Full transcript
0:00You are 19 years old lying under a Buick
0:03in your father's garage in Massillon,
0:04Ohio. And the date is September 10th,
0:072001.
0:09Gas is $1.49.
0:11The internet lives in the back office
0:14and screams when it connects.
0:16Your CD binder rides shotgun in your
0:18truck. Your girlfriend Megan is studying
0:20to be a nurse, and on Friday nights, the
0:23two of you argue in the aisles of a
0:25Blockbuster like [music] it matters.
0:27You have ordinary plans. Finish your
0:30certification. Take over the garage
0:32someday, maybe, if your father ever
0:34admits he is mortal.
0:36Marry Megan eventually.
0:38Nothing heroic. Nothing complicated.
0:42You will remember September 10th for the
0:44rest of your life precisely because
0:46nothing happened in it.
0:48It is the last day of the old world, and
0:50you spent it under a Buick.
0:53The next morning, a customer comes into
0:54the waiting room and tells your father
0:56to turn on the TV.
0:58It is 8:51 a.m.
1:00You stand there in a room that smells of
1:02rubber and burnt coffee, holding a
1:04torque wrench you will not remember
1:06putting down, and you watch, live, with
1:09the whole country, as the second plane
1:11comes in.
1:12Your father, who does not swear, swears
1:15[music] once, like a prayer said
1:17backward.
1:18The garage does not fix another car that
1:20day.
1:21Nobody in America does much of anything
1:23that day except stand very still in
1:25front of televisions, together, in gas
1:28stations and school gyms and airport
1:30bars, watching the same picture.
1:33That night, you sit on the tailgate of
1:35your truck with Megan, and you finally
1:37notice what is wrong with the evening.
1:39The sky is silent.
1:41Every plane in the country has been
1:43grounded, and for the first time in your
1:45life, nothing crosses over Ohio.
1:48No blinking lights among the stars. No
1:51far-off engine hum.
1:53The loudest thing about that night is
1:55the sky.
1:56On September 12th, you are fourth in
1:59line outside a strip mall recruiting
2:00office behind a college kid, a
2:0330-year-old roofer, and a man whose son
2:05works two blocks from the towers and got
2:07out.
2:08The recruiter looks like he has not
2:10slept. He has been opening early and
2:12closing late because this is happening
2:14in every town in America, the biggest
2:17rush to the colors since Pearl Harbor.
2:20Here is the part people forget about
2:22your war later when they argue about it.
2:25Nobody drafted you. There was no letter,
2:28no lottery, no number in a jar.
2:31Every single one of you stood in a line
2:33and asked to go.
2:35Your mother cries at the kitchen table,
2:37which you expected.
2:39Your father shakes your hand for a long
2:41time without talking, which you did not.
2:44Megan does not argue with you, not once,
2:47and years later she will tell you that
2:49was the hardest work she ever did.
2:51Before you leave, the town holds a
2:53candlelight vigil on the square, and
2:55somebody hands out small flags, and
2:58somehow yours ends up traveling the
3:00crowd with a Sharpie collecting names.
3:03Your coach, your third grade teacher,
3:06your grandfather, whose hand shakes now,
3:09half of Massillon in fading marker on a
3:12flag the size of a dish towel.
3:14You fold it into a plastic bag like
3:16evidence.
3:17It goes where you go for the next 9
3:19years.
3:21Basic training at Fort Benning is loud
3:23in a way you expected and lonely in a
3:25way you did not.
3:27The army shaves your head, takes your
3:29clothes, and rebuilds your posture one
3:32scream at a time.
3:34That is where you meet Ray Osmond,
3:36called Oz, a wiry Kentucky boy who
3:38narrates everything that happens in the
3:40calm voice of a fishing show host.
3:43"Now, watch this here," he says as a
3:45drill sergeant descends on a poor kid
3:47from Jersey.
3:49"What we got here is a classic ambush
3:51predator."
