I showed up in my unit in 101st Bravo Company 3187 on 1 August 1990. Most of us know Iraq invaded Kuwait

on 2 August 1990. We were alerted to go to Saudi Arabia on 11 August,

and on 11 September we went wheels up.

We air-sulted in, approximately 175 kilometers, hidden HLZ, where we downloaded our Humvees, and then we drove 30 or 40 clicks

into Highway 8.

Hey, welcome to another episode of The Spear, a podcast by the Modern War Institute at West Point.

I'm John Amble, editorial director at MWA, and The Spear is our platform to explore the

combat experience.

This episode is a first for us.

So far, every story we've featured has come from America's post-9-11 wars in Iraq and

Afghanistan.

For this episode, we're going back to 1991 and to Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

To do that, I sat down with Colonel Bill Osland.

In 1990, he commissioned and joined his first unit.

Shortly after, they were deployed to Saudi Arabia.

And just a few months after that, Colonel Austin, then a platoon leader,

and his battalion air assaulted into Iraq. He talks about what it was like as a young officer

in charge of his platoon to get the deployment order to be responsible for training his

platoon in advance of the mission they knew was coming and to lead his soldiers. He also reflects

back on a number of lessons he learned that he would carry with him

through his career as an army officer.

Before we get to the conversation, just a couple quick things.

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