From October 2001 through April 2004, Major David Doyle deployed five times with 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, twice in support of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM and three times in support of IRAQI FREEDOM. Doyle served variously as the battalion S3 (Air), a rifle company commander, and as a regimental liaison officer. He participated in such high-profile missions as the October 2001 parachute raid onto Objective Rhino, southwest of Kandahar, Afghanistan, and the April 2003 seizure of Hadithah Dam in western Iraq. In Afghanistan, Doyle and his Rangers also conducted "force protection operations, raids, manned observation points at border crossings, and conducted missions against high-value targets in order to interdict al-Qaeda members and supporters who were crossing back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan." With respect to both operating theaters, Doyle discusses his unit's interactions with civilians and with both conventional and Special Operations forces; the importance of refining the Rangers’ sensitive site exploitation techniques; and how his unit went beyond its typical “finishing force” role to often do its own reconnaissance and gather its own intelligence. He also talks about how the extremely high operational tempo affected his soldiers and how best to defeat insurgent elements. “It’s not easy,” Doyle observes, “to do things that are outside your familiarity and your comfort zone, but that’s really the only effective way, specifically in an insurgent fight, to get results. If you just repeat successful operations,” he adds, “they won’t be successful for long.”

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