top of that
you do interrogations, and you're just
sucking them dry.
You're a thing, you're a fucking monster.
You're a force of something
that is about to rip something else open
and leave it there just in a puddle,
because you need all of what they have,
and you've gotta figure out how to get it.
You becoming a person who has a lot of skills,
and you do have a predisposition for using them in abusive ways,
and that... I wouldn't say that gives you a God complex,
but it does... It does give you the sense
of superiority and advantage,
and whether that's real or imagined
I don't think really matters, 'cause if you think
you're better then you think you're better,
and you're gonna act like that, right?
Or if you think you know more, you think you know
how to argue better, you think you can
get what you want out of someone.
Just 'cause you can get what you want out of a terrorist,
doesn't mean you can get what you want out of your spouse.
I'd gone from doing some of the spookiest shit
that I've ever done, and then within a week
I was sitting down at a college class
that I was already two weeks late for.
His first year, he set the world on fire
at University of Maryland, did a great job.
He looked great, and he was ready to take on the world.
And you know, you go to school with a bunch of 18 year olds,
and all they wanna know is, "How many people did you kill?"
He is very smart and talented.
Nobody can deny that,
but at some point
I think that other side took over.
♪
When I came home in 2010, I was at UMD
and I was studying Arabic and Russian.
Quickly the floodgates opened,
and these memories from all of these different deployments
and these different worlds that I was in just came back,
and I didn't have any control over where my mind was going,
or what I was thinking about, or how I was
getting to those memories,
and I couldn't stop them from happening.
I was very angry very quickly.
It just kept happening, more, and more,
and more memories.
There's many loud moments all over the fucking place,
and I'm trying to do my best
to figure it the fuck out.
I can't figure it out.
You never get any sleep, I try to get sleep,
I can't get sleep, I drink to sleep.
I'm no longer in school because I'd rather drink,
because now the memories are so bad
that all I'm doing is drinking to quell them,
instead of even trying to do anything,
and then, you know, years later,
now I'm drinking to watch homecomings
of people, and now I'm thinking back
to homecomings of guys that never got to come home,
and now I'm even more depressed, and so I'm drinking even more.
♪
Jon was always getting into some kind of altercation,
and they was always like, "Dude, what's going on?"
He's like, "Ha, got into a fight.
Some jackass tried to jump me," or you know,
"Some jackass rear-ended me,"
or something, there was always something.
♪
When I first met Jon, we got in a fight,
and I'm a big guy, I'm 6' 3", I'm 330 pounds.
I'm not scared of any man in this world,
but when someone looks at you and you can tell,
like, "I have no fear for myself."
Like, that's... That's a humbling thing.
To look at somebody like that, it's just like,
"You really don't care if I hurt you."
Like, that's almost something that you need,
like he wanted it to happen.
I remember there was one night, and this was
a couple years later actually, and we're driving home,
and he's like, "Fuck it, you feel like dying tonight?"
Kinda looked at him like joking, I was like, "What?"
He's like laughing and joking, and I'm like, "Yeah, bro,
I'm with you no matter what, I'll ride until
the wheels fall off."
He's like, "All right, fuck it, we're going 120."
And he looks over at me and smiles.
That was petrifying.
You know, he was... that's the... That... in that state
where he was at his worst, that was him.
♪
He was not like that before,
and whenever he was at his worst,
he wasn't in touch with me,
and that just goes to show that,
I mean, he kept the ones that were close to him...
He closed them out.
♪
♪ They say I'm too late ♪
♪ Got nothing in my brain ♪
♪ That's what people say ♪
♪ I go on too many dates ♪
♪ But I can't make 'em stay ♪
♪ That's what people say, mm, mm ♪
♪
♪ But I keep cruising ♪
♪ Can't stop, won't stop moving ♪
♪ It's like I got this music ♪
♪ In my mind saying it's gonna be all right ♪
So, I woke up this morning to this skunk,
and her little fucking skunk babies,
and they just stared at me.
And then, the mother kinda turned around,
and I was like, "Oh, no, no, no!"
So, I jumped back in my tent and just kinda screamed
and yelled, and they didn't spray me,
and I'm okay,
'cause that would've been really tough, man.
That's been... I think that's probably the worst fear
is not like getting hit by a truck,
or fuckin' having to go toe-to-toe with a mountain lion
or a bear or something, or a moose.
A moose would... ugh.
But, I think the worst...
The worst fear is getting just doused by a skunk,
and then just having to walk for a few days,
and then what happens? Then, I show up
at somebody's house, and I just reek to high heaven
and they wouldn't let me in, and then what?
I gotta, like, sit in their front yard naked
with a... like, four cans of tomato sauce.
I mean, it's... yeah, so, good thing that didn't happen.
