What It Was Like to Be Under Incoming Fire from the War on Terror to Today

**Nicole Wiley** (0:09)
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 Podcast. 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.

**Colin Meisel** (0:58)
Welcome to this special crossover edition of the War on the Rocks Service Podcast. I'm Colin Meisel, here with Patrick McSpadden of Airman Pulse, Rick Landgraf 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 on 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?

**Rick Landgraf** (1:32)
Yeah, thanks Colin. My name is Rick Langriff. 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, that's otherwise known as Balad Air Base north of Baghdad. And then the sequel, 2007, 2008 at Camp Slayer in Baghdad, part of the Victory Base complex there. And then final tour in Afghanistan, 2013, 2014, Bagram Air Base. And as far as the types of indirect fire, I think same experiences as other folks. Mortars, either conventional or improvised tubes, unguided rockets, and artillery. I'd say these are characterized across the two theaters as really harassing fires. In both these theaters, as we all know, the US had air superiority. So the current threat as far as one-way drones really wasn't part of the picture yet.

**Colin Meisel** (2:35)
Steve, how about you?

**Steve Walsh** (2:36)
Yep, so obviously I'm here representing Sailor Pulse, but I actually began life as an enlisted helicopter mechanic in the Army. So I was deployed to Salerno in Coast Province, Afghanistan from 2005 to 2006, and then again in Bagram, Afghanistan in 2009 And we experienced the same thing as Rick, and I had the opportunity as a 19-year-old kid, essentially, to get really enthusiastic about the Army, come into the Army, and then go through a couple of deployments, and seeing how that impacted not only my own attitude toward the deployment, but also all the other soldiers that were there on base.

**Colin Meisel** (3:14)
Matt, how about you?

**Matt Francis** (3:15)
So my name is Matt Francis. I'm from Marine Pulse, 15-year infantryman from the Marine Corps, brah. My very first experience with any form of indirect fire was in the invasion in 2003 We were there at Camp Commando. I was with Task Force Tara with Second Battalion Six Marines. And we had a Searsucker Cruise Missile impact the base, followed by a couple other impacts as well. Fast forward to 2004, 2005, I was in Bagram there for the Karzai Protective Detail, QRF, similar to a lot of the other gentlemen here. I was on Quick Reaction Force. We had a lot of different indirect fire munitions coming down from, there was basically just a bunch of different tubes on the sides of mountain sides, rounds encased in ice, and we'll get into that later as well. But not as much guided munitions. It's more just like harassment fire than anything.

**Colin Meisel** (4:04)
Yeah. Yeah. Patrick, how about you?

**Patrick McSpadden** (4:06)
Hey, everybody. This is Patrick Siving-Spadden from the Airman's Pulse, 21 year career Air Force intelligence officer. So one unique experience or one overall experience in my career, I deployed forward from Aviano Air Base to Bagram May through November of 2010 We went forward with one of our F-16 squadrons, and then we were joined by a combined strike eagle squadron from Wakenheath. Same time that Colin was there at Bagram, and just like everybody else, a mixture of indirect fire from mortars and rockets. The threat had changed rather significantly in that area over those few years, between primarily Taliban to then a mixture of the Haqqani network. One particular attack took out a two, a couple down for me, and unfortunately resulted in the death of one of the service members. We did have a couple of defensive systems there at the time, but just like everybody else, it was one of those kind of lingering threats that everybody honored, but more or less just kind of came in the background over time.