When 9/11 happened, I was checking out of the guest house at Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC) in San Antonio at the end of my colectomy/j-pouch process. I was still in Command (in name) of HHS/1-14 FA. I left command soon after that and went to work on the Brigade Staff.
In June 2002, I took command of B/3-13 FA. We had one hella good battery. Around September or October, the Iraq war drums started beating and the activity level ratcheted up several notches as we tried to figure out who/how many would go from Ft. Sill. It only made sense that deep fires would be a big player in any war in Iraq, so Ft. Sill would be called upon to respond.
Our Battalion was the first called, but we were only tasked to send one Battery to round out the MLRS Battalion in the 3rd Infantry Division (3ID), who would be the first to deploy. The leadership decided that C Battery would be the Battery to go, but it would be "reorganized". The reorganization included swapping four of my six launcher crews into C Battery, moving the A Battery 1SG into C Battery, and moving my 1SG to A Battery. To me, it was very clear that B Battery was going to war under a new commander......... apparently I was the weak link in B Battery.
As the build up went on, Ft. Sill sent 9 of 12 Battalions and 3 of 4 Brigade Headquarters to Kuwait, but because of the speed and tempo of the initial ground war, only one Ft. Sill Brigade (mine) and only one Battalion actually got into the fight. Those of us left at Ft. Sill were organized under the stay behind Brigade HQ as the "strategic reserve".
There is much more to the story than that, but I'll leave it there and move on to my AC/RC job in Idaho. There, I was responsible for assisting a National Guard Battalion in its training. The Battalion I was training was mobilized and we went to Ft. Bliss to help them train up. Through some twist of fate, I ended up going with them to Ft. Polk to complete their training and stayed with them right up to when they got on the plane to leave. Shaking each and every hand as they got on the plane, and watching them fly away, I could not have been more proud of this group of citizen soldiers who answered the nation's call. I was proud of any contribution I might have made toward their success and their individual survival. However, standing on the tarmac, watching them fly away, I felt totally stupid and impotent as the Active Duty Army guy watching the National Guard fly away to war, but that was my assignment and not my decision.
Shortly after this, I went back to Ft. Bliss to help finish up the training for the 29th BCT.
Given all this, and some things I haven't said, I decided that, as much as I loved leading soldiers, I would never be an Artillery Battalion Commander (and I couldn't live my life as the guy always left behind) so I switched over to Acquisition so I could continue to serve with honor, progress in my career, and make a difference for our Warfighters.
Why did I tell you all this? I don't know.... maybe to say that no matter how little skin we have in the game, we all have some skin in the game. Maybe to highlight how much things have changed in ten years.
My thoughts on the wars have definitely changed in the intervening years. I wonder now if the cost was worth what we have gained. I have no doubt that the people in charge at the time thought, with all their hearts, that they were doing the right thing. I say again, NO DOUBT.
I also know that I, still today, wear a bracelet with the names, SFC Randall Rehn, SGT Todd Robbins, and SPC Donald (Sam) Oaks, who were members of C/3-13 FA and were killed in a "friendly fire" incident in OIF 1 when an F15 mistook their MLRS fires for anti-aircraft missiles and dropped a bomb on them. Also on my bracelet is SSG Toby Mallet, who was a technical fire direction super star, but a young and dumb junior soldier in many other aspects that worked for me when I was a Lieutenant at Ft. Stewart. He got out of the Army at the end of his enlistment at Ft. Stewart as a PFC but decided to come back in. When he died he was a Staff Sergeant and had proven that he had overcome his youth and had become a man and a leader. Those were four good men, with four good lives still left to live. I escorted Randy Rehn's wife and family to the memorial service, even before his body had come home. I saw his wife grab SSG Brian Frazier, who would be escorting him home and tell him, "You go get him. You get him and bring him home!". I saw BG Formica try to explain to Sammy Oaks' parents that he might have been killed by fratricide. I saw the families' react to the last roll call, and I shed a tear too (It's the most powerful thing you could ever experience. It hammers home the fact that your loved one has departed the earthly formation and will never rejoin it.) I went to Randy Rehn's funeral and watched his wife cry on his coffin.... and I wonder if all the good we did in Iraq was worth the life of either of these four men, much less the 4000+ who gave their lives.
No matter how you feel about the war, always remember that real men (and women) fought it and they deserve our respect and we owe them our gratitude and the care and benefits they earned. They were Soldiers, and they carried out the orders of the President of the United States and they served on our behalf. If you doubt the war, it is a lie to say that the soldiers died for nothing. The soldiers died for their country. They died doing their duty, which includes going where the country sends them and doing what the country asks them to do.
