Retired Col. Eric Terashima rates scenes portraying the Afghanistan War in movies. During his 30 years of service, Terashima had 12 deployments, including eight combat tours, three of which were in Afghanistan.
He discusses films that were based on real battles, like "Lone Survivor" (2013), starring Eric Bana, Taylor Kitsch, and Mark Wahlberg; "12 Strong" (2018), starring Chris Hemsworth, Michael Peña, and Michael Shannon; and "The Outpost" (2020), starring Scott Eastwood and Orlando Bloom. He talks about the vital role of interpreters during the war, as portrayed in "The Covenant" (2023), starring Jake Gyllenhaal. He shares the best tactics to use in shoot-outs in urban settings, shown in "Dear John" (2010), starring Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried. He describes the prevalence of improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan, as seen in "A War" (2015). He breaks down the roadside ambushes in "Iron Man" (2008), starring Robert Downey Jr.; and "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" (2016), starring Tina Fey, Margot Robbie, and Billy Bob Thornton. Finally, he relates his personal experience when watching how an Afghanistan War veteran's post-traumatic stress disorder is portrayed in HBO's "Barry" (2018-2023), starring Bill Hader and Henry Winkler.
Veterans who have been affected by PTSD can contact the PTSD Foundation of America at ptsdusa.org or the Wounded Warrior Project at woundedwarriorproject.org.
He discusses films that were based on real battles, like "Lone Survivor" (2013), starring Eric Bana, Taylor Kitsch, and Mark Wahlberg; "12 Strong" (2018), starring Chris Hemsworth, Michael Peña, and Michael Shannon; and "The Outpost" (2020), starring Scott Eastwood and Orlando Bloom. He talks about the vital role of interpreters during the war, as portrayed in "The Covenant" (2023), starring Jake Gyllenhaal. He shares the best tactics to use in shoot-outs in urban settings, shown in "Dear John" (2010), starring Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried. He describes the prevalence of improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan, as seen in "A War" (2015). He breaks down the roadside ambushes in "Iron Man" (2008), starring Robert Downey Jr.; and "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" (2016), starring Tina Fey, Margot Robbie, and Billy Bob Thornton. Finally, he relates his personal experience when watching how an Afghanistan War veteran's post-traumatic stress disorder is portrayed in HBO's "Barry" (2018-2023), starring Bill Hader and Henry Winkler.
Veterans who have been affected by PTSD can contact the PTSD Foundation of America at ptsdusa.org or the Wounded Warrior Project at woundedwarriorproject.org.
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TechTranscript
00:00 - Contact left! - What do we got?
00:02 (gunshots)
00:03 - Rolling out that door is remarkably stupid.
00:07 You don't go on contact left.
00:10 You go out the other side.
00:11 My name is Eric Terashima.
00:14 I'm a retired colonel from the United States Marines.
00:16 I spent 30 years of service and had 12 deployments,
00:20 including eight combat tours,
00:21 and three of those were in Afghanistan.
00:24 Today, we are going to look at Afghanistan war battles
00:27 in movies and judge how real they are.
00:30 Landing helicopters in Afghanistan was challenging.
00:39 Those look to me like CH-47 Chinooks
00:42 that was frequently used by the Army,
00:44 heavy lift helicopter, large troop transporter.
00:46 Some of that looks enhanced just for the movie
00:55 to make it look more dramatic.
00:56 An RPG bringing down a helicopter is absolutely realistic,
01:00 but it has to be a very, very lucky shot.
01:03 Like, you just, you hit a vital system,
01:05 particularly in a very dramatic crash like that.
01:07 I would give this clip an eight.
01:09 The stress and the duress that I felt
01:11 coming through the actors,
01:13 as well as the scenario that was depicted.
01:16 So, yeah, this was, they did a pretty good job.
01:18 Being on horses would be beneficial
01:25 for fighting in Afghanistan
01:26 because of the mountainous terrain.
01:29 You have to go through a lot of elevation changes,
01:31 hiking up, hiking down.
01:33 And so, horses are gonna help you
01:34 gain more distance more quickly
01:36 as opposed to wearing yourself out on foot.
01:38 Later, when I started to go through some advisor training,
01:41 this is up in the mountains,
01:42 we would have classes on how to pack mules, for example,
01:45 and how to butcher animals
01:47 and have them cook them out over an open fire.
