School of War - What War Teaches Us—If We Survive It

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

People think retired Army Major John Spencer lost part of his ear in combat. He didn’t; he lost it in a fight behind a bar that cost him his spot in the Army Rangers. Spencer went on to serve repeatedly in combat and become one of the country’s leading experts on urban warfare. He joins Aaron MacLean to discuss his origin story and other anecdotes from his new book, Twenty Times I Almost Died, as well as why he thinks the U.S. “is clearly winning” the war in Iran. 3:30 War With Iran 9:43 Battle of Hormuz 10:42 Wartime Stockpiles 12:32 The Stakes of Failure 15:34 Losing His Ear 23:34 Losing the Rangers 25:51 Resilience 28:58 Invading Iraq 33:59 Common Sense in Combat 39:08 The IED Trap 44:25 Battle of Marjah 51:01 Gangs of Baghdad This episode of School of War is brought to you by Maven Smart System, the builder platform for the American warfighter, fielded across the force and live on the frontline today. Learn more at palantir.com. This episode of School of War is also brought to you by Stratolaunch, a leading pure-play hypersonics company. Stratolaunch helps the U.S. and its allies move new hypersonic technologies from concept to capability, faster and cheaper. Learn more about how Stratolaunch is accelerating the future of hypersonics at Stratolaunch.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of School of War is brought to you by Maven Smart System, the builder platform for the American warfighter, fielded across the force and live on the front line today. Maven Smart System isn't just software you use. It's the platform you build on. Every day, thousands of uniformed service members use AI coding agents to build their own agentic applications across all warfighting functions on top of the DOW's integrated ontology. What once took a contract in a year, now takes a warfighter and an afternoon. Administered by OSWCDAO, powered by the Palantir platform. One platform deployed everywhere at all classifications. Build at the speed of war.

Today on School of War, John Spencer comes back. We start by talking about Iran, but we spend most of the interview talking about his experiences as a young soldier and officer, especially serving in Iraq. He has a remarkable humility and openness, as he recounts some of these tales, and I think you're really going to enjoy it. Let's get into it. It is a prescription for war. Just to walk the invasion of the way. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in him. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a state. We continue to face the grave situation in grand. It will fight on the beaches.

We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I am delighted to welcome back to the show today, John Spencer. He is Chair of War Studies at the Madison Policy Forum. He's the author of the new book.

20 times I almost died. John, thanks so much for coming on the show. Aaron is great to be back with you. So we're going to talk about Iran here at the top of the, a conversation. We're recording this late in the morning on Monday, September the 14th. We'll have it up first thing Tuesday. But I always like to say the date when we do conversations like that, because things change quickly. And I'll get your take on where the war stands. You've been offering a lot of commentary on this recently. But I do want to spend most of our time today talking

about your book, 20 times I almost died, which I really enjoyed. And I warmly recommend to listeners and viewers. In particular, I think, to younger ones, either getting their start in the military or maybe even thinking about the military, like you're in college, considering whether or not OCS is right for you. It really is, what I really admired about it, John, was your candor in talking about your own perceptions and decision-making as a young lear. It's hard. And reading these stories, I like, I felt a lot of recognition, honestly, because in so many ways, They're great stories. They're familiar to any young officer who's sort of served in our rough generation.

And I know what it takes to be this honest because it's uncomfortable being that honest. And they're great. They're really great. They're not only entertaining, but actually, like, pretty meaningful. So well done to you and well done in the book. Yeah, thank you so much. I really appreciate that. It means a lot, especially coming from you, but absolutely hopefully transparency.

and like don't make some of these mistakes, but here's what I learned from them. We'll come to that in just a couple minutes. On Iran, here we are. It's September. We started back on February the 28th. John Spencer, where do things stand and where is it going to go from here?

Yeah, so, I mean, it's been an interesting aspect, and I love all your coverage. I just re-listen to the one you did with Nick Ryan, a good friend going way back to the modern wars to start at West Point. If you judge a war, which I hope people do, you judge it by its objectives, although objectives can change throughout the war. So if you take those February 28th objectives, how is Iran doing on this nuclear weapons program? Not well.

You could argue so many aspects of it, but the facts is that it doesn't have a program at this moment. And you could probably guess in recent, based on missile developments that the United States has directed a lot of, aerial capability to observe whether it's a nuclear site or ballistic missile-reting sites, as we saw in the last couple weeks. The United States struck what they said was a ballistic missile that would have deployed some mines into the Strait of Hormuz. So from that aspect, you have to give credit where credit is due that we're succeeding in that objective.

Of course, the Battle of Hormuz has been a topic. And I don't know you've covered this in great detail. I saw recent reporting. I mean, as objectively as possible, it's hard to weed your, almost navigate your ship through the bias of certain reporting. You know, is the straight open? Not to Iran. Is the straight open to global shipping? Yes.

And you can't argue. Of course, people will say, well, not at the levels as it was before. I think the recent reporting said it's 10 million barrels a day. It hit a 20 million barrel, which is the pre-war, but it was only for a single day. So everybody's like, well, that was just one day. But the, and we've talked this in the last episode, how the Strait of Hormuzes becomes less relevant daily. It's almost separate than the war, but it's actually the strategic context of what, what will the world look like after this world, this war? Will the Middle East be better for it?

Will the United States, which is a very strong question, be better for it? And will the transparency and the weakness in the global economy be better for? I've argued that the Strait of Hormuz will be less relevant forever, whether it's, you know, the Saudi Arabia attempt to do a railroad to Turkey, the expanding of the pipelines in UAE, the reinvestment in infrastructure in Iraq. I mean, it just won't have the weight and vulnerability that it had before. And that's a good thing. where the Battle of Hormuz lands is still yet to be seen.