I'm at somewhat of a... a weird... A weird decision.
I don't know what to do right now.
So, I'm out in the middle of nowhere.
Pretty fucking gorgeous, though.
And as I'm walking,
look what is lying right on the ground.
That's real, so I guess I gotta call the police
and let them know.
Uh, I... I don't really wanna touch it,
'cause if it does have bodies on it,
I look like a transient,
and then they're gonna pin all the murders on me.
Well, I'm here.
It's pretty cool.
I'm, uh... I am now at
the Wiley Ranch.
I see him coming to Mommy's.
- Yeah? - Yeah.
♪
- I'm so excited. - He walked a long way.
I'm so excited.
- Look like rag doll. - That's right.
I can tell you've been wearing that thing for,
- like, a year, dude. - Dude.
- Crazy. - What's up, brother?
Oh, man.
♪
How are you, man?
Good to see you, I'm sweaty as shit, brother.
Oh, good to see you.
- What's up, man? - Nothing.
Ugh.
Now we got this hill, and I'm like, I just went up
- a bunch of hills. - I told you it was all hills.
♪
♪ Wind blows wild ♪
♪ These thoughts inside my mind ♪
♪
♪ Don't mind ♪
♪
- So, I came from Maryland. - What?
It's way far away from here, and I walked here.
- What? - What?
Yeah, I walked here.
- Why? - Um...
- This is the moment. - So, I walked here
because of your daddy.
'Cause your daddy and I are brothers
and we served together in the Marine Corps.
We were fighting guys together.
- What? - Yeah, so we were
big, strong fighting men.
Um, I could fight, too.
You can, but you don't have to because we protect you.
- Right? - Yeah.
Yeah, so you get to just be a princess.
Yeah, or, well, in this case,
you get to be Rapunzel.
♪ I'm taken back by all these different footprints ♪
♪
♪ Littered all along this lonely road ♪
♪
♪ Loosening these worn out inhibitions ♪
♪
♪ Covering this tired, lonely soul ♪
♪
♪ Wind blows wild these thoughts ♪
♪ Inside my mind ♪
♪ Don't mind ♪
♪
♪ My thoughts are ♪
♪ Like Moses ♪
♪ Spread water ♪
♪ Lead me straight to you ♪
♪ I've gone past ♪
♪ Believing ♪
♪ This is the only thing I have that's left to do ♪
♪
Is that the book you and Dad read?
"I love you through and through.
- I love your top side." - "I love your top side."
"And your bottom side."
"And my... and... the bottom side."
"And"... what?
"Your silly side."
"Your mad side."
- "I love your fingers." - "Your fingers."
- "And toes." - "And toes."
"I love you through and through, yesterday, today,
- and tomorrow, too." - "Tomorrow, too."
You got it.
Yeah.
Ah, shit.
Wiley and I went up to Mansfield to go see Powers's family,
and see his grave, and see the truck
that their parents finished that Powers bought,
and had every intention of making into
this souped-up pick-'em-up truck.
- So, this is his book. - Oh, yeah.
And we just put it on the car,
and we just let everybody look at it,
but it's got the Marine insignia.
- Yeah, I saw that. - Those are his dog tags,
and he goes everywhere with us.
Oh, man.
This is him working on this truck.
When he was 15.
- Oh, man. - And then, this was
my favorite picture of him working on the truck.
Mike's choking him out.
- Right. - Fitting.
That's fitting.
So, we put this on the seat, and we put it underneath,
and we just share it with everybody.
♪
From the time we were kids, like, little kids,
he was gonna be a Marine, like, he had a cot in the living room
and he was like... It was so funny,
'cause he's like, "This is where I gotta sleep,
'cause this is where I gotta get practice."
♪
Caleb was about to come home two weeks before he was killed.
Rick, he had like six more months.
It's like your whole past and your whole future
all at once, like,
when you have two people that you lost
that you love more than anything in the world,
like, your two most favorite people
in the whole entire world, when you lose them,
I just, like, collapsed on the floor.
Couldn't even survive.
It was terrible.
♪
What is this?
We'll never forget that day.
Nah, man, not ever.
- That was a tough week for us. - Yeah.
We came up
to relieve these guys,
'cause it just happened.
We got the... Got the medivac call,
and, uh,
it said like, "Urgent surgical."
I'm like, "Shit, somebody's fucking hurt."
- Mhm. - So, when we roll in,
and, uh, we got there,
there was... there was confusion on our end,
and, uh, Robinson had come down,
and he was all a mess,
and then immediately you knew who it was,
and I didn't realize...
I didn't even realize Caleb was dead yet.
And then...
Well, Ammons came up to me and was like,
"Hey, man, we gotta go to the top,
we gotta, we gotta do some cleanup."
