Full episode
280: In Country
Act One

When Weekend Warriors Work On Weekdays

When an Arkansas National Guard Unit is sent off to Iraq, they assume they're going to help rebuild the country, since they're trained as an engineering unit. But once they arrive, they find themselves in a combat zone, unprepared and ill-equipped. Their trucks, for instance, are from the 1950s and 1960s. The unit's story is told in a documentary television series Off to War, which is on the Discovery Times cable channel. Ira interviews the filmmakers, Brent and Craig Renaud, and talks to a few of the guardsmen still stationed north of Baghdad. We also hear clips from the documentary. The series is produced by DCTV in New York. (39 minutes)