Of course, we're talking about this, like you said, this week. Understanding war, you have to understand in its context. We have midterm elections. The United States with great success, I believe. And some could argue you should have started with that. But the Operation Economic Outcasts, I think that's what the current name of it, clearly successful. I mean, all metrics of Iran's economy, and you have a lot of

that talk about that, that it is hurting, that the real is lower than it's ever been since even before the revolution. It's struggling, whether it makes paychecks to the IRGC, all these other measures, is that it is effective and it gets increasingly more effective, whether it's the European Union signing up for or whomever. This isn't the decisive victory that everybody wants very rapidly,

but you can't, I think it would be hard to say that it's, It's not being effective. And that the United States, they're not clearly, since we do see flare-ups, like I said, of the attempt to deploy new mines. And there's been different reporting. And we, you know, through the fog of like Navy SEALs clearing what mines were in the straight-of-form moves, all these are positives as in, it's not a status quo. It's forward movement, but there are domestic considerations like midterm elections that, you, you, you want to keep a level level, but I don't think it's over.

I don't think, and at this point, I know it's a long answer. I think these things are worth fighting for, non-nuclear proliferation, freedom of navigation as we see, you know, the Houthi flare up that's happening in,

in Yemen and with other vulnerable straits of the world. I think it is important. But there's also a point for you, if you are in United States first, America first person, that deterrence factor and the cost of not having success now would be greater than the single war. And this is that more global, and I almost feel silly talking to you about this,

but as you know, through peace and whether you believe in the short answer of strength, you know, peace through strength is that there are great costs beyond all that we talked about to the United States, not achieving a achievement of objective. in the war against Iran because it would ripple and these are the second third over effects that are hard to determine, but I could say as a war analyst

that if the United States doesn't achieve a success in Iran, it will come at a cost to other aspects of American interest, especially in deterrence of aggressors like the Islamic regime in Iran of wanting to achieve nuclear capability, ballistic shields,

terror proxy armors, all of this. There are a lot more people watching And oh lastly, China is the biggest loser in all of this based on all its investments in trying to rework the Western or the international order being dominated by the United States. It's the biggest loser in all of this. But I'm not going to call a winner or a loser. The United States is clearly winning thus far while people may not like it because it doesn't look clean. And people that want to make it look bad can twist it to make it look bad. On the purely operational military level, like you, John, as somebody who sort of nerds out on this stuff,

and is just genuinely interested in how war itself is evolving. I'm really looking forward to learning more about how the Battle of Hormuz has actually been working these last few months. You know, we get these little snippets in the press, sort of an isolation like, you know, we've been sending frogmen and drones into the strait to disable mines and things like that. but I'm sure that there's been a really interesting kind of iterative back and forth between U.S. and Iranian forces where I agree with you, we do seem to have the upper hand. There's going to be a very interesting story to be told as both sides have learned the other side, strengths and weaknesses, how that's evolved since February.

I think it's hard to maybe you may know more than me, but from where I sit, sort of hard to tell both those stories right now. But in at least those two areas, I think there's going to be really rich material to go through here you know, ideally starting soon. Yeah, and I didn't mention it. The whole stockpile kind of fascination, you're exactly right. I mean, war tests all of assumptions,

even of the United States' assumptions, about capabilities, military, industrial, complex, you know, missile, you know, air defense, like you said, air defense of our bases, air defense of the allies where our bases are stationed. And on the stockpile thing, I've commented about this, but I appreciate learning where our assumptions are wrong

and whether that's the maintaining prepositioned stock, the ability to reproduce, or all these large war game and assumptions that are incorporated into our National Defense Authorization Acts on stockpiles and missile capabilities. I mean, the fact that we, I mean, just like we learned about artillery, that the United States had one plant producing artillery rounds, and it's really still needed in war, that we have one plant that conducts the final assembly of Pact three Patriot missiles is not a good thing.

And I appreciate and see where the United States will rapidly try to adjust after that assumption is learned to include, which I think are all great stories of market competition in defense industries, whether it's Andrew or these other great companies that can produce things faster, cheaper, and break kind of the system. I appreciate those assumptions, and you're right.

We're going to be learning a lot from this war, despite us getting certain snippets of it, and whether, like we thought, you know, people saying that Iran is, which is do it, this article was published in New York Times. Iran is now one of the four regional powers of the world because it can close the straight of Hormuz whenever it wants. And that's just, that was just not true. Yeah. Well, stepping back to the sort of the biggest picture, I mean, I've had guests on the show, John, who are, you know, 100 percent, everything's going great. We're winning and we're going to win to the other end of the spectrum. I've had guests on the show who you think this was a major strategic mistake. I find myself coming down somewhere in the middle, motivated, I mean, just to be totally honest, motivated in certain respects by my complete animus towards the Islamic Republic.

a regime of which I'm proud to count myself an enemy. And so very sympathetic to, you know, if you go back to those February 28th remarks from the president, like very sympathetic to the case he laid out in those remarks. I found it kind of unimpeachable as a list of reasons for why military action was justified. And then, you know, I root for America. So I, you know, and to me, the consequences of failure here are very, very severe. That New York Times article that you just referenced, which is false. I mean, they are failing to close the Strait of War moves right now, literally failing.

Well, you know, there's a world in which if we were to give up and walk away, actually that article could suddenly become true. And that would be a catastrophe for the United States, for the region, for world order. And so I worry, you know, my source of my worry is, you know, we're not Putin's Russia, right? We are a democracy in the pressures from the markets, from the voters. And, you know, the Iranians obviously know that. And that's obviously what they're guinea for. That's behind every element of their strategy, whether it's in the country.

straight where it's in these movements you see towards the battle mandeb from the huthies um uh and you know um i i do think that this economic campaign we have embarked upon is going to take some time to show results and so to me it's a question of will the administration be able to hold it together over the the unknown period of time that's going to be required yeah a spot on and i think so many as you said the spectrum and i try to meet in the middle as well um because i understand looking at more than one war, what you learn about once it begins, everything, all the assumptions are tested, but the repercussions, I'm fully with you, are great, and this is global, to include everyday Americans' price of goods. That connection to them isn't, of course,

depending on what news station they listen to, isn't made that, such as freedom of navigation and the ripples of our economy are solely the United States' economy if freedom of navigation wasn't a global international order that was upheld by the world, and it should be, and what the ripples would be if it wasn't. All right, so I'll just talk about grand strategy and the future of war fighting. It's all very interesting, but I want to talk about second lieutenant,

John Spencer, or maybe even, I don't know if in this first story, I want to talk about if it's private or specialist, or where exactly you were? Because you were an enlisted guy, you enlisted, and then in the Marine Corps, we would call you a Mustang. Does that language apply in the Army as well? It does, it does.

