Transcription
We all talk about how when we're going to go home, how proud we're going to be to be combat vets. I mean, how many people can say that they're combat veterans? You know, 19 years old, I fought in a war. That's that's awesome. Nothing can beat that. That's the coolest thing in the world. You know, it'll be fun to look back on. Just waiting to get to that point where I can look back on it.
Here it is, 2003. They got us out here in Baghdad. Life is hard. Got us pulling [ __ ] two hours of guard, then they up it up to eight. Between 12, I don't give a [ __ ]. I think I'm stuck in hell. I'd rather be there instead of jail. Putting B on the me, my. It's not a moment of day to go by that not a thought about Baghdad never crosses my mind. It made me who I am today. Going to a country where you don't know nothing. Knowing what's going down, knowing you're hearing the bombs and the gunshots. It's real now. Like you've been trained for it. They done told you about it. Now you're here.
Dr. Calm down, it's a wedding day. They always show up with the Wednesday. Yeah, nothing. I'm already ready. That's the worst [ __ ] you can go through at the age that we was going through it. They're trying to hit the compound. Someone smoking a cigarette in the [ __ ]. Oh [ __ ].
[Music]
What are you going to do when you get out of the army? Be a [ __ ] rock star. Sometimes I remember, oh yeah, that's right, I went to Iraq. Now that I have a kid, sometimes I find myself thinking, is he going to end up going to some war that ends up not doing any good for the world and receive a bunch of shitty care afterwards?
I think we were in Baghdad for a few days, and then we were in a firefight outside the Abu Hanifa mosque. And it was just totally bizarre. Just you [ __ ] gunfire everywhere, a couple of RPGs. And I was just thinking, what the [ __ ] am I doing here? And that question never went away. I don't know how to explain the war to myself and have yet to have any clear thought of like, yes, we actually made a difference there because we didn't at all. There was no difference [ __ ] made. Uh, maybe for the worse.
[Music]
The area I come from is uh, very small. Not a lot of opportunities for people fresh out of high school. So it was either community college or go do something, travel the world, get paid for it, experience places like this. I had swore I'd never join the army. I watched my brother come home all rigid when I was like 12, and I was like, no way. And then he called me and he said, you watching this [ __ ]? And I said, what? He goes, turn on the television. And about 30 seconds after I turned on the television, the second plane hit. When that happened, one, I was mad. You know, in my [ __ ] backyard. Um, but I immediately thought, you know, this is what I need to do. I need, I need to, to, to defend my. I just felt it. I just had to do it. I had to go join my brother. I had to be by his side. There was no way I was going to let my brother go into a war and me not be there.
We'll keep one saw back here. Just know where your people are. We got the. So you need to start holding that like you [ __ ] mean it. That deployment was funny because there was no clear-cut mission the whole time. You're wondering like, what are we really doing? Are we really in combat? Are we not in combat? Who's actually the enemy? Now you're in Baghdad. Now you're in the heart of AIA. Now you're now.
[Applause]
What was going through my mind was it was dark out and I couldn't see my fingers basically. I was hoping I still had my fingers. I couldn't tell where I was shot. I just knew my arm was numb. And I found out I had my fingers and I could move them. The doc came by and he was patching me up and we just had a shallow conversation about, uh, you know, oh wow, man, you got shot. I was like, yeah. And I think I was only 19 at that point. And to be shot in the first two weeks of a 16-month deployment was was setting the tone to say the least.
[Music]
IEDs are the scariest. Gunfire and crap like that, that [ __ ] don't bother me. You know, it's whatever. With IEDs, they had that [ __ ] in garbage, man. And it could be anywhere. And you ride through the hood and you see a milk jug on the side of the road, but the milk jug look kind of cut, or trash bag, trash bag look kind of ripped up. That's the [ __ ] that they will put the [ __ ] bombs in. Back up the road, I don't see any wires, but it's on the surface. We found Coke cans with plastic explosives in them on the corner. And when you're walking around a neighborhood that's literally, I mean, trash up and down the streets, it's you can't really tell where they are. You see us when we're going around corners and there's a box on the side of the road. It's just you cringe and take the turn, hopefully you don't hear a bang. I still cringe when I pass garbage. I still my ask my wife, she goes nuts. I avoid garbage like the plague on the road. I will swerve my car to the other side. She's like, what the [ __ ] is wrong with you? We're riding in the open tailgate of a truck and people are getting [ __ ] up all the time and we'd still go out there with it. Part of our $87 billion budget provided for us to have some secondary armor put on top of our thin-skinned Humvees. This armor was made in Iraq. It's high-quality metal and it will probably slow down the shrapnel so that it stays in your body instead of going clean through. And that's about it.
