♪ ♪ FRANK DEVITA: The invasion was supposed to be June 5, but the day before, there was a big storm.

So Eisenhower asked the weatherman, "How's the weather gonna be?"

He says, "Better."

So Eisenhower said, "Let's go."

I was in the United States Coast Guard, and I was a gunner's mate, third class.

On D-Day, I was an LCVP-- landing craft vehicle personnel.

Had a crew of three.

We were in the boats, but the Army guys had to climb down rope ladders.

It was very rough.

Carries 32 men.

The Germans had a gun.

(fires) And the range of the gun was ten miles.

(distant explosion booms) So, we had to leave from 11 miles out.

It would take us an hour to get to the beach.

We were kids.

Too young to drink, too young to vote.

(voice breaking): But not too young to die.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ TAMMY DUCKWORTH: Any veteran will tell you that no matter what your training has been, the real test is the moment you finally deploy.

It can mean a tour of duty in a combat zone, or a vital support role in the vast military machine, or a posting wherever America's interests are at stake.

And no matter what your mission entails, it shapes the veteran you become.

(crowd cheering) My name is Tammy Duckworth.

Today, I'm the junior senator from Illinois.

But before I got into politics, I was an Army captain.

I flew Black Hawk helicopters.

And just before Christmas 2003, I got orders to deploy to Iraq.

I wouldn't say any of us wanted to go to war, but after 12 years of training, it was time for me to step up.

I was as ready as I could be, but it was still a leap into the unknown.

Safe trip.

Take you right down the middle there.

- How you all doin'?

ANNIE KLEIMAN: When we deployed to Afghanistan, one of the things that they had us fill out before we deployed was a casualty packet.

It was everything that we wanted in case we died.

So, you know, from who we wanted to be notified, to the choice of music at our funerals, to how we wanted our families to be taken care of.

It did make it a little bit more immediate, I think, for all of us.

MICHAEL JACKSON: I had never been on Braniff Airlines before.

It was very surreal to be going to Vietnam on a plane with stewardesses who looked like something out of "Star Trek."

We were half lieutenants and half privates, all Marines.

It was a very bizarre trip.

HAROLD BROWN: We were all in a convoy.

Took us 32 days to get across the Atlantic.

We went through the Strait of Gibraltar and came up to Naples.

Then from Naples, it took us another six, seven, eight days to get over the Ramitelli, in Italy.

Our unit was totally segregated.

We had no mixing, no nothing.

We had our own base, everything.

We were flying the P-51, one of the fastest fighters we had.

There is a smell to any place when you get off the plane.

In Iraq, it just smelled like burning.

There was always all kinds of stuff on fire-- vehicles, trash.

I mean, it stunk.

♪ ♪ JAMES MCEACHIN: When I went over there, I didn't know that much about Korea.

I mean...

I never heard of it, you know?

When I got there, it was in the dead of winter.

We had these boots on that were insufficient as far as keeping out the cold.

I think that the average Korean veteran to this day is having trouble with his feet.

I know I have trouble with mine.

♪ ♪ MITCHELENE BIGMAN: When we crossed over into Iraq, I was kinda like... (laughs) I think I kinda shocked a few people.

I was, like, "Hey, this is like the reservation!"

(laughing): I was excited, 'cause I lived on the Navajo reservation for some time, and I felt like I was at home, 'cause there was a lot of sand and small vegetation and I was just rattling off, you know, "We used to do this and do that," and... And they're all looking at me, like, "You know we're at war.

We're in a combat zone right now."

DUCKWORTH: My unit was stationed in Balad, in Central Iraq.

But any day, my mission could take me northwest to the border with Syria, or down south towards Kuwait.

The landscapes were utterly unlike anything I had seen before.

That's the thing about war zones: There's really no way to prepare yourself for one.

JAKE WOOD: I remember for the first month, you know, every time you go out on patrol, every step you think is a booby trap, every corner is an ambush.

And eventually, you just become so used to that heightened level of fear and anxiety... Come on, come on, come on!

WOOD: ...that it just, it becomes the new normal.

(guns firing) NICK IRVING: I had no idea what it sounded like, to get shot at.

I always thought that it was a bang-bang when you hear that, but you actually hear that, the supersonic crack of the bullet before you ever hear a bang.

So, you hear this, like, a ruler smacking a desk sound.