I am a proud Mustang. Let's start back in the ranks. Here you are. You've joined the military, and you've achieved a very impressive goal for a young man, which is you're in the Ranger Regiment. It's a big deal. And I want to, I want you to tell me the story.

I mean, as you tell it, I'm going to read. read a couple bits from the book, too, because I just enjoyed how you wrote some of this stuff. But I want you to tell me the story of the time that some dude named Pepper straight Mike Tyson's your ear and how this led to a bit of a career crisis. So, John, how the heck did you get into a bar fight and lose part of your ear? So thank you, Aaron, for that. Yeah, I was a young specialist, what we call a tablis specialist, so somebody who hadn't been to Ranger school yet,

serving in the Ranger Regiment, which I, from even the reason I joined the military, I had achieved that self-actualization, I believe, at the time, and I was a Ranger. It wasn't a bar fight, actually, which is I wasn't drinking. I was actually below drinking age. I had been at a gathering of young people and had been knocked out by a baseball bat. One evening went back to my barracks, and this is why I tell this story other than the humor of it and the shocking value of it is because of the, just the ignorance that I think a lot of young men in the world that I thought after

being knocked out with a baseball bat, I needed to go back and fight for my honor or that I had been disrespected. Not only I had been disrespected, but my unit, my tribe, my Ranger regiment had been disrespected. And I went back to that location and was engaged in an alley fight, an arena full of civilians, because, you know, I was in the military. I wasn't rangerism, but this is a straight civilians. And in the middle of the ring is an individual named Pepper, who was the guy who had knocked me out with a baseball bat the night before. I told this, I've told this story in so many facets because I've never learned more from a single night in my life than this incident, despite, you know,

commanding in combat and everything. I entered that ring so unprepared for a fight that it's, it is almost humorous. And my body was responding to not being prepared to fight because I had never been in a fifth fight, but I was young and ignorant to the fact that respect cannot be taken. It can only be given. It can be earned.

But I think it's a crisis in many organizations, whether there's gang culture or whatever, that, you know, it's all about you can't discharging. respect me. And that's why I entered that ring, but I also entered it unprepared. So it's a credit to how we prepare young soldiers for combat is we want to put them through the hardest training in the world. So when they enter combat, they have confidence and they know that they, what they, they do, what they've been trained in, they'll have success. That wasn't me entering that ring. I had zero. I'd had about a week of jiu-tit-treating training, because this was 1996. So I had actually been trained for a week by Hoace Grace.

Wait, can I actually read? This is exactly the part I wanted to read. Okay. You have such humility as you write about this in the book. And I think in a way that I totally get. Like, I'm reading this, I'm like, yep, yep, yep. But I actually think to a lot of the folks at home, especially those who have not served or maybe not served in common arms, like this notion that, you know, you're, okay,

you haven't been in the Ranger's school, yeah, but you are literally in the Ranger Regiment. But here's how you put it, this is you write this in the book. Come on, John. Don't army guys have to bash each other with those big padded sticks? Pugil stakes. Yeah, we did those. But guess what nobody bothers to explain before the fight? How to actually use a pugil stick? The whole idea is just to make you face fear. There's no skill, there's no real skill transfer. And then you go on, you're talking about the martial arts bit that you just did, that the Army had been doing bayonet training, which shouldn't seem really

all that realistic anymore. Then you write, the Ranger Blass, sorry, the Ranger Brass, then-Lutonel, General Stanley McChrystal, sent one of our senior sergeants around the world to study the best fighting styles, including the Gracie School in California. At the time, ultimate fighting was exploding in popularity. We even ended up hosting Brazil's famed Gracie brothers as guest instructors. And by the time Pepper came swinging for me that night, I had maybe four lessons under my belt. That's not to scoff at those four lessons. Actually, so I was just on...

It did you well, apparently, but yeah, I totally get it. I totally get why you're walking into that, maybe a little uncertain of your decision-making leading up to that point. Yeah, actually, I just told this story to my friend. Jacco Wilming, who's like a, you know, a Brazilian jih Tjitsu, Blackbell, his daughter is a world champion. And we actually, we took from it is how powerful that system is, if you learn just a couple things and nobody knows them. Like the, what I did in that fight, since I didn't have, you know, I don't know how to the box, actually the worst strategy in the world for fighting, although this is, you know, geeky detailed is to take your, your hand full of all those breakable

bones and mash it against a human skull, which, just the hardest part of their body. That's like the worst strategy in the world. So, you know, the close the distance basically is what it's called. You close the distance to the individual, get out of striking zone, and you take the person down, which is like step, less than one of all actually, like army combatives training. And I did it and it worked. Now I ended up on top of pepper, actually in the, in the gully of the alley. So I'm literally in my feet are in water, having what I thought was a fight to the death. And it was literal because there is no rules and that type of a fight.

And at one point, Pepper reaches up because my head was near his rookie mistake and he bit my ear off. The greater lesson, though, is that I would, because I was medically, I had a medical profile losing my ear. I had to leave the Ranger Regiment. So I thought like my, you know, my identity had been taken, which is, there's just so many lessons that I learned from that night. I shouldn't have been there. It was wrong. It allows me to have such great conversations from preparing for combat to educating my son about, you know, when do you fight and when do you not?

And how do you earn respect and everything? So I appreciate you picking that one out. And I like to tell it, and I'll tell it over and over again, because I have no shame. And that scar and that lesson was really hard to learn, but it's done me a lifetime of service. This episode of School of War is brought to you by Maven Smart System, administered by OSW CDAO, powered by the Palantir platform. Maven isn't an app. It's a builder ecosystem. Right now across the joint force, thousands of uniformed service members are pointing AI coding agents at their hardest problems and building the tools they need themselves, targeting workflows, intel products, battle management. No ticket, no vendor, no wait. The warfighter closest to the fight is now the one building for it. That's how you fight at the speed of war.

