In 2003, just months after graduating from West Point, Misty Cantwell was a military police platoon leader waiting to cross the border into Iraq. Arriving after the main invasion, Cantwell’s platoon was assigned to Sadr City, a restive neighborhood in Baghdad. Initially arriving in Iraq in soft-skinned vehicles without modern body armor, Cantwell was soon immersed in the rising anti-coalition violence that summer. In this episode, she shares the story of her role in the response to an attack that killed US soldiers, reflecting on the change that happened to her that night, what she would tell her younger self, and how the effects of combat linger.
In 2009, Sgt. 1st Class Sean Ambriz was on his first deployment in Afghanistan. When a platoon became pinned down by enemy fire, he...
For Bill “Fenway” Wyman, Sadr City in 2004 was a strange mix of combat and humanitarian missions. Fenway, then an Army major, was servince...
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...