The Second Battle of Fallujah, 20 years later

This month marks 20 years since the start of the bloodiest battle of the Iraq War.

Marines who were on the ground share their stories and the two-decade long struggle to heal.

Thomas Brennan, founder and executive director of The War Horse, a non-profit online newsroom focused on military service. In November 2004, he was a lance corporal assigned to 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment. Producer and director of “Shadows of Fallujah."

Reinaldo Aponte, In November 2004, he was a Hospital Corpsman 3rd class petty officer assigned to 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment.

Kathleen Faircloth, mother of Lance Cpl. Bradley Faircloth, who died in combat during the Second Battle of Fallujah.

Part I

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: Thomas Brennan is with us today. He's founder and executive director of The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit newsroom dedicated to military servicemen and women, veterans, and their families. Thomas, it's good to have you back.

THOMAS BRENNAN: Thank you for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: So take us back to November 2004, 20 years ago.

How old were you?

BRENNAN: I was a 19 year old Marine that had just enlisted out of Randolph, Massachusetts.

CHAKRABARTI: Just enlisted. Okay. And in November 2004, at 19 years old, where were you?

BRENNAN: So I was on the outskirts of Fallujah at that point living in holes in the ground with a few thousand other Marines, just waiting for the battle to start.

So the day began with us digging, fighting holes, eating chow, cracking jokes, hanging out with each other. A few of us got interviewed by the BBC journalist that was there. And come nighttime, that's when it all began. And it was just artillery and bombs being dropped and white phosphorus just melting out of the sky, down onto the city and it was, we called it shock and awe. And it was just this awe inspiring demonstration of munitions and explosions. And it was really hard to process at all during the moment. Because none of us had ever seen anything like that ever before.

CHAKRABARTI: What you're talking about is the beginning of the Second Battle of Fallujah, right?

In Iraq, which was, I think it was the bloodiest, it was definitely the bloodiest battle of the Iraq war. And I think the largest ground scale incursion or battle that U.S. forces had undertaken since at least Vietnam. But I want to slow down actually quite a lot, Thomas, if we could and just go back first a little bit.

You were 19. And you had just enlisted, when did you enlist, in 2004?

BRENNAN: So I enlisted in 2003 and left for boot camp almost immediately after I graduated high school. And then I graduated recruit training around November of 2003, went to infantry school. Graduated around March, April timeframe of 2004, and then in June, I was sent to Iraq with 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, which was about 1,000 to 1,200 Marines and corpsmen, out of Camp Lejeune.

CHAKRABARTI: And why did you enlist?

BRENNAN: Part of it was because it was just after 9/11. There were a lot of people of my age that felt compelled to serve and to defend our country with what we saw as an emerging threat. You have to remember back then, a lot of the lies had not been exposed yet. But the other real reason why I joined and why I think a lot of other people joined the military is because it does provide opportunity.

I came from an upper, lower class, lower middle class family that didn't have, college wasn't, I was going to take on incredible debt in order to do that. And quite frankly, I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life yet. So I saw the Marine Corps as an opportunity not only to instill a little discipline in me, because I was a punk teenager at the time. But to also, I felt a calling to serve, but then also there was education benefits that I knew that could help me through the rest of my life after my military service ended.

CHAKRABARTI: So then it sounds like being on the outskirts of Fallujah was one of the first major experiences you had in your deployment.

BRENNAN: Yes. So for the first roughly three months of our deployment, we just aimlessly wandered around Iraq and small villages. And we did some good things.

We helped set up schools and civic affairs people worked with locals, and now I know, looking back on it 20 years later, that some of those operations going to those cities where we're just walking around were the preparatory work that was leading up toward clearing the surrounding cities around Fallujah, in order to prepare for the bigger fight that was coming later.

So with time has come some clarity on both what the strategy was and what some of our mistakes were.