I just love, because you have real combat experience. We'll talk about that here in the minutes to come. I mean, you've been in it. And but this very visible injury that you have for your ear actually has nothing to do with any of that. And it is purely the consequence of the decision making of specialist John Spencer while on Liberty. And I kind of love that. I kind of love that, and I kind of love that you wrote about it. Thanks.

Actually, I get told. They think it's going to be a cool enemy shot my ear off. Like, no, my story's better than that. I have better lessons. And the individual I mentioned Matt Larson, who was that young sergeant got sent around the world to train. He actually teaches, he went on to be like the godfather of Army combatters. He teaches at West Point.

Great on the warrior mindset and like what it's all about. Now, of course, you got to be prepared to kill everybody in the room. and that's a factor of carrying, you know, walking softly but carry a big stick. Yeah. Reflect for a few minutes more, if you would, on how low you felt being sent down from the regiment. You know, the MPs had come in, you'd give them the whole story, you need all this medical work. Like, from the point of view, the commanding officer is kind of an easy call, as you know now where you sit. But that commanding officer would also have known now this guy is 19 or whatever.

I think you were 19. You know, he's not, based on what I see here, he's not a bad guy, maybe some questionable decision making. Who among us at the age of 19 did make some similarly questionable decisions? He'll find other opportunities. But to you, as you say, it didn't seem that way. How did it seem? Yeah, it seemed like, I mean, it was, it sent me into depression.

And I can be very honest about that because I thought I had lost everything, my identity. and which is a really a theme in the book is about you know we need identity we need purpose but to take that from me and it and it wasn't slow it was immediate i mean it was it was argued as in okay just go get medically fit recompete come back um but at the time and i and i think um if i would have had a book or something like that to whether it's man search for meaning or something like that it might have helped but at that moment i felt um i went into depression thought i'd lost everything and that matter to me. And it was just the start of a new journey. And I went on to, I wouldn't be here had that not happened. But I, at that moment, it was a dark moment. And I needed to understand that that wasn't the end of anything. And I went on to, you know, I went to Ranger School like seven months later with half an ear and got to make the joke of, I can't feel my ear in the cold weather aspect. But it, I felt really bad. And it's for me, again, why. keep telling the story and I told it to my children is like I mean who are you and what makes your

identity I mean spread of core in the military as you as you know um doesn't matter what what branch or what military it becomes a very core part of your identity and that can't be taken um whether it's service duty or whatever but there are things that happen that cause you to have to go you take a pivot and go in a different direction is question of resilience I mean you make this a story about respect but but says so much about resilience as well I was just on TV this morning talking about, you know, with this great 60 Minutes piece last night, we interviewed a dude 4-4 Bravo, Nora O'Donnell from CBS News. And one of the things that struck me about, you know, what we learned in the 60 Minutes report,

but also just since the operation was, you know, how much went wrong? I mean, beginning with getting shot down, which is not great, to his parachute doesn't function perfectly on the way down, so he's pretty badly beat up when he hits the ground, to, you know, he has to watch his buddy, his, his, his, the young pilot, who's flying him get rescued in a timely fashion and they, they don't have him, which he, you know, he has, I mean, they should teach his response to that in like any class about maturity and charity, charity, charity in the deep sense, like human, human love, because

it's easy to imagine a different person watching that and despairing. He describes watching it and, you know, feeling happy for his buddy. But then the operation itself, like that C-130, it's, you know, in this provisional airfield in the middle of Iran, jogging distance from the Isfahan nuclear facility, by the way, like marathon jogging distance, but still, you can do it. It gets stuck in the mud, and they got to go in and basically rescue the rescuers from the Air Force Special Operations Command. And it's just for, just to, you know, make the single point of it, this incredible success is really in many ways of sorts. story of a whole series of failures. But the people involved just push through each one of them. And, you know, talking to kids or young people, like,

that seems to me to be one of the most important things to stress. It's like, you're going to fail. You have no idea how much you're going to fail. Take it from me. And take it from you, John, as you point out here in the book. But if you don't give up, the sky is the limit. I can't agree more. Every aspect.

And what a great coverage of that operation. As you know, I mean, there is military history where, whether it's, you know, Desert Eagle, I mean, you name it, where those things have gone wrong and it ended horribly. And there is an aspect of luck. The pilot's aspect and it really hit me as well as he didn't feel alone, although you can't imagine how alone and with his thoughts on that ridge line for 24 hours by himself. But you're, it doesn't, and I think this applies as much as into society as it does in the military. that you're never truly alone. And that individuality, isolation aspect sends a lot of people in dark places.

Of course, we have things in the military that kind of help us with that. But you're never truly alone. And that's an aspect as much as then the 100 rescuers getting them and they're not alone. And how the, especially whether it's Secretary of War, the Joint Chief of Staff, you can see it in their responses. And I'm sure it was that way in the operation as in, okay, this happened. And now what are we going to do? And that quitting is never an option.

All right, let's flash forward a few years. The military career of specialist John Spencer has somehow survived. You're running with Pepper. And you are now, if I'm not mistaken, your lieutenant, your lieutenant, John Spencer, either second or first. It's 2003. And you are part of the invasion of Iraq. You parachute in to northern Iraq.

And here's just another one. In this case, I actually have basically lived this story. It was in Afghanistan, not Iraq. You're on your way to a big, a major combat operation, not long after jumping in. You're going to be attacking this Iraqi strong point. You're in a motorized column. You're the boss. You're out in the lead vehicle driving through the desert looking for this bridge.

