In this episode, Brian Chontosh, a retired Marine Corps officer, details the circumstances of an intense and complex combat operation in Iraq that involved Brian and his Marines using captured enemy weapons to clear an entrenched hostile force that ambushed their convoy. Brian ultimately received the Navy Cross, one of the top valor award in the US military, for his actions that day.

This episode features a story from Joe Ritter, an Air Force officer and MQ-9 Reaper pilot. The MQ-9, the largest remotely piloted aircraft in the US military's inventory, has a wide range of the capabilities—from providing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance to conducting battle damage assessments to helping a ground element direct their fires to striking enemy targets with air-to-ground Hellfire missiles. Ritter and his sensor operator brought all of these capabilities to the fight during a single mission in Afghanistan in October 2018.

Lieutenant Colonel Liam Walsh is currently the commander of the 4th Battalion of the 9th Infantry Regiment, "Manchu." In this episode of The Spear, Liam speaks with MWI's Charlie Faint about his experiences in reacting to an IED strike in Iraq and responding to a Taliban attack on a forward operating base in Afghanistan, and how a series of setbacks during a rotation at the Joint Readiness Training Center helped him understand the power of "yet."

Sergeant Major Chuck Ritter overcame a series of bad decisions in his youth—as well as a rough start to his Army career—to become a highly successful Special Forces senior noncommissioned officer. In this episode, Chuck joins MWI's Charlie Faint for a discussion about resilience, personal responsibility, motivation, good leadership, and the circumstances that led to Chuck receiving the Purple Heart three times, as well as the Bronze Star and Silver Star medals for valor in combat. He also offers his perspectives about critical thinking, the utility of storytelling, and the dangers of hubris.

On August 30, 2021, General Chris Donahue stepped onto the ramp of the last American C-17 in Afghanistan and into the pages of history. At the time, he was a major general commanding the 82nd Airborne Division, leading his paratroopers as the United States withdrew from Afghanistan after almost twenty years of combat. He would go on to serve as a corps commander and, since December 2024, the commanding general of US Army Europe and Africa. Donahue joins this episode of The Spear to describe the evolving and complex mission on the ground during the 2021 deployment to Afghanistan, during which he relied on trust and relationships to lead his troops and oversee the evacuation of more than 120,000 Afghans. He also reflects on his career and the leadership lessons he learned along the way, sharing advice for junior and aspiring leaders.

Long before his selection as the fifteenth sergeant major of the Army, Dan Dailey served multiple combat deployments in Iraq, first during Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s and then in Operation Iraqi Freedom more than a decade later. In this episode of The Spear, he joins MWI's Charlie Faint to reflect on those deployments—describing in particular one deployment's operations in Baghdad's Sadr City, where he receiving the Bronze Star Medal for valor. He also discusses lessons he learned over a career that began when he signed his enlistment paperwork as a sixteen-year-old and culminated in his service as the most senior enlisted soldier in the Army. And he shares his thoughts, refined after working alongside officers at every rank, from platoon leaders to the chief of staff of the Army, on the vital relationship between officers and noncommissioned officers.

In this episode, retired US Air Force Col. Kim Campbell joins to share a story from 2003. A career A-10 pilot, her squadron was deployed to the Middle East at the beginning of the war in Iraq. During a mission, she and her flight lead in another A-10 responded to a call for air support from a US unit engaged with Iraqi troops. On her last rocket pass, she felt and heard an explosion—and knew immediately that she had been hit. Listen as she explains what happened that day and how she responded when she suddenly found herself flying a heavily damaged aircraft.

In this episode of The Spear, MWI's John Amble is joined by Major Tyson Walsh. In 2013, during a deployment in Afghanistan, he was working out alone late at night on the heavily fortified Bagram Airfield, the largest US and coalition base in the country. It's the last place he expected to end up in a fight—he didn't even have his weapon with him. But that's exactly what happened. Listen as he tells one of the most intense stories we have featured.