2004: Summer Feature: A Soldier’s Tale

Leadership seems to be in Paul Rieckhoff’s bones.

President of the Student Government Organization before graduating from Amherst in 1998, he enlisted in the Army Reserves that fall. After teaching and then working on a political campaign, he worked on Wall Street for two years, all the while fulfilling his Reserve duty requirements. Rieckhoff resigned from his job near the World Trade Center just three days before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. When he heard about the disaster at the Twin Towers, he rushed to join the rescue efforts there. That evening, his Reserve unit was activated, and Rieckhoff was eventually sent to Iraq. He led a 39-man infantry platoon from the Kuwait border into Baghdad, where they participated in both combat operations and reconstruction activities.

Although Rieckhoff returned from battle safe and sound in February 2004, he knew many who were not so lucky. Sgt. Dustin Tuller, a member of Rieckhoff’s platoon, lost his legs in battle. Rieckhoff’s Brigade leader, Command Sergeant Major Eric Cooke, was killed, as was Spec. Robert Wise, a member of Rieckhoff’s battalion. For their efforts in Iraq, Rieckhoff and his platoon received the Combat Infantry Badge, becoming the first Reserve unit since Korea to earn this honor.

Now a first lieutenant, Rieckhoff is unusual in several respects: He is a recent Amherst alumnus in active military service; he is a strong advocate for the Army who is also a harsh critic of many aspects of the war in Iraq; and he has a rarely heard front-line perspective on both fighting and nation building.

In October 2003, CBS News’ “60 Minutes II” interviewed Rieckhoff for a report on U.S. military activity in Baghdad. Rob Longsworth ’99 and Dick Hubert ’60 saw that story, and arranged to interview Rieckhoff for Amherst on two different occasions in April 2004. Later that month, Rieckhoff spoke at Amherst in uniform, the first alumnus to do so in recent memory. Shortly thereafter, he greeted Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. on a visit to New York, and the senator’s presidential campaign then arranged for him to deliver the Democratic response to President Bush’s weekly radio address in early May. A flood of publicity ensued.

Excerpts from the Hubert and Longsworth interviews follow.

Paul, walk us through how and why you volunteered to go into the military.

My family, at least two generations since we’ve been in this country, has served in the military. My grandfather was drafted during World War II and served in the Pacific, and my father was drafted during the Vietnam time. It’s something that my father and grandfather never really touted, but it was always obviously a part of their development, and it’s something that I admired in them and that I kind of longed for myself.

So, when I graduated college I was looking for what I felt would be an extreme challenge. Something that would develop me as a person and wasn’t necessarily a conventional résumé builder.

I had an offer from J.P. Morgan and was committed to them, but still had this yearning to do the military. So I decided to defer my job on Wall Street for a year, and I enlisted in the Army Reserves. It was primarily so I could get what I call tangible leadership skills: actually moving people, influencing people, directing people, understanding the relationships that were necessary to achieve a common goal. I just felt that I wasn’t going to get that in a business environment; I wasn’t going to get that in an academic environment. The military gave me the ultimate in personal-development challenge and leadership.

In ’98, that was pretty much not thought of—people had no idea why in the heck I would ever conceive of joining the military after coming out of a place like Amherst. I remember an Army recruiter came to meet me at the Campus Center at Amherst. When this guy walked in, in full military uniform, it was like an alien had been beamed down from Mars. Amherst students couldn’t even comprehend that someone in uniform was coming on the campus.

We had only one guy in my class—Mike Anderson—who was ROTC, and he had to go to the University of Massachusetts. He joined the Air Force.

So, here you are, in the Army Reserves, and 9/11 hits. What was your first reaction?

I quit my job on Wall Street three days before 9/11, and was planning on taking a vacation and chilling out for a while, because the grind on Wall Street was a pretty exhausting two years.

Around 9 a.m. I got a call from a friend who said, “Have you seen what’s happening on TV?”—I had slept late for the first time in two years. I wandered out onto 24th Street and then walked over and looked down Broadway as the second plane hit. By the time the second plane had hit, a friend of mine, with whom I was in the Reserves, called me, and a cop friend of mine, who was downtown, called and said, “Let’s go down there and see if we can help out.”

So I linked up with two or three other guys. We got on whatever military equipment we could and just made our way south before the towers fell. My unit was activated formally around 10 p.m. Sept. 11. Guys just sort of came trickling in from all over the city. Anyone who had ever been associated with the military kind of understood that there was a way they could help, and people flocked downtown: cops, firemen, military, ex-military, guys on leave.

When we were walking downtown people said to us, “Well, go get those sons of bitches” or “Go get ’em back for us. It’s your turn now!” They felt like there was going to be an immediate punch back and we were going to be the people to do it.

What were the orders following 9/11 for you and your unit?

It was pretty much “hurry up and wait.” We thought we were going to go to Afghanistan. And that was put on the back burner. I went in the meantime to an infantry officer basic course and pre-Ranger course down at Fort Benning, Ga., for about six months, from February 2002 to June or July 2002.

Where were you when the U.S military crossed the border of Iraq?