CHAKRABARTI: I wonder if you could put us back in your 19 year old self, though, and in those, in that time before you were part of, it was called Operation Phantom Fury, right? The second battle of Fallujah.

But just before that, what was 19-year-old Thomas thinking about where he was, what he was doing, the purpose of it. Did it all make sense? Did some of it seem absurd? What was it like?

BRENNAN: So I think that what a lot of people don't realize about being that young enlisted service member, is really for your first two years, you're just trying to survive.

And you're trying to get the mentorship from your senior Marines so that you learn how to survive in the Marine Corps. I don't remember much being said about the First Battle of Fallujah. I don't remember much being said about the Blackwater contractors that were hung from the bridge.

There were a few like very formative things that happened in Iraq where I was just so focused on being, I was a private first class at the time, so in E-2, very low on the totem pole. I didn't want to get yelled at by my senior guys. I didn't want to make a mistake that made them lose trust in me.

So I was focused largely on preparing for whatever the Marine Corps asked us to do, whatever the nation asked us to do and not paying as much attention to a lot of the headlines that were taking or being published across the United States and the world.

CHAKRABARTI: Folks, by the way, just to be clear Thomas Brennan is joining us today because November 7th does mark the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the Second Battle of Fallujah, which was the bloodiest battle that United States members of the military engaged in Iraq. And The War Horse, which, again, is Thomas's award-winning nonprofit newsroom, has created a documentary about this called Shadows of Fallujah.

Now, Thomas I have to say that I was thinking back to my experience of November 7th, 2004, which is basically nothing, right? Because I was here in the United States in the safety of my home and work. I was a producer, actually, on this very show, On Point. And all I remember is that we had talked on that day to a reporter who was embedded with U.S. forces on the outskirts of Fallujah.

And we could hear as she was trying to talk to us over the sat phone, explosions going on all around her. But even at that very safe, multi thousand mile remove, we could hear the intensity of the battle. For you, who was there, I'm wondering, all of these years later, Thomas, do you still, I don't know, does your body still feel the shake, the vibration, does your mind still remember the sounds and the sights of that first night or first days?

BRENNAN: Just this conversation in itself. My hands were sweaty ... sweating like crazy. It's hard not to have a visceral physical reaction when you're talking about this stuff. Just the intensity of that battle, and the intensity of the firefights and just how committed the enemy was to trying to kill us all.

It's really hard to put it into words. I watched some of the videos that the BBC footage that we used in Shadows of Fallujah when we were creating that, and we put lower thirds that identified when it was actually us that you're seeing on the screen. And there's some footage in there of us just getting pelted with enemy fire on a rooftop. And having been there, I can't look at some of that without wondering just how in the heck we made it home. When we talk about it 20 years later, the majority of us had the feeling in the back of our head like, none of us are going to make it out of here alive.

It was just so many times we were in U shape ambushes or surrounded by the enemy or things were just so, you know, one thing a lot of people don't realize about Fallujah is things were so chaotic that the geometries of fire, like the interlocking fields of fire, there were instances of friendly fire, where we had to stop and slow down. Because we'd be shooting at a building, and the rounds would be zipping by other Marines that were also pushing through the city.

So it was chaotic on so many different levels, whether it was Aircraft dropping a bomb that fell short and wounded. Some of our Marines, one of the more chaotic days that I remember, or two of the days, one day we found a torture chamber. Another time we found a drum of chemical weapons that had blood agents in them.

So like when you look back at moments like that, where you're like, it feels very surreal. It's hard to, a lot of it doesn't feel real anymore. So connecting with all these guys during the reporting and during the reunion, I think it made a lot of us feel a lot less crazy. Because we were validated and, Oh, yeah, that actually happened.

That was real. I'm not insane. I didn't imagine that. Yeah, it's been a lot to wrap our heads around as a platoon. And as a, just a collective of service members that survived and have to heal from this battle.

CHAKRABARTI: We have only about a minute before our first break, Thomas, and let me just ask you this, though.

