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Interview with MAJ Mark Holzer

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Interview with MAJ Mark Holzer UNCLASSIFIED A project of the Combat Studies Institute, the Operational Leadership Experiences interview collection archives firsthand, multi-service accounts from military personnel who planned, participated in and supported operations in the Global War on Terrorism. Interview with MAJ Susan Arnold Combat Studies Institute Fort Leavenworth, Kansas UNCLASSIFIED Abstract As officer in charge of the 101st Airborne Division Main in Iraq from March to May 2003, Major Susan Arnold – a JAG officer – was involved with targeting and rules of engagement issues during the major combat phase of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. After sharing her firsthand insights into the murderous pre-invasion grenade attack perpetrated against 101st officers, she discusses her responsibilities during the drive north and how they changed dramatically once the division arrived in Mosul. Indeed, from May until August, Arnold served as the 101st’s liaison officer initially to the northern Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA-North), which then became a branch of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA- North). From here, she had remarkable visibility on the disorganization that characterized the coalition’s early reconstruction efforts – the details of which she shares quite fully and candidly. Involved with Kurdish-Arab land disputes, the wheat harvest, propane availability and judicial assessments among many other post-invasion issues, Arnold relates how inadequate funding, severe personnel and equipment shortages, communication problems and an over- centralization that “put its thumb down on every good idea we had” resulted in a rocky transition into stability and support operations, causing her frustration level to be “very high.” “Arabs are very relationship driven people,” Arnold explained, “and when you get a rapport going and then get the rug pulled out from under you to some extent, that’s not helpful. In fact, that was a complaint I heard. Under Saddam, it used to be that everything had to go through Baghdad. And so when we got up and running in the north and then Baghdad starts vetoing things we’re doing, it seems like the old way of doing business – and that’s not helpful either.” Turabian: Arnold, Major Susan. 2006. Interview by Operational Leadership Experiences Project team with Combat Studies Institute, digital recording, 25 January. Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. [Digital recording stored on CD-ROM at Combined Arms Research Library, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.] MLA: Arnold, Susan. Personal recorded interview. 25 January 2006. [Digital recording done by Operational Leadership Experiences Project, Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS, in possession of Combined Arms Research Library, Fort Leavenworth, KS]. APA: Arnold, Susan. (2006). Personal interview with the author on January 25, 2006 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. [Digital recording done by Operational Leadership Experiences Project, Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS, in possession of Combined Arms Research Library, Fort Leavenworth, KS]. Government Printing Office: Transcript. Interview of Susan Arnold, Jan. 25, 2006; Operational Leadership Experiences Project/Combat Studies Institute; Records of the Combined Arms Research Library; Fort Leavenworth, KS. [Online version on MONTH DATE, YEAR, at http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/contentdm/home.htm]. UNCLASSIFIED Interview with MAJ Susan Arnold 25 January 2006 JM: My name is John McCool (JM) and I’m with the Operational Leadership Experiences Project at the Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. I’m interviewing Major Susan Arnold (SA) on her experiences during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM (OIF). Today’s date is 25 January 2006 and this is an unclassified interview. Before we begin, if you feel at any time we’re entering classified territory, please couch your response in terms that avoid revealing any classified information. And if classification requirements prevent you from responding, simply say you’re not able to answer. All right, Major Arnold, could you please start off by giving me a brief sketch of your military career, sort of beginning of time to the present, and then we’ll focus in on OIF? SA: Sure. I was an ROTC product out of Berkeley. I was originally a Signal Corps officer, did that for about four years, and then I applied for the Army Funded Legal Education Program (FLEP) and was accepted. At the time, they took like 10 people a year and paid for law school, so I went to law school from ’94 to ’97. After I graduated from law school, I was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division, went to the grad