01:48 So, yeah, we worked on some of those skills.
01:51 - Hey, where the hell do those come from?
01:54 How did those not know about a supply line?
01:56 - Lack of intelligence is what he's concerned about.
01:58 Like, we should know this.
02:00 These are capital pieces of equipment.
02:02 Our networks are so strong in the spy world
02:05 that they should have had an idea of what was up ahead.
02:08 And tanks are kind of a big deal.
02:10 They're loud, they travel long distances,
02:12 and everyone should know where all of them are.
02:15 The advantages are mobile armor.
02:22 So, the occupants are protected.
02:23 And then a big gun.
02:25 That's a big advantage.
02:26 Big disadvantage is that they are roadbound,
02:29 and they can only go on certain roads,
02:31 which makes them vulnerable to mines like IEDs.
02:35 They had tanks, they were Soviet-era tanks
02:38 that were available and usable by them.
02:40 By the time I showed up, the coalition forces were so strong
02:42 there's no way the enemy could possibly use tanks against us.
02:46 - Don't shoot!
02:47 Keep your asses apart! Fall back!
02:49 - People standing up in the middle of a firefight,
02:52 it's like, you actually don't do that.
02:53 You want to get down and down on the ground, right?
02:55 'Cause you don't want to get hit.
02:56 I would give it a six for realism.
02:58 This particular clip on the horses is cool and dramatic,
03:02 and, yeah, they're charging downhill.
03:05 But some of the individual tactics
03:07 kind of made me laugh a little bit.
03:09 - There's no logical reason for Hadi to lead us down this route
03:12 unless he's leading us into a trap.
03:14 - You're out of your bounds, Ahmed.
03:16 You're here to translate.
03:17 - Actually, I'm here to interpret.
03:18 - That's a really great response.
03:19 Interpreting is so much more than translation.
03:22 Translation, you're just trying to get the verbatim speech
03:25 and convey that.
03:26 Interpreters are much more than that.
03:28 They become cultural advisors
03:32 to the people that they're servicing with.
03:35 And when you start working closely with your interpreters,
03:39 what happens is you need to form trust with each other.
03:42 If you don't build that trust,
03:45 then you may be lacking in the ability
03:47 to get a full interpretation of what's happening.
03:50 He's saying, "I'm interpreting a cultural thing right here
03:53 that I'm seeing.
03:55 I'm seeing how Hadid is acting.
03:57 He's acting weird.
03:58 I'm sniffing this guy out.
04:00 He's being a rat.
04:01 And, by the way, even though your censors
04:03 and your patrols and stuff don't see it,
04:05 this is a bad road to go down.
04:06 You do not want to do this."
04:08 [car horn honking]
04:10 - He's a traitor.
04:11 - In Afghanistan, and actually in all cases,
04:14 we do have to vet sources of intelligence.
04:16 What you do is you try to confirm or deny information
04:19 that they give you as things pass along in time.
04:21 And so, over time, you build up,
04:23 "Okay, how often is he lying to us?"
04:25 Because you expect that.
04:27 And then how and why.
04:28 That's what a case manager is going to try to do.
04:30 That's how the vetting process goes.
04:32 [car horn honking]
04:35 I kind of call BS on that one.
04:40 If he's going to draw a weapon,
04:42 the one he's going to do is the rifle
04:43 that's around his shoulder.
04:45 And the reason why you do that
04:46 is because pistols are wildly inaccurate.
04:48 You've only got this much of a barrel.
04:50 A lot of pistol fights go off.
04:52 You see like 20 rounds fired by each side,
04:55 all misses at this kind of a range.
04:56 In various degrees,
04:58 you always have to kind of diffuse tension of some sort.
05:01 Is he doing a good job?
05:02 No.
05:04 If you're trying to de-escalate a situation,
05:06 drawing your pistol out,
05:07 it's not a de-escalation.
05:09 [car engine revving]
05:10 [coughing]
05:12 - He says they have his family.
05:14 - The risk was pretty high, really high.
05:18 In fact, particularly my last deployment
05:20 was 2019 through 2020.
05:22 I'm in Lashkar Gah,
05:23 and most of our interpreters were locals from Lashkar Gah.
05:26 They would kind of sneak on and off the base.
