Can you tell me about your early life and your reason for attending West Point?
Early life I grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana, right along the banks of the Mississippi. I had an idyllic childhood there. I grew up in a very America loving, patriotic household although I did not come from a military family whatsoever. I was the first person in my family to ever express desire to go to the military. But West Point was my only choice for college, it was the only place I ever wanted to go, it was the only place I applied, so it was kind of West Point or bust for me; I didn’t have a fall back plan. Thank God I actually got in. And when I did get in and showed up I realized how very fortunate I was, because I felt like I was out of my league and in over my head. But it was wonderful, it was a wonderful four-year experience. I’m one of the sick masochists who actually enjoyed his four years at West Point. I’m Just very proud at having made it through that tough experience and am now a better person for it, and I’m appreciative of how it prepared me to serve as an officer in the Army.
For the people who don’t know, can you tell me about your military experience?
I branched engineer so I became an Army Engineer Officer. I was a civil engineering major at West Point and I wanted to become, not just an army engineer, but an actual engineer who designed buildings and bridges and roads and things like that. That meant I also wanted to do that for the Army. But the Army, in all of its wisdom, decided to not utilize the skill that I learned in school, and they placed me in a mechanized combat infantry battalion in Germany.
So I went to Officer Basic Course at Fort Leonard Wood Missouri, and then my first year, or senior year as most people recognize it, is when September 11th occurred, and so I, and my classmates, realized that we were going to be graduating into a time of combat. And that changed the calculus of everything. I had the opportunity to go to Sapper School or Ranger School; I chose to forego all that stuff and get to my unit, and folks were telling me it was imperative that I got there if I wanted to deploy with the unit and not have to meet them for the first time downrange. So I went to Germany, I was there for about four weeks and then my unit deployed. I was a brand new second lieutenant and I actually took command of my platoon in Kuwait a few weeks before we departed in late March of 2003.
I was in the initial invasion of Iraq. I crossed over on the first day; my company was attached to a brigade combat team. And we made the mad dash for Baghdad in the first hours of the war, and I ended up spending a year in Iraq from my first deployment, about ten or eleven months actually. I was all over the country- Baghdad, Al-Anbar Province, I was out at Al- Qa’im on the Syrian border, I was up in Balad and did missions all over Tikrit, Kirkuk, and those sorts of places. I came back to Germany in December, 2003 and took command of another platoon in a different company of my battalion.
I guess I should tell you a little bit about what we did in Iraq. Nobody really knew what to do with engineers per se. Engineers up until that point had been trained in Cold-War style tactics, like clearing mine-fields, breaches and laying mechanized bridges from tanks over short spans, and things like that. But the threat that confronted us in Iraq, as everyone now knows, was the IED threat. And that’s something that started to pop-up pretty soon after we arrived. And engineers in the Army were kind of tasked with the challenge of figuring out the IED problem and how to counteract it, so that’s a lot of the work we did, at the very end of my tour, and certainly during my second tour.
So I was back in Germany for almost two years training. As I said I took a second platoon and became a company executive officer for yet another company in my battalion, and deployed again as an XO to Iraq, and this time we were with the Marines in Ar-Ramadi. And that was October of 2005 to October of 2006 and we were full on counter-IED. We had all the newest and sexiest equipment the military had been buying to counteract the threat, and we were kind of pioneers in putting that technology to use. It was a very tough year. One of the worst years of the war and probably the worst place on earth. Our unit took hard hits. We didn’t make it back with everyone, unfortunately, but it was just one of those experiences, I don’t know how to put it.
It was a tough year for everybody, and for me, professionally and personally I started to wonder what the hell we were doing over there. It was hard on me and I started thinking I might be of most use telling the story of what was going on over there rather than continuing to be an officer; frankly, I was just worn out. I met some journalists over there and was inspired to leave the military and try to become a reporter. I applied to Columbia Journalism School while I was still in Iraq and to my great honor and surprise, when I got back to Germany, found out that I’d been accepted. So I got out one day after my five-year obligation ended, and flew to New York City and started Columbia in the fall, which was a one-year program.
As a leader in Ramadi, how do you deal with the stress and pressure of being in such a horrible place?