As this nation is very much in the mood to not think about the forever wars that we were engaged in for 20 years. Why do you think it's important to think about, understand, and remember Fallujah now?

BRENNAN: I think that I sincerely hope that there is not another Fallujah. There should never be another Fallujah.

It was absolute hell. But if there is, it's going to be our sons and daughters that fight it. And I just, I absolutely, I don't want that for the American public. I don't want that for the youth of our country. They will do it if they are ordered to, and if the American public, it's what they decide needs to happen.

But having been downrange and living with these things, I hope that no other service members get sent downrange and have to experience this stuff.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI:  Thomas, before we get back to what you actually experienced and what your battalion experienced in Fallujah.

Part of me can't believe that 20 years has gone by, and it occurs to me that there are a lot of folks listening who were probably just babies at the time that you were experiencing the hell, as you called it, of Fallujah. So I want to go over just a little bit of history of the first year of the United States invasion and involvement in Iraq.

So here it is. This is March 19th. It's the 13th, 2003, when President George W. Bush announced the start of the Iraq war.

GEORGE W. BUSH: My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.

On my orders, coalition forces have begun striking selected targets of military importance to undermine Saddam Hussein's ability to wage war. These are opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign.

CHAKRABARTI: President George W. Bush there on March 19th, 2003. And of course the story that was sold to the American people about why the U.S. military was being sent to Iraq had to do with Saddam Hussein's supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction.

Now, just a couple of months later, May 1st, 2003, President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq, but with continued U.S. presence in Iraq, and anti-coalition insurgencies growing in the country, there were several very major incidents that occurred, including a truck bomb that demolished the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad.

Paul Bremer. Then U.S. Civilian Administrator of Iraq spoke to reporters just moments after the incident on August 19th.

PAUL BREMER: These people who did this not only brought down this building, but behind us, on the other side, was a hospital. It had more than 70 patients in it, a specialized hospital for spinal injuries, which they also destroyed.

Patients there have all had to be evacuated. This is an awful crime. What we must hope now, and what I sense from talking to my friends from the UN who've seen this, UN will now continue with even more vigor to carry out their wonderful mission of helping the Iraqi people rebuild their country.

CHAKRABARTI: Paul Bremer there in August of 2003.

So obviously, as we're remembering here, Iraq was never stable after the United States first invaded there, even though Saddam Hussein had been quickly removed from power. So that insurgency continued, and here's March 31st, 2004, and Thomas, you had mentioned this. It's a day that's seared into the memory of people who recall it.

It was when four contractors working for Blackwater, they were armed contractors, they were delivering food for caterers in the Fallujah area. These four contractors were dragged from their vehicles by insurgents. Their bodies were beaten, burned, and dragged through the city streets and hung from the Euphrates bridge.

Reuters correspondent Michael Georgy arrived at the scene just hours later.

MICHAEL GEORGY: The scene was quite gruesome. There was bodies that were being burned. Other people were stepping on the heads of these corpses, young and old. And I remember in the middle of this, I was taking notes, trying to understand what was going on, when a boy of about nine years old came up to me and he said, we took the others, burned them and hung them on a bridge.

Would you like to see them?

CHAKRABARTI: It's from Reuters. Again, this is March 2004. The First Battle of Fallujah follows. That actually got stopped halfway through. Which then led to what Thomas experienced in his battalion. The second battle of Fallujah, November 2004. Thomas, I appreciate your patience in listening to that.

It's just that, as I said, I think there's this will, desire to forget. Which we shouldn't. Can you tell me about a little bit more about the first weeks or months as your battalion pressed into Fallujah. What did you do? What did you experience? What did you see?

BRENNAN: So on the 7th, like I mentioned previously, the shock and awe campaign where they were dropping artillery and bombs and white phosphorus on the city was going on.

