[extremely loud whistle and explosion.

[extremely loud whistle and explosion.

[gunfire] [men yelling] [rapid machine gun fire] (man) It was just chaos.

As soon as we got there an RPG detonated 20 feet away.

It was as if someone had taken a dustpan of gravel and rock and poured it in your mouth.

[rapid gunfire] I got one right in the chest, right in the center.

I'd go back in a New York minute.

I would go right back because I was comfortable there.

We had bombs going off and IEDs going off and all that stuff, and I was focused.

[loud explosion] The experience of a French soldier in Napoleon's army is no different than the experience of a Marine today.

The terror, the exhilaration that soldiers feel in combat, it's been part of war since the first humans.

War is heroic, it's scary, it's horrifying, it's courage, loyalty, brotherhood and sisterhood, and all of these things that have made humans human for a very long time.

We like to think that war is an aberration, but there's scarcely been a culture or a time when we've not been at war.

It's universal.

We try really hard to keep combat at a distance, but when we talk about war we're talking about what it means to be human.

[loud explosion] All you sit up straight and look at me now!

(all) Aye, sir!

You have just arrived at MCRD San Diego California, Building 602, Receiving company.

From now on, the only things that come out of your mouth is "Yes, sir" or "No, sir" when it comes to a question.

Do we understand?

(recruits) Yes, sir!

Now when I tell you to and only when I tell you to, you get off my bus and get on to the yellow footprints!

Do you understand?

(recruits) Yes, sir!

Get off my bus now!

(recruits) Aye, sir!

Let's go, get off the bus now!

[continues yelling at the recruits] Let's go!

Let's go!

(Karl) When I started boot camp, I think I was 19.

It was like, can I do this?

Marine Boot Camp's really hard, You know?

Some people don't make it, you know?

Can I?

So it was an adventure.

I was kind of excited about it.

I wasn't thinking about, you know, I'm a patriot, I'm going to serve my country.

I was very focused on, I wonder if I can get through this?

(male drill sergeant) Power walk, you're not ready, power walk!

Freeze here!

All of you stop moving around now!

(recruits) Aye, sir!

Scream for your life, Aye, aye, sir!

(recruits) Aye, aye sir!

My understanding of boot camp is based off the movie "Full Metal Jacket."

As real as Stanley Kubrick's version of Marine Corps Boot Camp is, ah, it's a light version.

(sergeant) You have 30 seconds to shove everything in that bag, now!

(recruits) Aye, aye sir!

(Lisa Crutch) I questioned my decision.

Why the heck did you join the military, you know?

You have a good job, you're married, you got kids, you own a house--why the heck do you wanna join the military?

(sergeant) Where you at Friedkin, Alex?

(recruit) Here, sir!

(Frederick Romero) They start calling out our names, and they're calling out "Frederick Romero," I'm not answering because my name was "Freddie" when I was a kid.

I didn't know my name was "Frederick" until I went into the Marine Corps!

(sergeant) Stop right there!

Get over here!

(recruit) Yes, sir!

(sergeant) Not so funny, right?

(recruit) No, sir!

[sergeants screaming] (recruit) No sir!

No sir!

I got down, I was doing like 50 push-ups, he's yelling at me, "Stupid assh---."

He wanted to know why I didn't answer.

I said,"I didn't know my name was Frederick."

He said, "Well, you dumb assh--- that's what your name is on your birth certificate."

[sergeants screaming] (recruit) Yes, sir!

No, sir!

Get out of my face!

Aye aye sir!

Go away!

(recruit) Yes, sir!

They tre They treated us like dogs, they institutionalized us, they stripped us of our identity and made us more of a collective being, if you will.

(all) Ahhhh!

It's a radical shift in your personality and how you think about yourself.

You come in as a kid who thinks only of himself and his needs, and you become someone who will literally risk your life for a fellow Marine.

It's what initiations are all about.

This transformation from child to adult, from civilian to warrior, it goes all the way back to ancient Greece, to Athens, Sparta.

Essentially, they try to make you quit, they try to weed out the weak, any way they can physically or mentally try to break you, they try to.

[yelling & gunfire] (Roger Sparks) It's really to benefit combat effectiveness.

You cannot think of yourself to be effective in combat.

And the moment that you have self-preserving thoughts, everything is going to go to hell.

