Until Tuesday by Bret Witter, Luis Carlos Montalván
Authors: Bret Witter, Luis Carlos Montalván
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he didn’t have the manpower necessary for the mission. The next week, I’d hear those same generals telling the media, “The commanders have assured me we have enough soldiers for the operation.”
When you’re a leader on the line (in a combat position), your responsibility is to the men and women beneath and beside you. You do everything you can for those troops, because they are your brothers and sisters and if you let them down, some of them might die.
For the senior officers in Iraq, at least in 2005–2006, the responsibility was to the men at the top, the media, the message, the public back home—anything and everything, it seemed, but the soldiers under their command. And that’s the ultimate betrayal of Iraq, the one that disillusioned me in Baghdad and Nineveh and keeps me outraged today.
I can’t vouch for the other regimental staff officers in the Third Armored Cav, but by the second half of my second tour I didn’t feel like I was working for the U.S. Army or implementing a higher plan. I was working for the men below me, both Iraqi and American, to keep them alive. I was a military attaché, spending most of my time at forward operating bases, but I had served recently as a combat leader and advisor, and I was close to the troops. I knew Pfc. Joseph Knott, who was killed by a roadside bomb. Our Regimental Command, Sgt. Maj. John Caldwell, whose skull was shattered by an IED, was a friend and the first person to shake my hand when I arrived in-country in 2003. The soldier I bailed out in Colorado Springs the previous summer suffered a devastating combat injury. We lost three officers in a Blackhawk helicopter crash, and I knew them all. Death wasn’t a number; it was something that crept up in quiet moments and stabbed at my neck, then reared back to strike again. It had a face, and a hot salty breath. I felt a tremendous responsibility to the troops of the Third Armored Calvary. Tremendous. I felt my work might save their lives, and I felt guilty whenever I took an hour off. So I didn’t drink. I didn’t socialize. I didn’t watch television or play video games. I don’t believe in being too tired to feel pain, but I believe in being hurt to the point that giving in to the pain, even for a day, will drag you down for good. So for six months I dragged my cracked back and throbbing head through twenty-hour days with the help of nothing more than a fistful of Motrin, then collapsed every night into a dreamless sleep.
Eventually, I was promoted to Colonel McMaster’s adjutant, a unique position for a junior officer. The colonel worked from 7:00 a.m. until 1:00 a.m., seven days a week, and I was always with him. When he went to bed, I worked an additional four hours making sure the regimental headquarters was organized and efficient, and that every operational component that Colonel McMaster needed for the next day was ready. I was relentlessly driven, sleeping less than two hours a night, and I wasn’t surprised when the official assessment of my PTSD, compiled by a doctor I worked and roomed with in Nineveh, stated that I had “unrealistic expectations of others.” Nobody could work that hard for an extended period of time. Nobody could meet my high expectations. Including me.
When my tour was up, I didn’t ask to stay. I had volunteered twice for extended duty, once in Al-Waleed and once in south Baghdad. This time, I was ready to leave. I had been, for as long as I could remember, just hanging on, trying to make it through the day without a breakdown, sort of like the American operations in Iraq. By the time I touched ground in Colorado in February 2006, I was burnt toast. That’s the image that always comes to mind when I think of myself then: a blackened, smoking hunk of bread, still jammed between the heated wires.
Four months later, in June 2006, Colonel McMaster completed his command with the Third Armored Cavalry. As his adjutant, it was my honor to sprint across a field at his
When you’re a leader on the line (in a combat position), your responsibility is to the men and women beneath and beside you. You do everything you can for those troops, because they are your brothers and sisters and if you let them down, some of them might die.
For the senior officers in Iraq, at least in 2005–2006, the responsibility was to the men at the top, the media, the message, the public back home—anything and everything, it seemed, but the soldiers under their command. And that’s the ultimate betrayal of Iraq, the one that disillusioned me in Baghdad and Nineveh and keeps me outraged today.
I can’t vouch for the other regimental staff officers in the Third Armored Cav, but by the second half of my second tour I didn’t feel like I was working for the U.S. Army or implementing a higher plan. I was working for the men below me, both Iraqi and American, to keep them alive. I was a military attaché, spending most of my time at forward operating bases, but I had served recently as a combat leader and advisor, and I was close to the troops. I knew Pfc. Joseph Knott, who was killed by a roadside bomb. Our Regimental Command, Sgt. Maj. John Caldwell, whose skull was shattered by an IED, was a friend and the first person to shake my hand when I arrived in-country in 2003. The soldier I bailed out in Colorado Springs the previous summer suffered a devastating combat injury. We lost three officers in a Blackhawk helicopter crash, and I knew them all. Death wasn’t a number; it was something that crept up in quiet moments and stabbed at my neck, then reared back to strike again. It had a face, and a hot salty breath. I felt a tremendous responsibility to the troops of the Third Armored Calvary. Tremendous. I felt my work might save their lives, and I felt guilty whenever I took an hour off. So I didn’t drink. I didn’t socialize. I didn’t watch television or play video games. I don’t believe in being too tired to feel pain, but I believe in being hurt to the point that giving in to the pain, even for a day, will drag you down for good. So for six months I dragged my cracked back and throbbing head through twenty-hour days with the help of nothing more than a fistful of Motrin, then collapsed every night into a dreamless sleep.
Eventually, I was promoted to Colonel McMaster’s adjutant, a unique position for a junior officer. The colonel worked from 7:00 a.m. until 1:00 a.m., seven days a week, and I was always with him. When he went to bed, I worked an additional four hours making sure the regimental headquarters was organized and efficient, and that every operational component that Colonel McMaster needed for the next day was ready. I was relentlessly driven, sleeping less than two hours a night, and I wasn’t surprised when the official assessment of my PTSD, compiled by a doctor I worked and roomed with in Nineveh, stated that I had “unrealistic expectations of others.” Nobody could work that hard for an extended period of time. Nobody could meet my high expectations. Including me.
When my tour was up, I didn’t ask to stay. I had volunteered twice for extended duty, once in Al-Waleed and once in south Baghdad. This time, I was ready to leave. I had been, for as long as I could remember, just hanging on, trying to make it through the day without a breakdown, sort of like the American operations in Iraq. By the time I touched ground in Colorado in February 2006, I was burnt toast. That’s the image that always comes to mind when I think of myself then: a blackened, smoking hunk of bread, still jammed between the heated wires.
Four months later, in June 2006, Colonel McMaster completed his command with the Third Armored Cavalry. As his adjutant, it was my honor to sprint across a field at his
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