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.
This episode features the first of a two-part conversation with Ryan Hendrickson. In this part, he shares a story from a 2010 deployment. On...
In 2003, Dan Stuewe was a platoon leader in the 101st Airborne Division preparing to cross into Iraq. With only a few weeks with...
As an executive officer of an infantry company at Forward Operating Base Fenty in Afghanistan, Michael Houghton was heavily involved in one of his...