course, and eventually was assigned to D.C. in early 2003. I then joined the 101st Airborne Division as part of the division was already in Kuwait prepping for the war. My OIF experience is with the 101st. JM: What were the circumstances surrounding your service in support of OIF? What kind of preparations did you make, when did you receive your deployment order? SA: I was part of the plus-up. I was in D.C. and my husband was due to be a battalion commander in the summer of ’03. We were both going to arrive in June of ’03 for service at Fort Campbell. As the war drums started beating, General David Petraeus tried to get in all his incoming battalion commanders and my husband was one of them. We both knew General Petraeus from the 82nd so we both asked to go. My boss at the Office of the Judge Advocate General said okay. In February of ’03, we found out we were both going and, in Army terms, I kind of became a division ready force (DRF) 9 while my husband was a DRF 1. He launched out to Fort Campbell and I took care of cleaning up the house, taking the pets to my parent’s house, and he was gone to Kuwait by the time I got to Fort Campbell in late February. Eight days later, I was on the ground in Kuwait. So, I wasn’t with the division for any of the train-up. JM: What was your idea of what your mission was going to be, how you were going to support OIF? SA: I really didn’t know. My biggest fear was that I was going to be left behind to be a rear detachment and thankfully that didn’t happen. And then Colonel Richard Hatch, who was the staff judge advocate (SJA) for the 101st and then later rejoined General Petraeus in Iraq for Multinational Security Transition Command-Iraq (MNSTC-I), he said he wanted me with him at the division main headquarters. I had been the chief of operational law with the 82nd for a time while I was there and I was a brigade trial counsel with the 82nd, so I had a fair bit of Operational Leadership Experiences Project, Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 3 UNCLASSIFIED operational law experience in a training sense. I knew that once we got over there, JAGs tend to get involved in everything. And I don’t mean like warfighting, trigger pulling, but all types of bizarre crap: American citizens showing up at the wire, misconduct – everything. Things happen, and some you can anticipate and then other stuff is just other stuff. JM: Like the 101st soldier who threw the grenade into the command tent. Did you have any involvement with that particular case? SA: Yes. I happened to be on duty. Let me back up first. I went to D-main, we set up in Kuwait at Camp New Jersey in anticipation of going across, and we were a 24-hour full-on D-main operation. In fact, my husband and quite a bit of the 101st had already crossed the border. JM: What battalion did he command? SA: He eventually commanded 2nd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment (2-187), but at first he was with the division assault command post. The assault command post was already across. We were getting ready to pack up and go and it was like 0200 and we get the word of a grenade attack – and then I found out that somebody had admitted it. I heard over tactical satellite (TACSAT) so I called up criminal investigative division (CID) and got hold of Mike Graziano who was the chief CID investigator. I let him know that somebody had already made some statements; and from an evidence point of view, when somebody has already made some statements that sets off a lot of bells as to whether they’ve been advised of their rights and stuff like that. So I wanted to make sure CID knew that so they did the right things when they went to talk to him. Aside from coordinating witness travel, that was about it. But when it happened, we thought the enemy had come over the berm. In Kuwait, the base camps are about six miles in circumference so everything is really spread out, and for good reason: if a SCUD missile comes in, they’re not going to kill everybody in the camp. There were a couple JAGs asleep in this giant tent pod; they were the only ones in this tent; and so I ran over there to tell them to wake up and go where there were more people. And then we found out it was that rat bastard [Sergeant Hasan Akbar] and wasn’t actually the enemy. If you ever want a story, Rick Atkinson from the Washington Post was embedded with us and he did a story. I’ve never read anything that was so good. It captured the mood so well. JM: When did you actually cross the berm? SA: We stayed put because of the duststorm. We were going to go around the 22nd of March, but the duststorm came up. Colonel Thomas Schoenbeck, the chief of staff, made the decision to stay put and his thinking was, “If the sandstorm hits while we’re halfway unpacked, everything is going to be exposed to the elements and everything would be ruined.” So he decided we would just sit there and wait it out, which we did.
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