And then that's about the time that the third IED went off right in front of our vehicle.

But we knew at that point that somebody was there watching us.

And then that's when the bottom kind of dropped out.

So small arms fire, RPG fire, coming from the Soder City side of where our convoy was positioned.

Hi and welcome to another episode of The Spear.

I'm John Amble, editorial director at the Modern War Institute, and The Spear features one-on-one interviews with individuals about their combat experience. More specifically, a single combat experience. A firefight, a battle, an ambush. It's a first-person account of combat.

Today we're talking to Major Emily Spencer.

In 2008, as a lieutenant, she led an EOD platoon in Iraq.

She's going to tell us about a particular route clearance patrol during that deployment.

Listen and find out what happened when her convoy reached the edge of Sauter City, a sanctuary

for the Jashal Mahdi militia.

Before we get to the conversation, a couple quick notes.

First, this was actually one of the very first episodes of the spear that we ran.

But we've reached a lot of new listeners since then.

So we're running it again so more of you can hear what is really one of our favorite episodes.

And second, as always, what you're about to hear are the views of the participants

and don't represent the position of West Point, the Army, or the U.S. government.

All right, enjoy the podcast.

I'm here talking to Major Emily Spencer.

We're going to talk about, I guess, what started as a route clearance operation

in April 2009, or sorry, April 2008 in Baghdad.

First of all, thanks for being here.

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