[soldiers yelling] [rapid gunfire] (Sebastian Junger) When we ask soldiers to go fight, it's not just another job.

We're asking them to kill other people for us, and that means that because they have a moral burden that's inherent in their job, we have a moral obligation to think about it.

(Karl Marlantes) You can't teach a person to kill, but you can convince the person that the normal inhibitions of civilization are now going to be removed, and we're going to send you over to this place, and out comes this incredible aggressive nature that we just have as an animal species.

But the other thing you have to understand is that you're playing with dynamite.

You've got a 19-year-old kid with an automatic weapon.

How do you check that?

That's the discipline of military training.

[drill instructor] Kill it!

(recruit) Aye Sir!

Aye Sir!

I don't think anybody grows up thinking, I want to kill people or I want to be a part of something where you're killing people.

So there's a lot of values installed in you that they had to teach you to go against and still be moral.

Ahhhh!

You have to realize that you can't think like a civilian.

And then when you see other guys do dumb, stupid, stuff.

And then all of us get punished for it.

Boot camp was the first time I got in trouble for something someone else did.

And that was a real eye-opener for me.

We had to have our canteens full of water, no matter what.

If they ever came and checked on you to see if you were hydrated, the first thing they would do is check your canteen, to see how much water you had in there.

And one day, I just didn't want to carry the extra weight.

I was like, this is BS, I don't want to carry this stupid canteen; it's not even that hot out outside.

Sure as (ááááá), this drill sergeant came over, and he started checking canteens, opens mine up, and he pours it out and there's nothing in there, and he goes, guess what?

What you're going to do is, you're going to go into the barracks.

You're going to tell everybody to come outside, and you're going to tell them that now we're going to do extra PT because you decided you didn't want to carry water outside of the cafeteria.

Right away, my heart sank.

I was like, phew, I have to be the bearer of bad news.

I have to go in there and tell all these guys that now, because of me, they're going to suffer the punishment.

I felt about that big.

That is war-- if you don't do your job, it doesn't just hurt you, it hurts everybody else.

The ego has to go!

By about your 8th week, when you're marching and we're so good, the drill instructor doesn't even call cadence.

You just drive your left foot into the ground a little harder than your right, and we're of one foot.

And we are so in tune, you start to really dig that, let me tell you.

(R. Dennis Eller) Your team, your tribe, is what matters.

You can only ever be as strong as the weakest member of your team.

And so because of that fact, you're going to take the person who like, forgets to fill up his canteen, you're going to take the person who doesn't know how to assemble his rifle, and you're going to rise him up to the level that he wants to be at.

(Harrison Manyoma) We were doing our final, final road march-- 15 miles.

Something snapped in my Achilles tendon.

I remember there was so much pain.

And tears were coming down my eyes, and the rest of the group was maybe about 50 yards up.

There's a vehicle that follows you.

And if the vehicle comes past you, you would fail.

And I was maybe about 5 yards from that vehicle.

I remember one guy, last name Gibson, from Alabama.

Gibson came all the way back, and he said, Manyoma, he goes, if you fail, I fail.

That's at the moment where I'm... [with much emotion] where I knew that somebody cared more enough about me than they did themselves.

And he carried my rucksack.

And he said you're not going to give up.

We came too far, and I need you.

And for the rest of the 13 miles he walked with me, and I was able to pass that.

[recruits scream a battle cry] (Karl Marlantes) They're not Marines until they get through it, and then at the top of the hill their drill instructors say, now you're in.

Good morning, sir!

Congratulations.

Thank you sir.

You guys look good.

Aye!

You don't smell so good.

Aye!

But you look good.

Yes Sir.

Well done, congratulations.

Thank you sir.

Well done, congratulations.

This is an initiation into something, but much deeper than they were before.

They reach a certain level of maturity that they did not have before.

What is it that those Marines have, that when I was 16 I didn't have?

I want it, you know, and that's how they get it.

You don't just go buy it.

You have to go through the crucible to earn it.

But I was not prepared for the reality of combat.

The real training starts, as you're getting ready to go to war.

You know, you can't teach a most important thing, which was, what does it feel like to get shot at?

All the training, none of it could have prepared me for what we experienced.

Experiencing war, and experiencing combat.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into-- none.

[chop-chop of the helicopter blades] (Sebastian Junger) In my early 30s there was a war in Bosnia, a civil war.

