In the late summer of 2021, after years of service to his country—including four years at the United States Military Academy—Major Naqib Mirzada, an Afghan National Army Special Forces officer, and his family fled Afghanistan after the Taliban's seizure of Kabul. Arriving at Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 15, amid the US-led coalition's withdrawal from the country, Naqib and his family spent several grueling days trying to escape. On this episode, he tells the story of those last chaotic days in Afghanistan and the start of his life in the United States.

This episode was jointly produced with the West Point Center for Oral History. The full video of Naqib’s interview will be available on the Center for Oral History’s website in the coming weeks.

In 2012, Rich Kent was a platoon leader deployed to Panjwai in Afghanistan's Kandahar province. Tasked with locating an IED cell in a small village just outside his normal area of operations, Kent was leading his platoon along a trail after receiving a tip about the location of Taliban fighters. After inadvertently drifting onto a different trail less traveled, Kent was reorienting his soldiers toward their target building when he stepped on an IED. He joins this episode to tell the story.

In 1998, retired US Air Force Colonel Mike "Starbaby" Pietrucha was an electronic warfare officer flying in an F-15E Strike Eagle, enforcing the northern no-fly zone over Iraq in the 1990s. In this episode, he brings listeners into the cockpit as he describes one particular mission during that deployment, when his aircraft was targeted by a radar guidance system for an SA-3 antiair missile. Not long after, the Iraqi surface-to-air missile was headed his way. After some rather hasty maneuvering, the F-15E crews in the air developed a plan with other coalition aircraft to strike back.

Before his NFL career, Alejandro Villanueva was a rifle platoon leader in the 10th Mountain Division. During a deployment to an especially restive sector near Kandahar, Afghanistan, his unit faced heightened security challenges due to a prison break that freed a large number of Taliban fighters. But Villanueva also had to contend with a unique dilemma: after a member of the Afghan National Police accompanying his platoon opened fire on an approaching motorcycle, they lost sight of the driver. The potential that this was a civilian casualty led Villanueva's brigade headquarters to task his soldiers with determining what happened. The task was made much more challenging when Taliban radio communications indicating they were planning to attack the Americans along one of the most dangerous wadis in the area: Route Mariners. He joins this episode to share the story.

As Ukrainian troops continue to fight against invading Russian forces, they are supported by a growing cadre of civilians. Many among this group, however, have no training or experience. Matt Gallagher, a former US Army officer and veteran of Iraq, recently returned from training some of those civilians in Lviv. In this episode, Gallagher talks about his decision to travel to Ukraine, the differences between his experiences as an officer in Iraq and as a private citizen in Ukraine, the training he provided in Lviv, and the human costs of war. Gallagher's reflections are both personal and profound.

In the second episode in a two-part series, Dan Gade joins The Spear to tell the story of his 2004 deployment to Ramadi, Iraq. After his unit suffered the deaths of two soldiers—the difficulty of which he discussed in the previous episode—his company continued to engage in frequent and heavy action with insurgents. But as coalition forces began to adopt a population-centric approach to providing security, Dan and his company found themselves increasingly conducting missions without the protective armor of their M1A2 Abrams tanks. On one mission, in January 2005, the lack of armor proved almost deadly to him. He shares the story in this episode.

In 2004, Dan Gade’s armor company took over a sector of Ramadi, Iraq, then the heart of the Sunni insurgency. Within days, his unit suffered its first fatality. As a company commander, Gade had the responsibility to lead his troops back outside the wire the next day regardless of the emotional toll Tyler’s death might have taken. In the first episode of a two-part series, Gade describes how his company continued to patrol, taking contact from enemy forces nearly daily.

As an executive officer of an infantry company at Forward Operating Base Fenty in Afghanistan, Michael Houghton was heavily involved in one of his company's primary missions: conduct counter–indirect fire patrols. Fenty was routinely targeted and these patrols were important for protecting the personnel and assets located there. Houghton was responsible for orchestrating the fight as what his commander called “a fighting XO.” After repeated enemy ambushes and rocket attacks from a known point-of-origin site, his company commander launched an operation to ambush their attackers. The fighting XO was needed to manage the battle and support while the commander led the fight. Listen as he shares the story in this episode.

In an episode of The Spear released in June 2021, Karl Blanke shared a story that featured the actions of one of his former Marines, Lance Corporal Jackson (a pseudonym). “Jackson” was a machine gunner in the 1st Marine Division and took part in the march to Baghdad in 2003, where he was wounded in a firefight and awarded a Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with Combat Distinguishing Device for his actions. In this episode, we hear the story from Jackson's perspective.

In 2011, Todd Angstman and his Special Forces team deployed to Gao, Mali, to provide training and assistance to the Malian Armed Forces. Gao was an important city, the hub of trans-Saharan trade, and had a combined arms task force deployed there, working with Angstman's Green Berets. The Arab Spring and subsequent uprising in Libya led to a decrease in security across northern Mali as displaced Tuareg tribesmen entered Mali. What was supposed to be a simple training mission took on more ominous tone as instability threatened the team. In this episode, Angstman recounts a fascinating tale of having to prepare for the worst-case scenario.