With one month remaining before my unit deploys to Iraq, I've decided that I'll have few opportunities as leisurely as this to establish my journal if I don't do it now. The purpose of this journal is two-fold: first to keep friends, family, and interested parties updated as to my goings-on and general well-being, and second to ensure that I spend time every few days during the deployment to write down recent events in an orderly fashion for future reference. For reasons which should be obvious, this journal will not include any real names or specific locations, and as I'll only speak of events that have already passed, this journal will pose no threat to operational security. And though my friends and family all know who I am, in the interests of aforementioned security (etc.) I have to maintain a kind of ridiculous anonymity. So just suspend your disbelief and pretend you don't know me.
What I can disclose:
-I'm a 24-year old Second Lieutenant in the US Army. My branch is Infantry. I commissioned from the Officer Candidate School in Fort Benning, GA, and I've spent the last two years in training of one kind or another to lead an infantry platoon.
-Through a combination of lucky timing and a general shortage of officers, I came to my brigade with a platoon immediately available. We're mechanized infantry, and I've held my position for five months now.
-In an even more fortuitous set of circumstances, I happened to take command of one of the three platoons in the company that has been tasked on my battalion's Order of Battle as the Main Effort for this deployment. So we're the spearhead of the battalion.
-My battalion has been named, because of a rotational notation system (it's their turn) as the Main Effort for my brigade. So, by extension, my company is now the Main Effort company of the whole brigade.
-Yet it gets even more fortunate. We are deploying to Mosul, declared a few months ago as "the last stronghold of Al Qaeda in Iraq." Thus, the brigade in Mosul has been named as the Main Effort for the Iraqi Theater. If you connect the increasingly ridiculous dots, this means that my company is now the tip of the spear for the whole of Iraq.
-And as Iraq is currently the Main Effort for the whole US Military... well, you get the idea. The point is that, through a million machinations of dumb luck, I happened to land one of the three platoons, 40 of 120 soldiers, that are slated as the primary focus--the very spear tip--for the entire Armed Forces of our nation. At least for this year, anyway.
And I was afraid I'd miss the war.
From this position, I'll be on hand to witness and even take part in the (hopefully) last days of the conflict in Iraq. I know a hundred lieutenants--and I can imagine thousands of captains, majors, and maybe even generals--who would kill to have my job right now. I don't blame them; this wasn't earned by skill or any extraordinary qualities on my part, but because the numbers just happened to work this way, and any Infantry officer with blood still flowing would salivate at the opportunity to be there, on the ground, leading the soldiers who will bring this war to a close. And I don't mean that in the sense that we'll end the war with our awesome bravery, our unsurpassed technical and tactical skills, or my ridiculously incredible leadership abilities. Though I assure you that those are all true. Very true. I'd venture that if we'd been on hand in 2003 for the initial invasion, my platoon would have taken Baghdad in a matter of hours--conservative estimate. No support. Just us. In fact, I'm sure that my men would have ferreted out Saddam Hussein that very day... using only their prodigiously wondrous sense of smell.
No, we'll end the war in the sense that we'll be there, on the ground, at the decisive point, when we clean off the old "Mission Accomplished" banner and hoist it back up. Game over. Elections completed, Status of Forces Agreement adhered to, democracy propagated, defended, and upheld; this is a foregone conclusion. The politics there have decreed it, the politics here have decreed it. The war in Iraq will end this year. If I'm fortunate, the symptoms we witness on the ground will correspond to this diagnosis. If I'm not... well, the banner's coming out of storage anyway.
So whatever may happen this year, I have a feeling that it will be interesting. It will be a personal interest for my wife, my family, and my friends, an academic or curious interest if you just happened to stumble across this journal one day, and a profound interest for the people of Mosul--and more importantly, in my eyes, the men in my platoon. I'll write again in Kuwait, a month from now, and begin the journal in earnest. In the meanwhile, please keep the men of Blue Platoon in your prayers as they spend these last days with their families and prepare for a Christmas in the desert.