And then the first Marine units pushed in after midnight on the 8th. But my unit, actually, the 1st Pioneer Marines sat, a few of our companies sat outside of the city until the morning of November 10th, when we pushed in inside of armored track vehicles, and we got inserted into the center of the city. And effectively we had to hold the government center and be surrounded until all the rest of the Marine units got online.

So we inserted into the city about 4 a.m. The ramps drop, to our surprise, it's relatively silent except for bombs and gunfire in the distance. We take our positions at the government complex in the heart of the city. And right at sunrise, it's just that the gunfire began and the gunfire didn't stop.

And it was just rockets and grenades and machine gun fire all over the place. And the next thing we did was we pushed across, we had to sprint across a four-lane highway to really get into the city. And that was a long sprint. And you get into the alleyway, and you've got just smoke.

And you're going house to house, and grenades are blowing up and marines are getting wounded, and you've got like street, the wire, the electrical wires hanging from the street poles. And it was just a scary haunting experience. And just one of the most vivid things for me was because I specialized in demolitions and rockets. So I was what was known as an assaultman.

And the riflemen, the O311s. They kicked in so many more doors than I did. And the anxiety of watching a marine line up on a door. And just lift their foot up, go to kick it in, like knowing that there could very well be somebody on the other side of that door who just lays into him with a machine gun. It was just insane watching the risks that people were willing to take to try to get the Marine to their right and left out alive.

CHAKRABARTI: Fallujah is a large city and if I recall, most of the civilians had left before the second battle of Fallujah began. I think 90% of them left, but that meant there was still as many as 90,000 civilians still in the city. Did you encounter any of them?

BRENNAN: I can, at the government center, when we got pushed in, it was really one of the last times that I saw civilians.

And when I saw civilians there, they were being used as human shields. By a handful of insurgents who ultimately ran down an alleyway and engaged other marines. So they were being used as human shields, there were other instances where some of us saw people coming with white flags. And we absolutely, you know, brought them in and didn't engage them.

Because the there's innocent civilians. But once we cross that highway, everybody that we ran into wanted to kill us, the place was crawling. It was just, now 20 years later, like some of the generals that I've spoken with have shared some of the maps of where they found all the dead enemy fighters, and where they found all the weapons and the explosives and all that stuff.

And the map of the little red dots with all that over the city, it's just a big collection of red dots over the top of the city. You can't even see the streets or the houses or anything. There were people and weapons and explosives everywhere.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. Because again, just to get our historical memory as accurate as possible.

The First Battle of Fallujah was actually halted because of rising civilian casualties, right?

And so the difference, is that right?

BRENNAN: So the way that I understand it was that there was a lot of propaganda about fake civilian casualties that were being inflicted by Marines that contributed to the withdrawal of troops during the First Battle of Fallujah.

But I think it's fair to say that more broadly, it was not a popular battle to begin with and that the Marine Corps effectively lost that battle, because they lost the information campaign alongside it. Thomas, hang on here for just a second. I want to now bring in Reinaldo Aponte.

He was a hospital corpsman, third class petty officer assigned to Thomas's battalion, the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, and he joins us from Milwaukee. Reinaldo, welcome to On Point.

REINALDO APONTE: Thank you for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: So listening to your colleague there, Thomas, talk about his memories of Fallujah, what's that making you remember about your experience?

APONTE: It's reliving all those memories that he discussed. It's so easy for those memories to pop back in your head. That just bringing up the topic rehashes all that.

CHAKRABARTI: What were those first days like for you? Did you get injured?

APONTE: I did not get injured. Those first days were pretty hectic.

There's a lot running through your mind at the time. A lot of unknown. So you run with the information that you have. You try and prepare yourself as best as you can. You make sure you have all your gear. You try and run scenarios through your head to make sure you're prepared for anything that could happen.

CHAKRABARTI: So you were a medical specialist, a hospital corpsman. Were there times that you had to aid other members of the battalion?

