In December 2021, at a White House ceremony, Master Sgt. Earl Plumlee received the Medal of Honor for his actions during a 2013 battle with insurgents in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province. But the story of his military career began years earlier. Prior to joining the Army and qualifying as Special Forces soldier, he was a Marine, deploying twice to Iraq. In this first episode of a two-part series, Plumlee shares the story of his early career, including his first firefight and what he learned as a young noncommissioned officer. In the next episode, he’ll describe his decision to transition from the Marine Corps to the Army and the events that led to his actions in Ghazni in 2013.

A Medal of Honor Recipient's Origin Story

The Spear is a podcast from the Modern War Institute at West Point. It sets out to explore the combat experience, with each episode featuring a guest who tells a detailed and personal story, describing the events and exploring topics like decision-making under stress and what it feels like to be in combat.

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Just six weeks out of flight school, Jordan Terry was in Afghanistan. On one of his first days flying, he took off on a flight that was supposed to be straightforward—he and three other pilots left their base in two OH-58D Kiowa helicopters, intending to help get him oriented to the rugged, mountainous area the unit was responsible for. On their way back, they they flew around a bend in a valley and came upon an Afghan unit under fire from Taliban fighters. The mission quickly changed, and an hours-long fight ensued, with the two helicopters repeatedly engaging the enemy from the air, refueling and rearming, and returning to the fight.

Kiowas in Action

In August 2007, a US Army Special Forces team came under fire while passing through a valley in Afghanistan. The call for support went to a nearby base, where an AC-130H Spectre gunship crew was standing by. The crew quickly launched, and shortly later, the aircraft was overhead. This is the type of job the AC-130H was designed for. In the hours that followed, they engaged enemy targets a number of times with both a 40-millimeter cannon and a 105-millimeter howitzer. Michael Murphy was a copilot on that aircraft in Afghanistan, and he joins this episode to share the story.

Spectre in the Sky

In this episode, host Tim Heck is joined by Lt. Col. Blake Schwartz. In 2009, Schwartz was a Special Forces team leader deployed in Afghanistan's Uruzgan province. Enemy fighters in the Langar valley, a restive area astride a vital road network, were a particular target for Schwartz’s soldiers. Schwartz attempted three times to enter the valley with his forces. On his final attempt, while countering a Taliban ambush, he authorized the firing of a Hellfire missile from an orbiting MQ-1 Predator. The impact had unintended consequences for the mission and for Schwartz.

Ambush in Uruzgan

When Chris L’Heureux joined the Army in 1999, it was before the 9/11 attacks and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that would define a generation of US Army service. Like many others across the Army, he would go on to deploy multiple times to those war zones. But his first deployment was very different. As a platoon leader, Chris and his soldiers were sent to Kosovo as peacekeepers. In his words, the United States had committed to placing American service members “in between two groups of people that desperately wanted to kill each other.” Some of his experiences would foreshadow challenges of future counterinsurgency operations. But one incident—which drew the platoon directly into an extraordinarily difficult situation when locals accused Russian peacekeepers in the area of criminal violence—presented dilemmas few lieutenants are fully prepared to face. He joins this episode to share the story.

A Lieutenant's Dilemma in Kosovo

In early 2003, Karl Blanke was a Marine platoon commander during the early stages of the US-led invasion of Iraq, when his battalion was given an objective: secure a bridge over what was known as the Saddam canal. It was meant to be a straightforward task. The intelligence briefings they received did not expect the Marines to meet with resistance from Iraqi military defenders. But as they approached the objective, that intelligence was quickly proved wrong. The lead elements began to engage, follow-on elements maneuvered alongside, and the battle began. Karl describes the fight that followed in this episode.

A Medal of Honor Recipient's Origin Story

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