Tango Alpha Lima crests 100,000 milestone

Following a week of accomplishments, this week’s American Legion Tango Alpha Lima podcast welcomes a Global War on Terrorism veteran who recently released a book related to his deployment experience.

Last week, Tango Alpha Lima won a Bronze Award during the 42nd annual Association Media & Publishing EXCEL Awards competition. It was the third award for the podcast’s special 20-20-20 series honoring the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Additionally, the podcast last week surpassed the 100,000 milestone for downloads since its debut on April 1, 2020.

Joining the podcast this week is Brett Allen, who served from 2006 to 2010 in the U.S. Army.

In late 2007, he was assigned to the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y., where he served as a platoon leader until a training accident resulted in a knee surgery. He was reassigned to the squadron’s operations office, and then deployed for a year to the Logar Province of Afghanistan in December 2008. Many events in his fictional book, “Kilroy Was Here,” have roots in real experiences on this deployment and his role as squadron air planner.

It’s easy to see who the main character is modeled after.

“As a young officer to be taken out of what you had been training to do for two years was pretty disheartening,” said Allen, a member of American Legion Post 356 in Grand Rapids, Mich. “The book kind of follows the main character as he arrives in Afghanistan with the hopes that he is going to be put back into a platoon. But he gets tasked with ridiculous assignments until he gets put on the squadron’s air operations planner.”

Other characters including a foul-mouthed chaplain were exaggerations or completely made up, Allen notes.

There are more than 130 Tango Alpha Lima episodes for veterans, servicemembers and others. All are available in both audio and video formats here. You can also download episodes on iTunes, Stitcher or other major podcast-hosting sites. The video version is available for viewing at the Legion’s YouTube channel.