[Laughter]
When we first got here, they were waving at us. Uh, and the next minute, soon as we drive by, we'd get shot at. Or some days they look at us mean and you know, give us gestures that they didn't want us there. And when I first got there, I noticed a lot of people doing this to me. [ __ ] you. [ __ ] you, American. They didn't say [ __ ] you, they were just. About 4 months into it, my interpreter looks at me and goes, Sergeant Bey, have patience. Wait, what? Have patience.
[Applause]
We hit houses with the wrong [Music] address and we'd have to apologize because we just kicked your door in or we just blew your door in or we just damaged your house at 3:00 in the morning. Go, go, go. Throw it right here. Throw it right here. Stay to the front. Stay the. Come here. Hold on. Hold on. Get down. Get down.
[Applause]
I still hear it. And the psychological side of it now, I still carry. Yeah, you see that in the camera. I'm Jal. Do do that mist. This. I still think about that guy. I still remember punching him in the face when he was going for this one. I punch him in his [ __ ] face. Oh yeah. And there's glasses right there. If you look and you put yourself in their place, how would you feel if you had someone kicking in your door and you as the man want to protect your family? And me coming through the door with bad intentions because the intel that I received told me you're a bad guy. Just shut your mouth. And you're just shut your mouth. Shut up. Yeah, I know that. Shut up. I'm always going to carry that. And, uh, I'm still working on that. Pick him up. He goes outside the wall. Yeah. He's protecting his house. He gets punched in the face, put on his damn back, ends up in Abu Ghraib, and he's never going to get that time back. So I think about that.
[Applause]
I don't feel like I'm defending my country anymore. And that kind of sucks. And that's that's that's the whole purpose when you're a kid to join the army. A lot of people feel it's like, you know, defend your country. But we're not defending our country anymore. I know we haven't defended our country in a while. But I didn't agree with the Iraq War when I went in. I, I was, I went in for Afghanistan. I joined to go fight in the mountains. I wanted to fight [ __ ]. I wanted to fight the Taliban. Um, you know, unfortunately, once you join, you have no politics. You're property. You know, you go where they send you.
When I was 20, I thought we were invincible. We were kids. We were just invincible. We're going to go here, we're going to do this, and we're going to get out. And I tell people to this day, the day that I grew up was November the 1st, 2003. That was the day I grew up. I think that's the day we all grew up. And you say that day, and it just, you just got the call over the radio that one of our Humvees was engaged with some kind of RPG or IED. Nobody knew what it was at first. It just hit, and it hit hard. Our Humvee was limping back to the compound, and we're getting status reports just constantly. Then we all just kind of went on with what we had to do that night. And then we got up the next day and they told us we had a 9:00 formation, but nobody told us as to why. I lined up the whole battery, and the beach he came out, and he was, he was already crying. He was really shook up. And we knew something was bad. And he told us that during the night that Lieutenant Hogan had died. And he just, everybody's heads just went down. It was, you could hear the gasps and tears on a lot of people. I think most people really wanted to go out and just kill everybody after that. That was the first, first death we had suffered in the battalion. And then we'd had people hurt, but no one had died yet. That's a really big thing to just grasp all of a sudden. This one of the things you'll never forget. Several other people in our unit were killed. Lieutenant Salts, PFC Moore, uh, Sergeant Major Cook was killed, uh, Sergeant McKever. Rest in peace, boys.
All I'm talking about that [ __ ] that [ __ ] is so [ __ ] depressing, man. You just have no idea. You have no idea, man. So what does it do to a generation of young people during these deployments? They become old. They are old young men. Yeah, I mean, I feel more grown up. I mean, I've changed a lot in the last, you know, year. You know, for people back in the States, it was just a year. You know, nothing really changed. It just got a year older. You know, for me, it was like, you know, a lifetime. You know, I feel I've grown up 20, 30 years out here. And every day it was, well, I guess I'm just doing what I'm doing today so that I can get to tomorrow so that we can get to our 365 days and leave. And then that changed. Then we stayed out there for a few more months. I think it was like 419 days that we were there.
Maybe George Bush should fund my [ __ ] guitar business. He owes me a beer, at least at minimum. The Iraqis are probably wondering how in the hell are they supposed to believe in a system that we forced fed them when our system doesn't even work. Going back to George Floyd, two words: not okay. There's actually a picture of me in Time Magazine with my knee on a suspected terrorist's chest. It wasn't on his carotid artery, it was across his chest. All these shootings, not okay.
[Music]
My mom doesn't like the army too much because, I mean, it took both her boys and we're over here. And, you know, she hates that, but she's very proud. And nothing beats it. It's the greatest feeling in the world. Jason's bike was always affectionately known as the [ __ ] because that was my brother.
[Music]
When [ __ ] gets dark, you know, and you're thinking about ending it or whatever, you call someone. Jason was that phone call for me, and I was always that phone call for Jason. So it was hard for me when you did do what he did. You know, the first few months I didn't, he called. Why didn't he call me? And I don't have.
[Music]