And again, you tell this story in a very honest way. Before you actually get there to launch the attack, what almost happens? Yeah, so I'm a second lieutenant, actually, I pin first lieutenant later in the operation. So start in first class, then I become second lieutenant, and then right out of school, which is a huge honor, right out of OCS, straight deployed, straight jumping into combat in northern Iraq, this massive brigade attack we're going to do. This is not an insurgency against the Iraqi army, the northern division we're going to. destroy elements so that they again they don't head to bagdad much greater story and i'm in this vehicle i'm the lead vehicle and the lead platoon of the lead company of the entire brigade um so there is that element of the responsibility and in the night with night vision goggles

which aren't that good back then um traveling and driving at in darkness and feeling the road and believing that we're going over this bridge, which we knew was the last kind of terrain feature that would be recognizable, kind of like, okay, go over this bridge and then about a kilometer ahead of you will be the enemy and you'll deploy. And we start engaging, you start engaging once you hit that point. The vehicle goes down a dip and then starts going up. And I, we all think that we're going over the bridge. And then the gunner on top of me yells out, stop. Brakes, what we call, you know, breaks, tactical silence, and the tips of our vehicle wheels

are cresting over basically a cliff, which is a water reservoir, ravine reservoir canal, basically. And we're about to go over the edge and die. But because we had missed the bridge and had veered off of it, and we're going

up the, basically the bank of the canal and about to crest over. So now I'm sitting with that moment with my tires basically on the edge and take a second to appreciate that and then realize

that the entire mission now rest on what are we going to do next? Well, obvious question. What did you do next? Also, I want to highlight this, I think the guy in the turret you made reference to

this guy named Brooks who has a recurring critical role in a number of your stories. This guy apparently has eagle eyes. We're all lucky that Brooks was there, John, because I think results

of some of him not seeing stuff would have been very bad for Lieutenant John. Spencer. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's the aspect of, you know, the idea of, again, there is no individual in war. It's a collective endeavor. The four or five people in that truck with me, of course, the gunner is sitting up there, but the driver, the RTO in the back, it's a family. But his eyesight, his human, and the lesson of this chapter, I call it common sense,

like to break the common sense, to yell out. In some people in a training environment, we think that would be crazy. Like, no, he yells out to stop, but you're right, he becomes a savior so many times. And even in my first word, connected soldier, it's just,

and this is that aspect that I believe that whether it's a USS Abraham Lincoln or me back here, this is 2003, how that cohesion between the people that you're serving with on your left and right is the superpower.

It is what allows you to survive, endure all of combat, and it's so vital. So what do we do? is that basically, again, the beauty of the American system is, you know, that the non-commissioned officer core, the ability to improvise under great duress. They're about four trucks back when a non-commission officers realize what's happened and then takes his vehicle and drives up to the other embankment and gets that long convoy behind us, that some of it's back on the right road and is able to

veer us and we do a quick change. It seemed like hours. And it will be a quick change. It seemed like hours. And was probably about a matter of three minutes, get back on the road, go over the real bridge, engage the enemy in an amazing operation, and have success and able to accomplish the mission. And then this common sense portion of the chapter you talk about, you were equipped with this wire and signs,

basically saying, you know, stop. And you're supposed to put those out as you're conducting the assault, which, you know, this is the kind of, these are the kinds of physical control measures that would probably make sense, you know, if you were setting up a vehicle checkpoint somewhere or something like that, you know, that would indeed almost be essential to do a good job for something like that. But here you are, you're engaged in a very traditional infantry attack.

I mean, sort of Army stuff 101. And, you know, you're meant to be sort of putting up these control measures that are not super relevant to the mission in hand. It actually kind of reminded me, I mean, again, I could draw from my own experience, but actually the moment it most reminded me of was a great moment. I don't think it's in the movie. I think it's in the book Black Hawk Down

where one of the ranger's fast robs out and he's out collecting the ropes on the ground after he's fast roped out as the raid is starting. But this raid, unlike some others they've done recently, he's getting hot really, really quick and there's rounds flying through the air. He almost gets shot a couple times

trying to get these ropes out of the middle of the intersection and he stops and assets are like, wait, wait, wait, what am I doing here? This probably does not make too much sense to die to collect a rope. And he obviously, you know, turns his mind to other things. It sort of reminds, as you described, it sort of reminded me of that. Yeah, absolutely. And there is always a disc sometimes, not always, whether it's, you know,

Tom Hanks explaining to higher headquarters why, you know, going to say Private Ryan is going to be a challenge, the context of higher headquarters, but they believe that putting out a roadblock in front of our blocking, position where all vehicles, all of them, were cleared hot to engage enemy targets their front, that we should put a sign and some kind of wire telling civilians to turn around and go back. I think the 10-18 vehicles opening fire would send that signal. But there is a broader lesson about common sense, of course, but also I as a leader wasn't going to ask any of my soldiers to do that. So I followed as much to the letter of rather than fighting it, because

this was a short order operation as well. Through the signs and the wire on the ground, they were deployed as directed and no civilians came towards our vehicles, not because of the signs. Yeah, yeah. And it's funny when I was teaching at the Naval Academy while I was still in the service,

I would frequently have conversations with the shipment where, you know, I would describe comparable dilemmas of having received an instruction where it's my obligation as a Marine officer to follow my orders here. And yet at the same time, just put it diplomatically,

there was some tension between that specific order in carrying it out and the overall success of the mission, not to say common sense. And just, you know, telling stories of how I navigated

moments like that. Usually, usually the students were somewhat scandalized as I would tell these stories because it would involve oftentimes not to reveal too much here. You're the one revealing everything

in your book. One of the reasons that makes it a really good book is because you're so revealed. about your own decision-making, but, you know, my stories would often involve not exactly, totally, completely, you know, sticking with the spirit of that original instruction, just for whatever good reason I had at the time. And it was kind of scandalizing and revelatory to them. And, you know, is this tension within the military system where we do, we do, of course,

follow orders, but at the same time, you're the lieutenant who's actually standing there on the ground with your eyes on the situation, and you've got to have some room for discretion. Absolutely. And there's no better way to tell that than do storytelling, which is why I want to reveal, even where I make mistakes and I make plenty. And when I was a, you know, a higher leader and mentoring younger officers or non-commissioned officers, is that understanding of nobody expects anybody to be perfect. People will make mistakes, but we also expect you to make common sense. It's actually one of the principles of patrolling, right? the common sense that if you don't tell those coming up through stories, I don't think it sticks giving in the examples, which is another beauty of our system, whether it's West Point or you name

