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Currently on my third year in command and ninth month downrange in Iraq. As the battalion commander for Task Force 2-37 Armor, I command 1000 great Soldiers of all different MOS's: infantry, armor, engineer, and many other great enablers. We are forward deployed inside the embattled, but strategic city of Tal Afar, Iraq. Tal Afar made the news back in March 2006 when President Bush cited the town as a great example of how the clear-hold-build strategy could and should work in the counterinsurgency fight. COL HR McMaster '84 and 3rd ACR did a great job of the clear and hold piece and we are now building every single day. It feels good to create a project, get it funded, and then open up projects like public libraries, computer centers, schools, and police stations. For those of the fellow Dogs from plebe year company E-2, COL McMaster, remembers our class well and how squared away we all seemed. Maybe it was because it was also known as "Easy 2" that we were thus enabled so!
I've in to a few classmates over here: LTC Jim O'Brien commanded 1-33 CAV and we shared the same FOB (as shown in the photo of the two of us on the landing strip at FOB Sykes) for a few weeks before he redeployed to Fort Campbell (Jim had been all over Iraq to include Baghdad, Bayji, and Diyala); LTC Jim Redwine is the Border Transition Team Chief for the Iraqi Syrian border brigade and gets resupplied from our FOB; LTC Howard Brewington is an Iraqi Maneuver Brigade Transition Team Chief over in Mosul; and LTC Jeff Peterson is commanding 1-14 CAV for the 3/2 Stryker Brigade down in Baghdad. Although the situation in Iraq continues to make the news in a bad way, there are many Iraqi's over here who really want to make their country better, safer, and an ally of the United States in the Global War on Terror. One is my local governance partner, Mayor Najim, who was also cited by President Bush in that March speech; and with partners like him, I am hopeful that we will win this war. Pictured here is the mayor and myself after presenting gifts/school supplies from my hometown of Long Beach, California to the Al Qala school for girls. Finally, my 2% club partner is still with me despite leaving her in Germany every time we get stationed there (deployed at end of OIF 1 as soon as we got to Friedberg, Germany and to Desert Storm from Erlangen). Tracy and our two daughters, Amanda and Rebecca, are doing great work with the Family Readiness Group and are planning furiously (but happily) for our Welcome Home celebration in 2007 just months before our 24 year old reunion of standing in the rain on the Plain in our gray New Cadet hats.
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