(guns firing) Prior to my first firefight, I had never heard that sound before.

♪ ♪ EDWARD FIELD: I flew in B-17 bombers.

I was a navigator.

Flying over the target, you went through, literally, a field of bursting shells with flak, these shards of steel coming through the thin walls of the plane and rattling around in the cabin.

Of course, my hand was shaking, and bombing Berlin was a ten-hour trip.

COURTNEY SALAPEK: I was a military police officer in Iraq.

Part of our mission over there was to train the Iraqi police.

So my first day on the job was, like, a ride-along.

We go and pick up this Iraqi police officer, we have an interpreter with us, and, you know, we're driving through the city, and we're getting shot at.

MAN: God damn!

And I'm, like, "This, this is crazy."

And they're, like, "Pssh, this happens every day."

I'm, like, "Every day?"

(device explodes) TOM BEAUDRY: The civilian world's view of combat is somebody shooting at you and you shooting back at them.

The Coast Guard's combat is Mother Nature.

When somebody's in trouble, it's you and your crew that's got to go out there and risk your lives to save them.

And when you're jumping into 25-foot seas, and you get pounded into the surf, you know what it's like to battle Mother Nature.

But it's pretty exhilarating when you're able to get out there, effect your rescue, and get home.

♪ ♪ BRUCE BLACK: You know, there's nothing unmanned about unmanned aircraft.

I'm sitting in the box in Southern Nevada, and I'm 6,000 miles away from the aircraft that I'm flying.

There's maybe a two-second delay.

I mean, it goes from Afghanistan, hits a satellite, bounces down to the relay station, piped via our secure internet to Las Vegas.

For all intents and purposes, I'm in combat.

Mentally, that's where you are.

(people speaking on radios) BLACK: It's bizarre.

♪ ♪ DUCKWORTH: The high-tech battlefield of today is a far cry from the Hollywood image of war I grew up with.

- Throw it!

DUCKWORTH: John Wayne in "The Sands of Iwo Jima."

Movies like that made it seem like everybody in uniform is under enemy fire.

The reality, though, is that only 30% of today's military are in combat roles.

- Move out!

DUCKWORTH: Before I got to Iraq, I'd spent 12 years in the Reserves and National Guard, and most of my service was stateside.

I'd served in positions from platoon leader to logistics officer to company commander.

On the surface, it can seem like a combat support role isn't important, but it's the lifeline the military has never been able to live without.

During the Civil War, the quartermaster general of the Union Army calculated that 100,000 men required 2,500 supply wagons and consumed 600 tons of supplies each day.

For a modern army, the task is just as daunting.

CHRIS WEIR: As a supply sergeant, I was responsible for ensuring that all of the platoons, no matter where they were at in country, had what they needed, from ammunition to, I mean, toilet paper.

I mean, anything that they needed, I was responsible for making sure that they had it.

It offered a little bit of a logistical challenge, but you're focused on your responsibilities and you just execute.

Despite the monotony, my job mattered.

Every job matters.

BRANDON ANDERSON: My job was to set up satellite infrastructure so that people can communicate from the front lines to rear detachments.

We were basically the T-Mobile for the Army.

It was really boring, because after you set up the satellite, you kind of just sit there until something goes wrong.

It's mostly boredom and monotony and just hard work.

You have to clean the vehicles, clean the guns, clean your barracks.

Just doing all the mundane stuff.

♪ ♪ ANGELA SALINAS: I went to the Pentagon in 1993.

It's mammoth.

I mean, it is huge.

It literally is a maze of corridors, and levels, and codes.

My office was pretty much right off the entrance, so I didn't have to go too far, but when I was tasked to get something from somebody else's office, my biggest fear was, I'm gonna get lost and nobody that I ask is gonna know how to get me back.

I always felt like I was gonna have to take bread crumbs with me.

DUCKWORTH: Some of my prior deployments were humanitarian missions.

For me, that was part of the military experience: the travel to distant places, the immersion in different cultures.

A school principal from Georgia named Levi Hemrick, who fought in World War I, felt the same way.

"Going to war also meant going to France," he wrote.

"Going to Paris, the city of my dreams."

(people talking in background) JO ANN HARDESTY: The whole reason I joined the military was, I wanted to see the world.

