Islander Tom Spotteck’s Afghanistan battle appears in HBO documentary

You can see Shelter Island’s Marine Corporal Tom Spotteck and his company fighting in Afghanistan in an HBO documentary titled “The Battle for Marjah.”

Directed by embedded journalist Ben Anderson, the documentary follows Bravo Company in February 2010 through “Operation Mashtarak,” which was the largest military operation since the start of the war in Afghanistan. The operation was a highly risky effort to liberate the strategically vital town of Marjah.

Corporal Spotteck described Marjah as the Taliban’s headquarters in southern Helmand province. “We dropped dead center into the middle of the city and tried to clear out the Taliban,” he explained. The operation was particularly risky because the soldiers’ nearest military support was three days away, he said.

When asked about the documentary’s portrayal of the situation on the ground in Afghanistan, Corporal Spotteck explained, “To be honest, I was really impressed with the way [Anderson] did it. He showed what politicians and the high-up generals that were located in the States said about how the war was going, and then he showed what was actually happening on the ground, to kind of give the comparison.”

Tom Spotteck returned safely from his second deployment in Afghanistan on August 2, 2010.

The remaining showings of the documentary can be seen as folllows: