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.
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 2003, after completing the march up to Baghdad in dramatic fashion, and after an all-night gunfight to seize one of Saddam’s palaces, the...
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...