Leaving a base in a war zone for the first time is frightening. This was certainly true for my friend Albert Herbokowitz, a lance corporal in the Marine Reserves who was deployed to Iraq’s Anbar province in 2007.

Then 19, Herbokowitz was a rock-solid Marine trained to operate M198 howitzers, beasts that could spit death, in the form of 155 mm shells, for 14 miles. Yet instead of raining high explosives down on the enemy, his company, or battery, had been deployed as provisional military police. Their primary duty was providing convoy security west of Fallujah.