APONTE: There were times where, as a hospital corpsman, attached to 1st Battalion, 8th Marines. I was specifically attached to Alpha Company. So for those 30 or so Marines with Alpha Company, I was their corpsman. I took care of them. I tried to handle any medical needs that they had. And if not, I would relay that to the aid station. But it was just me and another corpsman providing medical care for 30 Marines.

CHAKRABARTI: What kind of care did they need?

APONTE: Everything, from a good kick in the butt to life saving care.

Tried to do it all. Not only the physical aspect of it. Taking care of their wounds but also the emotional, the things people don't talk about, we tried, I tried to be their friend, I tried to understand them, so I can get to know them, so I can take better care of them. I cared for each of them very much.

CHAKRABARTI: Reinaldo, do you mind if I ask you and you can say no, if you don't want to answer, but 20 years later, can you describe some of the things that people didn't want to talk about? That you had to, that you were there to listen to them for 20 years ago?

APONTE: I could. I'd rather not betray anybody's trust. A lot of that stuff I talked about in confidence, and I'd rather not repeat. Some of those things talked about in confidence.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. No, I understand. I totally understand. So Thomas, though, help us again, I think that it's very urgent that we make real what these experiences are for people who have no connection to them whatsoever.

For the reasons why you said earlier, that what if the United States decides to engage in something like this again? Do you have a way to describe perhaps some of the experiences that you had there? That have taken you a longer time to think through and understand, maybe even years after the intensity of the moment, of, like you said, the white phosphorous and kicking down doors of buildings.

BRENNAN: Yeah, I think I'd be happy to talk about it. Maybe Doc can, would feel comfortable chiming in at the end, but I think the survivor's guilt that we all carry especially him for everything that happened with Faircloth could be really powerful for people to hear. But I could talk about, I was one of the Marines that cried when Faircloth died.

We were combat ineffective. I don't think there's any shame in sharing that. And as one of the Marines, doc, if you speak about the things that we talked to you about under fire, when we were having a tough time and you speak to them in general terms, I don't think you'll hurt any of the Marines.

I think if you name them, they might get upset. But if you talk more broadly, I don't think any of us would be mad at you.

CHAKRABARTI: You're talking about Lance Corporal Bradley Faircloth. We're going to actually hear from his mother in just a few minutes, just on the other side of the break, which we have to take in about a minute So I want to be sure to give that adequate time. But Reinaldo, let me turn back to you here. Just and I asked the same question of Thomas a little earlier. Why do you think it's important that people hear these stories again 20 years later, especially as, again, the mood of the country seems to be, to never want to think about those forever wars ever again?

APONTE: I think there's a forgotten cost to war that a lot of people don't realize until 20 years later. You have the casualties, you have the injured, then you also have the emotional scars. And the scars that follow people the rest of their lives. And Brennan mentioned earlier, the next war is going to be fought by the next generation of children who could be someone's daughter, someone's son, and the scars that they'll carry with them the rest of their lives are deep.

Part III

CHAKRABARTI: Both of you mentioned Lance Corporal Bradley Faircloth. We actually talked with his mom, Kathleen. And before we hear from her, a note for everyone listening, there's a moment in this next sequence where you're going to hear the sound of gunfire. It's from The War Horse documentary, Shadows of Fallujah.

And we just wanted you to know that's coming. And when we talked with Kathleen, she first told us about what she and her son, Bradley, did the day before he was deployed to Iraq.

KATHLEEN FAIRCLOTH: I remember the exact day. It was Father's Day and I had taken off work and we spent the whole weekend together. And for a change, I was not that uptight.

'Be perfect. Do not screw up 'mom. I'm like, what do you want to do, Bradley? We went and saw three stupid movies. I'm like, this is your last free weekend, you want to watch movies. And we drank as much beer as humanly possible. And he took me and introduced me to his friends, and I got to be a proud of mom and I didn't have to be high maintenance mom, I got to be his friend.

