Constant Combat

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We capture the story from MAP 1's Yancy Harris to trade Ramadi 2004 memories that swing from terrifying to absurd in the span of a sentence. A lot of the conversation centers on how routine danger shapes a unit’s nerves. It's RPG paranoia, the weird routines that kept him going, and what it feels like to come home and the long memories of deployment. 

• a mistaken RPG attack that ends in a weapons cache find 
• the “RPG truck”
• “Pistol Pete” and the one-shot Beretta
• CQB training, confidence in training 
• hooc...

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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 schools and neighborhoods 
• cache searches and a lizard scare 
• mission debriefs and why some unit partnerships stop 
• planning the glass factory visit to receive intel 
• CNN attenti...

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Straight shooting story from Ranie Ruthig, a mechanic Staff Sergeant who became a Lioness in 2004 Ramadi, building a mission from nothing, learning the culture, and surviving April’s chaos with Weapons Company Marines. The stories are raw, funny, and unfiltered, and full of details that can only come directly from the woman who lived it.

• converting Camp Rifle to Junction City with no infrastructure
• plywood armor, scarce showers, and late-night recovery runs
• why Lioness teams formed and why they always paired up
• early missions with 1-5 Field Artillery and Weapons Co...

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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 highbacks moving to up-armored Humvees
• IED near the train station
• cordon missions with thin numbers and decisive movements
• stress management
• leadership of Lt Stephens and Staff Sgt Coleman
•...

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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 a unit together when chaos in everywhere. Hard missions, mixed signals, media pressure, and choices that save lives shape this candid account.

• choosing loyalty over reenlistment tr...

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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
• the ambush‑magnet intersection at Nova and Gypsum
• cash payments, broken accountability, and moral injury from “projects”
• VBIED mass‑casualty response
• mosque sanctuary abuse, corrupt partners, and...

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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 deadlier.

• senior NCO leadership shaping tempo and standards
• rapid shift from Habaniyah plan to Ramadi reality
• mapping the city at night to learn routes and patterns
• five-platoon rotation balancing tempo, res...

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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
• life in the hooch, gym time, and a drink from the river
• IED sweeps, Oliver North sightings, up‑armor saves 
• sniper media anger and shifting to OP missions 

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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
• language training that didn’t match the mission
• first contacts that flipped hearts-and-minds to survival
• April 6 to 10: ambushes, alley fights, and QRF pushes
• psyops and door-to-door weapon finds

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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 debridement, no PT
• rejoining the platoon
• hooch humor, Xbox, stale brownies
• mortar strikes, tarp roofs, sandstorms, heat
• designated marksman mindset
• javelins, high-back Humvees, adaptation
• breaching plans and Army EOD takeover
• l...

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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 convoy north
• First sights of Ramadi
• Early IEDs and the March injuries timeline
• April 6 ambush, QRF response, scattered street fights
• House clearing dangers
• April 7 contact and a suc...

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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 aftermath 
• police stations bombed amid a fragile handover
• hotel firefight with Bradleys
• wild dogs, mortars, smoke pit rituals, and pig Latin humor
• leadership friction, communication failures, and fatal consequen...

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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
• Bug Hunt rooftop contacts
• Oliver North’s urban warfare lens and Vietnam parallels
• Chow hall rules
• May 1st IED with a concussion, shrapnel, and ch...

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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 briefs
• flight delays, New Jersey layover, Kuwait staging
• convoy north, Junction City, Hurricane Point setup
• guard on North and South Bridge, spotlight “games”
• first IED hits a...

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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 a stadium rooftop
• rare air support overhead and lessons learned after contact
• early April raids and the long waits that followed
• IED strikes, an RPG near miss, and split-secon...

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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
• Reunion plans and why dates matter
• The Marine bond across eras and the birthday culture
• Boot camp to SOI to Hawaii to Iraq in d...

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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 engagement, mortar fire, a TOW shot
• City-wide cascade of IEDs, RPGs, and QRF responses
• Operation Traveler and urban sniper contact
• Near misses, decisive marksmanship, and restraint
• Guard duty ale...

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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 invasion as a mortarmen
• rapid shift to patrols, raids, overwatch and medevac
• evolving IED threats, pressure plates and trip beams
• arrival in Ramadi, early KIA and Fox wounded

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“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 Opel
• mortars, counter-battery, and sensing incoming
• April 6 push to Echo Company under ambush
• rooftop fights, IEDs and palm grove contact
• evacuating wounded down Nova under fire

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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 that kept people from seeking care.

• transfer from MAP 2 to 81s and leadership pushback
• March AFB spin-up, open-bolt lessons, early blasts
• stigma around getting medical care, undoc...

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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 desert stars; and deciding how much of the past to carry into the present. 

• background as 0331 in a Mobile Assault Platoon
• training gaps versus urban combat reality
• convoy north, first I...

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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, Xbox, and rom-coms
• New joins... and close calls with power lines
• A sanctioned Javelin strike on a VBIED
• Lioness teams’ role in raids and sudden removal...

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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 to break the line while the rest of the convoy wrestles contact on every block.

