Original subtitles

- The end of ISIS is now in sight.

What I'm looking most forward to

is fighting inside of Raqqa.

When Raqqa falls in Syria, end of the book.

[explosion] - Oh!

- Go, go, go, go!

I don't know what the future holds,

but I know I'm made to fight,

and I'm made to train.

-Reporter: Today, 50 ISIS fighters

attacked the city of Kirkuk.

- I worry about Pete.

He's pretty scatterbrained

and stressed out.

- I just wanted out of here for awhile.

- I can tell he's calmer when I'm working with him.

- But I have a vested interest in the rest of this battle.

Mosul isn't done.

- ISIS, one of the most

dangerous terrorist groups on earth.

They've brutally conquered territories

all across the Middle East

and spread fear across the globe.

Their goal is to create a worldwide Islamic state,

and they will do anything to achieve it.

[gunshots] [explosions]

Against the advice of the U.S. military,

some Americans are fighting back.

- In the truck! In the truck!

This isn't just their war, it's everybody's problem.

Hold him, somebody grab him!

- Some of us were not able to just sit back

and watch this happen on the news.

- We're men of action, not men of words over here.

- This is their story.

[drum music plays]

- It's pretty amazing to be back,

for lots of reasons.

Like, this is what I'm supposed to be doing.

- As much as I love photojournalism,

I do feel like I'm missing something,

like that tangible being able to help someone.

But I speak Arabic. I've worked in the ER.

I saw what they were doing, and I was like,

okay, I can help you. Why not?

- This morning, the forces fighting ISIS in Iraq

have taken 60% of the territory

once held by ISIS.

The terror group's fighters

are trapped inside Western Mosul.

[gunfire]

The last road out of the city is cut off.

[car horn honks]

[child yelling]

- What was this, home?

- Yeah.

- This morning before I had my morning coffee,

we got the first real trauma patient.

It feels like real work again.

Getting the instant job satisfaction

of okay, I just saved that person's life or,

you know, they're gonna keep that leg

or whatever it is.

You don't have that dealing with all the preparatory stuff,

making 30 phone calls a day.

It's different being in a managerial role.

Just clean that off just a little bit maybe.

[phone rings]

Oh, this is a call I have to take.

The big NGOs who are gonna support us,

you know, I have to play their games.

Writing proposals and spending 14 hours a day

staring at Excel spreadsheets,

dealing with phone calls that you hate.

Skull fracture.

Which is fine with me,

because we'll get the needed supplies.

Tourniquets on both legs.

Should be there in about 15, 20 minutes.

I think we were new to the game

and we made everyone really uncomfortable

in the international community.

But you couldn't stop treating people.

Just because you don't feel like playing ball

doesn't mean the war is gonna stop,

the battle is gonna stop.

Yeah, we're too far right now, I think.

I.S.O.F. One keeps getting dead on arrivals.

We had three this morning, three yesterday,

like, that's the barometer.

If we're getting that many dead on arrivals,

we need to be closer.

So we move forward when I saw medical teams move forward.

We set up in parking lots,

houses, mosques, schools.

You got a big open space

where you treat people in triage.

You got a wall around you for security

in a centralized area

to give us the biggest range of effective treatment.

So that's the main way from the street to here.

The problem right now is four I.E.D.s

about 70 meters that way.

So E.O.D.'s gonna come in in a couple minutes

and blow them up.

Did we tell everyone here?

- No.

- So we're gonna set up in here.

It's close enough to the fight

where we'll get patients quickly,

but not close enough that we're gonna get hurt.

It's big enough we can move everybody into here.

It will be a good spot.

This is the new home.

- Yeah?

- They're gonna blow up the I.E.D., maybe?

- Now?

I don't want to go that way, let's go this way.

- The glass over there. No, no, them, them.

[explosion]

- It feels like proper work,

standing in a school listening to bombs blow up.

[jet engines roar]

[singing]

♪ Everything's got blood on it again ♪

♪ I'm back at the front lines scoobity-boo-bitty ♪

Everything I did in the Marine Corp,

I was trained to do,

and that lifestyle and being a part of it,

it took quite a few years for me to get away from that.

Okay baby.

- [crying]

- [speaking Arabic]

- I'll never ask him those detailed questions

about exactly what went on over there in the military,

but I think he needs to balance out the fighting

side in the military

with the saving side of this work, mentally,

even if he'd never say that out loud.

