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.
In 2012, Sean Marquis was an infantry platoon leader—deployed to Dehqobad, Afghanistan—with a Stryker brigade. The boundary between the platoon's area of responsibility and...
In 2010 Kevin Mott's unit arrived in Afghanistan's Kunar province for a deployment that would see months of hard fighting. At one point, he...
Command Sergeant Major Alex Kupratty enlisted in the Army after a year at the Virginia Military Institute and was immediately assigned to the 75th ...