And that's when it... and then, I had to go up, and...
Yeah.
- There was a lot of blood. - I bet.
We just scooped it up the best you could, and...
And then you had to fuckin' nut up
- and sit there... - Then I had to fuckin' sit
- in that goddamn seat. - Nut up and sit where he was
fuckin' sitting.
I was sittin' there 20 minutes prior to him sittin' there.
And then we got blown up on a building
- the next day! - The next day.
Yeah.
The whole damn thing almost came down on top of us.
♪
- That corner specifically... - Yeah, that corner.
Was lucky it didn't crumble off there.
It was just the one,
it was just the one stanchion that held.
There was no floor underneath us.
No.
Yeah, just that one corner piece.
Yeah, that was it, that was it.
♪
- I think about him a lot. - Yeah.
I talk about him often.
Oh, every day.
Anybody poke about the bracelet or the t-shirt,
any chance I get.
♪
Powers had just relieved me
in the same seat I was sitting in.
You heard the crack or whatever,
so we all came out the elevator shaft,
and I don't know, I just remember Powers with his,
his head kicked back on his chair,
and there was, I don't know,
there wasn't just blood, it was like
fuckin' brain matter
that was pourin' out of his head and shit.
And I just remember, I don't know,
just how lifeless he was, and limp and shit.
We're all kinda screamin' at Doc,
but what can we do to help you and shit?
It's like, nothing, he's gone, you know.
It took a moment before,
you know, it really, it really hit us and shit
that he was gone.
♪
So you gotta understand a sniper is a debilitating
and demoralizing thing.
You don't know where they are,
and you don't know if they're coming back.
We always wondered,
"Is this guy staring down a fucking scope?
Is he lookin' through glass at me right now?
Is this my moment?"
♪
That was tough, and Chadwick and I
looked at each other and said, "We gotta sit at this post.
We gotta show our guys that, yeah, this just happened,
but fuck it."
For the next two hours, Chadwick and I sat there,
and we talked about everything,
and we talked a mile a minute.
The missed opportunities with girls, the cars we wanted,
the Appalachian Trail hike we wanted to do.
We squashed a lot of differences right there because,
dude, we were dead.
I think it gave us both a lot of respect for each other
'cause we both volunteered to sit in that spot.
That was, that was really,
really, really hard to sit in that spot.
Obviously, it's gonna fuck with you.
♪
You know that you're already dead.
You know you're already dead.
And you accept that,
and then it actually becomes easier to do your job
because at the end of it, you're dead.
You're not livin' through this, you're not makin' this out.
The day after Caleb was killed,
that same seven-story building
had the floor below it just blown out from under 'em.
First thing we did was call it in,
and start tryin' to get in touch with the guys from 3rd.
And fortunately everybody was alive.
And the only thing I do remember sayin' on the radio was like,
"Hey, man, get the fuck outta the building,
it's goin' down."
Remember standing over on the roof and just lookin' down,
and I just came up.
It wasn't the same old Jon that I remember
a few hours ago.
The look in his eyes was completely different.
We can think of PTSD a an unprocessed trauma,
where the mind and the body can't seem to work through it,
and it gets into this pattern that
keeps it from being able to be processed,
but it's also a completely normal response,
given what the person has been through.
So in a combat situation,
there's not necessarily only one trauma,
there are multiple traumas that happen.
And how can you even think of starting to process
when you're in that type of environment?
You've been raised by your parents and your teachers
to do the right thing,
and then you go off to war,
and you're gonna be asked to do unspeakable things
that aren't exactly in the code of ethics or law
'cause it's a different ballgame at that point.
But then, you quickly have to go back,
and they want you to act normal.
Well, it just doesn't happen that way.
The new normal is not a rinse, wash, repeat,
and do it again, you know?
It's a... there's a decompression that has to happen.
So, to think that you just went over and did your job,
that's pretty ignorant.
Just bein' outta the corps itself, it's,
it's like a drag.
You kinda feel lost,
like you really don't know what to do,
where to go anymore.
The camaraderie of the corps is no longer there.
You're not even close to your family
like you are to the guys you served with.
You know, there's still a distance
between you and your family,
and most people don't understand it.
Can't really explain it unless you experience it yourself,
you know, that kind of closeness.
I just never get any sleep.
It's just 'cause my mind's running,
and I can't shut it off.
I also have panic attacks
or anxiety attacks when I fall asleep.
I feel this buzzing in my head,
and it feels like you're about ready to die,
and it's like... what it does is
you're goin' to sleep,
and then you're triggerin' back up to awake.
'Cause I've seen dark figures standin' in the corner,
which is really crazy.
♪
You just have these wicked dreams.
I remember just instead of dreaming about
some little Iraqi kid getting killed,
it's my son, or it's like
I'm in a fire-fight,
and I'm just shooting members of my family.
