Before we start today's show, we want to share a warning that this episode has explicit language,

descriptions of violence, and includes mentions of suicide.

Okay, here's the show.

I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is a Sunday story.

Veterans Day is coming up this week, so I wanted to invite NPR's Quill Lawrence onto the show to share a story he's been working on for 10 years.

Quill has covered vets in the Department of Veterans Affairs for NPR since 2012.

And for almost that whole time, he's been following the story of one combat veterans journey home.

So Quill, welcome.

Oh, thank you, Aisha.

Now, just to brag a little bit, NPR is the only mainstream national network that has consistently had a dedicated veterans reporter.

And Quill, that started with you.

How did you get the job?

Yeah, I was a war correspondent for about 15 years.

And the end of that, I was working at NPR bureaus in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the beginning of those wars, I could

just cruise around either of those countries in a beat-up taxi and just sort of keep a low profile.

As the wars got more intense, the only way I could get around was to embed with U.S. troops.

So that's when I started getting to know troops.

And so you're embedded with these troops.

You're spending all this time with them.

What did you learn from that?

Well, besides just seeing the war from their perspective, as the years passed on and they

...