In 2004, Dan Gade’s armor company took over a sector of Ramadi, Iraq, then the heart of the Sunni insurgency. Within days, his unit suffered its first fatality. As a company commander, Gade had the responsibility to lead his troops back outside the wire the next day regardless of the emotional toll Tyler’s death might have taken. In the first episode of a two-part series, Gade describes how his company continued to patrol, taking contact from enemy forces nearly daily.
This episode of The Spear features a conversation with Capt. Lindsay Heisler. An aviation officer and Apache pilot, in December 2015 she was part...
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 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...