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I'm Hi and welcome to The Spear, a podcast by the Modern War Institute at West Point.

I'm John Amble, editorial director at MWI, and The Spear is our platform to explore the combat experience.

Each episode includes a single one-on-one interview with the guest who walks us through a particular event and their role in it. A battle, a firefight, a mission. It's a first-person account of combat.

The episode you're about to hear is actually the first of two parts of a conversation I had with Ryan Hendrickson. It wasn't originally planned to be two separate episodes. I had asked Ryan to

share two stories and even though they're separated by six years they really deserve to be

told together. And as you listen, you'll understand why. But as we recorded, I started to realize

that these stories are really important to tell,

and neither should be rushed just to fit them into a single episode. So we're splitting them

into two. In the next episode, you'll hear a really incredible and vivid combat story from

2016. It's a story of an event for which Ryan was actually awarded the Silver Star.

But what makes that story even more compelling is that in 2010, during a deployment to Afghanistan,

Ryan stepped on an IAD. The explosion almost cost him his leg. Doctors thought he would lose his leg.

But he fought through an intense recovery and then had to fight really just to stay in the army.

That's the story you'll hear in this episode.

He talks through the mission and the day he got hit.

And he talks about the aftermath.

These are the types of stories that are really important to tell but understandably they can also be

...