So of course, the opportunity to be on a ship, traveling to a whole host of different places, was very exciting to me.

I had the opportunity to go to Hawaii, Guam, Hong Kong, Singapore.

I went to so many places.

My most precious memory was when the ship pulled in to Mombasa, Kenya.

I walked down off the ship, and this, uh, brother walks up to me and looks me in my eye and goes, "Welcome home, sister, you've been gone 400 years."

I still feel it today.

I still tingle when I think about the energy of that moment.

LENA KING: We went to Birmingham, in England.

We were the 6888th Postal Battalion.

It was my first time going overseas.

You know, I was an adventurous person.

They said there was a backlog of mail, but to actually, to see it...

I mean, they had mail piling up for two to three years.

Our motto was "No mail, low morale."

We were an all-Black unit.

At that time, you know, you had Black units, you had white.

I remember going to a party given by some of the English girls, and this soldier, an American soldier, was so livid-- he was livid when he saw that I was there, and he came over to me, said, "What the hell are you doing over here, nigger?"

And that was the first time, you know... (exhales) I didn't know what to say.

I didn't, I didn't say anything.

I said, no, I just slowly walked away.

♪ ♪ BRENDA MOORE: Women were categorically excluded from certain positions in the military, and African Americans were, as well.

And when you look at the Six Triple Eight, what makes it unique and a very interesting unit is that you see the intersection of race and gender with women serving overseas for the first time.

KING: We were given six months.

We got it done in three, half the time.

We were able to get all that mail sorted and sent out.

And then when we left Birmingham, we found a similar situation in France.

(laughing): No wonder they needed so many of us.

♪ ♪ DUCKWORTH: My father was a World War II-era veteran and I looked up to his generation.

But the popular history of that war tended to overlook some harsh realities.

Black service members were strictly segregated, and usually given the worst jobs the military could dole out-- digging ditches, draining swamps, and burying the dead.

Decades of activism finally opened the door for a group of fighter pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen.

BROWN: From the time that program started, in 1941-- it ended in June in 1946-- we trained 992 pilots.

We were stationed in Italy, and our 30th mission was a special mission.

Every airplane we could get in the air took off early in the morning, and we caught them by surprise.

So here I am, about 100 miles from Linz, Austria, going in on this locomotive, and I got that locomotive lit up like a Christmas tree.

And I got close, I said, "Why doesn't that thing blow up?

Why doesn't it blow up?"

That's when it explodes.

(exploding) I'm caught in the explosion, and my engine was damaged.

I knew that I'd had it.

So I pulled the airplane up, rolled it over, I jettisoned my canopy, and... You pop the stick forward, and it throws you out.

(exploding) I land in a small wooded area.

A few minutes later, there were a couple of guys up on the top of the hill and pulled rifles out, 'cause they saw me down there.

So I threw my hands up, and that was it.

Now, I'm 20 years old, and the first time I was integrated was in a P.O.W.

camp.

That's, uh, that's a sorry commentary, but that was the truth.

After the war was over, Truman decided he was going to integrate the military.

So, on the base, we were integrated, but off the base, with my family, we were in a segregated society.

MOORE: The desegregation of the Armed Forces took place in 1948, so the military was leaps and bounds ahead of civilian organizations in terms of desegregation and integration.

The military really got it right when it came to removing all structural forms of racial inequality.

But for women, those structural inequalities were still in place.

Post-World War II, there was still that bias about women being in certain positions in the military.

MAN: Say, there goes one of those petticoat soldiers now.

MAN 2: Yeah!

She's crazy-- what the devil's a woman want to be a soldier for?

- Just a waste of time.

This is a man's war!

DUCKWORTH: Women have shared the dangers of war since the early days of the republic.

Sarah Edmonds was one of a small group of women who disguised themselves as men to fight in the Civil War.

During World War I, a group of 223 women, known as the Hello Girls, operated telephone switchboards just behind the front lines in France.

Their commander, Grace Banker, once wrote, "Never spent more time at the office and never enjoyed anything more."

NELL BRIGHT: I served in World War II with the Women Air Force Service Pilots, the WASPs.

Our mission was to fly here in the United States to release the men to go to combat.

One day, I was in Sacramento, California, at Mather Field, and had to fly a B-25 down to Long Beach.

So, when we got there, we called in for landing instructions, and we didn't get an answer.