Or, I'm in a fire-fight and members of my family
are dead all around me, and I can't do anything.
Or, I'm in a minivan driving with my wife and kids,
and then it hits an IED.
Every day I was drinking like a 24-pack
just so I can sleep.
You know, it was just wakin' up, beer cans everywhere.
Okay, you know, hungover, drunk still.
You're just there
sitting alone
not even being able to talk to anybody.
When people ask those stupid questions,
"How many people did you kill?
Where you ever scared?"
Yeah, at first, I didn't really know how to freakin'
answer that kind of stuff, you know.
It was kinda like,
"How dare you fuckin' ask me that?
That's none of your fuckin' business.
Why would you say something like that to me?
Have you ever been raped, do you wanna fuckin'
relive that experience with me right now too?
Well, let's fuckin' talk about the most fucked up thing
you ever fuckin' did in your life.
Your Uncle fuckin' Tom, your weird Uncle Tom
ever touch you when you were a kid?"
You're asking questions about the most fucked up thing
that has ever happened in this person's life.
♪
You know, for most people,
they look at PTSD and they see it as
like some sort of frailty, weakness.
And quite frankly, I thought of it like that too for some point.
And I'm just like,
"There's something wrong with me,
and I need to get over this shit because it's been years.
So, get the fuck over it."
But it's different, PTSD isn't that.
It's a survival mechanism, it's what...
The situations that we were in over there,
demanded us to behave in a different way.
Demanded us to...
♪
To be what we are now.
♪
People would say,
"That's the guy you're dating?
That guy?"
Because now I look back on it, and I'm like,
"You've got...
What were you missing," you know what I mean?
I felt like I should have seen something.
When we got together,
three months into it, he was like,
"We're gonna get married,
we're gonna have a baby."
He knew exactly what I wanted to hear.
And then, I got pregnant,
and I called him so excited, and he was like,
he was hungover, and he's like, I,
I'll never forget it, I mean, I'll never forget that.
He just was not,
not thrilled with the idea.
After that,
he flipped a switch
from this guy who was ready to start a family,
and so happy and excited to
"This is the worst thing that could have ever happened to me."
♪
All of this crap started surfacing about
it not being his, and...
He started getting super possessive of me,
going through my things,
and going through my laptop and my emails,
and my text messages, and everything.
As soon as I would put my phone down,
if I was in the bathroom, he was picking it up
and looking at it.
To his friends, to his family,
I was this whore who slept with everybody,
who "This isn't my baby, she's crazy.
She's making this shit up.
We never tried to have a baby."
I was instantly the bad guy.
And so he would say to me, "Don't you know who I am?
Don't you know that I am an interrogator
for this country?
Don't you know that I can figure out anything
that I wanna figure out,
and I can make you say whatever I want you to say?
I can make you feel however I want you to feel."
That's the kind of stuff he would say to me.
And that's when I was like,
"This is bad.
This is a lot worse than I thought it was."
It was like he was still in it, like he was still there.
He either did something or said something
that broke my heart every day.
And the day that he showed up to break up with me
at my parents' house on their porch,
he brought all of my stuff
in trash bags
and left it in my driveway.
♪
- Did you love Kristin? - Yeah.
- Do you still love her? - Yeah.
I'll always love her.
♪
You know, Cole was a twinkle
in our eyes and her belly.
I couldn't handle it,
and that's when,
that's when I started drinkin' hard,
and it just kept goin' hard for a long time.
I was drunk the day he was born.
I was shitfaced the day he was born.
♪
I remember when I went into labor.
I was at the hospital,
and one of our mutual friends came
to be with me 'cause I didn't have anyone.
From her, he found out that I had the baby.
And he called me, and he was drunk,
and he cried,
and said, "I knew this whole time that he was mine.
I don't know why I let other people influence me.
I don't know why
I didn't believe you."
And I said, "Then, come up here.
Come be with me, like what?"
And he's like, "I just can't.
I can't."
Yeah, I wanted to be there,
but I didn't know how to be there.
You know, maybe,
maybe we both didn't want
exactly as much as we said we wanted,
but the bottom line is is I didn't stick up for her,
and I didn't stick up for my son,
I didn't stick up for any of it.
♪
That's a hard thing to get over.
That's a hard thing to forgive yourself for.
♪
Years later, I was sittin' in a car with my mom,
and I was just workin' shitty jobs
'cause nobody would hire me.
I can remember just bein' pissed off and screamin' in the car.
"I fuckin' hate my military service!
I wish I'd never fuckin' joined!
I fuckin' hate the Marine Corps.
It fuckin' ruined me."
♪
I thought I was owed something.
I thought a lot of people owed me something
for military service.
