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 1998, retired US Air Force Colonel Mike "Starbaby" Pietrucha was an electronic warfare officer flying in an F-15E Strike Eagle, enforcing the northern...
As a lieutenant, Maj. Jesse Lansford was deployed to Afghanistan. A Kiowa helicopter pilot assigned as an aviation platoon leader, he rarely found himself...
In 2003, Maj. (ret) John Spencer was a platoon leader in the 173rd Airborne. In this episode, he talks about the very first mission...