Ten Years Since…
Honestly, I do not know how to write this but I feel I must.
Its been ten years since my deployment to Iraq, the first of three combat tours. My time in Iraq was spent learning and leading. Initially I was assigned to a large fusion cell that had no real impact on the battlefield and I was bored. Before deploying we had been fairly active in counterterrorism fights in the Pacific, we had become accustomed to having an impact. I realized within a week of being in theater that all the work we were actually doing could be accomplished from back in our home station. Technology really is a wonderful thing… just don’t tell your supervisor that. So I eventually found my way to a small team that needed a body…I was glad to go and traded the life of a FOBbit for that a “war tourist”.
Everyday was spent either on the road in a patrol in an attempt to identify an enemy who was hellbent on avoiding discovery or figuring out how to find them in the “office”. Sunni and Shi’a insurgent groups supported by Iranians or Al Qaeda itself became our targets. Find them and provide accurate, timely, and predictive analysis/information to the manuever commander in order to launch an operation to neutralize the threat to American and Iraqi forces in the region. At the time we had worked fairly close with an Iraqi Army battalion that was split down the middle and ran by a very competent commander. Their intelligence office had suffered a serious personal loss at the hands of fellow Shi’a and knew the stakes that were at play.
I won’t get into the day to day. We did the work we were asked to do the best we could. My brigade lost only one Soldier and suffered few wounded casualties. That one Soldier was Sergeant Myla Maravillosa who was killed in action on Christmas Eve 2005 in Al Hawijah, Iraq. Her story spread through the command and eventually we learned of her death despite not knowing her. She was a reservist and while were active Army we felt the loss all the same.
Her funeral was attended to by the American Chief of Mission Scott Bellard to the Philippines. She was burried in her hometown of Inabanga, Philippines on the island of Bohol. We all knew the worst could happen at anytime and we took measures to ensure we did not go down without a fight. On our small team we carried more ammo than an infantry unit of the same size for that very reason.
Its been ten years since we took off from Hawaii and landed in Kuwait. We traded surfboards for M2s. It became comfortable to strap into the driver’s or gunner’s seat and then launch into the desert or the town we were near. Trash piles, crowded markets, or empty stretches of endless desert seemed to always keep you teetering between boredom, fear, and excitement.
There were moments of levity of course. At the end of the day we would relax and write our reports. Play Halo on XBox or chat with our families back home on a pirated MWR line. We made the most out of the tour and left whole, which is what my mother told me to do. She told me before I left that I had been training for the heat in Iraq all my life: 105 everyday and humid in our neighborhood, it sure felt like it. But nothing prepares you for this:
It took a while but the driving habits from Iraq faded. The paranoia of crowds faded. The memories have too, which is why I have so many photos to remind me of the time there. But also they remain so I can tell my son and daughters about the time there. My lessons are for me to use now in my line of work but they also exist for my children’s future. Someday they’ll decide if they want to volunteer for the military and I want them to be able to know what they’re getting into before that deicison is made.
No questions about Iraq then and now. For now I’ll just reflect on back then. The panic I felt almost every day we strapped up and took off. Sitting in operations briefings and spitting out our reports then being asked if it was worth American lives was… terrifying. Hearing of an IED attack on another patrol and being thankful it wasn’t us but the immediate guilt that it wasn’t. Celebrating a week’s succuess with burgers and steaks on a make shift grille while taking incoming rocket and mortar fire. Before I finish I’d be remiss if I didn’t push for you to read Phil Walter’s take on this feeling. All of it I remember… and I oddly enough. I wanted it again. I reenlisted that tour because I wanted to go back. I felt I had not done enough… I still feel that way.
iBreak is a decade long Army intelligence specialist with three combat tours and one to Korea. Rampant Harley rider and rugby player. A graduate of Troy University with a major in criminal justice and concentration in homeland security. He is also a graduate student at George Mason. The opinions expressed are his alone, and do not reflect those of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
