The platoon leader calls me up and says, hey guys, I had somebody take around.

We called a medevac, but he's not going to make it if we wait for the medevac.

Will you come get him?

And I immediately turned to my right-seater and I knew that he in particular

his name was Alec. I knew that Alec could put me down anywhere. And so I turned to him and

I said, Alec, let's go get him. And Alec immediately said, yep, I'm down.

We're starting to work our way out from real close to the ground forest, trying to find

the closest spot we can where we think we can land.

And eventually Alec and I found a spot.

It was like a posted stamp right on the river with trees kind of surrounding this little

spot.

Alec executes this approach.

And I can't say for sure, but I tend to swear to this day. It felt like

the tail rotor is hanging over the river and there's tree branches over top of the blades.

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

I'm John Amble, editorial director at MWI, and we have another incredible story for you in this episode.

MWI's Major Jake Morali talks to Major Patrick Du Bois.

Major DeBois is a Kiowa helicopter pilot, and in 2010, during a deployment to Afghanistan,

he was part of what started

as a pretty routine mission to provide support to a ground force. From there, though, things

became less routine, as you'll hear. After being diverted to provide support to another ground

force that was in contact with the enemy, they were asked to do something Kiwa pilots almost

...