A Little Personal History

by Andrew

One of the first comments to my first post asked whether or not I could elaborate a little on my military background. So I’m responding to that request here. But since I have no idea how significant the interest is in it, I’m keeping it below the fold so you can slip past it if you’re not interested.

I know…Israel’s at war, Iraq’s getting uglier by the day, and the new guy wants to talk about himself. What an ego.

I first enlisted in 1988. Just out of high school, I got a call from a National Guard recruiter. Since I was going to college in the fall, active duty wasn’t an option, but one weekend a month and two weeks a year seemed like a reasonable way to try and pay the country back a little for all the benefits it gave me. (Please note, that is a description of my feelings at the time, not a recommendation that anyone else should follow.) So I signed up as an 11H, TOW Missile Gunner, with D Company, 1-181 Infantry, 26th Infantry Division. TOW stands for Tube-launched, Optically-sighted, Wire-guided missile; it’s an antitank missile still in use in the Army today, although the ones we have now are a lot more advanced than what I played with in 1988-9.

Because I was going to college, I wasn’t scheduled for basic and advanced training until the summer of 1989. In the interim I attended about ten weekend drills with my unit, learning a lot about the Army and my job. At the same time I enrolled in ROTC, since I was already in the Guard, and it only made sense to try and earn a commission under those circumstances. And since I was in ROTC, it made sense to try and earn a scholarship, so by the end of my Freshman year I’d been selected for a three-year ROTC scholarship.

From May to August 1989 I attended basic and advanced infantry training at Fort Benning, Georgia. It was an interesting experience, with both good and bad points to it. I learned a lot about military life, as it was my first exposure to fulltime duty. I wouldn’t recommend Georgia in summertime, however.

Because I had an ROTC scholarship, I was put out of the Guard after returning from training, so I was back to just being a fulltime student and cadet. I did that through December, 1991, spending three more weeks at Fort Benning in June 1991 attending Airborne School, and five weeks at Fort Lewis, Washington, attending ROTC Advanced Camp. Advanced Camp is kind of a combination basic training and leadership course designed to assess cadets prior to their senior year. It was a lot of fun for me, as my prior experience made most of the tasks fairly easy.

In December 1991 I had completed my degree program (History and Government), so I graduated from ROTC early. I was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in Armor in January, 1992, and slated to attend the Armor Officer’s Basic Course in May 1992. I reported to Fort Knox, Kentucky, in May 1992 and spent the next four months learning my craft as a tanker and officer. In early September I left Fort Knox and drove to Fort Hood, Texas to join the 5th Infantry Division. I was assigned as a tank platoon leader, a job I held until December, 1994. During that span I took my platoon to the National Training Center, qualified my tank in four gunneries, fired a platoon gunnery, and spent a lot of time in the field. It was a great time; being a platoon leader is one of the best jobs in the Army. A tank platoon, for the record, consists of four M1A1 tanks, each with a four man crew, so it was just me and fifteen other soldiers (when we were at full strength).

In January 1995 I was moved to a position on battalion staff as the Battalion Liaison Officer. My job was nominally to link up with adjacent units on the battlefield and make sure we were tightly integrated with them, but since we never actually had adjacent units, I was basically a staff flunky helping the battalion operations officer (S3) to plan and execute training. In May my battalion was sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as part of Operation Sea Signal. Some 50,000 Cuban refugees were being housed there, and our job would be to run several of the camps housing them until they were processed into the United States. I spent four months at Guantanamo Bay, the highlight of which was writing an order to move all the Cubans from one side of the base to the other to watch a Gloria Estefan concert, then returning them to their camps on our side of the base.

In September 1995 I returned to Fort Hood and took over as a tank company executive officer. The XO is second in command of the company and is responsible for handling maintenance and logistics for the company. As XO I took the company downrange twice, including qualifying again on tank gunnery.

In April 1996 I left Fort Hood and returned to Fort Knox. I was now a promotable First Lieutenant (meaning I’d been selected for Captain) and I needed to attend the Armor Officer’s Advanced Course. So I spent another summer at Fort Knox, learning how to be an effective commander and staff officer, and spending an obscene amount of time on the Military Decision Making Process.

