James Gilligan served in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay. In Afghanistan, he gave a faulty compass reading when calling for fire, which led to his unit firing round and round into an Afghan village. James is in tears as he provides the account of how this happened and how it has affected him.

Gilligan implies Afghan police corruption when he tells about finding the largest weapons cache he had seen and finding out it belonged it to the local Afghan police station.

In 2003, in Iraq, Gilligan's company was securing a runway when they found a man at the end of the runway collecting souvenirs. He had no weapons or anything suspicious, but Gilligan was still ordered to make the man's vehicle inoperable and he did just that by cutting every wire and slashing every tire.

After his time in Iraq, he was sent to Guantanamo Bay for a six month tour. There, Gilligan had spoken with several MP's about various methods used in the Camp.