CHAKRABARTI: Kathleen heard from Bradley once every few weeks during the course of his deployment. At times he told her that he'd been injured, although Bradley would always be pretty nonchalant and downplay the wounds. At other times, he told his mom that he's not supposed to call.

But still wanted to wish a family member happy birthday. Meanwhile, on the battlefield, the situation was never as simple as Bradley had told his mom it was. And 18 days into the mission.

FAIRCLOTH: Brad's first, like he always wanted to be. And I'm right behind him. He moves to go to this door. There was three guys, I think, in this room, just waiting, sitting there with a machine gun.

And as soon as he came into that line of sight, and they pulled the trigger, really loud, at least 20 rounds, just right into him. And he just dropped, hit the floor.

CHAKRABARTI: Lance Corporal Faircloth was killed. Kathleen got the news the day after Thanksgiving.

FAIRCLOTH: I wish I knew the guy's name. He said, Ms. Faircloth, what are you doing? And I said, I'm driving. He said where are you going?

And I was like, I'm coming home from hunting camp. He said, do you need somebody to drive you? And I just said, no. I don't need anyone to drive me. I said, what's happening to Bradley? I don't have clearance. I'm just calling to check on you. How long will it take for you to get home? And I said, 30, 45 minutes.

I was driving literally 110 miles an hour, and all of a sudden, I just get to the road I lived on. And what do you, why are you rushing to find out your son's dead?

CHAKRABARTI: Kathleen stopped in the middle of the road momentarily. She was just three blocks from home.

FAIRCLOTH: I get to my house, and at that point, my mom and brother and my dad and his wife, and they were there, and two men and a woman in dress blaze, and I just said it was game on. And they handed me that flag and read me his letter and I looked at them. I said he's already given me instructions as to what to do. He sent me all the phone numbers to everybody that he went to high school with, to call them. After his first injury, he said, anytime I get hurt, I want you to call everybody and tell them what happened and I'm okay.

So I had the letter. It was Thanksgiving weekend. All his college buddies were in town for the holidays and within 30 minutes, I had a house full of kids.

CHAKRABARTI: I'm not quite sure how you ever heal from the loss of a child. Kathleen struggled for years. She believed that if she denied it long enough, her pain would go away.

But over time, she did find healing through the community that Bradley left her.

FAIRCLOTH: The thing that shocked and amazed me, the first shock and amazement was in 2006 when we did Bradley's statue dedication. And I want to say about 20 Marines came to my house and probably five to seven of them had tattoos on their body with my son's name on it.

And I was like, I'm like, Oh my God, y'all are going to get married. Your wife is not going to look at a dead person's name on you. That was my first thought. Oh my God, that is so weird. And my mother heart was like, Oh my Lord, it was a forever testament. You couldn't go home and wash off. And I was like, I did not know what that commitment meant.

I did not realize how deep it was. And so then, some of them named their children after him and they took me in. And I always believed in my heart that Bradley may be gone, but he left me sons all over this country.

CHAKRABARTI: That's Kathleen Faircloth. Her son, Lance Corporal Bradley Faircloth, died in combat in the Second Battle of Fallujah.

Thomas, can you talk about Lance Corporal Faircloth a bit?

BRENNAN: He was just, it was just so beautiful to listen to Kathleen talk about that. He was just, one of the things that bothers our platoon is he was the bravest one among all of us, and he was never recognized for valor. He was never awarded for his bravery.

He earned three Purple Hearts. He kicked in more doors than anybody else in that platoon. One of the heartbeats of third platoon. Yeah, just a phenomenal Marine. And I admittedly, we were not close friends. I feel a lot closer to him after his death.

I was watching from down the street when Doc was trying to save him and when he got put in the body bag and loaded into the back of the truck.

Yeah, it was a tremendous loss for us as a unit and seeing what it did to Doc after that was just really crushing for our entire platoon.