05:29 Fortunately, we were co-located with an Afghan base.
05:32 So that's a very simple lie.
05:34 I'm going to go work on the Afghan base,
05:36 come in and out,
05:37 not knowing they're actually working
05:38 for the coalition forces.
05:39 So we've got these locals who are extremely at risk.
05:42 Like if their pictures get out,
05:44 their names get out,
05:44 then their families get known
05:45 and their families do get threatened.
05:47 Obviously, I'm still concerned
05:48 about the ones who are left behind.
05:50 I still send money on a regular basis
05:53 to multiple families out there.
05:54 They need support and I can't let my friends starve.
05:57 I'd give it a four,
05:58 mainly because the scenario is common enough.
06:02 What I don't like are the tactics.
06:03 A person who's trying to de-escalate the situation
06:05 and instead does an escalatory move,
06:08 which doesn't make any sense at all.
06:09 So that's why I gave it a four.
06:11 - Just flick it, don't change any settings.
06:13 - Okay.
06:14 [gun firing]
06:15 Vehicle ambushes were very common in Afghanistan
06:20 because you're confined to roads
06:22 that can handle that kind of load.
06:24 And because of this kind of terrain,
06:26 it's up in the mountains,
06:26 everything is catalyzed.
06:28 You must go through that road.
06:31 That makes it a lot easier to ambush vehicles.
06:34 - Contact left!
06:35 - What do we got?
06:36 [gun firing]
06:38 - Contact left means that if I'm here in the driver's seat,
06:43 that means I'm receiving fire
06:44 from my left-hand side.
06:46 Yelling contact left and rolling out that door
06:49 is remarkably stupid.
06:51 You don't go on contact left.
06:54 You go out the other side.
06:56 [gun firing]
06:58 Stark should have stayed in the vehicle
07:02 because what usually will happen is
07:04 as you're forming defenses during an ambush,
07:07 the vehicle actually becomes a safe spot.
07:10 That's where your food is,
07:11 that's where your water is,
07:12 that's where your pack is,
07:13 your supplies and other things.
07:14 So yeah, the vehicle's absolutely central.
07:16 [gun firing]
07:19 It does happen sometimes
07:23 where you'll have a nearby exploding piece of ordinance
07:26 and next to nothing happens to you
07:28 as opposed to you could just get utterly destroyed
07:32 depending on where you show up in the frag pattern
07:34 is how that works.
07:35 And this is just dumb luck.
07:36 I think I'd give this one an eight.
07:38 There is gonna be a deduction
07:39 for contact left getting out left.
07:40 Although people do do stupid things
07:43 when they're in duress,
07:44 Stark should not have left the vehicle either.
07:46 - Back up, back up.
07:47 - What's he saying?
07:48 - You give them props for not having doors on the Humvees.
07:51 That's a good detail.
07:52 It's like that's clearly early, early on
07:56 where you were doing stuff like that.
07:58 [gun firing]
08:00 It would be common to be in bombed out buildings like that.
08:06 Just standing out in the open,
08:07 firing a bunch of rounds,
08:09 not necessarily the smartest thing to do.
08:11 You're looking for cover,
08:12 you're looking for angles.
08:13 Like don't stand right next to each other.
08:15 - Come on, I got you.
08:15 Get your hands up.
08:16 - Tyree, Tyree, can you read?
08:18 Talk to me, Tyree.
08:19 - You're lucky something [beep] hit your plate.
08:20 - Oh, Jesus.
08:21 - When that metal hits your plate,
08:23 that's like someone punching you in the chest basically.
08:25 Right?
08:26 So all that force, velocity and bullet are hitting you.
08:30 And so you just feel this giant thump.
08:31 The tactics of the shooting and moving
08:34 don't make sense to me.
08:36 I think that could have been depicted a little bit better.
08:38 So I'm gonna give it a six.
08:42 - There's a Taliban right here.
08:43 Halt.
08:44 - The film portrays the battle of Kamdesh in 2009.
08:51 That's an absolutely horrible defensive position
08:54 to be rayed down in the middle of a valley
08:55 with two steep cliffs up above you
08:57 with lots of terrain that you can hide in.
08:59 One of the first things you would do
09:01 when you occupy a position like this,
09:03 at least I would do,
09:04 is write what's called a fire plan sketch.