My battalion, actually my company, was scheduled to come down through Turkey. Part of the original plan was to have Task Force Iron Horse, the 4th Infantry Division, come down through Turkey to Baghdad, through Tikrit and Mosul.

When the Turkish Parliament said “no,” we were redirected through Kuwait. So we actually got there late. We ended up getting to Kuwait the last week of March, beginning of April. We pretty much followed the original invading force up, and from that point we were attached to First Brigade, Third Infantry Division, which was one of the first brigades into Baghdad. The Marines came up one side, and the Third I.D. came up through the other side.

We rolled into Baghdad pretty much as the city was in the process of falling. Elements of our battalion were in the original invading force, especially in Baghdad and around the Baghdad Airport. Pieces of our battalion were there throughout the whole combat phase.

The combat was over, at least in a lot of American minds, the day the Saddam statue in Baghdad was toppled — an event that happened almost exactly one year before this taping. When did you feel that combat was over, if at all?

It ebbed and flowed.

The damage from the looting was tremendous. People ask me about the infrastructure and how much buildings were damaged during the bombings. The bombing campaign by the U.S. was tremendously effective and also incredibly surgical. They could take out one building and preserve all the surrounding buildings with limited damage. What was most destructive on the infrastructure and the buildings and the people in Baghdad was the subsequent looting. There wasn’t a plan in place to control it, and there were certainly not enough forces in place to control it, so it became what the guys used to call “the Wild West.”

It was chaos, especially in May and into June, but it wasn’t conventional war. It felt like a security mission, it felt like a peacekeeping mission. It didn’t feel like direct combat. The enemy didn’t really engage us. When they did it was sporadic engagements, and it wasn’t head on. It’d be pot shots; we got shot at all the time. But it was never an organized, coordinated attack.

The organized attacks really didn’t start to come until the fall. November was the worst month for us, when we started to see improvised-explosive-device attacks.

They started to take mortar shells or artillery shells, wrap them up with some detonation cord, and attach them to either a doorbell ringer or cell phone or any kind of remote detonation device. They’d wait for either a dismounted walking patrol or a mounted patrol in vehicles, and they’d detonate it. That’s where the bulk of the casualties have come in the year after the official end to combat operations. Those are difficult because when you are hit, it’s like a booby trap. You’re hit, and there’s no one to really retaliate against, and if you do, that’s what the guerrilla forces want. They want you to come in and punish the civilians who don’t know what the heck happened.

What was your best day in Iraq?

We did a lot of work with the local schools. In my sector we were responsible for the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Labor. There were two colleges, the largest medical complex in Iraq, I think maybe six elementary schools, three nursery schools and I think three high schools. We were reconstructing a lot of those facilities and the way they operated.

The thing that my guys and I took the most pride in was the schools. There was one school in particular that had been devastated, not so much by the war, but by the looting and by the years of neglect from Saddam. We saw a pretty large class difference in Baghdad. The poor schools are very poor: I’m talking raw sewage, no electricity, no power, no equipment, no chalkboards, no books, no security. The kids there did not feel safe; their parents did not feel safe sending them. So my best day was maybe one of the days when some friends from New York and from J. P. Morgan put together 50 or 60 boxes of school supplies. I told the kids stuff was coming, and I don’t think they ever really believed me until I showed up with a couple of Humvees full of pencils and crayons and paper and everything else. The kids just went crazy.

In my platoon, each guy contributed money to pay the salaries of the teachers in our sector the first month or so we were there. The teachers hadn’t been paid in three months, and they couldn’t afford to teach any more. Days like that really fueled my fire and made it worthwhile.

What was the worst day?

Our worst day was probably Christmas Eve 2003. We had been caught in an ambush the night before. We were doing a raid on a couple of buildings to the west of our sector that had been a problem, and as we were getting ready to enter the buildings we got caught in a rain of AK-47 fire, and three of our guys were hit. One was shot in the face and miraculously enough survived. Sgt. Jason Crawford was shot with a .38-caliber revolver at about point blank range, but at the time we didn’t know how bad he was. Sgt. Dustin Tuller was hit multiple times in the legs and back, and then we had another guy who caught some shrapnel in the face. It was very chaotic. We didn’t know if Sgt. Tuller was going to make it. Being there at Christmas time, I think, made it that much harder.

The following night, to exacerbate this situation and make it that much tougher, we lost our Command Sgt. Maj., Eric Cooke, while we were executing a raid in another part of Baghdad. Those two raids were probably the toughest time for us. But the unit really came together, and the guys bonded, in ways that I think only soldiers can understand. We pulled together and took care of each other and got through it.

For a lot of us in the U.S., seeing an Amherst guy identified on “60 Minutes II” as a class president must have come as a shock—a pleasant surprise, I hope. How did they find you?

The “60 Minutes” piece started with a reporter who had originally come to our compound to do a story on one of my soldiers who married an Iraqi woman. In the process, the “60 Minutes” guys spent some time with my guys and with me. The producer asked me, “Do you get the impression that the American people really understand what’s happening here on the ground in Iraq?” And I said, “Absolutely not.”

