Hey, everyone, this is Jake Maraldi.

On this week's edition of the Modern War Institute podcast, we'll be talking to Staff Sergeant Ryan Pitts, Medal of Honor recipient at the Battle of Warned.

Because his story is so compelling, for the first part of this podcast, I'm going to get out of the way and just let him tell it.

Toward the end, I'll jump back in and ask him how junior leaders can prepare themselves

and their soldiers to handle a situation like he handled at what not. If you're listening to this on

iTunes or Stitcher, I encourage you to go to the Modern War Council blog website at modern

war institute.org. We'll be posting additional information like maps and other things that

can help you make sense of

Defstar and Pitts's story. As always, take the time to rate us on iTunes and email us through the

Modern War Institute website with comments or topics that you'd like to hear in the future.

With that said, here's Death Start Ryan Pitts with his story of the battle of whatnot.

This is the Modern War Institute podcast.

We were breaking down, we'd already broken down the Uranus post, and we were breaking down Cop Bell.

It was just too isolated, you know, airlocked, could only be reinforced by helicopter, only resupplied by helicopter.

It was at the bottom of valley.

It was just, it was going to be bad.

And so we broke that down, and we needed to have something to deny the enemy freedom of movement. And the incoming

unit didn't have the same experience we did. I mean, who better than somebody that's been there

for a while? Like we know train, we know the weapon systems, we're cross-trained, we've been in fights,

we've got to set them up for success. And they were going to have less guys than we did. So that's what

it was all about.

And it's not that uncommon.

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