From the day I signed my contract with the Army, I knew that I would deploy. It was March 20, 2003, the very first day U.S. troops crossed the berm into Iraq. As I sat at the in-processing station watching the news, I knew I too would be heading to Iraq.

I began my Army career that October, only months after graduating from Harvard. I completed my basic training at Fort Knox, Ky., and Officer Candidate School (OCS) at Fort Benning, Ga. In April 2004, I was sent to Fort Sill, Okla., for the Field Artillery Officer Basic Course. After finishing my training at Camp Shelby, Miss., I was assigned as a Fire Support Officer (FSO) for E Troop, 2nd Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. By January 16, 2005, I was on a plane leaving Gulfport, Miss., headed to Kuwait and ultimately Iraq.

On Deployment

The initial invasion was a sprint to Baghdad; my deployment was more of a marathon. I was in Iraq for a year, from January 16 to December 29, 2005. I spent the entire time in an area approximately 35 miles south of Baghdad, east of the Euphrates, and north of Hilla (present-day Babylon).

Iraq is a divided country, with the south predominantly Shia, the middle Sunni, and the north Kurdish. We operated on the fault line where Shia mixed with Sunni, a volatile region dubbed the “Triangle of Death” by the media. Over the course of the year, we saw terrorist activity aimed at coalition forces, criminal activity, and sectarian violence—all happening simultaneously, all difficult to distinguish.

The media call the people we fight “insurgents,” while the Army commonly labels them AIF—anti-Iraqi forces—as they don’t hurt the United States as much as they hurt their own country. Like most soldiers, I call them terrorists. People who blow themselves up and kill innocents are not “freedom fighters throwing off the yoke of American occupation,” as they like to claim.

On a 12-month deployment in Iraq, you have four months to learn the area, four months to effect change, and four months to transition from one unit to the next. I spent the first four months in a city called Haswah, the last eight in a small town called Diyara. With a year-long stay, the best I could hope for was to finish the projects and initiatives I started and hand off the rest to the next unit. I also had to realize that not everyone makes it to the end. Some of the soldiers in my unit were injured or killed. Two were sent home because they could not find someone to take care of their children. Another had drug issues. One accidentally shot himself in the stomach.

In more ways than one, the Echo Troop that left Kuwait was very different from that which returned to Kuwait.

On Operations

Most of what frontline soldiers in Iraq do every day is patrol. They drive around establishing a presence, trying to learn what “right” looks like and what looks wrong. They talk with people to learn what they’re thinking, what they might have seen or heard about, what problems they may have with their water or electricity. At all hours of the day and night, soldiers are patrolling, watching roads, sitting, waiting.

I regarded operations as two-tiered. Lower-order operations are basic, security-driven measures such as cordons and searches, raids, patrols, sniper sets. These operations create the conditions for higher-order operations such as humanitarian aid, medical care, electricity or infrastructure-building, and, most important, government and army/police-building. The operations are synchronized through a process called targeting.

On Targeting

I was a fire support officer (FSO). To understand what an FSO does, you need a general understanding of how artillery supports basic maneuver warfare. Artillery is essentially cannons and rockets—sending very large “bullets” across long distances. Artillerymen are broken down into three parts: the eyes, the brain, and the brawn. The eyes are your observers: people who have eyes on the target and formulate the call for fire. The brain consists of the fire-direction specialists, who take that call for fire and translate it into data for the gun line. The brawn is made up of the gun line: people who load and fire the artillery pieces. When a round is sent downrange, the observers figure out how close steel came to target and generate a new call for fire based on the necessary corrections.

In conventional warfare, where there are good guys, a line, and bad guys, traditional artillery is very effective and very necessary. But in stability and support operations, artillery can be too destructive a weapon to employ.

My job was to sync all our targeting in our area of operations. This meant lethal targets, such as raids to detain terrorists and criminal persons, or actual fire missions using artillery or mortars to destroy buildings or create a show of force. This also meant non-lethal targeting, including trying to establish a town government, carry out civil affairs projects, and provide humanitarian assistance.

Non-lethal targeting was my specialty. I was to influence Diyara using all methods at my disposal, from psychological operations (PSYOPs) and civil affairs units to job programs and flat-out starting a town government. It was like playing the video game SimCity; at age 23, I was given a town and told to make it work. My only guides were creativity and maybe a course I took my sophomore year, Government 20: Introduction to Comparative Politics, with Professor Steve Levitsky.

Our Day Labor Program paid Iraqis $7 a day plus food and water to work on projects such as garbage removal, canal-cleaning, and pothole repair. The Medical Assistance Program paired our doctors and medics with Iraqi counterparts to provide free health care. The Humanitarian Aid Program filtered food through the local mosque to provide for needy families. We also built or refurbished an Iraqi army base, water filtration station, food distribution center, and bridge. Over the course of the summer, attacks declined, shops opened, and people felt safe to walk the streets.

While other soldiers in my troop trained the Iraqi Army, I tried to train local leaders. I had to gather men, educate them about what a government could do, and then empower the government to execute programs. The first two, we did well. The third was a work in progress. Then, in late October, a two-VBIED (vehicle-borne IED) attack halted much of the work we had done. Afterward, the children stopped going to school. Shops closed. Families began moving out of Diyara.

With only a month-and-a-half left before going home, I did as much as I could to stop the hemorrhaging, but the town was never the same as during that summer of hope.

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