This episode of The Spear features Brian Humphreys, a former US Marine Corps officer who shares stories from two deployments. In the first, to Iraq’s Anbar province,the ambush he describes is indicative of the tough deployments the Marine Corps was facing around 2004 and 2005. Later, in Afghanistan, Brian was tasked with training Afghan soldiers, and his experience is something many veterans of our post-9/11 wars can relate to: long periods of tedious work punctuated by intense, violent, and sometimes chaotic combat.
"Trust your NCOs" is common advice given to every new lieutenant. This adage, the overwhelming majority of the time, is valid. But when it’s...
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...
Col. Bill Ostlund is the director of the Department of Military Instruction at West Point. In 1990, as a lieutenant, he arrived at his...