Valor in Sadr City

The Spear

John Amble

Government, News

4.8 • 642 Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2024

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Long before his selection as the fifteenth sergeant major of the Army, Dan Dailey served multiple combat deployments in Iraq, first during Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s and then in Operation Iraqi Freedom more than a decade later. In this episode of The Spear, he joins MWI's Charlie Faint to reflect on those deployments—describing in particular one deployment's operations in Baghdad's Sadr City, where he receiving the Bronze Star Medal for valor. He also discusses lessons he learned over a career that began when he signed his enlistment paperwork as a sixteen-year-old and culminated in his service as the most senior enlisted soldier in the Army. And he shares his thoughts, refined after working alongside officers at every rank, from platoon leaders to the chief of staff of the Army, on the vital relationship between officers and noncommissioned officers.

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 firepower.
0:14.1	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.
0:38.0	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.
0:48.3	There was all these Humvees on fire.
0:50.0	It was truly bullets flying from every angle that you could see. 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.
1:03.0	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.
1:10.0	You're shooting at everything.
1:16.6	It was a fight.
1:17.6	Welcome back to the Spear. I'm Dr. Charlie Feint, your host.
	...

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