Constant Combat

Send us Fan Mail Part 2 with Ranie Ruthig, one of the original Lioness soldiers who was often attached to Weapons Company, to illustrate how early missions in Ramadi evolve from outreach to intel work and high-risk convoy life. We also get her blunt take on standards, unit culture, and why her view on women in combat is more complicated than people expect.  • early “hearts and minds” runs to schoo...

Send us Fan Mail You can feel the choice before you hear it; Sergeant Lopez with a clear path to promotion walks away from the safe bet to stand next to his brother and friends in Ramadi. That decision by John Mark becomes the spine of this story... from a division-level meritorious board to Ramadi as a combat replacement with his brother, tracing how training, discipline, and fast decisions hold...

Send us Fan Mail Part two with John Mark Lopez and trace a four-man team’s cordon-and-overwatch role, the shift from highbacks to up-armored, and the thin line between luck and skill. Leadership, loss, and life after service tie the story together with hard-earned lessons that he carries on to his personal goals and civilian career. • rooftop overwatch and night raids • improvised armor in highbac...

Send us Fan Mail Excellent interview with the Company XO, Lucas "Duke" Wells detailing how a Marine weapons company became a mobile, citywide cavalry in Ramadi, evolving from thin intel and a weak handover to a five-platoon rotation that broke sieges and mastered the streets. The story follows raids, April’s turning points, a midyear enemy shift, and hard choices that made the unit deadl...

Send us Fan Mail Part two with the XO, Duke Wells, going through a near‑fatal friendly fire, a catastrophic VBIED, and the daily grind of raids, politics, and broken systems. The thread throughout the chaos is team, leadership, and the choices that keep people alive. He closes with a view 20 years removed and what that means.  • a tank round on Route Michigan exposing comms and deconfliction gaps...

Send us Fan Mail Everyone has a Joe Herscher story, even Joe: a theater student watches Heartbreak Ridge, and joins the Marines, and then finds himself in Ramadi learning decisiveness under fire. We walk through some pre-war Okinawa moments, the first ambush, April’s street battles, and a desperate standoff. • why a comedy dreamer chose infantry and mortars • culture shock in the fleet and Okinawa...

Send us Fan Mail Part two with Joe Herscher from Rainmaker Platoon, moving from firefights and improvised humor to the hard road of leaving war, finding sobriety, and building a life that serves others. What sounds like a short story is a life time of change and cultivated rehabilitation, and a story about healing. • remembering Savage and the chaos of May 12th  • field versus garrison Marines • l...

Send us Fan Mail From Mobile Assault Platoon 3, Will Knackers’ recalls his path from Kuwait’s staging grind to the convoy into Ramadi, onto the April 6 QRF chaos, house clears, near misses, and the July 1 blast that killed Sgt. Conde and sent Will on a medevac chain. While he doesn't always recall every detail, the stories he recounts are striking and emotional.  • Kuwait buildup and the long...

Send us Fan Mail Part 2 with Will Nackers about getting wounded in Ramadi, being evacuated across continents alone, and returning stateside to a system that offered questionable medicine with no follow-up. Humor in the hooch, shifting tactics, near-miss stories, and the weight of legacy close a deep story from this Marine. • abrupt battlefield evac with no debrief • wet-to-dry dressings, painful d...

Send us Fan Mail Kyle Mader kept a detailed journal and recounts his path from late arrival on ship to the workup grind, the convoy through Kuwait and Iraq, and two violent days that defined early Ramadi. Street fighting on Easy Street, shifting rules of engagement, and the game changer of an ACOG in gunfights. • joining 2/4 Weapons Company and team makeup • March Air Force Base lanes, MOUT, IED b...

Send us Fan Mail Part two with Kyle Mader: gear that mattered, raids that tested nerve, and the twin blasts that changed the platoon. Between a Gunny tossing back a grenade and Oliver North linking the city to Hue, the story moves from gallows humor to loss without losing the thread of what kept people alive. • ACOGs proving their worth under fire • Operation County Fair • Lioness program origins...

Send us Fan Mail Part 3 closes with Kyle Mader's memory that unfolds in sharp scenes: near-miss IEDs, a pit of scorpions, hotel firefights, and the long ride home that finally let the breath out. He closes with a little barracks humor, and how talking always made the weight lighter for him. • field injuries and improvised care, including acupuncture relief • a scorpion scare • sniper aftermat...

Send us Fan Mail Chris Kackley tells how a three‑day stop in Hawaii turned into short detour on the way to Ramadi, how broken and inadequate gear forced us to improvise, and why the bond we built now powers some late‑night calls and reunions. Humor and hard lessons come from Chris as he revisits bridges, raids, and the rules that kept shifting. • WhatsApp and Facebook as our modern radio net • Reu...

