SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Sometimes we bring you news of stories as they're breaking, and other times, pieces of journalism take time. NPR veterans correspondent Quil Lawrence has spent the past decade following the story of one man, a combat veteran named Dave Carlson. Carlson is the subject of the new NPR podcast, Carlson's War. In this excerpt, the year is 2005, and Carlson, who had a felony record as a juvenile, had just enlisted in the National Guard. Quil Lawrence picks up the story.
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QUIL LAWRENCE: So Carlson joined the National Guard, and he went to basic training, and he said it felt good. It felt right.
DAVE CARLSON: I was like, I'm good at this. Like, I can do this, and I feel something. Like, I feel a type of, like, purpose with this.
LAWRENCE: By the time he's ready to deploy, it's becoming clear with the U.S. surging troops into Iraq and Afghanistan that National Guard units are going to be doing extended combat tours.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: National Guard and Army Reserve troops in Iraq will be staying a bit longer. Active-duty troops are already being held longer than expected. Now Guard and Reserve troops are having their tours of duty extended to as long as a year.
LAWRENCE: This is just a couple of years after 9/11. And all of the recruiting zeal and people signing up in big numbers after that is running into the reality that Iraq is not going to be a quick or easy war. And now guardsmen basically have to leave their jobs and spend a year in combat.
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LAWRENCE: And that was the case with Dave Carlson. He was told at the time he signed up that he was headed for war. He went on his first tour of duty to Iraq at the end of 2004, and it's just as the Iraq war was starting to get really nasty. He was sent to a base near a town called Dhuluʿiya. And the name of that town actually just sends chills down my spine 'cause I was in Iraq at that same time, and I know just how much violence and how much killing was going on in that town around that time.
So Carlson's National Guard unit was mostly standing watch back at the base rather than going out on patrols. But Dave Carlson - he wants to do more, and he wants to be out there where the fighting is happening. And he'll go out on patrol with anyone who'll take him.
CARLSON: I'd bounce around different squads, like sections going out, depending on, like, my schedule. 'Cause I would pull, like, Guard duty for, like, eight hours or 10 hours, and then I would go on mission with them. Or I'd get dropped off after mission, and then I'd go on Guard duty.
LAWRENCE: Eventually, he started going out on missions with one particular platoon led by an Army sergeant named Alwyn Cashe, who will later be recognized as one of the heroes of the entire Iraq War. But at the time, he was just the sergeant that Carlson had to pester about going out on patrols.
CARLSON: I was super - I was a private. I was like, a PV2, right? Super nervous to approach this individual. And I'm like, can I come with you on tour? Like, my snot nose, like - and he put up with it, right?
LAWRENCE: And sometimes he'd wake up. Like, Cashe was asleep from having been out on patrol all night. And he'd be like, Carlson, yeah, OK, yeah, just, yeah, whatever. Yeah, you can come on patrol with us. Just let me sleep.
CARLSON: And they would talk s**t. Like, the other privates and stuff would talk s**t, and be like, why the f**k do you want to come out with us?
LAWRENCE: But Carlson did well out there.
CARLSON: But then, a couple of the specialists, and then maybe, like, one of the E-5s came up to me and was like, why did you join the Guard?
LAWRENCE: That was meant as a backhanded compliment. They're asking Carlson basically, why did you join the Guard? Why aren't you in the Army? And it felt really good.
CARLSON: I felt like my entire life to anybody that accepts me - right? - I just get, like, a fierce loyalty to them. And so that was - yeah, it was, like, the best thing in the world.
LAWRENCE: You know, he felt like he'd found his place and maybe, you know, he'd found his new family. And then it's toward the end of that year-long deployment. And Dave Carlson - he's on base, and Cashe's platoon calls his National Guard commander asking if they can have Carlson for the next patrol.
CARLSON: He was just like, I'm not letting you guys go on missions anymore.
LAWRENCE: Basically, he hears his National Guard commander say, you know what? No. We've been here for a year. I want to bring all my guys home, and we're just not going to send them out on any more of these patrols. Now, honestly, to you or me, great call, right? You want to bring all your guys home. Who can argue with that? Well, Dave Carlson can.
CARLSON: Even though we've been doing this all year, for you to make it home and be able to, like, say that you brought everybody home, like, you're willing to, like, deprive this other company of a resource that they may need.
LAWRENCE: In other words, to him, it was like saying, let's not do that. Let's let those other guys do that. Let's let Cashe go out and do that. And all these other guys that he's starting to feel a loyalty to, guys he's been under fire with, let's let them go out. And this is another really crazy, cruel turn of fate. You know, I'm not sure if it was on that day that that call came through, that they said, no, I'm not sending any more Guard out, but it was definitely within those couple of weeks. It was October 17, 2005. Sergeant Alwyn Cashe and his platoon get ambushed.
CARLSON: Cashe lived for, like, two weeks. Like, 90% of his body had third-degree burns on it.
LAWRENCE: During this attack, you know, the explosion, somehow, you know, Cashe's uniform gets covered with diesel fuel. But he's going back into his burning vehicle to get his men out, and then Cashe catches fire. He's on fire. And he goes back in several times. He gets seven of his men out of this vehicle while they're getting shot at, and then he refuses to get on the medevac until all his men are out. He gets on last, and he doesn't die of his wounds till over three weeks later at an Army hospital in Texas.
Years later, he'll be recognized with the Medal of Honor, 1 of only 8 people to receive the Medal of Honor in the whole Iraq War. It's the military's highest medal. You get it for doing things that no one could ever reasonably ask of even a fellow soldier. Cashe was the only Black man to get this medal since Vietnam, by the way. But that's all years down the road.
Right at that moment, all it means to Dave Carlson is, I should have been there. Like, why wasn't I there? Why did those guys die? Why did I survive? And those questions - they still haunt Dave Carlson even all these years later when he retells the story.
CARLSON: Bakhoum (ph) was an interpreter. Their interpreter for the ECP (ph) - he burned to death in that...
LAWRENCE: Take a minute. Don't worry about it.
CARLSON: I'm good.
LAWRENCE: Yeah. Take a couple of deep breaths, whatever. Have a sip of something. You never know when that stuff's going to hit.
CARLSON: Ah.
LAWRENCE: Can I take this water?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Yeah. Yeah. Of course.
LAWRENCE: We're having this conversation almost 20 years after these men die. But I can see for a moment he's back in that place in Dhuluʿiya, Iraq. At the time, Carlson says he was just supposed to move on. By November 2005, his tour is over, and he goes back to Wisconsin. You know, the active-duty Army, they come home, and they're still in the Army. They're supposed to have some dwell time before they deploy again. They might do a military job back here in the States. They stay with their same unit. When you're in the Guard like Dave Carlson, everyone scatters back to their towns and cities and goes back to their day job, and they're just back on the streets of the USA.
When you came home, are you just...
CARLSON: You're just home.
LAWRENCE: You're done. You're basically...
CARLSON: One week in a month, two weeks a year.
LAWRENCE: And you're going to school?
CARLSON: Yeah.
LAWRENCE: So it's like you're a civilian, suddenly?
CARLSON: Right back to being a civilian. It was bizarre.
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DETROW: Dave Carlson's story continues in our podcast. It's called Carlson's War. And you can find both episodes in the Up First feed or at npr.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
