Baghdad
THIS APRIL, I had the honor of being embedded with a brand new Army unit–the 1st Squadron of the 1st Infantry Division’s 4th US Cavalry Regiment, from Fort Riley, Kansas. The unit was created in January of 2006, and arrived in Iraq for this, its first combat tour, in February of 2007. As a result, it contains a disproportionately high number of soldiers–officers and enlisted–who are on their first combat tour of any kind; in fact, though they seem like seasoned professionals at this point, privates with fewer than 18 months in the Army abound in the unit’s platoons, which are now operating on the front lines in Baghdad.
“We are really like the ‘Band of Brothers’ in some ways,” the 1st Brigade Combat Team’s Public Affairs Officer (PAO), Major Kirk Luedeke, told me. “Just like the guys from the 101st Airborne Division depicted in [the miniseries], we are learning on the fly in the crucible of combat, and many of our team leaders and squad leaders haven’t ever done this kind of thing before. But they’re learning quickly and using sound judgment and leadership techniques each day. They’re team leaders and squad leaders because their chain of command has recognized their potential and given them responsibilities that would normally have gone to guys with more time and deployment experience. The way we were constituted as a new brigade did not afford us the luxury of having a large percentage of experienced junior enlisted and NCOs, so we are a modern day ‘Band Of Brothers’ in that regard.”
