As a lieutenant, Maj. Jesse Lansford was deployed to Afghanistan. A Kiowa helicopter pilot assigned as an aviation platoon leader, he rarely found himself on foot outside the wire. But on one day his helicopter had to land. He spent a brief time on the ground, but it was enough for him to encounter an IED. He joins this episode of The Spear to tell the story.

In the fall of 2006, Rory McGovern was a company fire support officer assigned to a combined arms team operating in the area around Abu Ghraib, Iraq. The day after Christmas, he was on a security patrol in support of a local sheikh’s Hajj send-off party when a shot rang out. McGovern had been hit. He shares the story of that encounter with the sniper and subsequent recovery in this episode.

Lt. Col. Brian Kitching joins this episode of The Spear to share a story from a 2012 deployment in southern Afghanistan's Kandahar Province. Two months into the deployment, the company he commanded was taking part in a large, seven-day clearing operation. They made contact with enemy fighters on both of the first two days, but on the third day of the operation, Kitching and his soldiers found themselves engaged in a fight of an entirely different level of intensity. Listen as he tells the story of that day and describes the selfless service of his soldiers' actions under fire.