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.
Col. Bill Ostlund retired from the Army in 2019. In 1990, as a lieutenant, he arrived at his first unit as an officer and...
On October 3, 2009, several hundred Taliban fighters attacked Combat Outpost Keating, an isolated outpost manned by B Troop, 3-61 CAV and a small...
This episode features a conversation with Ryan Hendrickson. After almost losing his leg in an IED blast in 2010, he was back in Afghanistan...