I thought you owed me everything.
♪
I was drinkin' every night, and there's the first DUI.
And then, I got my second one almost a year to the day
of the first one.
♪
The second one was clearly me tellin' myself like,
"Hey, you don't need to be here anymore.
You just keep fuckin' up.
You just keep hurting
yourself and others.
Why do you need to do that anymore?
Just fucking kill yourself."
After a while, I realized I was doin' nothing
but isolating myself.
And that came to a culmination after two DUls.
I tried to empty an entire medicine cabinet
into my stomach.
And I've sat up at night and put a gun in my mouth,
and begged for the strength to pull the trigger
because I thought I was a burden on my family,
thought I was never gonna be a good father,
thought I wasn't a good friend.
♪
His descent into his depression,
into coping mechanisms,
drinking, his failed suicide attempt,
it all came as a shock to me.
We got on the phone, and we talked for a while.
He caught me up to speed
on a few of the stories from the deployment,
and then we talked about what was goin' on with him.
If you're sittin' there reading someone's narrative
of a patrol where there's a casualty...
You know, I've been reading these over and over
for months and years now.
Just insert the name and it's a different patrol,
and it's a different KAA.
And I wanted him to kinda flesh it out,
let me know what I needed to know,
what he had gone through.
And that summer of '15, I think,
I shot down over a long weekend and surprised him at his house,
just kinda shook him up a little bit,
let him know that there was other guys out there in 2/4
that were concerned about him
and what was goin' on with the unit.
♪
Then there's times when you are isolated,
and you are in your own head the whole time,
and it's... You never stop wonderin'
if there's somethin' you could have done better,
or coulda stopped something from happenin',
but you can't think like that, and it sucks.
♪
I guess it's just tough 'cause
I've been walkin' for so goddamn long, but...
I get to see some of the most beautiful things on the planet,
and all I think about is like,
"My brothers never get to see this."
It's fuckin' tough out here...
but I wouldn't change it for the world.
I just wish, I just wish that I died instead of them.
I mean, that's the only thing that really keeps me goin'
is knowin' that...
I don't know what I believe in.
I don't know if I believe in God, I don't,
I don't know.
But I do know that if they were energy,
and they could see me,
I'd hope they'd be proud of me.
♪
Guess we'll find out when Valhalla opens its gates,
either I'm greeted with a beer or an ass-whoopin'.
I'll take either.
♪
♪ When the walls come crashing down ♪
♪ When the walls come crashing down
we will own our past ♪
♪
♪ And we will own our future ♪
♪
♪ And we will own our past ♪
♪ When the walls come crashing down
we will own our future ♪
A Vietnam vet just jerked his car over to the side of the road
and came to a halt.
Told him what I was doin'.
And then, he found me the next day
and handed me his father's Eagle, Globe, and Anchor
he earned from boot camp
during World War II.
And I was just completely floored by that.
I kept it, it's wrapped into my stick now,
so it's not goin' anywhere.
It'll stay right there.
There was a lady back there that came up to me.
She was not happy that I was wearin' a Marine Corps flag
at all.
Preceded to call me a baby killer, and then she...
But I just kinda sat there and took it, man.
I've kinda found that
the only way
I ever deal with it anymore is I just agree with everybody.
And just be like, "Yeah, man, I did it all the time.
That's all the government ever told me to do
was just kill the children,
so that that way I didn't have to
fight guys later on."
Hey, how are ya?
I know it sounds like I'm peein'.
No, it doesn't!
That's crazy.
It's my shower today.
Nice end to a...
It's a really cool little mountain spring.
So I showered.
I still stink.
Diane Layfield is the mother of
Travis Layfield.
I didn't know Diane before the walk.
First time I met her was at the Marines' Memorial Club.
That was an eye-opening experience.
Cheers!
My daughter, and my grandson, and I went down
to meet Travis' battalion when they came home,
and that was probably the second worst,
hardest thing I've ever done in my life.
- Watching all of them... - So you saw us come home?
I saw you all walkin' up that hill.
Yeah, we walked up that hill after the armory.
And I thought I was gonna die because Travis wasn't with you.
Oh, no, there they are.
And Travie always hides from me.
There he is!
I always say one is too many on this wall, but...
Unfortunately.
The guy that I was tellin' you about,
Jeffrey Mehlman,
was actually holding Sims when he died.
And I kept tellin' him all these years,
'cause he's held that inside of him.
I kept sayin', "You need to talk to his mom,
you need to tell her," I said,
"That's just one thing us Gold Star parents want is
every piece of everything that we can get about our kids,
any pictures, any stories, anything, we want hear."
He's yet to do it, and I said,
"You're carrying that heavy burden around with you,
and you've told me and you wanna release it,"
but I said, "She's, Margaret's a great lady.