3:52Oz carries a spiral notebook full of
3:54plans for the diner he is going to open
3:56when he gets out.
3:58He reads you the menu at night like
3:59scripture.
4:01Biscuits the size of a fist, coffee you
4:03can stand a spoon in,
4:05a breakfast called the full Kentucky
4:07that he is still perfecting.
4:09He adds one new item to the notebook
4:11every place the army sends him.
4:14It is his way of promising himself there
4:16is an after.
4:18Benning also teaches you the army's
4:20oldest subject, which is waiting.
4:22You wait in lines to wait in other
4:24lines.
4:25You learn to sleep standing up, to eat
4:28in 4 minutes, to make a bed a quarter
4:30could bounce off,
4:31and you privately suspect that none of
4:33this has anything to do with fighting
4:35and everything to do with remaking the
4:37part of you that asks why.
4:40At night the barracks sounds like a room
4:42full of exhausted teenagers pretending
4:44not to be homesick, because that is what
4:47it is.
4:48The average age in your platoon is 20.
4:51Half of them enlisted the same week you
4:53did for the same reason, and none of you
4:55talk about the reason because you do not
4:57have to.
4:59It is the one thing every man in the
5:01building has in common with every other
5:03man in the building.
5:05You all watched it happen on a
5:06television. Your first platoon sergeant
5:08overseas is Staff Sergeant Vasquez, who
5:11was in Mogadishu in 1993 when he was
5:13your age, and who has the stillness of a
5:16man who has already used up his
5:18surprise.
5:19He does not yell.
5:21He corrects.
5:22He can tell you what you did wrong in a
5:24voice so quiet you lean in to hear your
5:27own mistakes.
5:29Every night, no matter where you are, he
5:31reads the platoon roster to himself name
5:34by name, like a man counting money or
5:37saying a rosary.
5:39You ask him about it exactly once.
5:42He looks at you for a moment deciding
5:44something,
5:46and then he tells you his whole
5:47philosophy of soldiering.
5:50"Everybody comes home," he says.
5:53"That is the job.
5:55Everything else is details."
5:58Later you learn that in 1993, he was one
6:01of the men who carried the ones who did
6:03not.
6:04Through streets you have seen in a
6:06movie.
6:07And that the roster is not a habit.
6:09It is a promise he renews every single
6:12night
6:13to 18 names at a time.
6:17Afghanistan, 2002, is not what the
6:19movies promised.
6:21You land in a country that looks like
6:23the moon owns it.
6:25Dust the texture of flour.
6:27Mountains stacked to the sky like teeth.
6:30Villages older than your entire nation.
6:33For weeks the war is mostly walking.
6:37You patrol valleys in body armor under a
6:39sun with a grudge.
6:41Drink water that is always warm.
6:43And learn that boredom and terror are
6:45not opposites.
6:47They are neighbors.
6:49Contact, when it comes, comes as a snap
6:52of air overhead and a hillside that
6:54suddenly sparkles.
6:56And lasts 4 minutes that use up a year
6:59of your life.
7:00And then the valley is silent again,
7:02like nothing ever happened.
7:05The mountains do not care.
7:07That is the first thing Afghanistan
7:09teaches you.
7:11You are brief here.
7:13After your first contact, an older
7:15specialist watches you sit down hard on
7:17a rock with your hands not quite steady.
7:20And he nods like a doctor confirming
7:22something routine.
7:24"Everybody's hands do that," he says.
7:27"It means you were paying attention."
7:30That night you write your first letter
7:32home from a war.
7:34And you understand, all at once and
7:36forever,
7:37why every soldier in every century wrote
7:40the same three lies.
7:43The food is bad, the weather is hot,
7:46I am fine.
7:48Some sentences are load-bearing.
7:50You do not touch them.
7:53It is on that first tour that you meet
7:55Farid, the interpreter,
7:57a 22-year-old from Kabul who learned
8:00English from bootleg American movies and
8:02deploys it with total confidence and 80%
8:05accuracy.
