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 the second of a two-part conversation with Ryan Hendrickson, our guest shares a story from 2016. Six years and a couple deployments after...
This episode of The Spear features a story from US Air Force Major Joe Ritter. An RPA pilot, his story takes place both at...
In 2010 Kevin Mott's unit arrived in Afghanistan's Kunar province for a deployment that would see months of hard fighting. At one point, he...