On July 13, 2008, around two hundred Taliban fighters ambushed American and Afghan soldiers in a remote area of eastern Afghanistan. The ensuing fight would become one of the deadliest battles for American soldiers during the United States' long war in the country. In this episode of The Spear, the battalion commander of the forces engaged in that fight reflects on the battle, the challenges that would follow, and the sacrifice of the paratroopers he commanded.
Col. Phil Ryan is the commander of the elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. In 2003, in the first days of the invasion of...
Col. Phil Ryan is an Army aviator who has spent much of his career in the Army's most elite, special operations aviation units. In...
In 2004, Dan Gade’s armor company took over a sector of Ramadi, Iraq, then the heart of the Sunni insurgency. Within days, his unit...