8:07"Hasta la vista, brother," he says every
8:10time your patrol leaves the wire.
8:13He calls the platoon "my guys."
8:15He has watched Titanic 11 times.
8:19When you describe Lake Erie to him, a
8:21lake so big you cannot see across it, he
8:24refuses to believe you.
8:26Then thinks about it for 2 days and then
8:28comes back and says,
8:30"When this war is over, you will show me
8:32this impossible lake [music] and we will
8:35fish in it."
8:36You shake on it.
8:38It becomes the promise.
8:40Small, stupid, important.
8:44You come home after a year and discover
8:47that home kept moving without you.
8:50Everyone has a phone in their pocket
8:51now.
8:52Songs are files instead of discs.
8:55In the airport, [music] people see the
8:57uniform and clap.
8:59Strangers applauding in a terminal.
9:01[music]
9:02The country learned that much from
9:04Vietnam and you were grateful in a way
9:07that is hard to explain.
9:09But the same stranger who claps will ask
9:11you in the same minute whether you knew
9:14anybody who died over there.
9:16And you learn to answer questions like
9:18that with airport words.
9:20And Megan learns to read your face
9:22across a room.
9:24And 9 months later, a set of orders
9:26arrives
9:27because your war has invented something
9:29the old wars never had.
9:32The rotation.
9:34The war does not take you once and let
9:36you go.
9:38It keeps calling you back, tour after
9:40tour,
9:41like a debt with interest.
9:44Iraq, 2004, is a different war wearing
9:48the same uniform.
9:50In Ramadi, the enemy is almost never a
9:52man you can see.
9:54The enemy is the road itself.
9:57A soda can on the shoulder.
9:59A dead dog.
10:01A pile of trash that was not there
10:03yesterday.
10:05Every drive is a math problem where the
10:07wrong answer is a flash and a thump you
10:10feel in your teeth.
10:12The gunners scan garbage the way sailors
10:15used to scan the sea.
10:17>> [music]
10:17>> You start dreaming about trash.
10:20Between missions, life is a loop the
10:22platoon calls Groundhog Day.
10:25Same gym, same chow hall, same gravel,
10:28same three movies,
10:30same 30-minute window in the phone
10:32trailer where you tell Megan the food is
10:35bad and the weather is hot and nothing
10:37else that is true.
10:40On the whiteboard on her fridge back
10:41home, she crosses off days.
10:44You are counting again.
10:47Every war invents its own arithmetic,
10:50and yours is a subtraction that keeps
10:52starting over. The phone trailer at the
10:54FOB is a row of plywood booths with a
10:57line outside it at every hour of the day
10:59or night
11:01because Ohio is nine time zones behind
11:03the war.
11:04You get 30 minutes.
11:06There is a soldier whose job is to tap
11:08you on the shoulder when they are up.
11:11You learn to build a marriage out of
11:1230-minute windows.
11:145 minutes of the food is bad.
11:1610 minutes of her nursing shifts and her
11:18sister's wedding and the neighbor's dog.
11:2110 minutes of nothing important, which
11:23is the most important part.
11:26And 5 minutes of not saying goodbye
11:28slowly.
11:30Once the connection [music] drops at
11:31minute nine, and you stand there holding
11:34a dead phone with 21 minutes left and
11:36nowhere to spend them.
11:38And the soldier behind you without a
11:40word steps back and gives you his place
11:43in line when the phone comes free.
11:45You never learn his name.
11:47You still think about him.
11:50One evening at a checkpoint outside the
11:52city, a white sedan comes toward your
11:54position at dusk and does not slow down.
11:57There is a procedure for this and the
11:59procedure [music] is a staircase.
12:01Hand signals, then a flare, then a
12:04warning shot. And then the shot that is
12:06not a warning.
12:07And the staircase takes eight seconds to
12:09climb.
12:11The car keeps coming through the
12:12signals. It keeps coming through the
12:14flare.