09:06 You put down all the places in the terrain
09:08 that's surrounding you,
09:10 like a ledge that an enemy can just peek over.
09:12 What you would be able to do with the sketch
09:14 is from any position in your defensive spot,
09:17 you would know, okay, that ridge right there
09:19 is 200 yards away from me.
09:20 And that makes a difference of where you're going to aim
09:22 or how you're going to aim and with what weapon system.
09:25 - Thompson's down!
09:27 Thompson's down!
09:28 - Would it be realistic to have a machine gun
09:32 that's ready to go under a tarp?
09:34 Absolutely it would be.
09:35 You'd prefer to have somebody on the machine gun
09:39 at all times, at least I would.
09:41 I would be doing at least one test fire a day
09:44 just to make sure all my stuff was tight and ready.
09:46 And I would have rounds at the ready.
09:47 Any bit of armor in the field helps,
09:50 especially 'cause this is a gunfight of,
09:52 yes, you want your personal protective equipment on.
09:55 Ceramic plate that's on your chest and on your back
09:57 is designed to stop a 7.62 round at close range.
10:00 And that kind of thing happened all the time.
10:02 You're running operations 24 hours a day.
10:04 You're going to have to have day sleepers
10:06 or people who are doing other things.
10:07 People may be working out.
10:08 So you go to the bathroom, you take a shower,
10:12 you're doing all these things and you're 24 hours at risk.
10:15 So yeah, when something happens,
10:17 it's normal to see folks in maybe their unlaced boots
10:21 with the flak and helmet on.
10:22 That's all they got and their weapon.
10:24 - Due to weather, Apache's are down.
10:26 It'll be two more hours.
10:26 - That happens all the time.
10:27 The terrain is so drastic within Afghanistan.
10:31 Like here in this depiction, looks like it's kind of sunny,
10:34 maybe a little bit overcast,
10:35 but the weather doesn't look all that bad.
10:38 Well, one mountain range away,
10:39 it could be just like insane weather.
10:41 It could be a crazy thunderstorm,
10:43 windstorm, sandstorm, high winds.
10:45 An Apache helicopter is an assault aircraft.
10:54 It carries a Gatling gun and it carries rockets.
10:58 It's highly maneuverable.
10:59 It can get in and out of the terrain.
11:01 And sometimes they already know
11:02 before they're even coming in
11:03 what their targets may be looking like,
11:05 'cause they may have gotten a pre-brief.
11:06 It's an extra machine gun and rocket firepower
11:09 that's highly accurate.
11:10 I'll give it a nine.
11:11 It's really good.
11:12 It's really well done.
11:13 - You wanna take a look at this?
11:15 - Wow, what do you see?
11:16 Let me see.
11:17 - Fire watch is a 24 hour man position.
11:22 And it's fire watch because in the Marines,
11:25 we harken it back to, you had to have a fire
11:28 and you needed to keep the embers going.
11:30 If you didn't, you were screwed.
11:31 He called it an OP.
11:32 So it's an observation post.
11:34 That's why he's on the binoculars.
11:36 Binoculars are a whole lot easier to hold up
11:39 than having a rifle at the ready.
11:41 And they also have a wider field of view.
11:43 So if you wanna be able to scan large parts of the horizon,
11:47 binoculars are definitely the way they would be doing that.
11:50 - You got him.
11:51 - Typically you want high up positions.
11:54 High up positions give you better fields of view.
11:57 They're longer.
11:58 You can see more.
12:00 And in some cases, like in this particular one,
12:02 you've got a lot of standoff
12:03 between you and the other folks.
12:05 (gunshots)
12:07 - Barry Berkman!
12:12 (clapping)
12:13 - Barry.
12:14 - Barry Berkman!
12:15 (clapping)
12:16 - Barry.
12:17 This is kind of a PTSD trigger moment
12:18 that this guy's going through.
12:20 It's a really intense emotional feeling.
12:22 Like you're killing a human being and oh, by the way,
12:24 no, you killed three.
12:25 And then the guys who are with you are celebrating.
12:27 Like giddy celebrating, which is for your normal person,
12:31 being that up close and personal to death is bizarre.
12:34 One of the issues for me with PTSD is
12:37 I get overly stimulated.
