Suddenly, we see, you know, curtains of enemy fire originating from 360 degrees around the valley.

This includes, you know, high ground from the mountains.

And also, you know, we have heavy machine gun fire coming from inside of Pakistan.

And it was truly, you know, bullets flying from every angle that you could see.

You know, I had never seen anything like it before.

At that point, our instincts kicked in, and it was, I don't think we really, we weren't

thinking really, we just acted because that's all we knew to do.

You know, anywhere we saw enemy fire originating from, we shot back.

Hey, welcome 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 for this episode, I sat down to talk to Captain

Lindsay Heisler.

She is an Apache helicopter pilot, and on December 5th, 2015, she was a

platoon leader in 1st Battalion 101st Aviation Regiment, and had been deployed in Afghanistan for

several months. That night, her aircraft and another were given a mission that the pilots had done

a number of times before, provide security for a ground force. But that night would turn

out to be unlike previous missions. When the ground force began taking enemy fire from all

sides, the Apaches above had to take action. In fact, because of her actions that night,

Captain Heiser received the Distinguished Flying Cross. It is an incredible story, but

before we get to it, as always, just a few quick notes.

First, if you aren't yet subscribed to the Spear, you can do so on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher,

or your favorite podcast app.

And if you're enjoying the stories we feature, we would love it if you'd take just a moment

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