The Spear

In 2008, Maj. Emily Spencer was an EOD platoon leader in Iraq. In April, she and one of her teams accompanied a route clearance patrol that was planned to approach Sadr City, a notorious safe haven fo...

9 Aug 201926min

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 ...

17 Jul 201941min

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 parti...

8 Jul 201938min

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,...

18 Jun 201938min

The battle to wrest control of the Iraqi city of Mosul from ISIS involved some of the fiercest urban combat since World War II. Throughout the battle, US forces partnered with Iraqi security forces, a...

4 Jun 201945min

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...

22 Mai 201936min

This episode of The Spear features a conversation with Lt. Col. Coley Tyler. In late 2004, he was a captain serving as a battalion fire support officer in Iraq. That meant that when the Marines asked ...

8 Mai 201935min

Col. Phil Ryan is an Army aviator who has spent much of his career in the Army's most elite, special operations aviation units. In 2003, in the first days of the invasion of Iraq, he was a pilot in th...

24 Apr 201930min