No Greater Love

My name is Justin Roberts.

My wife, daughter and I are currently

stationed in Rose Barracks, in Vilseck, Germany.

But for three years, I was assigned as chaplain

to the 2nd 327th Infantry Battalion.

Also known as No Slack.

Since I returned from the deployment,

I've struggled with a numbing depression

and I've wondered what kind of father

and husband I'd be if I couldn't shake this.

General MacArthur once said that old soldiers

don't die, they just fade away.

And that's what I felt like.

Like a part of me was fading away.

During the last New Year's fireworks celebration,

I was home with my wife and daughter.

Before the fireworks were through,

I was on the ground weeping.

I wasn't shaken by the explosions,

but with an overwhelming sadness.

I started thinking about the guys I served with in No Slack

and wondered if they were experiencing

any of the same things.

I wanted to understand what was happening,

and what I could do to get better.

My wife and daughter accompanied me

to Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

There I planned to spend a couple of weeks

reconnecting with the soldiers I served with

and their families.

I hoped our dialogue would benefit them

and provide insight into my own issues.

After not seeing most of them for three years,

I thought I'd reintroduce myself

in a familiar setting.

Oh my goodness.

We got a whole collection of No Slackers in a church.

That's a miracle.

This is not gonna be a typical sermon.

If you were expecting I was gonna be

guilt-tripping you or anything like that,

it's not gonna be that today.

This is more like a confession.

When I showed up to No Slack, as many of y'all know,

chaplains can't carry weapons,

so I decided to carry a camera.

I went out on the missions and I captured

a lot of these moments that would change my life,

but it wasn't the photos and it wasn't the video

that changed my life.

It was understanding the stories behind 'em.

I captured people doing some courageous things,

some valorous things.

I was going through the deployment

asking the question why?

Why are they doing these things?

What is driving these guys to risk their lives for others?

And even after they've been wounded,

why in the world would they come back to this hell?

Part of the answer might lie in No Slack Battalion's

proud history.

No Slack is part of the legendary 101st Airborne Division,

and a central component of the United States'

World War II force.

- What defined them is the Battle of the Bulge,

where Germany came through and bulged the line.

They fought and defeated the Germans

that were up against them.

- Later, the Civil Rights Movement

found the 101st Airborne defending the Little Rock Nine,

who were the first African-American kids

to attend a segregated school.

During the Vietnam War, No Slack spent more time

in combat than any other battalion.

No Slack is a great battalion.

I have some family that served with 101st Airborne, as well,

so it's good to part of a great story.

- Most of the No Slack soldiers that I met

had their stories begin in Iraq

where they initially faced combat.

Through our conversations, I wanted to recount

the deployment to Afghanistan, so together,

we could process some of the things we experienced.

At the time, we didn't realize that we were

headed to our biggest fight since Vietnam.

- Going to Afghanistan, none of us have been there before.

I've done three Iraq tours.

I knew how they were and everybody new

that went over there said it was totally different.

- The soldiers in Iraq were very used to

very close combat fighting in urban areas

and we had to be a lot more mountains focused

and Afghanistan was a lot more far ambush.

The [speaking foreign language] as the Soviets

called it, the ghost of the mountains,

were always behind the rocks,

greater than 300 meters away

and that was a training challenge

to take a very good unit who did extraordinarily well

three straight deployments to Iraq

and shift mentally to get ready to go to Afghanistan.

- Alright, here we are in beautiful Afghanistan.

We're about to get into in our house.

- Everything Afghanistan was just a lot more committed.

In Iraq, it seemed like it was just punks there

to fight for a couple minutes and run away.

They never went toe to toe.

Afghanistan, they stopped.

They fought.

They were prepared to die for their belief.

RPG.

RPG!

- Afghanistan is known as the graveyard of empires.

No country has ever won a war there.

- We were in the Kunar Province.

What was that like?

The worst place I ever been.

- We walked into, my analogy was the red arrow,

pointing on Asadabad, the provincial capitol.

The time we were coming in, the previous

two units had seen a significant increase in enemy activity.

- Here we are, we finally made it to FOB choice

after many days of travel.

Right now, as I'm talking to you, we have been under fire.

- Kunar always been contentious in history.

- It's the one area that, in any war since the Khan Era,

has never been conquered.

The Russians were stopped in their tracks

in the Kunar Province.

- Kunar, Nangarhar were the footholds

for the Jihad in the 1980s.

It's a warring culture.

They're raised to fight.

They seemed experienced?

Very experienced.

You could tell by age and also by their tactics.

- They would shoot at you and try to fix your position

and then start maneuvering on you.

They were actively trying to kill you.

They were extremely tenacious.

They were seasoned.

- How many generations in the Afghanis have been at war

with each other, with other enemies.

- The same rat lines that the insurgents moved on

in the 1980s were the same ones they used against us.

- Fathers taught their sons how to fight

in these fighting positions.

It was nothing new.

They worked against the Russians,

so why change what works?

- Roger, we also have contact

from the [staticky mumbling] over.

Fargay's hittin' us.

- We're an army that can see you from left, right

and especially down to up, so they learned

our weapons systems probably as quickly as we did

and how to defend themselves against it.

They have thermals and then they have

a blanket to cover them.

We have technology advantage and firepower advantage.

They had a--

Home field advantage.

Yeah.

- Osama Bin Laden had camps up in Kunar.

Why?

That's where you can train.

That's where people can't get to you.

You don't need all of Afghanistan

to have a trans-national terrorist state.

That area, pretty close by are some airfields.

You can export your terrorism anywhere.

- One of the men who trained Osama Bin Laden,

Qari Zar Rahman, made the mountains of Kunar Province

his base of operations.

We knew him as QZR.

- The perception of QZR is he's just

some rag-tag Taliban guy.

That is incorrect.

He is Al-Qaeda and TTP Taliban.

The Pakistani military had him in custody in '08, '09,

let him go.

If you go on YouTube to this day,

you can see him being interviewed by Pakistani journalists.

Total sociopath, Soprano-esque.

He was truly a dangerous man.

Coercing, physically kidnapping,

beheading Afghan villagers.

When he goes in there and takes five village elders,

brings them to the mountains and beheads them,

what's a village of 30 people gonna do?

Everybody's okay, we get it now.

We're a QZR fan.

The guy's not gonna stop.

- He ruled with a very iron fist and he was organized.

- He was the one who was pulling the strings

on the suicide bombers in Asadabad.

- Heading for the center of governments.

He was the ringleader

of operations for AQ and TTP.

- Watch out, let him go.