Photo By Staff Sgt. Patrick Caldwell | Lt. Col. Brian Dean, the commander of the 3rd Battalion, 116th Cavalry Regiment,...... read more read more
LA GRANDE, Ore. – Lt. Col. Brian Dean remembers his anger when it happened.
Master Sgt. Dan Ishaug remembers the confusion.
Capt. Christopher Miller recalls that Sept. 11, 2001, started out with a trip to the rifle range at the U.S. Marine base at Twentynine Palms, California.
All three men were in different places but the sudden, bloody terrorist attack 14 years ago was the trigger point of an epoch of transformation, tragedy and challenges for the American military.
All three men – members of Eastern Oregon’s largest Army Guard unit, the 3rd Battalion, 116th Cavalry Regiment – understood that the peacetime life they knew evaporated as the tragedy in New York City unfolded.
“When it happened I was mad as hell,” Dean, commander of the 3rd Battalion said. “We all collectively knew our military was going to become more active in the world.”
And the cost was going to be high, first in treasure and then in blood. The first butcher’s bill tallied more than 2,500 lives lost on 9/11. The monetary cost – in terms of fighting the war on terror – is somewhere around $1.6 trillion according to statistics from the Congressional Research Service.
By 2009 – two years before U.S. troops departed Iraq – more than 3,000 Americans had died in that nation and another 31,000, including more than 13,000 who did not return to duty, wounded according to the Congressional Research Service.
While statistics can be misleading, the percentage of deaths compared to the population of the United States during the war on terror stands at 0.002. Contrast that figure with the percentage of deaths in the Civil War – compared to the population – of 2.835.
Before the 9/11 attacks the 3rd Battalion was a solid unit filled with citizen-soldiers that fit a broad age range. Guard life revolved around one weekend a month drills and a two week training sessions in the summer. The specter of war was always far away.
In essence, before 9/11, a Guard member could conceivably go his or her whole career without hearing a shot fired in anger.
9/11, of course changed all of that.
By 2012 the 3rd Battalion was a combat-tested unit with two deployments to Iraq under its belt. The unit also boasted a different kind of Guard soldier, typically younger than in the past and a veteran or at least one deployment to a combat zone.
Ishaug, who was a Sgt. 1st Class assigned to the 3rd Battalion in 2001, remembered it was evident that everything had changed when he arrived at work that morning.
“I walked into a beehive. I remember everyone was running around in a panic. The phone was out of control all day. People calling up to get information,” he said.
That night, Ishaug was assigned to man the armory until the next day. At the time he said he understood that the paradigm for citizen-soldiers had changed dramatically. Ishaug, who is now the master gunner for the 3rd Battalion, admitted the war transformed his unit.
“That event changed the Guard, but I don’t think it was overnight. But the mindset, and the training, the adrenalin factor, because of the potential to go to war rose dramatically. But it did change the Guard. It changed everything,” he said.
The 3rd Battalion deployed to northern Iraq in 2004 and went back to the central part of the war-torn nation in 2010.
Ishaug, a La Grande, Oregon, resident who served two years in Iraq, said the deployments made the eastern Oregon Guard unit more proficient.
“The battalion is a better unit because of the two deployments. Would we be better if we never deployed? I don’t think so,” he said.
Dean, who was a young lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion on 9/11, said the subsequent decade-long war produced a different kind of Guardsman.
“In the days following 9/11 the military and the National Guard began an era of building flexible and adaptive leaders and soldiers. We didn’t realize it at the time but we had become rigid in our pursuit of perfection,” he said.
Dean, who grew up and went to college in La Grande and also deployed to Iraq, said the war forced soldiers and commanders to think in different ways over longer periods of time.
“We needed to become quicker, more agile, more ready and willing to change based on the situation,” he said.
Miller, also a La Grande resident, was still an enlisted man in the U.S. Marine Corps on 9/11. Eventually he served his initial enlistment in the Marine Corps, entered civilian life and then decided to join the Guard. His first experience with the Guard, he said, left him unsatisfied.
“It wasn’t professional,” he said.
Miller left the Guard and then, when the Defense Department began to deploy Guard units on a large scale to places like Afghanistan and Iraq, he decided to join the ranks of citizen-soldiers again.
“I wanted to do my part. I felt I needed to be part of it,” he said of the deployments.
The Guard force that emerged after 10 years of war, he said, produced an organization that was completely changed.
“There was a great degree of focus on discipline and training. From my perspective, for the National Guard, as an organization it [the war on terror] gave it a new relevance and credibility that it didn’t have on the national stage. It made the National Guard a professional organization,” he said.
In short, the war on terror and the deployment of National Guard units to combat zones ratchet up the stakes for soldiers, especially leaders.
“Becoming an officer during a period of conflict adds a certain level of seriousness and an additional level of importance to your job. You are responsible for leading soldiers and responsible for their welfare and it is sobering to know, OK, I will be leading soldiers in a war zone and my decisions, my proficiency, technical and tactical, may or may not lead to their death,” Miller said. Miller also deployed to Iraq during the war.
Ishaug said he noticed other changes in America since those dark days in the wake of 9/11.
“I think people are forgetting the nation was united then. We are not as united now. The trade centers united us and it took a tragedy to do it which is sad,” he said.
| Date Taken: | 09.11.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 09.11.2015 17:44 |
| Story ID: | 175809 |
| Location: | LA GRANDE, OREGON, US |
| Web Views: | 110 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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