this school, a war college. Many of the instructors are the military, which is in requirement, but when it comes down to these like dilemmas that aren't usually ethical moral dilemmas, but they're kind of dilemmas and what do you mean? You didn't follow the order to the letter of the law. Like, well, because we are given that autonomy, which comes with great responsibility to make the right decision at that moment, and that whether you call it mission command, you know, following the intent or whatever, is it very unique in traveling the world and doing all the research I do in other militaries. I get that perspective and appreciation that it isn't present. And it is one of the duties of our system. But how you translate that

to the younger ones coming up. It has to be through storytelling, which I have a passion for. You know, sometimes it does involve, you know, ethical or moral dilemmas. I'll be saving those for my own book. The four times I almost died, I guess. I was in for a lot less time than you,

so I have to be modest. You have another experience there in Iraq involving a pretty big IED. And in another story where, I don't know his rank, but young Mr. Brooks also plays a, You roll. This storyably familiar to anybody who served in Iraq or Afghanistan, but it has to do the lesson you drew from it regards your intuition. And sort of the begins with sort of suppressing really your intuition about something because you were on a clock and you had you had to move somewhere. What happened? Yeah. Actually, one of my favorite books relating to this is called The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker about our, you know, our minds are our supercomputers taking information. But on this, on this day, Brooks, again, calls out stop IED.

This one was over the actual, the radio. We all stopped and he had seen, with his hawk eyes, an IED, kind of in a covert, at 1-55-round in the open with a yellow wire running out the back of it. It was curious by every element, but it was a legit call. There's a bomb in the road. And at this, there is an element at this is kind of, You know, later in 2003, closer to 2004, before the large-scale IED programs, but we were

experiencing IEDs immediately. And a lot of them were these 155 rounds rigged a blow and then a wire and whether it's command detonated or electronically detonated. It became the race of the IED, counter IED, and then later with the Iranian IEDs, which I lost soldiers to, the Iranian EFP. but we see this obvious IED on the road and we at this time we didn't have you know the whole element of EOD or explosive ordinance disposable wasn't that big of a program so we had this conversation within ourselves if we called this in we'll be out here hours because there was only one EOD element to the entire battalion I think I mean you had to call them in you had to secure the area so I wanted to investigate more I go around to the back of this where

the wire was leading because it led to an open farm field. And there was, there was nothing. The wire just ended in the, in the farm field. And Brooks at this point now, is with me. And then the artios with me says,

why don't we just pull this? Not saying we had done that a lot, but why don't we just pull this bomb off the side of the road and, you know, basically move on. And at that point, which sounded reasonable, given all the information,

there was something inside of me, intuition you've got feeling yeah in 2003 that would seem like it's because it's all new in 2009 2010 by the time I'm there obviously we know we we all know like this is obviously a trap there's there you could have no more obvious a trap than that but I can see how in 2003 oof I'm like tensing listening to you tell the story yeah and I mean we had just done days and weeks of missions where you go out to fields and just collect up all the artillery rounds and blow them up I mean the battlefield collection is such a big story of the entire year that we're is just you're taking all this stuff off the battlefield and others are collecting it and use it later.

But something in my gut says, don't do that. And we actually walked up to try to get a closer look, right? This is kind of the exploration of warfare that is most people don't get it. They're not there of like looking into things. I make the decision not to touch it, cordoning it off, wait for the three hours plus for the EOD to get. Luckily, I did because you're right, it was a trap underneath that obvious bomb on the road was four more um five five rounds daisy chain together a trip wire if we would have walked up to where it was um it was actually a bomb to to hurt the eOD as well um it was a like a trap in a trap and

a trap and i wouldn't be standing here with you today if i had not listened to intuition and i probably would have lost you're taking soldiers with me yeah amazingly well done um you know it's it's it's funny um like the decision that you make right there, like that's what the lieutenants are paid. The big bucks for is to sort of listen to that intuition and rely on the training and then make the right call. And how many, how many explosive devices were in there? You say in the book, I just don't have it from trying to be.

There are four underneath that one, so total five. Yeah, that's a big boom. That's a really big boom. Yeah, I am, you know, it's funny. One of the, one of my proudest moments as a lieutenant, you know, even though these are, not really, this is not really what you're paid to do as a lieutenant was, um, on, on two occasions, I personally spotted the wire. I mean, my Marines, my Marines got to be aces at this. And we all,

at some point in the deployment sort of developed an intuition where I could have taken any one of my squad leaders who were these incredible guys and we could have looked at an intersection together. And then my squad leader had been like, there'll be one right there. There'll be one right there. And they were, you know, they were usually right. And they had in several of our, of our Marines, also just had eagle eyes. As you described it with, but one time, actually in the middle of the Battle of Marja itself, like as the battle was proceeding, we have been asked to clear this, essentially it was like a narrow street, sort of an alley, sort of a small street of shops. It was like a market area. And it was deserted and it was sort

of spooky looking, like to your point about intuition. Like there was nobody down there. There were no Americans down there. Couldn't tell for any Afghans down there, probably not. It just didn't feel right. And then I saw, I saw going up the wall. of the first shop on the left, a wire. And it just, you know, it wasn't particularly remarkable. Like it could have been, could have been a wire for anything. Could have been a wire for something legitimate. But it just, it just didn't feel right. It didn't seem right. And I personally didn't want to walk down that street right now. And if I didn't want to walk down that street, I certainly didn't want to send, you know, a squad of my Marines walking down that street. So this led to, you know,