Send us Fan Mail Part two with Chris Kackley of Mobile Assault Platoon 1.  Chris tells a volatile slice of Ramadi: from a rooftop firefight to a near-miss RPG, and several good leadership examples that made the difference. Kackley also remembers some humorous hooch life, care packages, camp guard... and moments of honoring friends who didn’t come home. • riding with Oliver North and engaging from...

Send us Fan Mail Manny Gonzalez talks about his third deployment in 4 years. This time to Ramadi as a combat replacement. He went from advising a Marine Corps video game to landing in Ramadi and learning the Mark 19 overnight. The story moves through shifting IED tactics, hard losses, small wins, and the leaders who kept him steady. • combat casualty replacement orders  • reflections as on the inv...

Send us Fan Mail Manuel Gonzalez’s notes are exceptional for a charged stretch in Ramadi: VBIEDs, mortars, a TOW shot that made TV, a lifesaving tire shot, and the quiet grit of drivers, gunners, and leaders who kept moving. Outside of the shots and incoming, he also discusses denied extensions, training standards, and how bonds last. • Oliver North encounter and the grenade mindset • VBIED engage...

Send us Fan Mail Josh Alderette gives a candid oral history: a young lance corporal is yanked from his team and dropped into 81s as a TOW gunner, right after losing a friend. The early Ramadi period shows how expectations fractured early. They were sold stabilization... then hit with IED craters, night missions, and gear failures under stress.  What lingers isn’t only violence; it’s the culture th...

Send us Fan Mail “We went from amateur to professional in two days.” Ambushes, mortars, Bradleys, and the fog of war as told by Josh Alderette in part 2 of our conversation. Two brutal April days, from convoy ambushes and mortar fire, and the small human moments that still echo decades later. We talk tactics, errors, lucky breaks, and how those hours turned kids into adults overnight. • the white...

Send us Fan Mail Nick Kelly recounts Ramadi in 2004, from the first push, to the government center, to the fight that swallowed Easy Street, and the strange silence of coming home. Nick also paints the story of what lingers. It's the humanizing part: calling a parent from an accidentally open phone center; cleaning carbon off steel because it steadies the mind; reading about Vietnam under des...

Send us Fan Mail Heath McKenzie's story comes with a lot of laughs sprinkled into a good recounting of some busy days. The streets emptied and everyone knew what came next. If you listen closely, he gives an excellent account of tactical changes made from lessons learned. We walk through April 6 and 7 as Golf pinned down... QRFs ambushed from both east and west, and a small team surging ahead...

Send us Fan Mail Part two with Heath McKenzie of MAP 3. He leads us thru the memory of Ramadi: VBIEDs, RPG ambushes, and his rare Javelin shot... and then recounts the long, messy work of coming home, sobriety, and leaning on people who answer the phone.  • VBIEDs and the life-saving impact of up-armored Humvees • The government center as a constant contact point • Hooch life with volleyball, golf...

Send us Fan Mail We catch up with Jon Wade from the 81mm mortars platoon. He details some sharp turns from the workup and flight over.... to the long, slow convoy into Iraq, where a medevac on the highway snaps everyone into a new reality. A reality that shaped how we fought and how he led in the future.  • joining 81s in Oki • Super Bowl bet, broken jet, snow PT in Jersey • acclimatizing in Kuwai...

Send us Fan Mail We revisit Ramadi 2004 with Jon Wade to trace how hard lessons learned became durable leadership in his later career as a senior NCO and Staff NCO. We end on brotherhood, nerves at the finish, and what it means to bring people home. • early raids blocked by chains, walls, missing tools • switch from textbook CQB... to shock and overwhelm • April 6–10 battle: motorbikes, shifting R...

Send us Fan Mail Dan Ackles brings us back to the moment he stepped off a van from SOI and into a deploying battalion bound for Ramadi. A rushed workup, 7 ton trucks with sandbags, April’s sudden violence, and the moral weight of changing ROE shape a raw, unvarnished account. This interview is blunt, darkly funny, and deeply humanizing via a lived record of how young Marines adapt fast.  • boot dr...

Send us Fan Mail Part 2 with Dan Ackles from Rainmaker Platoon to recall Ramadi’s chaos, the missions that went right... until they didn’t, and the people who made it possible to keep going. Language barriers, split-second choices, and the loss of a close mentor anchor a hard look at meaning, duty, and memory. • language barriers • raids with potential intel issues and gestures over words • the IE...