April, 2008
A Soldier's Perspective
J.M.M.
Five years ago I was on my way to be apart of history. I was part of the initial invasion of Iraq. I did not know it at the time, but my life was going to be forever changed. My unit, the 2nd Battalion 7th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, was at the front of the 21-day drive to Baghdad. Just to give you a little history of this unit, it has been in all U.S. wars and battles since 1798. The 7th Infantry Regiment has served in more campaigns than any other Infantry Regiment in the U.S. Army. Several U.S. presidents, such as Andrew Jackson and James K. Polk, have served as commanders of the regiment. It was my honor to serve in such a prestigious unit and add to the growing of its history.
My journey in Iraq with the 7th Infantry Regiment began on March 18, 2003, when my squad moved into Iraq over the top of the giant sand berm, or wall, that separated Iraq from Kuwait. I had been in Kuwait since the beginning of January. Now, after all the rumors that had been in circulation, we were finally moving out to do the job that we thought that most Americans were in favor of. I was actually sitting in Iraqi soil one day in advance of the start of the war waiting for the word to move out. Finally, the word came to commence combat operations and my unit moved out. I could see several cruise missiles flying overhead to their objectives and several U.S. jets flying toward targets farther north as we moved deeper into Iraq.
It took my unit 21 days to reach the Saddam International Airport. It would have been a few days faster if it had not been for the worst dust storm in recent history. We were stuck in what look like another planet with red dust in and on everything. I was in several battles in our drive north but, nothing like what waited in Baghdad. My friend, Cpl. Saenz, the other team leader in my squad, and I even painted our faces with our desert camouflage in the hopes of motivating our men and scaring any enemy we saw.
My first day in Baghdad was greeted with a 4-hour battle in which my unit suffered one wounded and a Bradley Fighting Vehicle destroyed. It was during this battle that I was shown on TV directing my men and other soldiers in my unit where to shoot our antitank missiles, called the Javelin, at several Iraqi tanks, one of which shot the Bradley that was destroyed. While all this was happening, we were receiving enemy fire from both our front and our rear as we were on top of a highway overpass. Meanwhile the engineer company that was attached to our unit was in a firefight to our rear. During that firefight a Sergeant First Class, named Paul R. Smith, was shot and killed defending his men from being over run by the Iraqi Army. Two years later, Paul R. Smith was the first person to receive the Medal of Honor since Sgts. Gordon and Shughart during a battle in Somalia in 1993.
I spent several more months in Iraq, mainly Baghdad and its many districts, patrolling the streets and restoring order. I met many people and learned many things. These people were oppressed by a tyrant and now they were happy to see that there is such a thing as freedom. Under Saddam, many Shiites and Kurds were killed and the wealth of the country belonged to Saddam, which he hoarded for his vanity and his legacy. Even before his own death he still believed he was in the right in killing innocent people.
I was back in the United States for all of 2004 and returned to Iraq in January of 2005 due to being placed on stop-loss status. This time I served with the 3rd Battalion 69th Armor Regiment in Samarra Iraq, where the golden dome of a mosque there was blown up by Sunni insurgents to cause a civil war between Sunni and Shiite. I was part of two different Personal Security Detachments, or PSD teams. One was for the battalion S-5, who paid normal citizens for damage done by U.S. forces and also paid contractors money for civil projects like sewage treatment and a drinking water treatment facility. In this job I got to be more involved with the people of Samarra and surrounding villages. My second team was to be the personal bodyguard as well as a gunner for the battalion S-3. I went where ever the operations officer, who is third in command of the whole battalion, went. When he walked into a building, guess who walked in there first? That's right, I did.
Also, during this tour I was introduced to something new called the "roadside bomb" or IED (Improvised Explosive Device). We did not have too many during the invasion. I went by a few that never exploded until a vehicle or two later. There is actually a student here at the University of Florida that served in the same battalion as me in 2005, who was injured by a roadside bomb. So if you ever see him, do treat him like a statue. Go and offer a kind thank you for fighting and for suffering so that you could walk around this campus and attend class with your own free will. I will leave his name out to save him any embarrassment. The problem in Iraq is that people we help are actually trying to hurt us. They hide within the normal community and most people are too afraid for their lives to tell us who the bad guys are.
I returned to the United States on the Dec. 30, just in time to attend my grandfather's funeral. He became ill and I never had a chance to see him again. It was after this that I decided my time in the Army after seven years and six months was over. I have been working and taking classes trying to adjust to civilian life, but many times I find it very difficult. There is still not a day that I wake up and regret leaving the Army. There is not a day that goes by when I do not still wish to be a soldier. I guess I live up to the words of a friend of mine when he said, "You can take the soldier out of the Army, but you can never take the Army out of the soldier."
I still wish to be in Iraq. I do not understand why I feel this way. Maybe because I left bits and pieces of myself there that I just cannot get back. Maybe I left bits of myself with the friends and peers that died and came home in boxes. Sometimes I feel this war just made more sense than sitting in the air conditioning, drinking soda, watching flat-screen TVs, and listening to all the negative people that live in America saying how much they hate America, the government, and the military, and are only now proud (thank you Michele Obama), but are not willing to fight for freedom and only want to give in to terrorism because they are cowards. These are the people that believe that freedom should just be given to them without earning it, but they also support the most radical forms of racism, religious persecution and gender inequality, which they are totally against in the U.S. Or just maybe I have a hard time letting go of a moment in time that defined my life — a time that will be in history forever. Maybe I do not want to forget about all the heroes that I served with whowho died or went their separate ways after our time together.
I was diagnosed with PTSD after my first tour but could not use it as an excuse to get out of my obligation to my country and unit, but mostly to my men. I could not train them, then let them go to battle without me. To most people this might sound corny, but I feel it was me living up to the two words that I live by: Honor and Courage. Without those two words, I do not feel like I could have made it through all the impossible times and still lift my head to face another day. Those words will always be etched into the fabric of the life that I live. You cannot have honor without courage and you cannot have courage without honor.
My time in Iraq is done, but I will be forever changed from my experiences. I will never forget my time there and the men I served and bled with. I wear four bracelets with four names of fallen comrades as a testament to my word to never forget them and honor their sacrifice. America has the upper hand right now, but the troops need the support of the whole country. That includes Code Pink and two certain columnists that write for a certain campus newspaper. We are Americans just like you, and if you do not support us, you can leave and go support your Islamic fascist buddies over in their country. We will see how long you will last. We can win the war on terrorism, but America as a whole needs to stand together or we will only unite terrorists with our disunity. Most Americans will never go to Iraq, but be rest-assured that this former grunt has been there twice and would go back as fast as lightening.