Hi, I'm Nicole Wiley, membership editor for War on the Rocks. You're listening to a special

crossover episode of our members-only Armed Services podcasts. With the events unfolding in the Middle

East over the last few weeks,

some of our hosts from these shows sat down together to speak on their personal experiences

with bombardment and indirect fire. This is a personal, wide-ranging conversation that we hope

you find interesting. Before I turn it over to Colin, your host for this episode, I'd first

like to take just a moment to acknowledge

the American service members who have died in the current war in the Middle East, especially

the six Army Reserve soldiers who died in Kuwait by an Iranian drone strike. With that, Colin, over to

you.

Welcome to this special crossover edition of the War on the Rock Service podcast.

I'm Colin Maisal, here with Patrick McSpadden of Airman Pulse, Rick Langraph of Soldier Pulse,

Matt Francis of Marine Pulse, and Steve Walsh of Sailor Pulse.

Given recent events in the Middle East, we've come together to talk about indirect fire,

including our own experiences on the receiving end of it during the global war on terror,

and what American service members in Kuwait and elsewhere are experiencing as we speak.

To ground listeners and where we're coming from, let's start by briefly describing when and where we served, where we received indirect fire and the kinds of indirect fire we received.

Rick, could you start us off?

Yeah, thanks, Colin.

My name is Rick Langraf.

I was an Army intelligence officer for 20 years.

As far as experiences with indirect fire, really across three separate deployments, 2004, 2005 at LSA Anaconda in Iraq,

...