12:16Your warning shot cracks off the
12:17pavement and the sedan finally stands on
12:20its brakes and stops. Close enough that
12:22you can see everything at once.
12:24An old man at the wheel with fogged
12:26glasses.
12:27A woman beside him.
12:29Four children in the back.
12:31All of it one squeeze away.
12:35The old man is deaf.
12:37That is the entire explanation.
12:39That is the whole event.
12:41He is somebody's grandfather. He is
12:44deaf. His glasses were fogged. And the
12:47staircase [music] had one step left.
12:50That night nobody at the chow hall says
12:52much.
12:54The rule said what to do
12:55>> [music]
12:55>> and something older than the rule said
12:57wait.
12:58One more second and you will spend the
13:00rest of your life quietly grateful to
13:03whatever that older thing was.
13:06Not every checkpoint in your war got
13:07that second.
13:09You know the number of that arithmetic,
13:11too.
13:11>> [music]
13:12>> And you do not say it out loud.
13:14And neither will I.
13:16Halfway through that tour, Oz's truck is
13:19third in the convoy when the road
13:20detonates under the second.
13:22He walks away from it.
13:25That is the phrase everyone uses. Walks
13:27away.
13:28Because he does.
13:30Upright, joking by sundown, deaf in one
13:33ear for a week.
13:35The notebook gets a new item that night.
13:38A burger called the IED. So big it takes
13:41two hands and everybody laughs.
13:44And nobody knows because nobody knew
13:47back then what a blast wave does to the
13:50inside of a skull that walks away.
13:53The army checks his hearing.
13:55Nobody checks anything else.
13:58It is 2004.
14:00We did not know.
14:02That sentence will cost this country
14:04more than any battle of your war.
14:07Your third deployment is Afghanistan
14:09again, 2008.
14:11A valley outpost with a name nobody back
14:14home will ever learn.
14:15And Farid is there, older now. My guy is
14:19still.
14:20Between patrols he studies for a visa
14:22that is always 18 months away.
14:25The paperwork is called an SIV and it
14:28moves like winter.
14:30He has a wife now and a daughter he
14:33teaches English with the same bootleg
14:35movies.
14:36The Taliban leave night letters in his
14:38village.
14:39Notes on his family's door with his name
14:41in them.
14:42Because to some of his countrymen, the
14:44word for what he does is not
14:46interpreter.
14:48Vazquez on his fifth war reads the
14:51roster every night.
14:53"Everybody comes home." He still says.
14:56You are 26 now
14:58and you notice he says it differently
14:59than he used to.
15:01Less like a fact. More like an argument
15:04he is having with someone.
15:06On that last tour, you notice the war
15:08has begun to age.
15:10The new privates arriving at the outpost
15:13were 9 years old on September 11th.
15:16They know the towers the way your kids
15:18will know them. As history. As a video.
15:21And they are brave and funny [music] and
15:24impossibly young.
15:26And one of them asks you what it was
15:27like that day.
15:30And you hear yourself giving airport
15:31words to a soldier in a war zone.
15:35Before the end, this war will be old
15:37enough to enlist in itself.
15:39There will be soldiers in Kabul in its
15:41final summer who were not yet born when
15:44it started.
15:46No American war has ever done that
15:48before.
15:50Yours will be the first.
15:51>> [music]
15:52>> And you hope with everything in you, the
15:54last.
15:56You get out in 2010.
15:59There is no single day the war ends for
16:01you.
16:02There is just a last time you hand in
16:04gear.
16:05A last salute in a parking lot.
16:08And then a Tuesday where you are a
16:10civilian in a garage in Ohio.
16:13And the loudest thing you own is an
16:14impact wrench.
16:16You are 28.
16:18The war goes on without you, which feels
16:21wrong, like hearing your own heartbeat
16:23in another room.
16:25You marry Megan.
16:27>> [music]
16:27>> You take over the garage.