And off I went to Bosnia with a stack of notebooks and some pens to became a war reporter.

I wanted to understand what war was all about.

There are all kinds of wars-- there are unjust wars; there are wars that are necessary, like World War II.

But I quickly discovered that all wars have something in common.

You see people relying on each other.

They rely on each other in small groups to survive the circumstances of combat.

The group matters more to them than their own survival does.

it struck me, like, that is our human origins.

I mean, that's why this species has survived and thrived, is that the individual is capable of putting a group before their own interests.

That, to me, held some secret to the human experience that I really, really wanted to understand and write about.

(Dennis Mosley) My first deployment I was part of a machine gun team, the 240, Bravo.

I remember being extremely nervous 'cause one, I didn't want to f--- up, and two, I didn't know what was going to happen.

(Morocco Coleman) The pilot said, "Gentlemen, please fasten your seat belts, we will land in 15 minutes."

And I looked out the window, and I saw this lush, beautiful, green utopia.

(Elijah) I mean you flew in, and you see these mountains and this desert and these green patches of orchards.

It's just such a, it's a beautiful country.

I mean, it's one of the most beautiful countries I've ever been to.

(Jason Wheeler) The cab's air conditioned in the plane, and when they open up the door, you know, I was like, man, those engines are really hot, you know.

The turbines are really blowing that hot air in here-- that's crazy.

And then I realized that it wasn't the engines, that was just the ambient temperature outside.

As we're walking down they're just handing us bottles of water going drink water, drink water, drink water.

I'm like, you've got to be kidding me.

[rush of strong wind blowing] I was like what the hell am I doing?

What the hell have I gotten myself into?

Where in the hell am I, and how'd I get here?

[laughs] It was a, really, you know, like being in a different world.

(Ron) When I was on ship, getting ready to fly out to my first op.

I sought out those guys that were salts, salt meaning they'd been there awhile, to try to learn what the bush was like, to try to get some sense of, of what to expect.

And of course, none of them really wanted to talk much about it.

The guys that are leaving, they don't even look at you.

We didn't exist.

We're replacing the 2nd Infantry Division and these guys, you know, they look like they're just been beat to death with a tired stick.

(Frederick Romero) You could just see these people that are like zombies, kinda-- zoned out.

Mean hard look on their face, like, I'm not messing with these guys.

Right?

You know, you're looking at these guys, you're like, am I going to be like that in a year?

(Frederick Romero) I asked the sergeant, hey, what's wrong with these guys?

He said, you'll find out later about what that's about.

It made me be more afraid.

Then you start thinking about what it was going to be like.

I mean, you know you're going into a hot area, and you know someone's going to die.

[chop-chop of the helicopter blades] When we were out in a combat zone, it was different than normal life.

You knew it was different.

Psychologically, it was different.

I'd been in country about 2 days or 3 days.

Myself and another lieutenant were put on a helicopter to be dropped in to where our company was, which was in the middle of the jungle, probably up about 4,000, 5,000 feet.

I'm sort of, I've got a map, and I'm trying to see where we're going and everything and all of a sudden, fff!

fff!

fff!

fff!

holes came into the fuselage.

I was like, my god!

We're being shot at!

[loud gunshots] God, we were such Cherries.

So we roll into our FOB, Victory North.

As we're rolling into Victory North, we went by an IED, there's mortars that drops behind us as were rolling in.

Then we stop with our Humvees, and my company commander comes running out, he's like, everyone run to the bunkers!

And we're like, oh s---, war!

[extremely loud explosions] Probably one of the loudest explosions I've heard in my life because it was so close and it was so big.

People just everywhere, every direction.

I remember just getting up off the ground and going, what the f--- was that?

I knew exactly what it was, but it was one of those things where you couldn't believe that it had happened to you.

The second the mortar hit, right then was when I realized that either I'm going to live or I'm going to die-- there's nothing I can really-- you're a dead man walking, basically.

nothing I can really-- you're a dead man walking, basically.

[loud whistle; loud explosion] These things were coming in with this awful whistle, Zzzz...boom!

Right?

And they were landing right on top of us, we were curled up in trenches.

It felt like World War 1.

[loud whistles and explosions] And you just think, If I hear the explosion I'm alive.

And if I get killed I'll never hear the explosion.