we had a lot, unlike 2003, we had a lot of resources with us. You know, we had EOD with us. We had translators everywhere, so we learned a lot of the lessons, to include to be very suspicious in moments like this. And so it's led to a whole negotiation with a Marine Engineer platoon that was nearby to see if we could plow the middle of the street. So at least the EOD guys, the EOD guys were going to go down and check things out, but they wanted a safe lane in the middle of the road where they could walk. And I remember the guy who drove the dozer that was going to dig this safe lane down the middle of the road, kind of getting into it with the gunnery sergeant, the EOD tech, and telling him, Gunny, this dozer's only going to take one hit. And the EOT tech responds,

motherfucker, I'm only going to take one hit, which sort of settled that debate. And they drove the dozer down. And as they're driving it down, you can see it picking up wires under the dirt. Wow. It's just like picking them up out of the ground. And what we ended up finding was 19 pieces of military grade ordinance, daisy chain, like 107s. This is like grab bag of a different stuff, daisy chained down the street. And the whole idea, of course, was to get a whole platoon to walk down there and blow it all at once. Now, in retrospect, it's actually slightly less dramatic than it sounds, John, because it turns out it was a pool cord device. And the

cord went up to the roof of one of the one-story shops overlooking the alley, which at this, by the time we got there, was unmanned because it struck me that this was like, one of those ideas that sounded like a lot better of an idea the night before, where it's like, oh, yeah, they're going to walk down here, and, you know, I'm going to be up there with the pool cord, I'm going to blow this whole thing. And, like, morning comes and, and, like, No one's super enthusiastic to be the one up there with the pool cord. Nevertheless, it was, I believe, the largest in its aggregate IED found to date at that point in Hellman province. And I did notice it's funny, like, the thing that, you know, when you're a young lieutenant,

the things that earn you credit or lose you credit with your Marines. And like just having like that, having had that moment of like basic infantry observance, it did me well for a few days until inevitably as lieutenant, I found some new way to, to embarrass myself. That's an amazing story. It makes me think of, you know, as we talked on the last show, all the work that I've done and trying to gather lessons from Gaza, actually completed about a 63-page report. And that element of the IED, which is really hard for those that haven't experienced

it, threats. And in Gaza, because of the readiness available munitions. And the advance, like, you face things that I didn't. And now I'm seeing people on the battlefield face of things that I couldn't have imagined in the sophistication of, um, you know, two thousand pound bombs underneath the street with a, a zoom or a, you know, a ring camera that's monitoring. Um, and then a hard wire to across the entire city in pushing the button on something that they built into the structures, not, not placed it later that you're reminding me. but also the prominence of how much a bulldozer in urban warfare can change the entire game of what the enemy wants to do. And in Israel, they have the D-9, which we've used in military operations to include the Battle of Fallujah as well, that can take that hit. Because sometimes you don't want to put that guy on the street to make that decision.

A bulldozer will make it for you. Before we move on, I want to talk about one more story with you about your encounter later as a company commander with the Sopranos. of Baghdad, which is a great story. But just to, it's funny. As I was asking about this, I remember among the moments that I then managed to humble myself as a platoon commander was on the same deployment out on patrol and the poppy and everything have been harvested and the new crops have gone into the ground.

We're walking through some field where like little, little, you know, nubs of the new crop are starting to poke out of the dirt. And I look down at it and I say, oh, what is that? Is that corn? Because I knew theoretically that a lot of corn was going to be grown in the area in the next season. This young Marine looks up to me from the formation looks up at me. He goes, sir, that's cotton. And he says it with this expression, both on his voice and in his tone of voice, on his face and in his tone of voice,

that like up until that moment he thought, you know, maybe things were going to work out. But he has just realized that his platoon commander apparently has some kind of mental disability. because only an idiot would not know what cotton looks like coming up out of the ground. I'll never forget his expression and the look on his face is like, oh, maybe we're not going to make it, guys.

I don't know. We thought we'd be okay, but actually now I'm reconsidering I'm reconsidering everything. Absolutely. Even the aspect which connects to that, we had a principle in the army called every soldier a sensor

because once you realize that you are one person, but everybody you're with is, has not. or in the case of like ID searches or even intelligence, every soldier is a sensor. And again, going back to our culture, that young Marines ability to tell you that is judging because they're always judging is a part of our kind of our superpower that every soldier, Marine, sailor has a voice and can contribute to the success, life or death.

It doesn't sound like that one was one, but definitely their ability to humble you. is there as well like i said i'm saving all the good stories for some for some future day there are plenty of plenty of life or death and very humbling ones on my end um one more from you and this is another one that really resonated with me um is uh your dealings with this guy ahmed when you were a company commander in bag down i'm just going to read the passage um here uh basically again in a way that's going to be very familiar to a lot of veterans listening here uh the army was pain um for security in a neighborhood, paying the local guys who were helping to provide it via somebody who was de facto a mob boss. And then a decision had been made, no, no, no, we're going to do the

salaries direct, which obviously, Ahmed, as the Tony Soprano of the neighborhood, didn't care for. So here's what you write. Then came the sigh. Ahmed leaned back, letting it roll across the table like smoke. Captain, I am much saddened by the unwise decision of your superiors last week. It was a softer opening than I had expected. issue was money. American money that once passed through Ahmed's hands were now being paid directly to the guards he employed. My job was to unease that sting. Brad translated my reply carefully. It's better those guards are paid directly by us, Ahmed. The army no longer wishes to deal with middlemen. I am not the middle, my friend. Ahmed countered smoothly. I am the holy man perched atop

the mountain. What a great line. What a great line. How'd the rest of this meeting go, John? And you have a bunch of these moments. Some of these are just me recounting. I wrote the article called Gangs of Baghdad, and I hope other people, military or not, realize the struggle of maintaining power, some of them ancient to some of them very urbanized, like gangs. And entering one of my jobs was just go around

and meet with many of these Tony Sopranos that are as indicative of a mob bosses you could ever have. It had nothing to do with family, tribes, nothing. they commanded neighborhoods through very nefarious ways. And I had to enter that room on his terms and dressed as much as you can imagine a Tony Soprano, but I don't know if he watched it, but he invited it.