And she'd be easy to talk to, and she would be
so appreciative to hear this."
Some of the most healing points on this journey
have been when I've gotten to speak with guys
that... or, with families of guys
that I've known personally and known well.
Told them weird and stupid stories, and just...
- But we laugh, we cry. - God, we laugh, we cry.
We do it all, but we do it together.
That's right.
That's what's important to know
just how things were there.
It's another thing all together,
when you're lookin' at these guys right in the face.
I was QRF for Collins when he was killed by a sniper,
we thought he was alive until we got to Junction City.
And then, when they pulled him off the back of the Humvee,
his legs were,
- his legs just fell. - Oh.
And I knew he wasn't alive anymore.
Oh, man.
Holy shit, Mom!
I love you baby, I'm sorry.
I'm so sorry!
It was just such love.
It was like he had another family.
It was like another mom, really.
And Roseanna Powers, I know it was her brother,
but it's the same thing.
It's just family that they didn't know they had.
It was just a really good experience to have Jon here
just to ease the burden from us.
When Jon comes, he caries the grief too,
but it's like I'm not the only one.
I can share it with him.
That sounds bad, but like,
"Here, you have some of that too."
♪
I hope that Jonathan's brought some measure of relief,
comfort to those families 'cause they,
they suffered mightily,
and they still do.
I'm always hurting inside, I'm always crying inside.
I miss him immensely.
It's been tough, but I've met so many wonderful people
along the way through my journey,
and Travis has brought someone or something into my life
almost every day.
I don't want them to feel guilty.
They have to live their lives,
and that's what Travis said in his last letter, actually.
He said, "Mom, don't sit in a corner crying
and worrying about me," he says,
"Go life your life, keep on dancin'."
He knows I love to dance, and he said,
"Keep on dancin' and keep on livin'."
And that's what we have to do.
♪
If Dustin came home,
he could be as screwed up as any one of these guys.
Jon could be our son.
Literally, he could be our son.
We really didn't know each other,
but immediately, within less than 40 minutes,
we went to the darkest place possible.
I don't even know how it happened.
We went to Dustin's death.
I don't know how it happened, but we just kind of
went off in some direction, and all of a sudden,
bam, we were there.
We were surprised, we were actually
talking like, "How did, how did...
We didn't mean to do that so quick."
At that moment, I was like,
"My family needs to meet this guy
because he's gonna help them,"
especially Kerry
because Kerry, at the time,
was just a young teenager.
He didn't meet any of these Marines.
So, I knew it was gonna be healing.
All right, so Kerry joined me.
He's here.
How's it going'?
Everybody knows who Kerry is, and if you don't,
Kerry is the Gold Star youngest brother
of Dustin Schrage, who we lost in Iraq in 2004.
He's picked up with me.
He's gonna do the last 75-ish miles.
♪
When you're a Marine, it's something special.
He was one of their brothers,
and you, being a family member,
you're now a family member.
♪
What did you see in your family when Jon was there?
Joy, I think.
I think everyone's like...
It's just kinda cool that you see someone
that's reaching out to you that knew your brother,
and knew your son.
So, it's cool to hear stories and hear
stuff that made Jon laugh that Dustin would do, you know.
Hear your brother's name livin' through someone else,
not just your close family.
♪
What's up, brother?
What the fuck?
- God! - How you doin', bro?
Good, bro.
Oh!
- Yeah! - There he is!
Your face.
- Yeah. - You look as happy as ever.
I know, right?
All right, well, say hello to everybody.
- Dude! - How you been?
Good.
Hancock's here!
Oh, God, ah!
- Oh! - Motherfucker.
- How you doin', man? - Doin' good, man.
Look at you, you look like a mushroom.
- Yeah. - Oh, there it is.
Toad, man.
Jesus!
Oh, shit!
♪
- What's up, Scottie? - What's up, brother?
Goddamn!
Ah, it's so good to see you, man.
♪
We didn't, I don't think, realize what we had
and how fuckin' important and special it was.
It's healing, for sure, but I don't think this is a time
for us to fuckin' get together and all fuckin' cry,
you know what I mean?
That's not what this shit's about.
This shit's about
coming and enjoying each other's company
and bein' able to crack the most fuckin' inappropriate jokes
in the world with each other and laugh,
and have a good time, and, like,
man, just release all of this pent up shit.
With these guys, I can talk to fuckin'...
I can talk about 'em with,
about fuckin' anything, anything!
All the serious issues that's in the world, or whatever,
don't fuckin' matter.
Here, here, they don't matter.
What matters is here.
This is it, we're fuckin' doin' our thing.
Man, it's, I swear to God,
the best therapy in the fuckin' world.
There's nothin' better than this shit, man.
Really.