• joining 2-4 on the heels of 9/11
• Okinawa extension, stop-loss, MP assignment
...

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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 ROE
• intel gaps and rare feedback on detainees
• HVT hit with Delta and Oliver North present
• corrupt cop raid with large caches and documents
• unit culture bui...

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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 Kuwait
• the long convoy, first medevac seen, stress and luck
• living under daily mortars and calm under fire
• Seabe...

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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 IED that wounded 2 Marines and a stalled recovery
• the blast that killed Savage
• leadership under fire and Doc Contreras’ lifesaving work
• culture shocks and unit humor as reli...

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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 drop straight into 2/4 without a full workup
• crash-course training at March Air Force Base and Kuwait
• arrival and life at Hurricane Point
• first convoys in...

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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’ll find some tools here: speak up, seek community, move with purpose, honor the fallen, and build spaces where you and others can heal.
We close with a t...

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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 politics that shaped the city and missions.

• rushed training at March Air Force Base and minimal turnover
• building hooch plumbing and fixing broken infrastructure
• April 4 loss of Morris 
• April...

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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 family.

• joining the Marine Corps
• Okinawa miles that built grit
• thin handoff in Ramadi and designing the guard
• first IEDs and a fast escalation...

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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
• May 12 KIA and the May 29 engineer IED and Echo VBIED
• checkpoint split‑second decisions and civilian misreads
• rumors, alcohol accusations, and SOG duty
• leadership und...

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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 you... and brotherhood sustains you.

• rushed deployment, missing gear, fast acclimatization
• patrols on Route Michigan and fighting on Easy Street
• MAP tactics, cross-training on TOW, javelin, machin...

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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 after the war.

• pre-mission ritual and a bad gut feeling
• IED blast on Route Nova
• improvised armor, gear tradeoffs
• disguises, mustache fiasco, and base culture...

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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 together.

• volunteering out of a FAP to rejoin 2/4 as a first-wave combat replacement
• getting assigned to Weapons Company at Hurricane Point
• the lonely integration of a n...

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Navy Corpsman Rudy Contreras’ job is simple on paper and brutal in practice: find the wounded, make the call, and keep your honor clean. He brings us front seat in part 2 of his interview to combat medicine, the IED strike that took Jeremiah, and the long road from Ramadi to healing. Hard choices, raw humor, and a code of honor shape how Rudy treated enemies, held his Marines together, and found peace years later.

• treating enemies and civilians under fire
• triage choices, morphine scarcity, and restraint
• the IED blast, airway manageme...

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“Doc” wasn’t just a nickname. It was trust earned under fire in Ramadi. Doc Contreras' story goes from Navy schoolhouse to Ramadi’s streets, where he learns to improvise care, earns a rifle, and covers two mortar platoons through months of daily contact. The story tracks hard lessons in combat medicine, leadership, stress, and how he kept the unit moving.

• joining the Navy and embedding with Marines
• Bridgeport training and earning trust as “Doc”
• deploying via Kuwait and first contact in Ramadi
• improvising tourniquets and chest seals with limited gear
• Q...

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Part two with Jamie Rocha and his raw, unscripted memories from 2004: the streets of Ramadi can turn from quiet to chaos in a breath.  He details everyday texture of deployment: spades games in the hooch, bootleg DVDs, a gas alarm when no one has a mask ready... and set it against the heaviest moments: responding after sniper teams were killed and meeting the family of your fallen brother and roommate. 
Jamie also shares the living legacy: the 2/4 Association, reunions that bridge Vietnam to Iraq and beyond, and the families who keep names alive.

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Jamie Rocha paints a picture of the first weeks in Ramadi in 2004: a broken flight, a slow convoy, and a first mission that turned a crowded market into silence and a defining memory that never really fades. Early raids, QRF nights, and hard choices about restraint and pursuit shape the story. From truck assignments to map frustrations, fear and humor all rode in the same vehicle.

• deployment journey through delays, snow, and convoy into Ramadi
• Warth wounded, emergency cordon, and shock of close blast
• buried artillery lucky near misses 
• holding a...

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A story can be both absurd and sacred, sometimes in the same breath. That’s the energy in this conversation with Mike Martinez and Jason Adams, two Marines whose memories from Ramadi are stitched together by dark humor, grit, and the stubborn will to stick together. From taser “experiments” and a rescued dog to transporting fallen snipers and sprinting down a trigger man. Leaving Iraq and being able to carry the lessons forward without sanding off the edges.

• Tasers, welding improvisation, and small mercies
• Transporting fallen snipers and museum-triggered grief
• IED strike...

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For this conversation, we talk to Mike Martinez and Jason Adams, combat replacements to 2/4 Weapons Company. A simple question sat on the table: go home, or go back with your friends into a fight that had already taken lives. Mike and Jason chose to return to Ramadi in 2004 as combat replacements, and their story lays bare what that decision meant—on bad days, on good days, and on the days that never leave you. The result is a raw, fast-moving account of grief, near misses, leadership that mattered, and the strange humor that kept pe...