I can tell why he's doing what he's doing now.

It's definitely redemption.

[gunfire in distance]

- That's a car bomb.

Yeah. So we're probably about to get busy in a second.

- We got a mass casualty event out of nowhere.

Truck after truck after truck just showed up in seconds.

These people are tore up.

- I thought I was kind of immune to those dead bodies,

but I almost puked there.

- Okay, who still has yellow patients?

- Right here.

- One, two.

- You gotta listen for his breathing.

- The mass casualty the other day,

I threw tourniquets at people, pressure dressings.

I don't think I touch a single patient.

Okay, we're gonna hold greens for right now.

Only yellows.

I went from treating patients to, like, dealing with people.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

Or moving ambulances.

No, they're not going in there.

Hold on. Adam!

We're not putting the children with the dead bodies.

And sometimes the odds win.

At this point, most of the time,

we are saving more people than are dying.

[siren beeps]

I think we're saving more than are dying.

I have to think.

- So I don't know how far

sabotage has gone through the whole village,

but for the most part,

I mean, the roads are clear.

We've been cutting off escape routes for ISIS around Raqqa,

and we've basically all but surrounded it now.

This is where we took contact from last night.

[gunfire in distance]

[whistles]

This guy screamed at out us, "Hey, who's there, who's there?"

Then he started shooting at us. The four of us responded.

We returned fire, killed him.

They had visual on guys going in and out of an armory.

Called in airstrikes.

[explosion] [whistles]

We found five more bodies in there.

That's what we do.

To enemies of humanity.

Fucking bastards.

- Yeah, dude. I felt bad telling--

I didn't know all those guys didn't know though.

They're like, yeah, we took Shaheed today,

and I'm like yeah, he was just here.

- He was the same guy that was like,

"Where are you from?" I was like yeah,

"My family lives in Dibasi."

He's like, "What's your family name?"

And I said it, he's like,

we are in the same tribe, me and you, man.

He said, "What's your grandpa's name?"

So I said my grandpa's name,

and he said, "I know your grandpa."

He got married like ten days before the op.

He was not even supposed to be there.

They started fighting and he kneeled

just that opening by the wall,

and he just got one shot right in the face.

He got shot in the face and died.

- I've met guys from all over

that I now consider family.

Kurdish fighters, Americans,

guys from around the globe.

And these guys, I mean,

I would take a bullet for any one of them

just like they would take a bullet for me,

and none of us would even ask questions about it.

It's just the way it is.

- V.B.I.E.D. to the left.

It's getting stressful, man.

- The most I could hope for is that it's a quick death,

not in the hands of some ISIS captors

or me slowly bleeding out on a battle field

thinking to myself,

this is the end and this is how I go out.

[car horn honking]

[yelling]

[groaning]

[yelling]

- I was in a convoy of vehicles,

and I injured myself talking a spill from a vehicle.

I could barely walk for the first week.

Kind of a combat inhibiting injury.

I'm slower than everyone else around me at this point.

I'm more of a hindrance than anything else.

Any station, any station,

this is front gate radio check, over.

Typical.

So it was a lose/lose situation in my mind at that point.

Me being okay with always being behind the front line

or me going home,

Which one do I want.

["Push It to the Limit" plays on radio]

So after a whole lot of chasing,

I called it quits

and decided to leave it all behind me.

I have so many great memories

and so many horrible memories.

So no universal question has been answered for me,

nothing along those lines.

I just kind of realized that

I've had my fun fighting ISIS.

Most of these cities have been liberated

outside of, like, capital cities like Raqqa

and a little bit of Mosul left.

These guys are done.

- U.S. and Iraqi officials say

ISIS will be defeated in days,

but don't expect peace any time soon.

[explosion]

Reporter: ISIS sent suicide bombers

to attack Iraqi soldiers in Mosul.

It was an act of desperation.

U.S. backed Iraqi forces

are close to recapturing the entire city.

- ISIS knows they're losing.

They're probably running out of food.

They have no clean water left.

Ammunition, no matter how much they stockpiled,

they're burning through millions of rounds,

millions and millions of rounds.

They're running out of everything,

and now it's just a bunch of sadist cowboys

running around doing whatever the fuck they want to.

