You know, the mission was to render Afghanistan unusable as a terrorist safe haven, something like that.

It was, you know.

Killer capture Al Qaeda wherever you find it.

You flew in on the latest technological helicopter in a damn sandstorm.

We have satcom radios and GPS, but yet I'm riding a horse.

You know, Mark was with Dostom. I was with Karzai.

We were all figuring out what we needed to do to hold the country together after the death settled.

And it was something that we just did as captains. I mean, it's really kind of crazy when you think about it.

Hey, welcome back 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 episode features a conversation with two guests who have a really remarkable story to tell.

It has been more than 17 years since the U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan began after the 9-11 attacks.

For almost two decades now, we've been at war there.

Many of our listeners have been a part of it at one point or another, but our guests on this

episode were there at the very beginning.

Jason Amarine and Mark Neuch were U.S. Army captains in late 2001, each in command of a special

forces detachment.

They were among the very first U.S. military forces in Afghanistan.

Nooch was in the country's north, operating alongside Abdul Rashid Dostum in the Northern Alliance,

while Ammarine was with future Afghan President Hamid Karzai

in the south.

They sat down with MWI's Major Jake Moraldi to share their stories of the very first days

and weeks of what would ultimately become the longest war in American history.

...