And he was in charge, even though I was backed by the greatest military in the world. And we thought if we gave them money, they would get the money and he wouldn't take his cut. And he actually said, look, no, I take more cut. And those dynamics. But there's another mob boss. that I knew as well, entered the room.

And this is a very small room with, you know, that's supposed to be one of these key leader engagements that everybody's familiar with. Another guy who's, one of his mob members had been wounded at a checkpoint. He comes in and it's as tense as it gets, as in

fingers on triggers in a small room. Now it's going to be like a Quentin Tarantino movie of everybody in the room dying because this guy comes in and starts yelling. about this feud and understanding the culture, it becomes an argument about how much money does Ahmed

have to give this other mob boss to pay for this life-altering injury that one of the individuals had at this checkpoint. Of course, it almost turns into a shootout in a very small room. And my, besides Brad, the interpreter, my personal security is there. I have a nine-mill on my side. and it gets that tense with weapons almost drawn. And then you see me being humble as in not trying to say that I have all the power in the room, let it play out.

And it does resolve itself. It was another appreciation of myself. It's almost introspection that, of course, there is an element of understanding the environment and all of this, the cultural aspects. And, you know, I'm the mayor, the sheriff, the trash collector of the cities. it's just part of the stability operations. And it ends with Ahmed and this other mob, Basa Green, on how much money is going to be paid. And they all smile and we go back to business.

It's an amazing story. You know, for me, the part that resonates is, as you point, you go back to business and ultimately you recommend your chain of command that it's probably just actually cleaner and better to pay Ahmed. That there's just going to be more trouble, more trouble than it's worth to try to cut him out because as he told you, I mean, he's just going to take a tax if you try to circumvent him. I remember in Afghanistan just being constantly

confused, really, is the word, by efforts from whether it was ISAF forces or from, you know, in theory elements of the Afghan government to go to war against corruption where I was. And I just didn't understand. I was like, based on what I was seeing. It's corruption to me as a word always suggested that something had been good and now it is soured. You know, processes that were supposed to happen have been captured by individuals and it's bad and we got to fix it. And, of course, I think that because I'm an American and that's how we feel in America. Like, I'm not going to slip cash to the, you know, DMV clerk to get my license. That's not how we do things in America.

But it does turn out that that's how things work in Afghanistan. No DMVs exactly where I was, but nevertheless, other processes. and the effort to sort of reconceive of this and wipe the slate clean and just have good government in a place which had never had it like tribute. I mean, you call it corruption. You call it tribute as Afma does to you.

You'd call it tax. Call it what you want. Like this is just the way business was done. And the notion that we were going to wipe that slate clean and just do business the right way struck me as I'll just say fanciful at best.

And of course in the end it didn't work. And what success we had, what success the Marine Corps I can speak to with great knowledge had in the Hellman River Valley in the years in which I served was because we embraced that system. And we, long story short, we didn't figure out how to establish the legitimacy of the Kabul government. I've not yet encountered an officer who cracked that code. I have encountered a lot of officers who figured out who to pay. And that's what pacified the river valley. And it was like in constant tension with this notion that like quote unquote corruption is bad. It's bad in Washington. in D.C. It's bad in Virginia. I'm not sure it's quite so simple to say it's bad in Helmand province. It just is. Yeah. This is the idea of creating something that never existed and doesn't even exist anywhere, but it's the good idea. And there is, you know, the road to destruction laid with many good intentions. I understand the good intentions of, of course we don't want this or that, but you're right, it's just a different term, a different element. And when you keep doing the same thing over and over again thinking you're going to get different outcome.

I'm pretty sure that's the definition of insanity. And there are levels to it, like you said, at a national level when you're trying to create something, again, that's never existed. But I know you could, you can relate to that one and I had to do it. And at times, make more of those decisions on this is not what they're telling me to do, but it doesn't make any common sense of doing something. It wasn't with the pay, but it could have been in another direction that was given, which is the complexity of these environments

and depending on what you're trying to achieve and why understanding the goal is important in mentorship, but from a military perspective is understanding the autonomy that leaders will have on that battlefield to make some of those decisions is something that's hard to pass on

outside of war to others. Well, John, we've really only scratched the surface of the book. You've got a lot of other stories that you tell on it, stories not just from Iraq, from all over the world, to include from your time,

as a researcher in addition to your times in the service. I really do recommend it, again, especially to younger folks who are trying to think about what it means to be a good officer or good NCO or maybe thinking about military service. And I commend you, again, for the humility and the honesty of recounting these stories, which has to come, you know, it's, it would have been probably so hard to do as to be impossible when you're in your 20s, now reflecting back on it. You know, you know what it just came to me, what it reminds me of most of all, Have you ever read Karl Moranty's Matterhorn? No.

Or he has got an essay collection as well. I recommended to you because what did he's like to go to war? And so he's basically both first in fiction, then a nonfiction, recounting, you know, his experiences at the second lieutenant in Vietnam. And it's also sort of painfully honest at times. And, you know, I remember with my midshipman reading that book and them saying, gosh, this guy doesn't seem like a very good lieutenant. And I said, really?

He doesn't seem like, this is, of course, Cormoranty's in real life receives the Navy Cross. The protagonist of the novel is Cormorillanties. He doesn't seem like a good lieutenant to you, really? The reason why is because you have access to his inner thoughts for this novel. The novel's written so you can hear all the crazy stuff he's thinking. But then, like, pay attention to what he actually does. Then we go through, like, how he's a great lieutenant, honestly. You know, how would you feel, midshipman, if I had access to all of your inner thoughts every day?

If I could literally read your mind. How well, how good of a midshipman do you think you would come off? But I think your book has a similar effect and I commend you for it. And thanks for coming on the podcast. Thank you, Aaron. And I will press you like many other people to write those, your own stories down. Because there are young people who will crave it. Like you said, we eat up when we were young.

We ate these books up, whether it's about face or black hearts, which is the opposite of a good news story. people want it and I think that people need it All right, the book's called 20 times I Almost Died. John Spencer, thanks for coming on. This episode of School of War is also presented by Strato Launch, a leading pure play

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