Ep. 28 – A Firefight on the Edge of Sadr City

Modern War Institute

John Amble

Government, News

4.7 • 798 Ratings

🗓️ 20 June 2017

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2008, Maj. Emily Spencer was an EOD platoon leader in Iraq. In April, she and one of her teams accompanied a route clearance patrol that was planned to approach Sadr City, a notorious safe haven for militants. As the reached the edge of the dangerous neighborhood, IEDs began detonating and they began taking fire. Listen to Maj. Spencer talk through the fight.

Transcript

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0:00.0	And then that's about the time that the third IED went off right in front of our vehicle.
0:12.0	But we knew at that point that somebody was there watching us.
0:17.0	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.
0:33.6	Hi and welcome to the second episode in our newest podcast series, The Spear.
0:42.7	The Spear features one-on-one interviews with individuals about their combat experience.
0:48.0	More specifically, a single combat experience.
0:51.1	A firefight, a battle, an ambush.
0:53.7	This show examines what it's actually like to be in combat.
0:57.2	Today we're talking to Major Emily Spencer. In 2008, as a lieutenant, she led an EOD platoon in Iraq.
1:04.2	She's going to tell us about a specific route clearance patrol during that deployment.
1:08.5	Listen and find out what happened when her convoy reached the edge of
1:11.4	Sauter City, a sanctuary for fighters from the Jashal Mahdi militia. Before we get to the conversation,
1:17.6	a couple notes. We'll release the next episode of The Spear in two weeks. Between now and then,
1:23.3	the series will have its own feed so you'll be able to subscribe to it on iTunes, Stitcher,
1:27.4	or your favorite podcast app.
1:29.5	Find the Modern War Institute page on Facebook or follow us on Twitter at War Institute,
1:34.7	and we'll let you know as soon as the series is available.
1:37.6	Also, as always, views expressed on this podcast are those of the participants and don't reflect any official position of the U.S. government.
1:45.8	All right, enjoy the podcast.
1:52.1	I'm here talking to Major Emily Spencer.
1:55.6	We're going to talk about, I guess, what started as a route clearance operation in April 2009.
2:03.6	In 2008, in Baghdad.
	...

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