Well first of all, I have to say a lot of my operational experience is in leading a platoon and being out there running missions, and that sort of thing happened during my first tour in Iraq when I was a young Lieutenant. During my second tour I was in more of a staff role, I was the executive officer of headquarters company, second in command. And halfway through my deployment I became the battalion’s S1, or personnel officer. So I did occupy leadership roles, but I wasn’t out running missions on that second tour in Ramadi, like a lot of our young lieutenants who came after me were. However, I would say that leadership of any sort, whether you’re a young platoon leader or a staff officer at the battalion level, requires a degree of composure and adaptation to environments that are unpleasant, scary and dangerous, because you have to do it. Troops are looking to their leaders, especially their officers for moral strength and courage and the affirmation that the mission is good, the cause is true, and that everybody is going to get out of there better than they showed up. So, I really think there isn’t anything you can do to get used to the environment- it just happens. You’re placed in adverse situations and you do the best you can. In combat you go from reality of normal life back home, and into this new reality, this new ecosystem, this new environment and it’s a shock to the system, but you realize quickly that if you let gunfire and mortar rounds and rockets, and the threat of IEDs get to you, then you’re going to have a breakdown and you’re not going to make it through. So I think mentally you just put it out of your mind. I had my fellow officers, the troops had their battle-buddies, we all have each other. It’s like a family. And everyone relies on one another, everyone has a job to do, and trust and love is what gets everyone through.
Can you take me through the process and what emotions went through your head when you found out you were being recalled to active duty?
I had graduated from Columbia Journalism School, and had stayed in New York City for a while, interning at the New York Times. Then I took another internship in Paris at Business Week Magazine- I spoke French, so they hired me to come and do man on the street interviews and stuff like that. I was in Paris for a few months and when that all ran out I went to Moscow and worked at the Moscow times as a copy editor (I don’t speak Russian). After that I came back to New York, because of my girlfriend who lived in San Francisco at the time and we missed each other, so we decided to move back to New York City. I took a job at the Star Ledger in Newark, New Jersey, and was reverse commuting from Manhattan. One day on my walk home from the Newspaper, I got a call from my Mom saying that a package had arrived from the Army. They had opened it, and it was a form letter, telling me that I had been activated as a part of the IRR or the Individual Ready Reserve to come back to the military. Everybody who goes to West Point or goes through ROTC owes a certain amount of time on active duty, and they have a set of years afterword where they’re part of the IRR and it’s very rare that people actually get called back, but I guess my number got called and I just got unlucky. I have to say that I was shocked and disappointed; I had a good thing going in journalism, I was doing what I wanted to do, I was writing, I was living in New York. And here I am two-years out facing the prospect of having to go back into it again, and God knows what.
So I would say I was upset, I was disappointed, I was bitter, I was angry, but it was a duty and I decided I was going to make the most of it, so I told my employer that I had to go and ended up heading down to Fort Jackson, South Carolina and Fort Leonard Wood Missouri again, and then I ended up in Camp Shelby Mississippi where I linked up with my unit, which was an infantry unit from the Georgia Army National Guard that was deploying to Afghanistan. They sent me to Gardez which is a mountain city in Paktia Province on the Pakistan border in eastern Afghanistan, where I basically worked as an information operations officer for a year.
And like I said, I wanted to make the most of the experience so I spent time writing about my tour; I had a blog, and I shared my experiences with readers about the cultural, historical, and societal quirks that I noticed about Afghanistan and it became kind of a hobby for me. I told people about what my daily life was like on base and some of our missions and the people I encountered, and stuff like that. That lasted about a year and then I came home.
Was your attitude or mindset different in your third tour to Afghanistan as opposed to Ramadi? If it was, how so?
Of course. When I went into the Army, from West Point, I was bright eyed and bushy tailed. I was a flag waving patriot, not that I’m not now- I still am. I love this country and I’m proud of my service. But I was gung-ho about going into the army and leading troops, doing good, and defending my country against all enemies foreign and domestic. But being called back into the military after a bit of time out, especially when it was clear that I was not needed and, by the way, there were plenty of people in the military who had never deployed ever, really got to me. I thought that the Army had a disastrous personnel policy, that they were executing on, and I did not go back to Afghanistan with the same attitude that entered the Army seven years earlier with. I was bitter and angry, and I was doing it because it was a duty, so you just grit your teeth and do it. There was no “I’m so glad to be doing this.”
After not being in Iraq or Afghanistan for some time, when you hear about what is going on there now, what goes through your head?