We called in three times.

The third time, the tower said, "Whoever is calling in using this line, please get off this line, we're trying to land a B-25."

And we got back on the radio and said, "We are the B-25!"

They didn't know that the Air Corps at that time even had women flying.

There's nothing like a dame, and the dames have finally come to the South Vietnamese war.

This week about 38 pretty, young American Army nurses landed at Qui Nhon to help set up a huge mobile field hospital.

EDIE MEEKS: It was really kind of a crazy time.

We were rocketed there quite often, and if you were, you had to get all your patients underneath their beds, and if you couldn't move the patient-- if he's, if he was too severely injured or something-- you put a mattress over him.

Our own beds were extra-high so that we could crawl under them.

And I remember thinking to myself, "What good is that gonna do?"

So we were rocketed one night and I had, like, five gals underneath my bed.

We were all chatting away there.

And I had my helmet on over my curlers, and I thought, "Yeah, my hair, head's... At least I'll look good when I'm dead."

♪ ♪ KLEIMAN: In both Iraq and Afghanistan, it's culturally taboo for a male American service member to try and talk with any of the local women, much less trying to question them or to search them.

- It's just females and children.

I didn't wanna rip their house apart.

KLEIMAN: So starting in 2010, Cultural Support Teams of female soldiers were attached to Special Operations units to help them with cultural interactions.

At the time that I was doing the Cultural Support Team program, the ground combat ban was still in effect.

Technically, women weren't allowed to be in ground combat, but here we are alongside male soldiers who were on ground combat missions.

We asked a military lawyer, "Doesn't that violate the ground combat ban?"

And the lawyer's answer was, "Oh, you're not with the ground combat forces.

You're ten feet back."

♪ ♪ DUCKWORTH: As a pilot, my first love was air assault missions.

We have an expression that when you put on your safety harness, you are "strapping the bird on your back," and there is nothing like the exhilaration, the speed, and the precision of flying in formation with your unit.

But our assault helicopters aren't toys and war isn't a game.

BIGMAN: In Iraq, you had to be patient with the children.

There was one that just sticks in my head.

He was, like, walking, but he was walking like he had hate in his eyes and he had a purpose, and that, you know, he was, he was not like the other kids who sometimes crowded around us.

I was afraid, what if he's strapped?

Suicide bombers would sometimes strap their kids.

(voice trembling): I was scared, because in my mind, I kept looking and I was, like... (sniffs) He looked just like my son.

And my reaction was, like, you know, if I had to, I'd have to shoot.

Then he just, like, turned away, he turned a different direction.

Then that's when I knew I don't think I could ever do it.

Even though we were trained, at that given time... (sniffles) My soldier left me and the mom kicked in.

MAN (on radio): Offset left, and then turn right.

MAN 2 (on radio): Standing by for a rocket check.

BLACK: When you actually have to call in a strike, it's, it's... You know, your adrenaline runs, you're, you know, you're hyper-focused on what you're doing.

You wanna make sure you got the angle right, you wanna make sure that you're taking as little collateral damage as you possibly can.

Is that easy?

No.

It's not easy.

Yes, it's graphic, and yes, you do see the effects of what you do.

My first shot, I stepped out of the box and threw up, 'cause I realized the impact of what I had done.

And, you know, the whole rest of your life, you, you think that, you know, did I... Did I do it the way I was supposed to?

Did I get the shot off quick enough to save the guys that I was trying to protect?

Did I do the job that I was supposed to do?

I don't think there's any way that you can ever prepare a person to kill someone.

(bolt clicking) IRVING: One of the sniper's sayings is "Without warning, without remorse."

(fires) But that remorse part is kind of where it gets iffy.

I don't know how you're not supposed to have remorse after, you know, watching a guy standing one minute and then, you know, nothing left in him the next minute.

I felt remorse for it.

Not remorse in, you know, for killing a bad guy.

Just taking a life in general.

You know, you grow up 18 years of your life and you're taught one thing.

To abruptly end that, you know, it, it played on my emotion a little bit.

MCEACHIN: The first time I shot somebody, in Korea, he was walking on the ridgeline and I had a clear shot at him.

And I fired.

And it was almost like slow motion.

There was a god-awful silence, and that was my first encounter.

I don't know if I ever recovered from it.