And you have one second to think that.

So, time after time it's this awful existential crisis.

Modern war, it's just, it's just random in many ways.

You really are completely out of control, and one of the things that gives you a sense of I might make it, is that I'm good at this.

I can, you know-- I'll be smart.

[extremely loud explosion] But when you're being shelled... [extremely loud explosion] there's nothing you can do, you just have to sit there and take it.

[extremely loud explosions] (Jason Wheeler) The first time that we were going on a mission, going outside the wire.

Nothing seems real; everything's surreal.

Because you don't know what's out there!

You just don't know!

(Sebastian Junger) On my third trip, about halfway through the deployment, I was in a Humvee, on a supply convoy coming into the Korengal Valley.

And we came around this hairpin turn very, very slowly.

We're sort of creeping around it, and, boom!

[explosion & clattering] The bomb went off under the engine block, instead of under the crew compartment, and so that was a matter of a fraction of a second that saved us.

We bailed out, there's gunfire, I ran behind cover behind another Humvee.

After that I was so jacked up for the rest of the day.

I mean, on top of the world, I'm cranked.

Right?

And then that night, I watch the footage again, and as I'm watching the Humvee get close to the point where it's going to get blown up, I just got this unbearable sense of anxiety, and I just couldn't-- I actually couldn't watch it.

Boom, I heard it go, and it took me a long time to actually watch it.

After the IED I got quite depressed, I had a lot of really bad dreams.

That lasted until the next time we got into a firefight.

[loud explosions & rapid gunfire] [men yelling commands] [machine gun fire] I have to say that I have never been so excited and so full of life as when I was, uh, in combat.

You lose that sense of ego, you're just part of this bigger cause.

I was in a deep primitive state of mind.

[machine gun fire] I think it's hilarious that in America now we have this big thing about meditation and being present, and all this other kind of stuff, right, because you're never more present than you are in war, like soldiers have figured this out eons ago.

If you want to be present, get shot at.

I guarantee you.

You are locked in, like Buddha, to what's happening right now.

Training kicks in, fear dissipates.

I'm in the zone, and I'm throwing lead.

[machine gun fire] (Lisa) I was a 50-cal gunner on a back of a gun truck.

[50 cal.

gunshots] That would be my weapon of choice.

[laughs] You know, you can take it down with a 50-cal.

And I would shoot until nobody else was up there, um, but standing there and shooting, and literally hearing shooo-- you're hearing the bullets, I could hear them go past my ears.

And now that I'm sitting here thinking about it I'm like, dummy, why didn't you duck?

[gunfire] Hearing the chaos on the radio-- it's a KIA or it's one down, one down, and the smell, when the 7.62 round hits the flesh of someone.

It's almost like an instant smell of burnt skin.

It's a terrible smell.

You mix that with cordite in a firefight and it sort of permeates the air.

[loud gunfire] Firefights are nasty.

Assault by the weapons, the smell, the explosions, the screaming.

It really just became us and them.

So it's either me and my friends or it's them and their friends.

I'm going to get them before they get me.

It just made us want to go out there, and we called it get some.

They're gooks, they're towelheads, they're hajiis, they're krauts, they're nips.

I mean, we have lots of names that allow us to fool ourselves that they're not really human being.

You are just facing your enemy.

It was either them or my guys-- f--- 'em.

Fire that way.

Don't fire this way at all.

(man) I'm trying to find Maverick and trying to get things consolidated.

We were on an assault, it was a very steep hill, you know, I mean, like, 45 degrees, and um, as we were going up the hill, they were dug into fighting holes and bunkers above us.

(Ken Clark) There was like an elevated road that went through the middle of these rice paddies and we went over that road and on the other side the VC was hiding out in the rice paddies.

I look, and I keep seeing these black flashes, and the VC always wore black pajamas or black shorts of like shiny black stuff, and I keep seeing them.

Finally I tell my squad leader, I said there's gooks all over out there.

He goes, what?

I said there's one right there.

He goes, I don't see anything, I'm like, there's one out there.

He goes, well go get him.

[machine gun fire] (man) All right, let's go!

C'mon, let's go!

Somebody shouted "Chicom," and Chicom is a hand grenade with a wooden potato masher sort of look to it, and I saw it tumbling in the air above me.

And I said okay, I'm gonna go around the side so that when they stand up to throw their grenades, I'll be there with my M16.