Reporter: We have heard that there have been some

pretty accurate coalition air strikes

on a number of targets,

however, we've been hearing more about

this human shield,

this sort of rounding up by ISIS of civilians,

which is a weapon of ISIS, let's face it.

- This guy came up and asked if we had body bags.

I said, "Okay, well, why?"

He said, "Well, I have 18 family members

that are buried in shallow graves that we need to move."

His family was killed in an airstrike.

So I started scrambling around asking for body bags.

And eventually I called the coalition.

I said, "Listen, there's a guy here who needs 18 body bags."

They called me back and said,

"We found eight for you."

I remember I said to the guy on the phone,

"Dude, listen, we spent a million dollars on the bomb

that just killed these 18 people,

let's spend 50 bucks on the bags that they're gonna need

to put them in the ground."

Sorry, how does he want us to help him?

The house had been flattened,

and somehow they had sifted through massive concrete blocks

and pulled out these 18 bodies,

and then covered them with dirt.

And this was definitely a situation

that was outside of the scope of what we were doing.

- I said that to everybody,

like no one has to do this,

but, you know, it's something that I think we should do.

So we laid out 18 body bags,

suited up, full masks and everything.

- They've been there for 20 days,

so a lot of them are pretty bloated

and probably disease-filled.

That's why our people who are digging them up

are wearing the chemical-exposure suits,

except for Pete.

I'm not sure why he's not wearing one.

The family wrapped them in blankets

and buried them pretty shallow.

[speaking Arabic]

- Okay. So she's saying her daughter

is the one in the green blanket,

and her daughter's daughter

in the red blanket next to her.

- When I think of human shield,

I think of the shield part,

which is to protect yourself.

This isn't that.

God, somebody needs to come up with a good term for this.

It's not a shield.

A shield is what you use to protect yourself.

[gunfire in distance]

ISIS figured out their standard operating procedure,

shoot at the helicopters, shoot at them more,

shoot at them more,

eventually the coalition's gonna blow them up.

ISIS figured let's make it bad.

Let's put people in there.

Let's not only just, go to houses where

we know there's like a family of ten,

because one of these houses had over a hundred people in it.

People in West Mosul don't just suddenly gather.

They don't even go to the mosque at a hundred a time.

I think ISIS jammed those people into those buildings

and played their hand.

- They seem pretty numb.

I feel like if this was my family,

I would need to be very matter of fact about it,

just, like, get them out, bury them,

and I don't know, everybody reacts differently,

but, like, I wanna cry right now.

- ISIS knows they're gonna lose this war,

so they've already started prepping for the next war,

making everyone in the coalition and the Iraqi Army

really, really, bad guys

by having them intentionally kill civilians.

Fucking assholes.

- Bro, I have [bleep] flashback.

This road.

- Look all the child.

The child, they are here because we fight here.

From this wall, I was shooting.

[speaking Arabic]

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

[speaking Italian]

- [speaking Arabic]

- Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you.

[gunfire]

[voices echoing]

[gunfire]

[children laughing]

- [speaking Arabic]

- Okay.

I'm very happy to see where you sitting now.

[translator speaks]

I was very scared, but I choose to fight,

and fight is not only with the weapons,

it's with the mind.

It's with the heart,

it's with your soul.

In life when there is moment difficult,

don't do like someone,

don't run away, stand and fight.

[speaking Italian]

- Thank you. - Thank you!

- Let me call you a little later because

it's still pretty chaotic, and I just have to--

I want to finish these numbers

and I want to get over to the other place

and then we can talk.

Okay. Eat something.

- That was Pete, just checking in.

It's hard to say when it's the end of the day.

It's like chaos.

A lot of it is not in our control at all.

Reporter: Iraqi and U.S. forces

on the verge of a major success

in the battle against ISIS,

taking back Mosul,

but thousands of civilians are still trapped

by the fighting.

- My job is very different than my job was three months ago.

Back then all I had to do was receive patients,

treat them, make sure they were gonna live,

and then send them on.

And that was great until I found out

where they were sending them on to

and how far away that was.

And then we wanted to fix that process.

- Sweet. We can borrow that.

- Look at this.

Most hospitals we've ever encountered

are like completely destroyed,

so this is like such a goldmine right now.

- [laughing] This is the best we've ever seen.