♪
Mike, get in here.
Mike, get in here!
- Come on. - Let's go!
Come here.
I missed you, dude.
I missed you somethin' fierce.
Like, I miss...
Trust me, brother, I wish I could have been
- out there walkin' with you. - I fuckin' called you
all the goddamn time because I fuckin' missed you.
It fuckin' hurt, man, I was like,
"Fuck V, I don't give a shit what he's doin'.
Nursin' degree, I don't care!
I'm a call him a 4:00 AM.
Fine, fuck it, it's all good.
Oh, you don't wanna answer?
I'm a leave nine messages!"
Not bein' able to see these guys,
or not knowing how they're doing,
it sucks.
You start havin' issues of PTSD, or whatever,
closest person you can talk to is
the brothers you served with 'cause they were
in the same dirt as you were.
And not bein' able to get ahold of them,
or anything like that,
you tend to lose it.
You know, a lot of people,
or some of the guys we deployed with,
kinda took the shitty way out, you know,
suicides, or whatever.
♪
It's hard to communicate, you know.
♪
We all know what this stands for,
and we know the heavy burden this brings to us all.
Days like today, it's these we remember for life
and we pass onto our junior Marines
and their junior Marines.
I know you all heard some stories
from some of these other Marines up here,
some of our snipers, our sergeant majors.
Carry them on.
I know there are a lot of us who aren't here,
a lot of people who couldn't make it.
There's people out there who are hurtin', they're strugglin'.
- Stay on them. - Fuckin' A.
Stay on them.
I talked a couple people into getting here today,
and this is therapy, gentlemen.
Stay on them.
People out there are struggling,
they're hurting, they don't wanna step forward.
Stay on them.
We can't lose anybody, gentlemen.
We can't lose anybody.
- Very well said. - Yeah.
What you guys maybe don't realize yet
is that you guys are a support network
that you're never ever gonna find anywhere else, ever.
Make sure when you guys fuckin' EAS,
and when your senior guys get out, and shit like that,
stay in contact with each other, man,
exactly what fuckin' Endito's sayin' man.
We don't need to fuckin' lose guys to suicide.
That's fuckin' horse shit, you know.
We all need to be here for each other
'cause nobody fuckin' else is.
- They don't understand. - Yup.
Oh, yeah.
♪ Gungi, gungi, gungi ♪
♪ Blood and guts ♪
♪ You can fuck with anybody ♪
♪ But you can't fuck with us ♪
You look at each other and whether it's said or not,
I can forgive myself for the things I've done
because I protected my brothers.
But how you were after,
like how I was after...
♪
And the lives that I broke
when people were just tryin' to hold on...
I put people through a ride.
♪
You have to go back and you have to understand
where you were and who you were,
and you've gotta fix it.
You have to look at yourself and sometimes admit
that you are the monster.
Dude, I was a fuckin' monster to people.
I was a fuckin' monster.
♪
Through everything, it's a lie
that you manufacture to try to help yourself
get through some of it
because taking responsibility for walking out on
anyone that loved you...
Shit,
how do you even begin to do that?
♪
I've always tried to
keep Cole in at a distance
to protect him,
to protect his idea of his dad
because I don't want him to know all that stuff.
I don't want him to know
the stuff that Jon and I went through.
I don't want him to know that stuff.
I don't want him to,
to be afraid of his dad, I don't...
Right now, he thinks his dad is a hero.
He thinks that
his dad saved the world.
I mean, he thinks that stuff,
and I don't want him thinking any differently.
So, like, when he's walking, he calls me while he's walking.
One time he found,
he found these big tents,
and they were like that.
So these are the sticks.
So look at all these, that's cool, huh?
- Yeah. - Yeah,
and they're all different colors.
That's where I am today.
How's a dinosaur say I love you?
I love you!
I love you too!
All right, buddy, I'll talk to you soon.
♪
He didn't start with the mindset that the was gonna save people
or change people's lives.
It's turned into that,
which he still, I think, has a hard time seeing,
but Cole holds him in this,
up on this pedestal, and I don't,
I don't ever want that to change.
Please help my dad to have a safe walk,
and please help him to be safe.
♪
So I'm afraid for after this walk because
to me, he's doing this great thing,
but it's also not really real life.
When he got out of the military, it was the same way.
He had a hard time transitioning into real life and coping
with real life stuff.
And after this walk,
he's gonna be back to
facing real life stuff.
♪
Once again, I've not lived in the real world
for a long period of time,
but I've been out here walking around
meeting with men that I served with,
trying to gain some perspective on how to live.
I see a lot of guys, and they do live pretty well.
And I guess the fundamental difference is
is that they've forgiven themselves...
♪
And I hadn't done that yet.
♪
All I can do is be the dad that I wanna be.