16:29Because your father finally admits he is
16:31mortal.
16:32Trash on the highway shoulder makes your
16:35hands tighten on the wheel for a few
16:36more years.
16:38>> [music]
16:38>> And then, mostly, it does not.
16:41You are one of the lucky ones.
16:44You know exactly how lucky.
16:46Because of what happens next. Oz calls
16:48every few months from Kentucky.
16:50Narrating his life like a fishing show.
16:53The diner is always two years away.
16:57Financing now, watch this here, zoning,
17:00the perfect building on Main Street that
17:01some fool bought first.
17:04Some calls, he's the old Oz for an hour
17:07straight.
17:08Some calls, there are silences with
17:10edges on them. And headaches he jokes
17:13about. [music] And a sleep that never
17:15quite works.
17:16And you say the things you know how to
17:18say,
17:19and they are not enough.
17:20And you do not know that yet, because
17:22nobody knew back [music] then.
17:26In February of 2014, the war takes Oz.
17:30Not with a bomb and not with a bullet.
17:33Not in a valley or on a road,
17:35but quietly at home,
17:38in the country he served,
17:40the way it takes 22 American veterans
17:42every single day.
17:45At the funeral, there are more uniforms
17:47than chairs.
17:48Vasquez is there, gray at the temples,
17:51retired.
17:52And he stands next to you at the
17:53graveside for a long time
17:56before he says the phrase you have known
17:58for 13 years, [music]
17:59except broken.
18:02"I told you everybody comes home," he
18:05says.
18:06"Some of us just come home years late.
18:09And some of us never all the way."
18:13It is the only time you ever hear him
18:15revise doctrine.
18:18Two weeks later, a package arrives from
18:20Oz's mother.
18:21The spiral notebook.
18:23On the inside cover, in handwriting you
18:26would know anywhere, like it was always
18:28waiting there.
18:29You do it then.
18:31It takes you 5 years.
18:33You keep the garage,
18:34>> [music]
18:35>> but in 2019, you buy the ugly little
18:37building two doors down and gut it with
18:39your own hands.
18:41And Megan does the books. And your kids
18:43do their homework in the corner booth.
18:46The sign says Oz.
18:48The menu is the notebook. One item from
18:51every page.
18:52Every place the army ever sent him.
18:56The full Kentucky is on there, still not
18:59perfected, exactly as he left it.
19:02Regulars think the name is a wizard
19:04joke.
19:05Veterans read the menu slower
19:07>> [music]
19:07>> and understand.
19:09And some of them nod at you on the way
19:10out in a way that has nothing to do with
19:13breakfast.
19:15Then, it is August 15th, 2021,
19:19and you are 39 years old, standing in
19:21your living room, watching a television.
19:25On the screen, helicopters are lifting
19:27off an embassy roof in Kabul,
19:30and the ticker says the government has
19:31fallen.
19:33And after 20 years, the war is ending
19:35the way it began,
19:37with all of America standing very still
19:40in front of a screen.
19:43Your phone buzzes in your hand.
19:45It is a number with too many digits, and
19:48a voice you last heard in a valley 13
19:50years ago.
19:52And it does not say "Hasta la vista."
19:55It says,
19:56"Brother,
19:57the airport.
19:59Please."
20:01What happens next nobody ordered,
20:03[music]
20:03and nobody planned.
20:05All over America, in kitchens and
20:08garages and home offices,
20:10the veterans of that war open their
20:12laptops [music] and go back to it one
20:15last time,
20:16unpaid and uniformed in t-shirts.
20:20You and 10,000 strangers work phones and
20:23group chats
20:24>> [music]
20:24>> around the clock for 10 days.
20:27Vasquez runs your chat like a fire
20:29direction center. [music]
20:31There are men in that group you have
20:33never met, who do not sleep for a week.
20:36Someone knows a gate.
20:38Someone knows a Marine at the gate.
20:41Someone can move a name up a manifest.
