82 millimeter mortar started coming in on us.

What is that? That's incoming mortar and artillery rounds.

We were engaged in a complex ambush from both sides.

An enemy force, unknown numbers engaged both sides of my rear vehicle,

so they targeted my rear vehicles with RPGs and heavy machine guns.

I was in the lead vehicle.

I have never experienced much chaos as I did at that time.

I just didn't know what was going on.

Hi, and thanks for listening to another episode of The Spear, a podcast by the Modern War Institute

at West Point. I'm John Amble, editorial director at MWI, and this podcast, The Spear, is our

platform to explore the combat experience. Each episode includes a single one-on-one interview

with a guest who walks us through a particular event and their role in it.

A battle, a firefight, a mission.

It's a first-person account of combat.

We chose the spear is the name of this podcast to capture two ideas.

First, that combat is that unique experience that takes place at the tip of the spear.

And second, that in our modern wars,

it isn't just combat forces that can find themselves fighting. Any part of our military, any part

of the spear, combat or support can be forced by circumstances to become that sharp fighting end.

In this episode, I talked to our own Major John Spencer. He's the deputy director

of MWI, but in 2003 he was a platoon leader with the 173rd Airborne in northern Iraq.

He talks through two separate events from that deployment. First, the very first

...