This episode of The Spear features a conversation with Lt. Col. Coley Tyler. In late 2004, he was a captain serving as a battalion fire support officer in Iraq. That meant that when the Marines asked for his battalion to take part in the Second Battle of Fallujah, he had an important role to play. He coordinated artillery, mortars, and fire from supporting aircraft to do something, in the Army, we call shaping the battlefield. As he describes, in Fallujah, that meant destruction.
For then-Major Bill “Fenway” Wyman, Sadr City in 2004 was a strange mix of combat and humanitarian missions. Fenway was a civil affairs team...
Arriving in Vietnam in April 1968, John “Tilt” Meyer volunteered for a highly classified unit without knowing so much as its name. Tilt, it...
In 2007, Patrick Melton was a military police soldier on his first deployment in Baghdad, when his combat outpost was hit by a barrage...