- This is amazing.

- It's the ISIS Department of Health.

- It was a hospital built by Saddam, right?

- Yeah, yeah, by Saddam for the military.

- Then it turned into civilian.

- And then for the civilian and then for the ISIS and now--

- Now for us. - For us.

- How will patients come here?

- We were losing dozens of people to transportation time,

and now we're not going to.

We're going to have actual field hospitals behind us.

- Did you see this?

Like, instructions on how to keep your, uh...

beard, like, in regulation.

I never take any souvenirs,

so I figure I'll grab this one.

I know my goal originally

was I was always saying I want to go home by choice.

It's a reward that I've earned.

I started treating people not because I was a medic,

not because I was a doctor back in the States,

but because nobody else was doing it.

That's no longer true anymore.

There's plenty of people here to help.

That's a good thing.

I gotta pack up my entire life into two bags.

That's all I can afford,

and it sucks, because I'm, like,

gonna have to leave a ton of stuff here.

I do miss my family back home.

My grandpa has cancer, which I found out about.

I would've really liked to stick it out

till the end of the war,

but that little sting of pride and just saying,

oh, I need to stay here till the war is over

means less than seeing my family and friends.

I'm not gonna let pride get in the way.

If I'm gonna be sentimental about anything,

a patch is something is very simple to keep.

It doesn't take up too much space,

and this isn't one I bought in a shop somewhere.

This is something I got on the front line,

so that to me is a little cooler.

This is like the I.S.O.F. Command patch.

Iraqi flag.

Make Mosul great again,

that's definitely one I'm gonna keep.

Oh, this one's cool.

Growing up I always wanted to be an Airborne Ranger.

There was a time when we were on the front line

training Peshmerga and the 101st Airborne showed up.

There was like this captain there,

and he was kind of very stern with us,

but at the very end of it,

like, he was walking out and he's like,

"Hey, guys, keep up the good work, stay safe."

And he went--

and ripped the patches off his shoulder,

and he gave me this one.

I guess decided I was worthy of this patch,

so that one's kind of special to me.

It's kinda cool.

I owe so much to Pete for everything we've done,

of course, like, this wouldn't have happened without him,

but I like to think

there's kind of a yin and yang there,

and I kind of think I was there to help him stay balanced

whenever he'd go a little bit off the deep end.

I think definitely he and I will always be friends.

I know Alex is a good person.

I know she makes Pete happy.

I know that he is crazy about her,

and I think she kind of helps Pete

level out a little.

So I feel a little easier leaving

knowing that she is here.

I don't know what I'm gonna miss.

I guess that's to be revealed.

- I saw evil happening on the other side of the world

and had to come over and help.

The only thing that I wanted was for the people to be free

and have independence like we have in The States.

[gunfire]

I think that was a bullseye right there.

That guy almost hit dead center.

- This is me. - No, that wasn't you.

That was the guy in the back,

the little small kid.

We've taught them enough to be able to defend themselves

against the threat that comes.

They know what they're doing and they're in good hands.

That makes me feel accomplished.

That makes me feel proud and successful.

Landed last night from Istanbul

and I got some bacon.

It's [bleep] delicious.

Being in and out of war since I was 18,

I don't know if I'm ever gonna be done.

I don't know what it's gonna take for that to happen.

I feel like I have a lot of things still incomplete,

and until I feel like they're complete,

I'll always have that emptiness to go back.

- They're always heavier

than you think they're gonna be.

It's just a plain box

that has his name on it.

That's Levi's ashes.

- Welcome to the show.

It's not the worst place that I've ever done stand-up comedy.

It's just like Cleveland basically, you know,

except cleaner,

and with less goddamn Ohioans.

[laughter]

- I'm still trying to understand

what it means to lose a child.

Time helps.

What I'm finding is there's little things

every day that remind you of that person.

This is for a comedy routine that he did somewhere.

Okay. "There's an all-new product out

"called The Kitty Wig.

"It's a wig you can put on your cat, see?

"You can get-- you can get yours now

at www.getalife.com."

[laughing]

I like that, that's really good.

Life doesn't really have meaning

aside from the meaning that you give it.

How do you go on through the rest of your life

without your kid? I don't know.

It's sort of like one of those things

you just put on foot ahead of the other

and you just keep doing that.