DUCKWORTH: When you're deployed, your unit becomes your priority, and the men and women you're serving with become your family.

The simplicity of your focus can be liberating.

The flip side is what you may have left behind.

When I was deployed in Iraq, my husband was back in Illinois.

At times, it isn't easy to explain what you are going through, or to shield the worst of the war from your loved ones back home.

(laughing softly) (laughing and talking) ♪ ♪ JENNY PACANOWSKI: My mom wrote every day, I think, just about.

For my birthday, she sent me 24 cards.

I didn't get all of them, and I told her I did, because I didn't wanna upset her, 'cause sometimes the mail trucks get blown up so you just don't get your mail.

I think I got 19 out of the 24.

(guns firing in background on tape) DUERY FELTON, JR.: Sometimes I would send a tape recording.

They had these portable tape recorders at the time.

My mother looked forward to hearing the tapes.

But in the background, they had the ambient sound of the war.

Now, I had become immune to that sound.

It was just an everyday sound, but I had no idea that it was being picked up, 'cause it was just background noise to me after a while.

And she was worried about me.

But I never knew that until decades later.

♪ ♪ MCEACHIN: Mail call meant so incredibly much to you.

There was nothing like receiving that letter from home from your parents, or your girlfriend, or whomever.

Nowadays, the guys can call home from the battlefield.

You know, they got cellphones.

Hey, you working out every day?

CODY AYON: In Iraq, you could Skype with your family.

So I knew when my wife was having a bad day.

And could I help her?

No.

I couldn't help her.

I know my soldiers felt the same thing.

I knew soldiers that, of mine who wouldn't call home because they didn't want to deal with the stress.

♪ ♪ WOOD: I actually thought that the connectivity was a bad thing for morale.

When we'd go back to base camp to get more ammo, get more food and water and all that stuff, these guys could go and call home.

And the guys that had some rocky marriages, it would jam them up.

I mean, it would, it actually had a significant, uh, impact, a negative impact on their morale.

You know?

'Cause they're having...

They're struggling to, to explain what's happening.

And then their, you know, their, their wives back home are...

They're struggling with their own stuff.

They're worried every night about whether or not their husband is gonna be safe.

And, and, like, that stress would come through on these calls, and it would be, it was bad.

♪ ♪ JACKSON: This letter is dated October 27, 1967, and this letter reads, "Please excuse my handwriting, "but it's hard to write in a foxhole, "and you know, we are going up that hill again some time today "to try to capture it again, and my only question is: "Is it worth it?

"I guess this is the age-old question concerning war, "but it just seems to me that God put man on Earth "for a better purpose than this.

"I guess I disagree with the old adage "'Ours is not to wonder why, but just to do or die.'

"Well, I'm a veteran now, and in some people's eyes a man, "but I'm really scared, just like everyone else who's here.

"That's all for now.

"I'm out of time.

With sincere devotion and all my love, your son, Mike."

ROY SCRANTON: If somebody got killed, then they would shut down...

They would shut down email and phones for 24 hours.

So, um, that was... That was always a strange moment where, like, you're on the internet and then it suddenly shuts off, and you know that, like, something happened and they've, they've put on a lockdown to keep people from telling the family before the military had a chance to tell the family.

♪ ♪ For me, what was weird about that ease of communication wasn't so much the way that it brought these two worlds together, but it was that it was doing those things in, in a place where violence could just reach out and touch someone.

♪ ♪ JEFF MELLINGER: We had a soldier that was very badly wounded in an I.E.D.

explosion and we knew he was gonna die.

His family, you know, really wanted to come visit him in Iraq and we, we could not allow that.

So I put the doctor on the phone, uh, unit leader got on the phone, um... And then the family understood the situation.

And then, as the, the doctors and the nurses did what they had to do to take him off life support, because that was the only thing sustaining him, I, you know, I was relaying doctors' information, you know, respiration this and heart rate that, and, you know, we're administering this or that or the other... You know, that, that information I passed to the family as their son died.

(breath trembles) ♪ ♪ So that, that was, that was one of those hard days.

♪ ♪ C.J.

SCARLET: For my first duty station, I got orders to Camp Pendleton, California.

I grew up at Camp Pendleton, and so I felt like I was coming full circle.

♪ ♪ I worked for the Pendleton "Scout" as a reporter.