CHAKRABARTI: Reinaldo, do you want to talk about that?

APONTE: Yeah, that was a difficult time. I felt as if I failed my Marines. I wasn't able to do what I was there to do. And from that point forward, it was difficult to actually look them in the eyes after that.

Because I felt so much shame.

CHAKRABARTI: Even though you know that none of your fellow, of those Marines, put even, would have blamed you in the least. You still felt that shame?

APONTE: Absolutely. I feel as if I, at that moment, I felt that with the training that I'd received, I felt that I was knowledgeable in my job. I felt that I was good at what I did. And then to have that situation come up, to not be able to fulfill my job the way I thought I could. It was difficult process and comprehend.

CHAKRABARTI: Gentlemen, I have to ask you this, because it has been 20 years, and I think one of the things that time does allow us to do is to turn around and confront with bravery, right? The truth of what propelled all of you into this tragedy. And Thomas, look, we know now, and we've actually known for several years, that people like Lance Corporal Faircloth, people like the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians that died over the entire course of the U.S. and coalition's presence in Iraq, they all died for a lie.

And, to ask, both of you said the word children, to ask young people, children, to sign up for one of the highest forms of service this country has. I think we owe them at least the assurance that what they are, the missions that we're sending them on are just, that they're righteous, that they're not based on lies, and that they're actually for the safety and security and defense of this nation.

I'm just thinking about how, I'm feeling how much that losing Lance Corporal Faircloth is still haunting both of you. And how do you feel that loss and the wounds that both of you carry, came about because of a lie?

BRENNAN: Do you want to go, Doc?

APONTE: Yeah, do you know? I try not to think about how it came about. I always try not to dwell on whether the reasons why we went there were true, or whether they were a lie. Because that's all out of my control, and I think that'll be out of anybody's control. Any service member.

That has to participate in a war, to be out of their control to make those type of decisions. But I think what the most important thing is the people that do make those decisions for them to realize the cost the cost in lives and the emotional cost for those that are still alive.

CHAKRABARTI: Thomas?

BRENNAN: I would join the military again if I was 17. The pride that I have in having served my country is something that I think I will always feel. It made me who I am today. It helped me get the education that I have. There have been so many positives. But I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't angry and didn't feel used by the government to support their lies.

And the hope that I cling to, that it was worth it, is because I still have people like Doc in my life. I still have people like Kathleen in my life. I got to know people like Bradley. It got to show me, like combat is horrible, but I now understand like the true horrors that exist in this world, which also helps you appreciate the happiness and the good things that exist.

Like there will always be a percentage of the American public that's willing to raise their hand and be willing to put their lives on the line, regardless of whether they're Air Force or Marine Corps or ... Space Force or Coast Guard or whatever. Everybody signs that same blank check, to sound a little cliche.

But we won't have people who are willing to sign that blank check if we just continue to lie to them, and we continue to abuse the trust of not only the service members that wear our uniform, but the families that are waiting for them back home, and the American public that should care about what they're sent off to do on our behalf.

CHAKRABARTI: This is one of the main reasons I understand that why you and The War Horse made Shadows of Fallujah, the documentary, because I hear you saying that you don't think that the American public as a whole puts enough care into the men and women in the services outside of wartime.

BRENNAN: Yes. I think that there are a lot of people who genuinely care about veterans and military families, and the people that serve our country. And I don't want to downplay that. That support is incredible. There needs to be more people like that. But I think there is a subset of the American population that just takes for granted the contributions that service members and other public servants across our government are willing to do for us as a people. I think for me, like caring about the veterans and national security is not just waving a flag.

It's not just saying thank you for your service on Veterans Day. It is really asking questions about the policies that your elected officials in your state are putting forth. It is making sure that the youth of America who are inheriting our military feel empowered to ask questions and that, yes, as an American public, we need to truly understand what we ask our service members to do. And be a more proactive part of that conversation or else it's going to be too late someday.