SIMON: Bodi, let me turn to you for your part of the story. As we see in the film, you wind up doing some of the most dangerous work there for U.S. servicemen and women in Afghanistan, and that's you become drivers and gunners who were looking for roadside bombs. You ran into some IEDs...
BEAUDOIN: Yeah.
SIMON: ...and tell us what that's like.
BEAUDOIN: Well, getting blown up is you get so filled with adrenaline that, you know, at first you really don't you don't feel anything, you just get a that, oh, here we go mode, you know, that lifesaving mode. So it's like anticipating getting punched in the face the whole time driving out there. And I mean that's our job. All of us knew on every mission that at any time, any of us had the possibility of getting blown up. So I think we did pretty well. I mean we found, the majority of the IEDs we found. I think we only got blown up like I think it was under 10 times and we found like 60 or 70 IEDs.
You know, for me what hurt me the most are RPGs, which is a rocket propelled grenade, more than the IEDs that hurt. Those are more scary.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, WHERE SOLDIERS COME FROM)
UNIDENTIFIED SOLIDER #1: Holy (bleep)
UNIDENTIFIED SOLDIER #2: What?
UNIDENTIFIED SOLDIER #1: Whoa. RPGs. Look out. Look out.
...
SIMON: Bodi, at one point in the film you say, you're serving in Afghanistan taught you to hate people - and you list them.
SIMON: You list quite a few groups. And I wonder what is it like to see yourself saying that now.
BEAUDOIN: At the time I was blown up I think around seven or eight times and I wasn't able to go out anymore with the guys, which really, really upset me. I always thought this was, you know, I don't want them to go out with[out] me. I worry, I would just worry about them. So I was so mad at the time.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, WHERE SOLDIERS COME FROM)
BEAUDOIN: I've learned to hate the people of Afghanistan and the country of Afghanistan. That's true. I hate everybody here. I hate everything about it. I hate the way they smell, the way they look, the way they talk, the way they dress, the way they think. I don't like them. I'm a racist American now because of this war and that is a true statement.
I obviously don't feel that way anymore. I look back at that and I can understand why I said that. You know, I was so jaded because of how many times that I was, that I got blown up.
SIMON: Well, help us understand that, because it's the determination of the army doctors that you were in so many explosions there's some effect.
BEAUDOIN: Yeah. That is...
BEAUDOIN: ...kind of on me also. I never wanted to not stop going out even though I got blown up so many times, so I would kind of bend the truth. Tell them that, you know, I feel fine, I feel fine, let me keep going out. And they have what's called a TBI test which is traumatic brain injury test - and I kind of cheated and memorized it. And there's is saying that they ask you a few words and you have to repeat them. And the few words are elbow, apple, carpet, saddle, bubble. And I will always remember that saying. And I could have sat out way earlier on the explosions, but I didn't want to because I wanted to go out with my boys. I'd rather get me blown up than my buddies.
Learning to Hate
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