four days, four days, cross the border around a Sunday, I got shot on Thursday.

And my short-term memory is garbage these days.

It's because of the gunshot, but I remember everything about that day.

This is death, sex, and money.

Now I will kill you until you die from it.

The show from WNYC about the things we think about a lot.

You're in more dire need of a blowjob than any white man in history.

And need to talk about more.

I haven't seen one dollar from you.

I'm in a sale.

In the early months of 2003, Staff Sergeant Tom Tran was deployed with the U.S. Army in Kuwait near the Iraq border.

He was 23 and waiting for his orders.

And I remember, I had this one major who was like, this isn't going to happen, boys. We've been here for three months. This is not happening. Just plan on being here two more months and then we're going to leave. And then like we would watch the news every day. We'd go to the MWR tent and watch, you know, CNN coverage of, you know, this slow buildup. And we're like, oh, yeah, this is us.

Like, we were watching coverage that we were living in.

The war in Iraq started 15 years ago this month on March 20, 2003.

Ten days later, Tom and his unit crossed the border from Kuwait into Iraq.

And just four days after that, Tom went on a recon mission with a special forces team.

They headed for a small city, Nazaria.

I was the driver.

I was the lowest, I was a staff sergeant, and I was the lowest ranking person in the truck.

I had a colonel next to me, and then I had a major behind me, and I had our interpreter

behind the colonel in the rear passenger seat.

...