And this little guy sees us, and he stands up.

The water is probably crotch deep on him, and he's starting to run, and we tried to chase him, and it's hard to run in a rice paddy especially if you've got on a flak jacket, helmets and guns and all this crap you're carrying.

He was only maybe 150 feet in front of me.

Well, I had an automatic.

And I got him right in the sight of my M16.

I'm laying on the ground, and I'm just like that, and he's probably 10 or 12 feet away from me, and um, we locked eyes.

And I remember whispering out loud, I couldn't speak Vietnamese, but I can remember whispering out loud, Don't throw it, I won't pull the trigger, 'cause he had his grenade.

Don't throw it, I won't pull the trigger-- I can remember whispering, just trying to communicate with him.

Just don't throw it, I won't pull the trigger.

Well, he just snarled at me and threw it at me, and I pulled the trigger.

At that moment I thought, better him than me.

It was years later that I began to understand I killed another human being.

[with much emotion] I hit him all across the lower back.

[with much emotion] And I...

I thought I had missed him because I saw the rounds hit the water behind him.

So I thought, well I missed him.

But he stopped and he was just sitting upright in the water, and as I approached he had turned, and he was facing me, and he looked like he was smiling, but he was grimacing, and I looked down.

The rice paddy was just boiling pink, muddy, dirty water.

I had just blew his guts out and the instant I saw that... [with much emotion] I could do nothing but turn my back.

He could have killed me.

I didn't care.

I just turned my back, and then he died a few minutes later.

(Sebastian Junger) War is incredibly sad.

I mean, war is heroic, it's scary, it's horrifying.

It's all these big bold emotions, but it's also incredibly sad.

And, um, sadness is a delicate emotion.

And when I really connected with how, just, sad it is that human beings kill one another, just that the basic term-- there's a bunch of boys on a hill, trying to kill a bunch of other boys on another hill.

That basic fact just crushed me.

[chop-chop of the blades of a helicopter) (MJ Hegar) I was the new guy.

I was one of the only people who hadn't had a rescue.

So any time the radio crackled I was like, jump in, and I was kind of excited, you know, and I was in the shower, and I heard my radio go off and sure enough it was the launch code, REDCON-1!

And I jumped out, I think I let a woo-hoo!

out somewhere.

I had my helmet on; I was really excited.

[gunshots and explosions] The LZ was under fire.

We were supposed to wait until the fire got suppressed before we landed, but we didn't.

We landed, we took him on.

My medic is communicating to us on the radio, and he's saying things like, we're code blue back here, which means he's lost his pulse.

I looked at the pilot next to me, and he looked at me, and he pulled as high as he could, as much as the engines could pull, and he just beelined, no tactics, no worrying about getting shot down, just beelined for the Role 3.

My medic got him back, said I've got a pulse, he's doing CPR in the back and uh, we got him to the Role 3.

They took him in for surgery and lost him.

[with much emotion] And I tell this story as a penance to myself because the guilt over being excited to have a mission and understanding now that as a medivac pilot when you get a mission somebody else is having a really bad day.

In Hue city, we went in with 53 Marines.

[loud explosion] After the first day, we had 28 left.

We lost 23 the very first day.

At daybreak, we were in a house, and the Vietnamese was right across the street.

And it's probably 50 feet, maybe-- very, very close, very close.

I went to the window to shoot, and when I stepped around the window, that's when I got one right in the chest, right in the center.

It felt like, um, somebody had taken a hot spit like you put on a barbecue, and just stuck it through your chest and left it there.

They put me on the back of the tank.

I thought the ride was going to kill me then, there's no rubber, it's all metal track.

And it was just constant beating, vibrating, and I had busted up ribs and chest, and that was what was hurting so bad.

It was really hurting.

At the MASH unit, I'm laying there, and one of the corpsman says, "This one's not dead yet."

And I thought to myself, Well, that poor son of a bitch must be hit bad, if he says "not dead yet," Well, I didn't know that he was talking about me.

They had put me in a body bag with the other Marines that, you know, were already expired and stuff.

Thank goodness somebody unzipped it!

We used to put all your personal property in an ammo can, in the bottom of the rucksack.

And there was a method to the madness, so that if you got killed or wounded, people could just pull out the can, and this is what you sent home.

