In 2004, Matt Hardman was an infantry company commander in the 82nd Airborne Division. Just returned from Afghanistan, his paratroopers were deployed to Iraq’s Babil province on just a month’s notice. The situation in Babil was uncertain, with limited intelligence on enemy cells, tactics, or objectives. Hardman’s battalion had almost eight hundred square kilometers to patrol and scant resources with which to do it. Within their first week, the company began losing soldiers. He joins this episode to reflect on that challenging deployment, describing the foundations for his paratroopers' success and what he learned about the fundamentals of leadership.
In 2004, Tim Strabbing was a lieutenant and platoon commander in the Marine Corps, deployed to an area just outside Fallujah in Iraq's restive...
In this episode, Chief Warrant Officer 5 Joe Roland joins to share a story from 2004. A UH-60 Black Hawk pilot, his aircraft and...
As a lieutenant on his first deployment, Capt. Steve Beckman was in charge of a platoon equipped with a unique vehicle—a Stryker variant called...