Constant Combat

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...

Send us Fan Mail Jason Mosel tells the story of arriving in Ramadi as teenagers on a “peacekeeping” mission; then living through April 4th thru 10th, and the long grind of sustained combat. It's a blur of close-range engagements where a single turn can bring an RPG screaming into your vehicle's grill. We also unpack gear gaps, improvisation, the famous Ollie North night mission, and the...

Send us Fan Mail Part 2 with Mozey is a very candid look at the aftermath of Ramadi through stigma, medication, and a near-suicide. This is an unpolished conversation and the deeper takeaway is simple and hard: recovery isn’t a medal. It’s a practice, a conversation, and sometimes a long quiet run through the woods. If you’ve ever carried something heavy and silent - PTSD, grief, addiction - you’l...

Send us Fan Mail Jose Miranda’s deep account includes a handover in Ramadi that felt hollow,  and the platoon building their own picture from scratch. From there, it’s a street-level view of the Sofia district fights, rockets fired at a suspected Vehicle born explosive, and the hard call to his mother. Before part 2 starts, Jose recalls what it meant to carry a fallen Marine’s story back to his fa...

Send us Fan Mail With Part 2, Jose Miranda starts with a streak of fire and close encounter with an Army unit during a friendly fire incident. He moves through several blasts, and carnage that defined a brutal summer in Ramadi. Jose closes with coming home, and the slow work of finding small joys and trusted voices. • the Army engagement • Operation Treasure Island and body recovery on the river •...

Send us Fan Mail Ayron Cox paints the path through Ramadi 2004. It's a candid, granular look at modern urban combat, CQB and breaching under fire, javelin employment in a city fight, and the mental health gaps that still shadow returning veterans. Naming a daughter after a fallen leader preserves a legacy of courage and care. His message is not tidy but true: war rewires you... tactics save y...

Send us Fan Mail Great convo with Brian Fox who in 2004 was a corporal fapped to military police and refuses to drift away to his end of enlistment... and fights to return to Ramadi. Arriving alone to a bonded unit and earning trust by taking the wheel of Vehicle 2 in Rainmaker platoon. The story tracks hard choices, aggressive driving, VBIEDs on Route Michigan, and the rituals that hold a platoon...

Send us Fan Mail Brian Fox, combat replacement of Rainmaker Platoon, joins us for part two and takes us straight back to Ramadi: where a pre-mission ritual, a bad gut feeling, and a freshly installed ballistic windshield become the slender line between luck and loss. The moment you heard “I’m not feeling it today,” you could feel the air change. He recounts brotherhood from a Humvee’s cab to life...