Before his NFL career, Alejandro Villanueva was a rifle platoon leader in the 10th Mountain Division. During a deployment to an especially restive sector near Kandahar, Afghanistan, his unit faced heightened security challenges due to a prison break that freed a large number of Taliban fighters. But Villanueva also had to contend with a unique dilemma: after a member of the Afghan National Police accompanying his platoon opened fire on an approaching motorcycle, they lost sight of the driver. The potential that this was a civilian casualty led Villanueva's brigade headquarters to task his soldiers with determining what happened. The task was made much more challenging when Taliban radio communications indicating they were planning to attack the Americans along one of the most dangerous wadis in the area: Route Mariners. He joins this episode to share the story.
In 2005, Major General Pat Roberson was the ground force commander for a combined special forces task force in Iraq given the task of...
In the fall of 2006, Rory McGovern was a company fire support officer assigned to a combined arms team operating in the area around...
In 2007, a destructive new weapon appeared on the battlefield in Iraq: the improvised, rocket-assisted munition. Also called a lob bomb because of the...