Did you ever ask them why they identified your college and the fact that you were a student government officer?

I didn’t actually ask them that, but I know that the producer was incredibly shocked to learn that I went to Amherst and I was in the military, serving in Baghdad. You don’t meet people from the top schools in the Army—very seldom. It’s not a traditional job track coming out of a liberal arts college, coming out of an Ivy League school in America. It’s not something that people have looked to as an area of opportunity.

Does that trouble you?

It troubles me tremendously. Because I think that the people who are enjoying so many of the benefits in this country are usually the ones who are difficult to convince to sacrifice in order to preserve the way they exist. The military offers tremendous opportunity for someone of lower socioeconomic class. People of higher socioeconomic class don’t view the military as a place that offers them anything.

The times that we live in now are much more trying than any in recent history, and the stakes are much higher, and I think that we as a country have been forced to re-evaluate what it is that we are standing for, what it is we hold dear to us. If we are going to progress and develop as a nation, I think there is going to have to be a greater degree of sacrifice. That will have to happen on all levels; the burden cannot continue to be shouldered by the lower classes. It’s time for the schools like Amherst and their alums and their students to understand that we have to play our part, too. And it’s not just giving money. If sons and daughters are going to die in a foreign land, it’s going to have to be sons and daughters from every socioeconomic class, not just the poor ones. Otherwise you’re going to have serious class issues in this country in the future. And that will erode some of the basic foundations of our country.

If it were up to me, military service would be mandatory. Some sort of service would be mandatory. The military is a great experience, because there are no class barriers. There are no age barriers, gender barriers—you’re all fighting for a common cause, you’re all working toward a common cause. You have people from all over the country, from all different backgrounds, forced to work together. And that creates a tremendous amount of awareness and understanding, and it makes for better people. It’s really unique in that respect.

A lot of people reading this will be surprised to learn that you intend to continue to put your neck out. You’ve volunteered for Special Forces.

I transferred this week to the 19th Special Forces Group, which is a Reservist Special Forces Group out of Rhode Island. I’d like to continue to be involved in the military, and Special Forces is the next challenge. It allows me to experience the things that I enjoy most about the military: everything from the most intense combat operations to the most benevolent, humanitarian missions. You get that entire scope in the Special Forces. You’re also around the best-trained soldiers in the world. I’m hoping that it’s something I’ll be able to do at least for the next few years.

Anything else you’d like to mention?

The thing that was most difficult for people to understand and accept, especially among my Amherst friends, is, “How can you be against the war but still fighting the war?” That was the big question, because I’m pretty vocal about how I feel on most political issues. From my student government time and just my personality in general, people couldn’t understand how I could be against the war but still have to go. They tried to understand if there were some kind of irreconcilable battle going on internally.

I wasn’t comfortable with the administration’s justification for the war. I felt like it changed a few times, like it was never clearly expressed to the American public, honestly, what the intentions for the war were. And they needed to throw the weapons-of-mass-destruction reasoning behind it in order to rally the support of the American people. I never felt after Vietnam we would ever wage a war that didn’t have overwhelming public support.

I was concerned about a lot of issues pre-war, but at the same time I was aware that the war at that time was pretty much inevitable. The Bush administration was going to war. And as a member of the military I was going to war. I had the foresight to understand there would be a time when peacemaking roles would become the bulk of what the soldiers would be doing over there. I didn’t know to what extent the combat was going to last. But I knew that, honestly, sitting in New York and protesting and raising hell was not going to stop the war. The war was going to happen anyway.

I felt like, as a platoon leader with 39 soldiers on the ground in Iraq, I could make more of a profound impact on the way the world viewed America, and on the war, than I could by sitting home and grinding my teeth and writing letters. I really believe in the power of each individual to determine a large part of how that overall endeavor is viewed. Even Iraqis who are against the occupation, when they meet a generous American soldier, change their views dramatically. I knew that I could mold 39 guys into a positive view of America, a generous group and a kind group. We achieved the role of being the best friend you could ever have and the worst enemy you could ever have.

Is it fair to say, Paul, that you’re going to be actively involved in these issues? You’re not just going to walk away from this.

No, I think it’s my duty at this point, and the duty of my soldiers, to communicate to as many people as possible about our experiences and about how our views have changed and developed as a result of these experiences. My soldiers, since they’ve returned to the U.S., have become more publicly active, have become more socially active, and that’s a good thing. It’s going to take a long time to filter this thing out. We’re going to have troops in that place 50 years from now. You can put me on the record. My kids’ generation will be there. As long as America continues to exist, we’ll have some sort of military presence in Iraq.

Rieckhoff is considering a graduate degree in public policy, and he says that if he is called back to Iraq he will serve again. “If I get the call tomorrow,” he told The New York Times, “I'm going.”

Dick Hubert ’60, a Peabody and two-time DuPont Columbia Award-winning producer, is a former Amherst alumni trustee (and Army PFC).

Rob Longsworth II ’99 is co-founder of Responding Together, a group of Amherst alumni who joined together after Sept. 11, 2001 to promote service to community and country.