Leading with Love

The Spear

John Amble

Government, News

4.8 • 642 Ratings

🗓️ 16 August 2023

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1995, Robert Craven was a teenage high school dropout with a baby on the way. Looking for options to improve his life, he turned to the Army and embraced its “be all you can be” motto as his own. Years later, as the senior platoon sergeant in a HIMARS battery deployed to Afghanistan, Craven found himself having to replace the rotating first sergeant while simultaneously addressing a command climate in another platoon that risked mission success. Now the command sergeant major for the United States Corps of Cadets at West Point, Craven shares his hard-earned wisdom and reflects on what it means to lead with love.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to The Spear, a podcast about the combat experience from the Modern War Institute at West Point.
0:09.8	More than 100 meters outside the village, you were definitely getting in a fire.
0:14.2	My first patrol I took, we had a fire ambush.
0:18.9	And then it was just a huge explosion.
0:23.0	The primary threat was RKG3 grenades,
0:25.9	like machine guns and AK-47s, that kind of thing.
0:28.4	Small arms, fire, RPG fire.
0:31.2	Explosively formed penetrators.
0:32.9	Suicide bombs.
0:35.5	And then that's about the time that the third IED went off.
0:37.8	And that's when another grenade comes spinning over the side of the wall.
0:41.8	And it's at that point the IED chain detonates.
0:46.8	There was enemy in the wire.
0:48.0	There was all these Humvees on fire.
0:50.0	It was truly bullets flying from every angle that you could see.
0:54.5	I opened the door and look outside and all I see is muzzle flashes.
0:59.0	There's a guy on top with a 240.
1:02.0	In the rounds passed right past his head.
1:03.5	At that point, our instincts kicked in.
1:05.0	One pilot on the controls, the other pilot was using his M4 to engage single-man targets on the ground.
1:10.5	You're shooting at everything.
1:16.8	It was a fight.
	...

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