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This three-day series was the culmination of a yearlong project that took an unprecedented look at the untimely deaths of Marines in Southern California's High Desert. We set out to produce something revelatory, and ultimately discovered trends that have never been reported before, and were likely unknown even to the military itself. Our series discovered that the rural Marine base in Twentynine Palms, CA suffered more non-combat deaths on American soil than war casualties between 2007 and 2012. Our reporting revealed that the base had an extremely high rate of off-duty car crashes, which was worsened by a culture of heavy drinking and a reckless, “invincible” mindset held by many Marines. The series also showed that Marines who took their own life at the Twentynine Palms base were twice as likely to be under the influence of alcohol as the average Marine suicide.