I actually made some phone calls to people to say good-bye.

Because I prepared myself to not come back.

(Karl Marlantes) It was a terrible experience-- seeing your friends mutilated.

It's the bigger motivator than saving your own skin.

There's 101 ways of saving your own skin in combat.

But most people don't do it, because you wouldn't let your friends down.

It's a form of love.

I mean, I'm not going to let you down.

I am going to have your back-- and you'll have mine.

That's a fate worse than death is to get into combat and let down the very guys that trusted you, trained you, and are standing there fighting right by your side.

To let them down is worse than any death I can imagine.

It was an intensely rich brotherhood, based on a lot of suffering, you know.

I've never felt that close to anyone, I mean, I'm not even that close to my wife, compared to the love I had for my brothers.

[with much emotion] I love those people as though they were birthed from the same parents.

We've seen and done and been through a lot of stuff together, that not even my biological family can ever understand.

(Sebastian Junger) Tim Hetherington was my friend, he was a photographer.

I convinced him to join me in a film project I wanted to do, which eventually became our movie "Restrepo."

We had a sort of special bond where when we were together, we looked out for each other, and the military calls it battle buddies, like, everyone has a battle buddy, well, Tim was my battle buddy, even though I didn't carry a gun.

Tim and I were supposed to be on assignment together in Libya.

At the last minute I couldn't go.

I was in New York with my wife, in our apartment, and the phone was ringing, and it was a mutual friend saying that Tim had been wounded.

And I was pretty optimistic-- some other journalists had been wounded, and it was a tank round.

They said it was a tank round, and I thought it had to have hit their, the house that they were in.

So tank rounds aren't that powerful, I bet he's all right.

And then within about a half an hour, it was confirmed that he was killed.

I suddenly understood what the soldiers were talking about.

In combat, if your buddy was in danger, you would give almost no thought to your own safety in order to help that person, which made it my failure that I hadn't protected him-- on some level.

I should've been there, it should've been me.

I should've been there to save his life, it should've been me, maybe I would've been killed and not him.

On some level, I was in New York, my buddy was in Libya, and he got killed, and I'm okay.

How do you live with yourself?

I think about guys that died, like my radio operator, I don't know, 3 or 4 times a month, he'll come to mind, I'll just think about, his name was Thomas.

I was the one that sent him on this ambush.

We wanted to, when we took a hill, I knew where the NVA were going to go, because I'd been there a while, and I knew there's only one place they can escape.

I said, Thomas, I want you there with a squad with a machine gun to kill 'em.

He was in the jungle, trying to work his way into a position.

I said, they're leaving, you got to get going, you got to move, you got to move, 'cause we're gonna miss 'em.

I was, I was in, I mean, my blood was up, 'cause I'd just finished the assault, we were still firing, in fact.

And he wanted to do a good job, and so, he broke cover with, from the jungle, and to move up into position.

Three RPGs, rocket-propelled grenades, they had rockets, two of them hit the squad and killed Thomas.

Warner, who was a machine gunner, I remember him coming up to me with Thomas on his shoulders, and he just dumped him there.

And I go, like, wow.

I bet you, I bet you Warner thinks I killed him.

And I carried that guilt for so many years.

You do get so close to people.

I mean, it's, I mean, Thomas saved my life one night because I had gone into hypothermia, and I was shivering so violently, I, I couldn't control it.

And uh, he knew what hypothermia was, so he just grabbed me and went to the ground with me, and hugged me for about 20 minutes to heat me up.

How close can you?

You can't get any closer than that.

[with much emotion] I mean, I start to cry about it even now, and uh, and he's gone.

When you're looking at your buddy who is missing half his body... it's a whole different level at that point.

They took someone that you care about, someone who you depended on in many respects, and you want to make them pay for taking that person.

When you get to the point where it's payback time and you want to go out there, and you want to kill a gook, you want to, you want to get some revenge or whatever, you can't wait to get out there.

(man) over there, there's openings in the windows!

Gunner!!

[loud machine gun fire] [loud rushing sound of a flame thrower] We got somebody!

War is an assault on your senses, including your sense of right and wrong.

You don't want to admit that you're becoming this animal where it's uncaring and unfeeling, but at the same time, you're tired of being tired, you're scared of being scared.

[with emotion] You can't take it no more, man, I'm tired of being scared!

