MPs in Baghdad
In 2003, just months after graduating from West Point, Misty Cantwell was a military police platoon leader waiting to cross the border into Iraq. Arriving after the main invasion, Cantwell’s platoon w...
28 Sep 202229min
Reflections on Being First In
We are now twenty-one years past the events of 9/11. America's war in Afghanistan has come to an end yet the repercussions of that day and that war continue to impact foreign policy, strategic positio...
14 Sep 202253min
Patrolling the Seam
In 2012, Sean Marquis was an infantry platoon leader—deployed to Dehqobad, Afghanistan—with a Stryker brigade. The boundary between the platoon's area of responsibility and that of an adjacent unit wa...
31 Aug 202236min
Joint SOF in Name Only
In the summer of 1993, Greg Banner was a newly appointed company commander in 10th Special Forces Group. Halfway around the world, ethnic tensions were flaring in the former Yugoslavia. The Cold War h...
17 Aug 202235min
Marine Platoon in Baghdad
In the previous episode of The Spear, 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...
3 Aug 202242min
A Machine Gunner on the March Up
In 2003, after completing the march up to Baghdad in dramatic fashion, and after an all-night gunfight to seize one of Saddam’s palaces, the Marines of Company C, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment we...
20 Jul 202240min
Platoon Leader in Vietnam
Few books have had the impact on generations of young soldiers as Jim McDonough’s Platoon Leader: A Memoir of Command in Combat. First published in the mid-1980s, Platoon Leader remains on military re...
6 Jul 202237min
Spectre in the Air
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 stand...
22 Jun 20221h 4min
