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 2010, Col. Jonathan Neumann commanded 1/17 Infantry Battalion, deployed in Kandahar province, Afghanistan. Near the end of the deployment, the battalion received intelligence...
This episode features a conversation with Chief Warrant Officer 4 Dylan Ferguson. In 2012, he served as part of the brigade aviation element of...
Lt. Col. Brian Kitching joins this episode of The Spear to share a story from a 2012 deployment in southern Afghanistan's Kandahar Province. Two...