The Spear

This episode features the first of a two-part conversation with Ryan Hendrickson. In this part, he shares a story from a 2010 deployment. On a mission in a particularly restive part of Afghanistan, Ryan stepped on an IED. Listen as he described that day and the aftermath of an incident that nearly cost him his leg.

In February 2012, Capt. Jannelle Allong-Diakabana was a military police platoon leader deployed in Nangarhar province, Afghanistan. One day, as she and her platoon prepared to respond to an incident outside her small base, an Afghan soldier appeared, took aim, and fired on her and several of her soldiers. Listen as she recounts the green-on-blue attack and its aftermath.

On July 13, 2008, around two hundred Taliban fighters ambushed American and Afghan soldiers in a remote area of eastern Afghanistan. The ensuing fight would become one of the deadliest battles for American soldiers during the United States' long war in the country. In this episode of The Spear, the battalion commander of the forces engaged in that fight reflects on the battle, the challenges that would follow, and the sacrifice of the paratroopers he commanded.

In 2008, British Army officer Will Meddings was part of a team deployed in Helmand province, Afghanistan, tasked with partnering with, mentoring, and training Afghan forces. That job brings with it a host of unique challenges, many of which come to the fore when things go badly—like they did for Will and his team on one particular day in July.

This episode of The Spear features Brian Humphreys, a former US Marine Corps officer who shares stories from two deployments. In the first, to Iraq’s Anbar province,the ambush he describes is indicative of the tough deployments the Marine Corps was facing around 2004 and 2005. Later, in Afghanistan, Brian was tasked with training Afghan soldiers, and his experience is something many veterans of our post-9/11 wars can relate to: long periods of tedious work punctuated by intense, violent, and sometimes chaotic combat.

In 2004, Tim Strabbing was a lieutenant and platoon commander in the Marine Corps, deployed to an area just outside Fallujah in Iraq's restive Anbar province. Listen as he tells the story of one particularly eventful 48-hour patrol.

In 2003, Alex Perez-Cruz was a company executive officer during the invasion of Iraq. He returned as a company commander during the Surge. Now a lieutenant colonel, he shares stories from each of those deployments, compares the two experiences, and reflects on the leadership lessons he learned during combat.

Dave Eubank is a former US Army special forces officer and the founder of the Free Burma Rangers, an aid organization that works extensively in conflict zones. At the height of the fight against ISIS, he and members of his organization were in Iraq. They were there to provide help, but in that environment, they also regularly found themselves as participants in the fighting that raged all around.

Col. Bill Ostlund is the director of the Department of Military Instruction at West Point. In 1990, as a lieutenant, he arrived at his first unit as an officer and almost immediately got the order to deploy to Saudi Arabia. Shortly after, he and his battalion air assaulted into Iraq as part of Operation Desert Storm. Listen to him recall his experiences and the lessons he learned from them.

In this episode, we talk to retired US Army Apache pilot Dan McClinton. He tells two stories from a 2007 deployment to Iraq. Together, the stories demonstrate powerful lessons about how military units learn, how they improve, and how that improvement requires servicemembers and leaders to be honest and, at times, self-critical.