[extremely loud explosion] (man) Get out!

Get out!

Get out!

One time, the enemy spent the night building car bombs, and there were 6 in 15 minutes.

So we show up, and the pieces of the bomber were thrown everywhere and anybody that happened to be on the street right there was thrown everywhere, and the trees-- we looked around-- the trees are singed black but then right across the street from it, all of these women are-- they're the family members of the victims, whoever was on the street in that area.

And they want to know what happened, of course, and we're there to know what happened.

The thing blew up 10 minutes ago, and the women are screaming, and I'm trying to pick up evidence.

And just the women never stopped screaming.

I could not hear myself think.

I couldn't hear anything but the shrieking, I can't talk to my team, and I can't gather the evidence, I can't figure out what's going on, the radio is squawking.

There's still, you know, there's another bomb that goes off, then there's another one waiting for us.

We're behind, and the women never stop screeching, and I had a moment where I thought if no one else will shut them up, I will shut them up.

And this was the lowering of that bar and lowering of the threshold, and what am I capable of?

And I am just like some kid from Buffalo, good Catholic kid from Buffalo, and the U.S. government gave me this rifle that is sitting right here, and they gave it to me because there would be times I need to shoot people, and this is one of those times.

What bothered me afterwards is what I learned about myself that the things I didn't think I was capable of, I am capable of.

I'm as capable of doing all these things as anybody else.

My god-given conscience was not going to stop me from doing these things.

I don't know what stopped me.

And that's when I knew that I had to leave.

[acoustic guitar; softly finger-picking] [playing The Rolling Stones "Play with Fire"] (Mick Jagger) ♪ Well, you've got your diamonds ♪ ♪ And you've got your pretty clothes ♪ ♪ And a chauffeur drives your car ♪ ♪ You let everybody know ♪ ♪ But don't play with me ♪ ♪ 'Cause you're playing with fire.

♪ When I came home, I spent a lot of nights sitting in the dark at home, at mom's house, and mom would come in sometimes, 2 or 3 in the morning, and I'd be sitting up, and she'd say, "Honey, you've got to put that behind you.

It's over."

And I said "No, I said no, it's not over."

And I remember sitting there at the breakfast table one morning, and she said, "Ronnie, I miss the old Ronnie."

I looked at her.

I said, "Mom, I want you to know right now, that guy was killed in Nam, and he's not coming back."

(Lisa Crutch) Prior to me going overseas I was a different person.

I was Lisa but when I got overseas I'm Sergeant Crutch and the transition from Lisa to Sergeant Crutch for me is very easy-- I can do it just like that.

but transitioning from Sergeant Crutch to Lisa is very difficult.

The memories from Iraq, they're still so fresh that I pushed everything else in the back of my mind.

I couldn't remember things that I've done with my family.

My kids would even show me pictures.

Mom, remember when we did so and so?

We went so and so, and I couldn't recall it.

It was like I see myself in the picture but I had no recollection of ever being there with them, but if you ask me anything that I did or what happened overseas in the military I can tell you everything I did in Iraq.

Some things I can even tell you the dates (Karl Marlantes) I stuffed it down, but it came back.

I'm on I-5, driving, it's 2:00 in the morning.

It's probably about 1990, I mean, you know, 25 years, '75, '85, about 15 years after the war, and uh, 2 in the morning, and all by myself, little bubble, I got country music on the radio, I-5, I'm on a mission, then those 2 eyes come up in the windshield.

That was how long it took me to finally start to understand that I had actually killed a human being.

That was the first time that I had, uh, ever even had a symptom of post-traumatic stress.

(Sebastian Junger) The crisis of killing and being killed is over, so the stakes feel lower when people come home, but really, if you follow veterans through their lives, the stakes aren't over.

I mean, there are enormous emotional, psychological burdens to engaging in war, if you are not properly reincorporated back into society.

The truth about war is very, very ugly, and on some level, people don't want to know about the ugliness.

We're talking about human lives, both American and foreign, and so it's a conversation that has to happen.

I wasn't allowed to talk about anything.

Anybody, even my own father didn't want to hear what I had to say about it-- Oh, I don't want to hear it.

I went, oh?

I had all this I wanted to share but I mean, even my friends didn't want to know what I had to say, and I'm like, okay.

So you just hold it in.