I don't know how to do that.
And it's tough on him because
he doesn't understand what I'm doing,
and later on in life, God, I really hope he understands it.
I really hope he understands exactly what I had to go do
to try to help myself.
We're gonna have a lot of really tough talks
later on in life, man,
and he's gonna ask tough questions,
and I'm gonna have to give him honest answers.
♪
He could totally hate me,
for sure.
But to be a great dad,
to be the dad I've seen my dad to be to me,
sacrificing myself once again,
but now doing it for my son so that he can see
the man that I have become versus the man that I was,
and he needs to see that,
and he needs to understand who I am.
♪
♪ We came a long, long, way back home
to see you one more time ♪
♪ We came a long, long way back home
to see you and say goodbye ♪
♪ We came a long, long way back home
to see you one more time ♪
♪ We came a long, long way back home
to hold you and say goodbye ♪
♪ Oh ♪
♪
Well, firstly, thank you for havin' me.
And to the 2/4 Marines Association
and to all active duty members of the Marine Corps now,
thank you for your continued service.
I'm happy I made it,
and it was pretty long.
I didn't know how I was gonna do it,
but I just knew that I had to go and do it.
And I can tell you that I'm not
the same person that I was.
I don't have the desire
to hate myself anymore.
I could never not take responsibility
for who I am or what I'm doing ever again.
And for a long time, that was lost.
I'm here today, and I see this amount of support, which is...
First off, thank you so much.
It really warms my heart.
- Love you, Hancock! - Love you, Jon!
But I've met a couple interesting people
along the way,
and a lot of people have taught me a lot of life lessons,
but one of those people is actually here today,
a woman named Lorelei Simons.
Lorelei Simons had a son who was in the Army,
and deployed multiple times, and when he came home,
he didn't win that fight.
And she came to me and said,
"If it's possible and your shoes fit,
would you be able to wear my son's shoes
across the country?"
Well, I was in need of a pair of shoes,
but that immediately... I was not gonna say no to that woman.
Lorelei, these shoes got me
from Miller, South Dakota to Spokane Valley.
And I took 'em off so that I wouldn't damage' em any more
'cause I wanted to bring them to you here today.
Can you come up here for a minute?
Thank you.
It's an honor.
I love you.
Love you too.
To my family,
thank you for being there, even in the darkest of times.
And to my son,
I had to go away for a little while.
And the gravity of this,
I don't think you'll grasp yet,
but just know that I had to go away
so that dad could go get strong, okay?
How's a dinosaur say I love you?
I love you!
I love you too!
Ladies and gentlemen,
thank you so much, thanks for everything.
Semper fidelis.
Have a good day.
♪
♪ Into the world, to the wild ♪
♪ No place for a child ♪
♪ Used my voice to howl
with the ghouls of night
in the dyin' light ♪
♪
♪ I'm losin' control my body, my soul
are slowly fadin' away ♪
♪ But I'm ready now to feel the power of change ♪
♪ I'm my mother's child ♪
♪ I'm my father's son ♪
♪ It took me a while
but my time has come
to be born again ♪
♪
♪ To be born again ♪
♪
Stigma tends to perpetuate this idea around
defectiveness,
but we're not broken.
We're not crazy.
We've been through things that
are difficult for people to even begin to fathom.
We're not victims,
we're survivors.
So many people get out, lose their mission,
lose track, lose sight.
We have this fuckin' superpower.
We went through somethin' that fuckin' nobody else did.
♪
PTSD can stop you, but you can't let it.
Anything that we put our goddamn minds to,
you can move a fuckin' mountain, dude.
♪
I feel an amount of pain
all the time,
but it drives me.
It makes me want to be better.
♪
A lot of me hurt me,
but a lot of that same me saved me.
There was a lot of desire to change,
but there wasn't motivation.
We do these things because we don't feel
that we're good enough.
We feel like the great guys are the ones that
went before us, and here we are
fuckin' up their name.
I don't want that to happen.
I don't wanna sully their memory
by leaving early,
or by not giving them all the credit that is due,
and then living my own life.
I don't get to realize their dreams,
but they gave me the ability to realize mine.
That's, that's where it is.
♪
♪ I'm taken back by all these different footprints
littered all along this lonely road ♪
♪ Loosening these worn out inhibitions ♪
♪ Covering this tired lonely soul ♪
♪ Wind blows wild ♪
♪ These thoughts inside my mind ♪
♪ Don't mind ♪
♪ I've gone past believin'
this is the only thing I have that's left to do ♪
♪
♪ My thoughts are
like Moses
spread water
spread water ♪
♪ I've gone past believin'
I'm on this road to you ♪
♪ I'm on this road to you ♪
♪ I'm on this road
I'm on this road
to you ♪
♪