The biggest thing I remember from the combat jump in March of 2003 was the terrain when we landed.

So we were dropped in the farmlands, which makes for a really soft jump, which is great for an airborne soldier.

But it was also had rained for a week before in northern Iraq into the farm field. So we jumped into knee-deep mud.

Yeah, for this, I mean, the planning probably took, I mean, for us max, you know, 15 minutes or something.

All we did was we picked up a map and we looked and I started on one end and Sarmaidu started another. I started at Kandahar and he started at Kabul and we just kind of looked at the map and looked

to see where we could kind of put in observation positions or OPs.

Welcome back to another episode of the MWI podcast. I'm John Amble, editorial director at MWI.

Today we've got a sort of special edition of the podcast, a joint production with the West Point Center for Oral History.

This episode features four veterans of combat jumps. Colonel Liam Collins took part in a high-altitude, high-opening jump into Afghanistan in 2001.

Major John Spencer and Sergeant First Class

Carlos Navas participated in a jump into northern Iraq in 2003, and retired Lieutenant Colonel

James Maggie Magellis jumped into Holland during Operation Market Garden in 1944. Together,

these four gentlemen give an incredible understanding of just what it's like to jump out of an airplane

onto the battlefield.

They're interviewed by Major Brendan Griswold of the West Point Department of History.

A couple of quick notes before we start.

If you're enjoying the MWI podcast, we've also got some great new content at the MWI website at MWI.usma.edu, so I hope you check it out.

Also, the Center for Oral History has some incredible interviews on their website,

literally hundreds of them.

If you're not familiar with them, their website is well worth visiting.

They're at westpoint c.org.

And lastly, as always, the views expressed in this podcast are those of the participants

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