20:4420 years of favors get spent in 10 days
20:48on flight lists and [music] pass phrases
20:50and grid pins,
20:52trying to pull the people who kept us
20:54alive [music]
20:55through a needle's eye of a single
20:57airport on the far side of the world, on
21:00a screen.
21:02For 3 days, Farid is a blue dot in a
21:04crowd of 30,000.
21:07You talk him and his wife and his
21:09daughter toward one gate, then another,
21:12through heat [music] and sewage and
21:14gunfire over their heads,
21:16while his phone battery falls like sand
21:18in an hourglass.
21:2040% then 19
21:23then six.
21:25On the third night, the dot stops
21:27moving.
21:28And then the phone dies.
21:31And for 11 hours, the war is 2002 again.
21:35And you are helpless in a comfortable
21:37room in Ohio,
21:39awake at 4:00 a.m.
21:41holding a coffee going cold,
21:44learning what every military family
21:46already knew about waiting.
21:49At noon the next day, a text arrives
21:51from a number you do not know.
21:53Three words. [music]
21:55We are inside.
21:58The rest takes a year.
22:00A cargo jet to Qatar,
22:02a base in New Jersey,
22:04the visa that moves like winter,
22:06finally, grudgingly, arriving.
22:10And on a gray afternoon in the fall of
22:122022,
22:14you stand at the arrivals gate of an
22:16airport in Columbus, Ohio,
22:18holding a sign with one name on it,
22:21next to Megan and your kids and a
22:23retired sergeant major named Vasquez,
22:26who drove 4 hours and pretends he did
22:28not.
22:30When Farid comes through the doors
22:32carrying his daughter,
22:3413 years and one entire war older,
22:38you do not say any of the things you
22:40rehearsed.
22:42You hand him the flag,
22:44the little one, the size of a dish
22:46towel,
22:47signed in Sharpie by half of a town in
22:50Ohio in September of 2001.
22:54The names faded now.
22:56Some of the hands that wrote them gone.
22:59The flag that sent a 19-year-old to his
23:02war
23:02>> [music]
23:03>> gets to say welcome home to the man who
23:05kept him alive in it.
23:08Fareed looks at it for a long time.
23:11Then he says, in his 80% English,
23:15that it is the most American thing he
23:17has ever seen.
23:19And that he would like to see the
23:20Impossible Lake now. [music]
23:23Please. People will argue about your war
23:26forever.
23:27They argued about it while you fought
23:29it.
23:3020 years, [music] four presidents, a
23:32trillion dollars, and an ending that
23:35looked like the beginning.
23:37There are nights you sit with all of
23:38that, and it does not resolve.
23:40>> [music]
23:41>> And you have made peace with the fact
23:42that it may never.
23:44But you have also learned where to put
23:46what you cannot resolve.
23:48You put it in a booth by the window with
23:50a bottomless cup of coffee.
23:53You put it in a fishing boat on a lake
23:55so big your friend still does not quite
23:57believe it.
23:59You put it in the names on a small faded
24:01flag, framed now
24:03>> [music]
24:03>> on the wall of a diner named after a man
24:06who never got to open one.
24:09It is a winter morning in Massillon,
24:11Ohio.
24:12First snow.
24:14Fareed works the grill on Saturdays now,
24:16and argues with the regulars about
24:18football like he was born here.
24:20The full Kentucky is still not
24:22perfected, and it never will be. Because
24:25perfecting it was never the point.
24:28In the corner of the diner, there is a
24:29television. [music]
24:30It stays off.
24:33You walk to the front door in the blue
24:34morning light,
24:35>> [music]
24:36>> past the flag, past the menu, past 20
24:39years, and you flip the little sign
24:41hanging in the glass
24:42>> [music]
24:43>> the way you do every morning.
24:45Everybody comes home.
24:47Some of them just need 20 years [music]
24:50and a friend at the gate.
24:52The sign says, "Open." [music]
24:55And the day begins.