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 were immediately sent to capture Baath officials suspected to be in a neighborhood nearby. A platoon commanded by Karl Blanke established a cordon and began searching house by house for their targets with little to go on beyond a set of grid coordinates. As the search continued, the cordon came under increasingly intense and accurate fire. One of Blanke’s machine gunners, Lance Corporal Jackson (pseudonym), was among those on the cordon and was responsible for protecting both the Iraqi civilians inside and his fellow Marines. On that day in 2003, his actions left an indelible impression on his platoon commander and his fellow Marines.
Note: this episode originally aired in 2021.
In this episode, we talk to retired US Army Apache pilot Dan McClinton. He tells two stories from a 2007 deployment to Iraq. Together,...
In the second episode in a two-part series, Misty Cantwell recounts the ongoing combat operations she conducted in Sadr City, Iraq, in 2003. A...
In 2014, Master Sgt. Raymond Collazo was a platoon sergeant deployed to eastern Afghanistan. Just weeks into his unit's deployment, the platoon was on...