In 2012, Mike Kelvington was a company commander in 1st Battalion, 508th Infantry Regiment, deployed in southern Afghanistan's Kandahar province. He joins The Spear to share a story of a two-day operations during which his company confronted a number of challenges. Some members of the Afghan National Army unit they were partnered with essentially quit during the mission. They took casualties from improvised explosive devices. And perhaps most challenging, the enemy was inflicting damage while avoiding an open fight. It was, in many ways, like chasing ghosts.
In early 2003, Karl Blanke was a Marine platoon commander during the early stages of the US-led invasion of Iraq, when his battalion was...
In 2003, Karl Blanke was a weapons platoon commander during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Crossing the line of departure in the first wave, Blanke’s Marines...
In August 2007, a US Army Special Forces team came under fire while passing through a valley in Afghanistan. The call for support went...