Interview with MAJ Chris Haggard
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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 Chris Haggard Combat Studies Institute Fort Leavenworth, Kansas UNCLASSIFIED Abstract MAJ Chris Haggard served as the battalion fire direction officer (FDO) with 2nd Squadron, 3rd Armored cavalry Regiment (ACR) in Anbar Province, Iraq during 2003 and as executive officer (XO) and commander with a military transition team (MiTT) in East Baghdad, Iraq during 2007 and 2008, both in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). In this November 2011 interview, MAJ Haggard discusses various Field Artillery (FA) duty positions and missions, the importance of his prior enlisted service, and the challenges and rewards of working on a MiTT. MAJ Haggard concludes his interview with the observation, "I love what I do in the Army. I think it's extremely important work that I'm doing, and that there will be times that it's frustrating, but as my instructors here at Intermediate Level Education (ILE) say, "Sometimes you just have to shut up and color." Decisions are made at echelons above my level that I may not fully understand, but those decisions are made for a reason and I am not a policy maker. I am a policy executioner." UNCLASSIFIED Interview with MAJ Chris Haggard 8 November 2011 JF: My name is Jenna Fike (JF) and I'm with the Operational Leadership Experiences Project at the Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. I'm interviewing MAJ Chris Haggard (CH) on his experiences during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). Today's date is 8 November 2011 and this is an unclassified interview. Before we begin, if you feel at any time that 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 that you're not able to answer. Before we talk about your deployments, could you give a brief history of your background with the Army? CH: Sure. I joined the Army on 3 September 1998 as an enlisted 11M, that's a Mechanized Infantryman. I attended Basic Training and Advanced Individual Training at Fort Benning, Georgia. My first duty assignment after Basic Training was with the operations section (G3) of I Corps at Fort Lewis, Washington. I have 20 months of enlisted time before I applied to and was accepted to Officer Candidate School (OCS) back at Fort Benning. When I was selected for OCS, I was branched into the Field Artillery (FA). My first assignment after attending FA Officer's Basic Course at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, was with 1st Battalion, 15th Field Artillery Regiment at Camp Casey, South Korea. It was a unique experience in Korea. It seems like Murphy follows me wherever I go; that one year in Korea was the coldest winter with the most snow since 1950, and I actually cannot stand being cold. I got a unique nickname, my first nickname in Korea was Cold Feet. I got a second nickname later during the monsoon season when I managed to sink my fire support team vehicle (FSTV) in Casey Creek. My fire support platoon was rolling out of the motor pool to go to a field training exercise with the rest of the battalion, and to exit the motor pool, the tracked vehicles had to go down into Casey Creek, go down the creek about 200 meters and then come out of the creek on the other side to get on the tank trail. During the monsoon season, Casey Creek was subject to flash floods. There were six to eight foot flood control berms along Casey Creek, and as I entered the creek, I got mired in the mud underneath the bridge that we had to cross under. As I was getting out of that eddy, I managed to get back onto the water crossing and a flash flood managed to swipe my FSTV off of the low water crossing and as we say, we were off to the races. The FSTV managed to swim very well until it started taking on water. We were 500 or 600 meters downstream when we had to beach the FSTV against a flood control berm because the water was so high we could not safely cross underneath a pedestrian footbridge crossing the creek. Being broadside to the current, that was when the FSTV started taking on water. Water was going into the track commander's hatch and came out the driver's hatch, completely submerging the FSTV. To add insult to injury, the recovery operations officer in charge was the second highest-ranking officer in the American Army on the Korean Peninsula, the Assistant Division Commander for Support. Because of that incident, a new safety briefing was instituted in 2nd Infantry Division (ID). That's how the Monsoon Safety Briefing came into being for American forces in Korea. Operational Leadership Experiences Project, Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 3 UNCLASSIFIED JF: You were the instigator of the Monsoon Safety Briefing. CH: I personally, first-hand contributed to the improved safety of all Soldiers in the Korean Peninsula during monsoon season. JF: You're infamous. How many Soldiers are on the vehicle? CH: We had seven Soldiers in the vehicle; four Soldiers assigned to the company FST, then there are two Soldiers for each platoon to act as forward observers and radio telephone operators (RTOs). We were not at full-strength, but almost full-strength. JF: I'm glad everybody got out. CH: The only casualty suffered during the incident was one duffle bag. JF: And a little bit of your pride. [Laughs] CH: I had a Polish science teacher in middle school who said, "If you cannot laugh at yourself, you cannot laugh at anything else." It was a humbling experience, but it did lead to a lot of jokes and I've got a very thick skin. JF: There's something to be said for that. You mentioned that when you went in enlisted you were Infantry, was that by choice? CH: Yes, it was. JF: What precipitated the switch to Field Artillery, was that also by choice? CH: FA was actually my third choice. When you fill out an application for OCS, you list your top ten branch assignments. Being Infantry and wanting to be outside in the open and not desk bound, which is counter-intuitive to going to OCS, I wanted to join the Infantry. On my OCS application, Infantry was number one, Armor was number two, and Field Artillery was number three. I am not bitter about not being Infantry, being Artillery has been a vastly broadening experience for me. I think I have had many experiences and opportunities that an Infantry officer might not appreciate. JF: How do you feel that your prior enlisted time has helped you as an officer? CH: Being a single, lower-enlisted Soldier prior to becoming an officer, has given me a certain perspective. There are things that I experienced as a Soldier, things that I had to do as enlisted, that I do not ask my Soldiers to do now, because I did not agree with them when I was enlisted. I try to keep my experience in mind from the enlisted perspective when I provide guidance to my Soldiers now. JF: Do you think that that's invaluable? CH: That is extremely invaluable. Officers come from very different and unique backgrounds, not only their commissioning source, be it West Point, Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC), or OCS, and the experiences that those cadets or candidates have coming up through their commissioning sources form their personality and their leadership style. It goes back further than that to how they were raised by their parents and really what part of the country they Operational Leadership Experiences Project, Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 4 UNCLASSIFIED came from, the society they grew up in, with the morals and the ethics and the values that their parents and families imparted on them, the values they absorb from the environment and the society they grew up in. Being prior enlisted does provide a unique viewpoint for officers, whether it's a staff officer responsible for a staff section, or a commander responsible for a unit. JF: Do you think that it's important to have those many different perspectives, to have prior enlisted officers but also to have officers who were not prior enlisted? Or do you think that it would be not a bad idea if most officers had some enlisted time as well? CH: With the things that the Army is asked to do today in a very complex, ambiguous environment, I think the more varied experience base that you have to draw from is more important than insisting that all officers have some sort of enlisted experience. That is just a small component of leadership from an organizational standpoint. The West Point officers, the ROTC officers, and officers who have come through OCS from their enlisted all bring in different viewpoints, different experiences, different thought processes that enable an organization to better understand and frame a complex, ambiguous problem. JF: I would agree with that. Thank you for going through all that. It's interesting to hear the different perspectives, because you do hear different stories from prior enlisted officers. How many deployments have you been on since we started operations in Iraq and Afghanistan? CH: I have had two operational deployments. The first was in 2003.