These are memorial bracelets of all of my friends.

Steve Deluzio and Tristan Southworth were killed in Afghanistan on the same day,

and Steve actually died my arms.

You probably can't tell by looking at him,

but retired Staff Sergeant Wesley Black,

35 years old, is about to die himself.

I could be dead tomorrow. I could live another six months.

No one knows. It really all just depends on how my body responds to the oral chemotherapy

and just how much more I can squeeze out of the stone.

Wes has terminal colon cancer.

After surviving combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan with the Vermont National Guard,

receiving a purple heart, it's smoldering trash from massive burn pits on U.S. military bases,

sometimes acres in size that will kill him.

Soldiers tend to generate a lot of trash.

Metals, plastics, electronics,

medical waste, you know, uniforms, anything and everything that can be burned was thrown into these,

you know, the trash dump and then coated in diesel fuel and lit on fire.

In eastern Afghanistan, Black says the burn pit on the combat outpost where he served was located

just 150 feet from the front gate.

If you were the poor sucker standing gate guard when that burn pit was lit and the wind was

blowing it into the main gate, I mean, you would be standing in the

smoke for upwards of eight to 12 hours a day. Just breathing it in. Just breathing it in.

...