First of all, I try not to read too much about it, not that it upsets me, it doesn’t upset me, I’ve just moved on. I don’t read books about the wars, I don’t watch movies about the wars, I don’t watch TV shows about the wars, I really don’t even talk about it, even with friends that I served with. One of my best friends lives here in the Philadelphia area, and he was Army, Ranger, Airborne, he deployed a ton of times and we were roommates at West Point. My wife and family, and his wife and family, we get together all the time, at least once a month, to barbeque and stuff like that. Never, ever, ever do we ever talk about our Army experience. And it’s not that we decided that we weren’t going to do it, we just don’t, because we’ve moved on with our lives. And it’s not something of interest to us anymore, we have kids, new jobs, and other interests that we want to pursue- we don’t dwell on the past. And I guess that it’s the same way with following news of what’s happening over there now; I see the headlines and I guess they make me sad, that so much blood and treasure was spent to right a wrong in that region of the world. I suppose a lesson I’ve taken from it is that the United States shouldn’t get involved in other people’s misrule, certainly not on humanitarian grounds. I understand that every nation has vital national interests that need to be protected and interests that need to be pursued, but intervening in other countries affairs for anything other than just pure American interests is a fool’s errand and is morally wrong. I think that ISIS, what they did to Mosul and a lot of other places across Iraq and Syria, is clear evidence of that. God, the misery perpetrated by that group in an area where America operated and probably because America was there. ISIS exists only because of the vacuum of leadership and power that America’s invasion of Iraq created. It just seems to be a cancer that’s metastasized and who knows, it may even get worse.
Today, we are hearing a lot about “fake news” and bad reporting. As a journalist yourself, what is your take on this, and how can people ensure they are digesting quality and truthful information?
No. I don’t think there is anyway. George Orwell, one of my favorite writers, said “All art is propaganda.” And I think that applies to the medium of journalism. I think that, just like art, news and media is created by fallible human beings who have personal biases- whether or not they see those biases and that they admit to them. I think it’s just an inherent part of content creation and information distribution. Like art, to use the analogy again, information can be interpreted in different ways, by different people, based on their personal experiences, world-views, outlooks and values. And this is a large, philosophical question- what is truth? And I’m always one of those people who believe that there is wisdom in the statement: “Don’t believe what you read. Ever.” I was a member of the media for a while, I was in the news business and I don’t believe in anything I read. Still; whether it’s the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, or Breitbart.
Book Recommendations?
I would say that the number one, best book, I’ve ever read is the Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The book changed my life, and I think it’s changed a lot of lives of people who’ve read it. So Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a Soviet Army Officer, I think he was a tanker, in World War Two, and was basically accused of crimes against Stalin and crimes against the regime. When he came back from the war he was imprisoned in the Gulag for many years, and he ended up writing a series of books about his incarceration there. And he became the voice of a generation of dissent against the crimes of the Soviet Union. And the Gulag Archipelago is one of his two most noted works and it essentially exposed the system of labor camps in the Soviet Union. And it’s not a technical or a historical work- it’s very much a spiritual journey. And he talks a lot about the fate of the nation, the fate of human beings and what it means for the spirit to struggle against oppression and cruelty and it’s just a really great book. And the reason I like it so much is because it’s a reminder of all the freedoms and liberties that Americans enjoy. It’s a classic. I think it’s fifty-years old now and it does not get old. I think Time Magazine actually called it the most important book of the twentieth century.
For the people who don’t know, can you talk about what Got your 6 is and how you got involved?
The mission is to change the perception of veterans as they return home. We think that veterans have been cast in a really negative light for the last fifty-years or so- they’ve been portrayed as extraordinarily broken or extraordinarily heroic, and weirdly that most veterans are “broken heroes.” And that’s just a false, cliché, lazy narrative, that’s grown up in the entertainment industry and media, and Got Your 6’s purpose is to destroy that stereotype, and that false narrative through a range of programs and operations that we do. That’s essentially it. I was drawn to the mission and messaging of Got Your 6 because it’s something that I really believed before I even really heard of them. The idea that all veterans are in some way broken is just nonsense. Most vets come home from having served their country and want to get on with their lives and want to do good in their communities, and want to continue to excel in life and work. And they are stigmatized by the small subsection of veterans who are suffering and have challenges, that are being addressed by a lot of big organizations. But there is a stigmatization that happens, and I saw it clearly, but could never really articulate it until I came across Got Your 6 and saw they had articulated it and they’d gone a step further to try to address it and correct it.