We were the storytellers of the day-to-day hustle and bustle of the military base.

Every day was something different.

I got to interview generals and infantrymen and movie stars, and escort the media and do community relations, and, oh, my gosh, it was so much fun.

I got a lot of attention.

I wanted the attention, I benefited from the attention, but I didn't want sexual attention; and that's what it was turning into.

Now, based on my three classes in psychology, two of which I cut, I can tell you that your problem is all mental.

You think too much.

It's very bad.

You should forget about your mind and pay more attention to your body.

SCARLET: I used to watch the show "M A S H" when I was growing up, and I thought it was such a funny show, until I lived it.

- Hey, you got sexy knuckles-- I didn't think that was possible!

It was very much like that.

It was like going through a gauntlet.

There were comments, there were touches, there was inappropriate behavior coming from all angles.

So I would be sitting at my typewriter, working on a story, and feeling like a professional journalist, and I never knew when someone would come behind me and plant a kiss on the back of my neck, and just make me feel instantly like a sexual object.

They would, um, back me up against the file cabinets, literally, and try to kiss me.

They would make suggestions about having sex with them.

♪ ♪ The harassment was so constant, it was like water torture.

It was drip, drip, drip.

But we put up with it, because that was what you did, and that was what guys did.

Hawkeye!

- Why don't we patent your ears so we could sell a million of them?

KIRSTIE ENNIS: The military is such a man's world.

And unless you have been in the military yourself, you just don't understand, you just don't know.

I was an aerial door gunner, and as a woman, I had to prove myself day in and day out.

You know, the guys would look at me as their sister, their spouse, their daughter, their girlfriend, or, you know, the long list of women in their lives.

But they realized pretty quickly that just like they had my back, I was gonna have their backs.

I just saw myself as a Marine.

(device explodes) PACANOWSKI: It is a man's world.

It's male-dominated.

I was lucky, however, because I ended up in a company full of medics, and half of them were women.

So I wasn't one of those people that was, like, the only woman in a unit.

Like I said, I was lucky.

♪ ♪ SALAPEK: There were about 35 people in my platoon and there was one other female.

And when I found out that I would be bunking with six other guys, I just figured, "Well, this is war," so I didn't really think twice of it, like, to question it.

But there was this one particular guy, and he used to make passes at me, or make comments to me, and I would always just brush them off, and we did work closely with each other, but never alone.

One particular night, we were stationed out on a rooftop, just him and I, taking turns sleeping, and it was my downtime and his uptime, and it was a very uncomfortable night, and I could definitely tell something was off.

I didn't feel right, um... And, uh, that night, he, he raped me.

♪ ♪ I couldn't do anything.

Physically, he was stronger, and in that moment, I mean, you're just paralyzed with fear.

(device explodes in distance) (exhales) At that point, I definitely felt like everything was taken from me.

I felt stripped, I felt unworthy of everything.

Part of it is because I couldn't tell anyone.

His word against mine, obviously, his is gonna win.

From that moment on, I knew that he knew that he had the power.

And, um, that was scary.

That was the point that I didn't feel safe anywhere.

I was in a freaking war zone with bombs going off and getting shot at, bullets whizzing by my ear, and now this?

I, I totally lost it.

I started having thoughts of how to get out of my situation.

I actually went to the point of putting a gun to my head.

Um, I remember doing it.

I...

In the moment, I don't think I was going to, 'cause I didn't, um, but I knew I needed help.

♪ ♪ I asked to see the doctors, and I confided in them.

(voice breaking): And they decided to send me home.

Um... That was the worst day ever, ever.

Because I worked so hard being all, "Hoo-ah!"

and thinking I can keep up with the boys, and even though I can look back and say I did keep up with them, I felt like they, it ruined, they ruined it for me.

I didn't get to be a lifer.

I freaking got discharged, an honorable discharge, but because of what I had to go through, I felt like everything was ripped away from me-- my dignity, my pride, my life.

That was my life.

♪ ♪ DUCKWORTH: It was never far from my mind that I was a woman in command.

I constantly had to think about what I said, how I carried myself, and the example I set.

In the end, the bonds I forged in combat are unlike any other relationships I have.

We're brothers and sisters in arms.

We've gone through an experience that no one else can duplicate.

♪ ♪ Back in World War I, there was a sergeant from Tennessee named Alvin York who knew that feeling, too.

