In late 2001, Scott Neil was a US Army Special Forces soldier whose team was among the first US forces in Afghanistan—the legendary Horse Soldiers who led some of the opening operations in the war there, just weeks after the 9/11 attacks. While theirs is a well-known story, Scott’s military service extends well beyond that experience. In this episode, he reflects on a twenty-five-year career that included time in a foxhole in Panama as a young private, the remarkable work of the Horse Soldiers, and a number of deployments in the years that followed, during all of which he grew as a soldier and a leader.
In October 2008, Maj. Nick Eslinger was a lieutenant on his first deployment as a platoon leader in Iraq. While on patrol one day,...
In this episode of The Spear, MWI Deputy Director Maj. Noel Sioson is joined by retired Master Sgt. Cedric King. In 2012 in Afghanistan,...
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...