- I've lost quite a few friends, brothers in arms,

and I think about every single one of them

often, very often.

This mother[bleep] right here though.

Boom! - Bring it in, bring it in.

- How you been, bro? You good?

- Yeah, you good?

- Always good, man. You look good.

- Look at you. - Can't complain.

So how long have you been back here now?

- Too long, man.

- Dude, I'm looking at maybe moving to Colorado

or Northern California.

Just like kind of hanging out there for like six months,

making a little bit of money

and then figure out what my next move in life

would be from there, you know?

Obviously, it's not like a career path.

- Me and PJ are close.

Keeping in contact with him is a very important thing.

You maintain that camaraderie, that brotherhood,

just that, know if they're okay still.

If they need anything from here to the rest of their life,

you're there for them,

and you know they're there for you.

- This is nice, check this out.

- This is beautiful up here, yeah.

- So there it is.

Glad to have you back, man.

Glad you're back.

Glad you made it back.

- Long time coming.

The allure of combat and fighting never disappears.

I 100% look at this as if it was a chapter

of a book and this one is now complete.

The only problem is the chapter that I'm about

to start is blank.

Who knows? Maybe in the next couple years

I find Mrs. Perfect For Me,

and I decided to settle down and have a family.

If that days comes, it comes, and I'll embrace it.

This is live, yeah? Detroit's playing.

I've gained a lot from my time in Syria.

Acceptance into a new culture

and being part of a fight that's bigger than myself,

and I'll always carry that with me.

But I've spent so much energy searching for combat

hoping to find satisfaction

in one of the most extreme ways I possibly could.

In many ways it was selfish of me

to seek satisfaction like this.

And I'm still looking for something.

Maybe one day war will call me back,

but for now,

I will look elsewhere.

Reporter: Iraqi forces fighting their way through Mosul,

inflicting ISIS casualties.

U.S. officials say the terror group is on the ropes,

down to its lowest numbers ever,

but experts warn the terror group

isn't close to total defeat.

- This morning we got a 13-year-old patient

who had been hit by a mortar,

and I just wrote about it.

She had been hit by a mortar

not long before she got to our door.

I'm sure she was standing outside somewhere

because she had little bits of leaves stuck in her leg.

I just have to swab the blood out of the way

and feel for that damn pumping artery.

Tying to keep pressure everywhere.

We use massive amounts of gauze

and bandages to wrap the whole thing.

I figured at some point her eyes would just

roll to the back of her head and we would call it.

I look at her IV lines and they're not running anymore.

Her veins are collapsing.

And out of nowhere these two big gorgeous

brown eyes lock with mine and bl

I let myself do something

I swore I would stop doing long ago.

I started to have hope that she will make it.

When you get a little hope,

it quickly turns into a lot of hope,

then it turns into desperation and then despair.

We get to the ER entrance,

and I'm still holding her pale, cold hand.

I'm not much into religion or faith,

but I am a fan of karma.

[child calling out]

Somehow I saved up enough for this little girl

to still be alive as she makes it inside.

She was afraid, but for once, I'm not.

She's going to make it.

Hope is a powerful thing.

For the first time in a while I gave into hope and won.

This one will stay with me,

but I have to remind myself of the reality.

I gambled with hope.

I was lucky to come out on top of this one.

It could've just as easily ended

with me sobbing in a corner.

This the first thing I've written

where I'm actually really happy at the end

in a long time.

Usually it's so I can get it down on paper

and not have to think about it anymore,

but this one I can--

I can definitely reread when I'm having a bad day.

Because we-- we fucking won one.

- No.

If ISIS surrendered right now,

and the battle for Mosul was over,

yeah, I definitely could,

but, you know, it's not over yet.

At the end of the day, we're doing a really good thing,

and I'm pretty happy with that.

If it goes for another three months,

I'll probably be happy with that too.

It's a good moment to take stock at your life.

I mean, why not, in the middle of West Mosul.

We have a great team.

I've got a lot of really good friends.

We've done good work.

I am batshit in love with this woman.

I don't know how in the middle of all this,

but life is pretty good.

Life's really good, actually.

Yeah.

- Everyone comes for a different reason.

We want to feel important.

We want to feel connected.

We want to feel like we are redeemable.

The fact is, we're humans,

and we're in this together.

That alone is worth fighting for.