Probably 1981, 1982, I was playing soccer with my son and I wasn't even thinking about the war or anything.

We were playing soccer, and we had this pear tree with low limbs, a lot of wind-- the leaves were shaking.

The trunk and the limbs were blowing, a lot like helicopter wash. My son had on his soccer-- he was like 10 maybe-- he had on his soccer shorts, they were black and shiny, and he ran up in that pear tree to get the soccer ball, I was gone.

[with much emotion] I wasn't there anymore... and it really scared me.

I mean, I don't know how long I stood there smelling and feeling the heat, but suddenly when I was back in the United States, my son was jerking on my arm going, "Dad, Dad, Dad."

I'm like, oh, it scared me so bad.

I have a Ka-Bar, I had a little survival rifle.

I took them and I hid them as far in the back of my garage.

I made it as difficult to get to those as I could.

And that started happening a lot.

(MJ) When people say "Thank you for your service," most vets will probably tell you this, it's a very awkward moment.

I don't want to be thanked-- what do you say, you're welcome?

I don't know how to receive that.

It's, oh, you're a hero!

Thank you for your service, no no no, because I'm just doing my job.

It always made me feel a little bit uncomfortable, because I always knew what I was like inside, and you know, if I was shooting at somebody, or shooting a gun, or calling some artillery, or whatever, I did it with malice.

I did it with hate.

You know?

And here's somebody thanking me for that, some lady's like, "Oh, thank you for your service," and I'm like, lady, if you knew the monster that lived inside of me, you would not want to be even near me right now.

My mother-in-law and her husband wanted to take us out to a nice dinner.

So me and my wife go out with them, and we're in a very nice restaurant, a nice steak place, so I'm at this restaurant, and I've got this $50 piece of meat that you can cut with a fork.

Right?

And I, suddenly, it just washes over me, I felt guilty that I'm fixing to eat this $50 steak with a fork, not even need for a knife, it's so good.

And I look around at all the people in the nice restaurant, and I'm like, wow, these people don't have a clue!

They have no idea what's going on in this world.

They're sitting here without a care in the world, eating $50 steaks, and there's some 20-year-old kid trying not to get killed halfway around the world, eating a black-bean enchilada out a frickin' MRE.

I f---in hate civilian life.

[laughs] I mean, it sounds horrible, but I do.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't go back to the military.

It controls your life way too much, but you don't have the same brotherhood or camaraderie, or just goal-oriented posturing-- purpose that you have in the military.

Civilians don't have it at all.

One thing about Nam, about military service in those situations is, you know somebody's got your back.

In the world, it's dog eat dog.

There's not that, that comradeship.

There's not that love.

There's not that I've got you covered I wish more of the American public understood war the way that warriors understand war, because we would be much more frugal as a nation in our use of young women and men who are dying right now still.

(Sebastian Junger) I think the great struggle for families and friends of veterans is how to gain access to what their loved one went through.

Civilians don't even understand that they have permission to ask the question.

To me it's very important to tell your story, to tell my story and other veterans to tell their stories, because they just want to be heard.

We just want to be heard.

Nightmares, not having anyone be able to understand what we went through.

It's a wonderful thing when, when someone can give you their details, because when we're able to give our details and the person that we're telling it to receives, there's a sense of no judgement-- hey, you're safe here-- you're more than welcome to pour, put it all out there, because we want to know, genuinely, and when we're able to do that, we start to feel safe, we start to forgive ourselves.

For the men and women who fight war, it is a deeply personal experience that leaves them changed for the rest of their lives.

So when you engage in stories about war, along with some great sadness and ugliness, you are seeing some of the most noble and admirable human traits on full display.

The act of sharing and listening to war stories can be a profound and potent way to incorporate warriors back into civilian life.

It's what tribal societies have done since the beginning of time.

It's what Homer did in Ancient Greece.

It's what every single healthy society has always done when its warriors have returned home.

I call it turning, ah, your ghosts into ancestors.

Ghosts are what run our lives because of these things that we've done.

But you can't let them haunt you because you'll never outrun them.

What you did in war will always be a part of your past, part of what defines you.

But when you tell your story without fear and others listen without judgment, we all become whole.

Going to War is available on DVD To order, visit shop.PBS.org or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS Going to War is also available for download on iTunes For a deeper look inside the veteran experience, visit pbs.org/goingtowar