"The war brings out the worst in you," he admitted, "but it also brings out something else, "a sort of tenderness and love "for the fellows fighting with you.

"It was as though we could look right through each other and know everything without anything being hidden."

♪ ♪ HERBERT SWEAT: Over there, it was comradeship.

We cried, we laughed, we killed-- we did everything together, and for one another.

♪ ♪ One guy, Richard Walker, we called him the Blue-Eyed Soul Brother.

He had beautiful blue eyes, blond hair.

He could sing any soul record by any artist and make his voice sound just like the artist-- unbelievable-- and then laugh at us because, um, he was so good at it.

And he was killed.

(voice breaking): He was 19 years old.

(exhales) PACANOWSKI: I was on leave and I was, like, "I don't wanna go back.

Why am I going back?"

But if the Army teaches you one thing, it's camaraderie, and there was no way that I wasn't going back into that war, because I knew that someone else was gonna run my convoys, and I couldn't live with that.

I couldn't live with knowing something could happen to somebody else because I wasn't there.

So I went back.

♪ ♪ WOOD: I think one of the misconceptions is that everybody likes everybody else that they serve with in the military-- no!

You don't like a lot of the people you serve with.

You love all of them, though.

I mean, there were people in the Marine Corps that I don't care if I ever see again in my life.

But if they ever called me and said, "Hey, I'm in a dark alley and I need someone," I'd be there in a heartbeat.

DUCKWORTH: Less than a year after I deployed to Iraq, my team and I were working together so well that being in a war zone seemed almost routine.

One day, we were flying missions we called the Baghdad shuffle-- moving people and goods from one place to another.

Basically, a taxi service in a Black Hawk.

It was a long day, and we were almost home when we were attacked, and a rocket-propelled grenade exploded in the cockpit of my helicopter.

We were lucky.

My pilot in command was able to land the helicopter even after the explosion.

I was so badly injured, my crew thought I was dead.

They pulled me out anyway, because you never leave anyone behind.

Some amazing medics ended up saving my life.

I am now a double amputee, but I survived.

♪ ♪ The willingness to sacrifice for something bigger than yourself is part of a commitment all veterans made when we signed up.

Even so, it's never something you can be ready for.

♪ ♪ DEVITA: On D-Day, my job was to drop the ramp.

When we got close to the beach, there was one machine gun that took a liking to my boat, and he was peppering the ramp, and the ramp is about two or three inches steel, but I had to get these kids off the boat.

And they were screaming, "Let us out," because they felt trapped on the boat.

We couldn't get on the beach because there was obstacles in the water.

So the coxswain screamed, "Drop the ramp."

And I re-- I froze.

I, I admit, I...

I didn't want to drop that ramp.

And then he screamed at the top of his lungs.

His name was Duriman.

He says, "God damn, DeVita, drop the effing ramp."

I dropped the ramp and the machine guns cut down 15 kids-- 15 kids.

(automatic gunfire echoing) The kid that was standing next to me, the machine gun took his helmet off and part of his head.

He had red hair, and he was crying, "Help me, help me."

I had no morphine, I couldn't help him.

I couldn't help him.

And he kept crying, "Help me, help me."

I had nothing in my arsenal, so I prayed.

I started saying the Our Father.

And when I prayed, he stopped screaming, "Help me, help me, help me!"

like that.

(sighs) And I don't know what possessed me.

I reached down.

I squeezed his hand, he squeezed my hand, as if to say, "It's all right," and he died.

(voice breaking): He died.

We had 90% casualties on the first wave.

And then we turned around and did it again.

I went back 15 times.

15 times.

10:00 at night, I went back aboard the ship.

I started crying.

I cried myself to sleep.

(sighs) At 4:00 in the morning, I was a boy.

At 10:00 at night, I was a man.

DUCKWORTH: Anyone who sees combat up close will tell you that it changes you.

Part of you is never the same.

When I was in it, all I wanted to do was live up to my training and not let my buddies down.

The thing is, though, your feelings about combat are never simple.

HICKS: We were driving around in our Humvees one night, and this huge gunfight erupted right in front of us.

(guns firing) It was an infantry unit who thought that they'd been ambushed.

So they just smothered everything with bullets.

(man shouts, guns firing) When they kicked in the door and raided through the house, they found that it was a wedding party, and they had killed a child.

