In the second episode in a two-part series, Dan Gade joins The Spear to tell the story of his 2004 deployment to Ramadi, Iraq. After his unit suffered the deaths of two soldiers—the difficulty of which he discussed in the previous episode—his company continued to engage in frequent and heavy action with insurgents. But as coalition forces began to adopt a population-centric approach to providing security, Dan and his company found themselves increasingly conducting missions without the protective armor of their M1A2 Abrams tanks. On one mission, in January 2005, the lack of armor proved almost deadly to him. He shares the story in this episode.
In 2007, Col. Marc Hoffmeister was a major on a Military Transition Team advising Iraqi Security Forces when an explosively formed penetrator, a specific...
In early 2019, Eric Kahle was a first sergeant assigned to an aviation maintenance company bound for Forward Operating Base (FOB) Dahlke in Afghanistan—also...
In this episode, we talk to retired US Army Apache pilot Dan McClinton. He tells two stories from a 2007 deployment to Iraq. Together,...