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.
Lieutenant Colonel Liam Walsh is currently the commander of the 4th Battalion of the 9th Infantry Regiment, "Manchu." In this episode of The Spear,...
This episode of The Spear features a conversation with Lt. Col. Coley Tyler. In late 2004, he was a captain serving as a battalion...
Long before his selection as the fifteenth sergeant major of the Army, Dan Dailey served multiple combat deployments in Iraq, first during Operation Desert...