12:41 You do kind of have sometimes these out of body experiences
12:43 where you lose track of like, okay,
12:47 this is not really good for everyday people
12:50 to hear or be a part of.
12:52 It's a selective crowd.
12:54 I'd give it a 10.
12:55 I think it was a good depiction of PTSD, absolutely.
12:59 (explosion)
13:01 - So we call this victim initiated.
13:09 Was there a way to detect IEDs in the field
13:12 before them going off?
13:13 Yes, absolutely.
13:14 So frequently what we would do is a patrol like that
13:16 would be led by somebody sweeping the ground.
13:19 In this case, for whatever reason,
13:22 they clearly did not do that.
13:24 (speaking in foreign language)
13:28 - So RC is radio controlled, kind of like a mine ambush
13:35 because it was a well-worn trail
13:37 and it was a remote controlled device of some sort.
13:40 Something got a signal.
13:41 So it was an active piece.
13:42 That means down on that IED,
13:44 there needs to be a power source.
13:45 It needs to be a battery.
13:46 That way you got something to close the circuit
13:48 to detonate the device.
13:50 And something that would receive
13:52 that remote detonation piece.
13:54 How far away does that person need to be?
13:57 Well, if it's like a garage door opener,
13:58 they gotta be kind of close, right?
14:01 To get that kind of a distance.
14:03 If it's more sophisticated,
14:04 maybe they could be further away.
14:06 That would be just a basic, like a paintbrush.
14:08 Same thing that like archeologists will use.
14:10 You might do that if you're concerned
14:11 about there being a trigger.
14:14 So if you're concerned about that,
14:15 then yes, you want to be very careful
14:17 around those initiators.
14:18 On the other hand, there's been times in war
14:21 where I've seen people see detonation cord.
14:24 Well, if you're walking around in an area like that
14:25 and you see like a red wire looking thing
14:28 that has no business being there,
14:29 that's detonation cord.
14:31 That usually means that somebody
14:32 has set up a bomb near you.
14:33 And so I've seen guys in the field
14:35 grab that detonation cord and just yank on it, right?
14:39 And reel in these bombs.
14:41 What you're talking about is rules of engagement, right?
14:49 When you can and cannot shoot,
14:50 why you should or should not shoot.
14:51 And establishing hostile intent is one of those things.
14:56 How do you determine that?
14:57 In this case, to make it really easy on the viewership,
15:00 it was this guy's putting a bomb in the middle of the road
15:03 that's clearly designed for us.
15:05 I'm going to give this a nine.
15:08 That's 100% realistic and happened.
15:14 And it was funny because she's like, hot, hot, hot, hot.
15:16 Because yeah, think about it.
15:18 You just had an explosion happen
15:19 in this little chunk of metal.
15:20 It's hot when it comes down.
15:22 So this is people in a firefight
15:29 who were just standing up.
15:31 Like, what are you doing?
15:32 You don't do that in a firefight.
15:33 You get down because you don't want to get shot at, right?
15:35 You don't want to get hit by a bullet.
15:36 So I'm laughing at that.
15:37 Just the tactics don't make any sense.
15:40 If someone's shooting at you,
15:41 you're not going to just stand there and be like,
15:42 hey, yeah, I like getting shot at.
15:44 This is cool.
15:44 (gunshots)
15:47 A javelin is like an anti-tank weapon.
15:51 Comes in two different modes.
15:52 There's a direct fire mode
15:54 and then there's an over-the-top mode,
15:55 which I think this depicted the over-the-top mode.
15:58 One of the funny things is that
15:59 it requires a certain standoff.
16:02 It's around 150 to 200 meters.
16:04 Well, that truck was not 150 to 200 meters away.
16:06 So there's a little bit of that cinematography
16:09 that you just got to do for Hollywood stuff, I guess.
16:11 So no points off on that one.
16:12 For realism, I'll give it a three.
16:15 Most of the detraction is just from
16:17 standing up while shooting.
16:18 You would never do that.
16:21 My favorite scene that I watched today was from the outpost.
16:23 It felt very real to me.
16:25 The duress of the folks being put into a horrible situation,
16:29 doing the best they can with it.
16:30 Pretty believable.
16:31 So I liked it from that standpoint.
16:33 And if you liked this video,
16:34 why not click on the next one?
16:36 (silence)
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