First Person: Iraq Service Difficult, Scary and Painful -- but We Did Good Work

As we near the 10-year anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq, Yahoo News asked U.S. servicemen and women who served to share their perspectives and discuss how it changed them. Here's one story.

FIRST PERSON | March 20 marked the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. I was only 16 years old at the time, and I never knew that six years later I would be there myself.

In many ways, the Iraq War stands as a defining element for my generation. We came of age during a period in which the United States was involved in constant conflict. Many of us have family members or friends who have served overseas, and for the military, it was a time of constant deployments, redeployments, and training in between.

I served as an infantryman in the U.S. Army from 2005 to 2009, and I continue my service in the Army Reserves to this day. In late 2007, I deployed to Taji, Iraq, with the 25th infantry division and returned in early 2009. During that time, my platoon was tasked with conducting numerous raids to capture "high-value targets," or individuals that were wanted for specific things -- orchestrating suicide bombings, attacks on coalition troops, and torture, to name a few.

I still remember the face of a young girl I met on a raid one night. We kicked in her door, waking everyone up as they slept on the floor. We ordered everyone to get up, but she was so weak and sick, she couldn't do it on her own. Her face, ringed with thick black hair, was beautiful, but I doubt she lived much longer.

That girl was a victim of events that were far beyond her control, or that of anyone who was there that night. Perhaps if we hadn't invaded, she would have not gotten sick, or would have had access to good health care. Or maybe she's alive and well by now, with a husband and family. I'll never know.

Many felt the war was unjust, that we should never have invaded in the first place, and that we should have left as soon as possible.

By the time I deployed to Iraq, though, the invasion was done, and the place was a mess. I decided not to concern myself with the right or wrong of the invasion; I just knew that we had a job to do, and we did it. My unit had an 84 percent success rate in our mission to capture high-value targets, and we took a lot of bad people off the streets. Iraq was a safer place when we left then when we arrived. In February 2009, I watched as Iraq held its first peaceful election in years, a moment that showed real progress in our involvement in a bloody civil war.

Shortly after that, we redeployed to the United States. I left active duty, moved back home, and used the GI Bill to go to college. It was the right decision, because as it turned out, I met my wife on my first day of classes.

I'm proud of my service in Iraq because I know that we accomplished something good during our deployment. Even better, my platoon brought every man home alive. It was often difficult and scary and even painful. But we did a good thing there. So 10 years after the invasion, and four years after I came home from my own deployment, I can look back at the war and feel good about my role in it.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/first-person-iraq-difficult-scary-painful-did-good-213600971.html

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