In September I was on a plane for Korea. I joined the 2d Infantry Division at Camp Casey, Korea, roughly two hours north of Seoul and an hour south of the DMZ. I spent that year in the battalion S3 shop planning training and operations for the battalion, including spending almost a month as the S3. It was a challenging job, as there was always the possibility the North might do something, so we had monthly alerts to ensure we were ready to go to war on short notice. I’ll not soon forget the day I got a phone call informing me of an artillery duel taking place at the DMZ and looking under my desk to make sure my gas mask was there. It turned out it was just mortars firing, but it was a shot of adrenaline.

In October 1997 I headed to Fort Carson, Colorado, where I rejoined the 4th Infantry Division as a planner on the brigade staff for 3d Brigade. I spent about 18 months as a planner, working out the orders to deploy the brigade to Pinon Canyon in southeastern Colorado and then to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California. In May 1999 I finally got what every Captain wants: company command, as I assumed command of Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1-68 Armor. I would spend the next 18 months in command of HHC, taking them to Pinon Canyon twice and the NTC once. HHC is everything in a tank battalion that isn’t tanks: scouts, mortars, medics, transportation, mechanics, cooks, and staff. As HHC commander, I had to train those disparate platoons while we were in garrison. When we went to the field, I ran the battalion field trains, the supply and logistics hub for the battalion. It was very different from commanding a tank company, which was what I would have preferred, but I learned a great deal about the importance of logistics.

In January 2000 I moved over to 2d Brigade, 91st Division to command a team of Observer Controller/Trainers. 2/91 was what’s known as an Active Component/Reserve Component assignment (AC/RC). After the first Gulf War, when Congress learned that no National Guard units were ready to go to war when they claimed they were, they created thousands of AC/RC billets to help train the Guard in order to make sure they would be ready the next time they were needed. So we spent the year flying around the western United States training National Guard armor units. After a year of that I decided that it was time for me to try something different, so I submitted my resignation and transferred to the reserves. I stayed in 2/91, as they have RC billets as well, but from April 2002 to January 2003 I was a civilian.

In January 2003 I mobilized in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Instead of going to the war, however, I got to train other units going to the war. We trained several thousand soldiers to go to Iraq in early 2003. In late 2003 we trained a brigade going to Afghanistan, then shifted into training the units getting ready to relieve the first group of OIF units. In April 2004 one of the National Guard units we were responsible for was alerted, so in June we deployed to Fort Bliss, Texas (and yes, the name is meant to be ironic) and trained the 116th Brigade Combat Team for Iraq. As part of that, I spent almost all of October at Fort Polk, Louisiana as an Observer/Controller augmentee while the 116th went through their final training exercise prior to deployment at the Joint Readiness Training Center (similar to NTC, but designed for light fighters). When I returned to Fort Bliss I had to help train another BCT, the 29th out of Hawaii. In December I was moved over to become the S3 (operations officer) for 1-361 Engineers, one of the cadre battalions in 2/91. In that position I planned and executed training for about a thousand soldiers between January and March of 2005 before finally returning to Fort Carson. The training requirements didn’t stop, however, as we had to start training the teams that were going to Iraq to train the Iraqi army.

In May 2006 the Brigade Commander tapped me to take over as the Brigade S1 (personnel officer), so I spent the next year doing that job. I learned a great deal about administration and paperwork, but it was a painful experience. But I was replaced at the end of May, and in June I took over as battalion executive officer for 1-361 Engineers. Right now I’m deployed to Fort Riley, Kansas, helping once more to train teams going to Iraq to train the Iraqi army (they rotate out after a year, so it’s a neverending job).

Something people will doubtless have noticed is that I’ve never been to combat. So what I know of war I know only through what I’ve heard from those who’ve been there. I talked a little about that a few years ago at my own site.

I hope I didn’t just bore the heck out of everyone. But that’s where I’m coming from.