(shouting) HICKS: I think I can honestly say that I didn't do anything good for anyone the whole time I was over there.

And I remember that moment where I thought, "I've got to get out of this any way I can."

♪ ♪ So I found the regulation that covers the conscientious objector application process.

I printed it off, and I read it cover to cover, and I found that the Army's definition of a conscientious objector was, you don't have to be religious, you don't have to be a pacifist.

You have to be genuinely, morally opposed to warfare, and I thought, "That's me."

♪ ♪ There was an eight-month investigation, and then I was just working in the motor pool one day, and somebody came and said, "Hey, you're, you're needed up at the first sergeant's office."

So I went back up to the first sergeant's office, and he said, "Oh, your paperwork came through, you've been honorably discharged."

So, that was probably the happiest day of my life.

(guns firing) WOOD: After a firefight, you've got this excess adrenaline coursing through your veins.

Your body's producing it and pumping it because you need it to survive.

And then that moment where you're safe, you still have it, and it's like...

It's, it's... You'll see some guys vomit, you'll see some guys, like, immediately fall asleep because it's like they're crashing off of a, you know, this unbelievable high.

Guys will be shaking trying to deal with, not the fear, but that adrenaline that's still there.

For a moment, you forget that guys may be hurt, guys may be dead.

You know?

You're, you're thinking about the fact that you cheated death together.

Almost willingly ignoring the reality that a couple of guys didn't.

(helicopters whirring) JACKSON: There's a picture taken of myself and, and my artillery officer right after the battle of Hill 672, where we had 100 wounded and lost more than 50.

I showed it to a friend of mine who's not a veteran, and he looked at me and he said, "How could you be smiling after this battle?"

And I said, "Well, we're alive."

It's not disrespectful to those who were killed or wounded-- has nothing to do with that.

It's just relief, and we made it.

For a while.

♪ ♪ DUCKWORTH: Being shot down was not how I planned to end my time in Iraq.

I was proud of what I was doing and wanted to be there for my unit.

Despite the fact that my time in Iraq was cut short, those eight months are something I will never forget.

♪ ♪ MELLINGER: I miss it terribly sometimes, and other times, I am, I am really thankful I had the experience, but I'm glad I don't have to do it again.

'Cause at the end of the day, exhilarating or not, war is an ugly thing.

And there is, there is no getting away from that.

SWEAT: My best friend, God bless his soul.

As soon as we got out of school, boy, where did we go?

To the recruiter, and he told us, "You both need to go home and get your mother and father to sign."

(sniffs) Wow, and we went.

Two great men.

♪ ♪ PACANOWSKI: When I think about my tour in Iraq, I'm not particularly proud of what I did over there.

And I feel guilty about, you know, little kids growing up in a war-torn country that they have no say in.

And they have to live there, and I get to go home.

I retired from the United States Marine Corps as a major general and my specialty, or my field, was recruiting, manpower, and training.

I was never in combat, and yeah, that weighed very heavily on me.

I mean, how can I lead Marines, the majority of them who've gone into combat, and yet I haven't been there myself?

But one of my sergeant majors pulled me aside one day and he said, "You know, General, we don't care "whether you've been in combat or not.

What we care about is how you lead us."

IRVING: Beware what you wish for, you know?

Beware what you wish for.

Don't wish for that one cool firefight to say that, "I lived through it and I did it."

You know?

Just be very wary of that.

MCEACHIN: You know, when I think about the war in Korea, I don't think I fully understood it until I went back over to Korea a year or two ago, and walked up and down the streets and found out how they had taken so much pride in honoring the American soldier.

♪ ♪ This is from one of my essays, called "Voices."

"On days of remembrances past, I have borne in mind "that last full measure of devotion of which "Abraham Lincoln so eloquently spoke at Gettysburg.

"From shadowed lanes, from far-away roads, "I have looked off and I have seen "the symmetrical obedience of numberless headstones "that stand like dwarfed sentries for the honored dead.

"Often I think of those buried at sea.

"I have thought, too, of those "interred in graves around the globe, "some with voices still calling out to each and every one of us, "'I want to come home.

I want to come home.'"

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ANNOUNCER: For more about "American Veteran," pbs.org/americanveteran.

"American Veteran" is available on Amazon Prime Video.

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