Until Tuesday by Bret Witter, Luis Carlos Montalván Page B
Authors: Bret Witter, Luis Carlos Montalván
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tell Tuesday’s story, for better or worse, I have to tell my own. Because to understand Tuesday’s impact on my life, and why he matters so much to me, you have to understand who I used to be and how far down I’ve been.
In 2003, when I arrived at Al-Waleed, Iraq, a tiny outpost three hundred miles from Baghdad and sixty miles beyond the nearest American forward operating base, I was strong. I could bench press 350 pounds, do 95 push-ups, plow through an Army obstacle course, and run ten miles before breakfast with hardly any effort at all. But more than that I was confident, strong-willed, a leader of men in the U.S. Army. And I loved my job.
I wasn’t raised in a military family. My father is a respected economist, my mother is a business executive, and they raised me in a comfortable, deeply intellectual environment. They expected me to attend college, like my sister and brother, but I grew up in the Reagan years, when optimism and nationalism were fundamental aspects of American ideology. I believed in “the Evil Empire,” as Reagan famously called the Soviet Union, and wanted to do my part to topple it, even though I was only eight at the time of his speech. When the United States invaded Grenada in 1983, there was talk among my father and uncles, all Cuban refugees, that maybe Cuba was next. Not militarily, at least in my father’s mind. He had been very much against the Vietnam War; he believed in economics and ideas, not blunt-force weapons. I believed sacrifice and hard work were required to change the world, and that meant action. So I defied my parents and enlisted in the Army on the day I turned seventeen. I spent the summer after my junior year in high school in boot camp. I was there when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and the U.S. military, along with a broad coalition, drew a line in the sand. I was hoping to serve in the first Gulf War, but by the time I turned eighteen and graduated from high school in June 1991, the “100-hour war” was already over.
I spent the next decade in the Army as an enlisted grunt, graduating from college and getting married, training my body and mind. I knew we were going to go back to the desert. There was unfinished business, and Saddam was a wild joker in the Middle Eastern deck of cards. I just didn’t know how we were going to get there. I was enrolled in the officer training corps at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., when the answer came in a cloud of smoke rising from the direction of the Pentagon. I called my infantry National Guard unit and told them, “I’m ready to go. Just tell me what to do.”
It took two years, but when the fight arrived I was ready. More than ready, I was eager. I believed: in my country, my Army, my unit, and myself. Defending my country and securing freedom for the people of Iraq? That was my purpose in life. My task? That was Al-Waleed and Iraq’s border with Syria.
Al-Waleed was the largest of only two functioning border crossings (known as ports of entry, or POEs) between Syria and Iraq and a notorious cesspool of corruption. For months, foreign fighters and weapons had been pouring across the border into Sunni-dominated Al-Anbar Province, which by the fall of 2003 was on the verge of revolt against the American occupation. So, in late September 2003, command sent my platoon—White Platoon, Grim Troop, Second Squadron, Third Armored Cavalry Regiment—to staunch the wound at Al-Waleed. Our job was to establish a forward operating base (FOB), secure the port of entry, and neutralize the flow of contraband and enemy fighters across more than one hundred linear kilometers of border and thousands of square miles of Anbar desert. To do the job right, it would take a few hundred troops. But the overstretched Third Armored Cavalry didn’t have a few hundred men to spare. As platoon leader of White Platoon, I was given three Humvees and fifteen cavalrymen.
We tore into our assignment, working from the basics out. Our first
In 2003, when I arrived at Al-Waleed, Iraq, a tiny outpost three hundred miles from Baghdad and sixty miles beyond the nearest American forward operating base, I was strong. I could bench press 350 pounds, do 95 push-ups, plow through an Army obstacle course, and run ten miles before breakfast with hardly any effort at all. But more than that I was confident, strong-willed, a leader of men in the U.S. Army. And I loved my job.
I wasn’t raised in a military family. My father is a respected economist, my mother is a business executive, and they raised me in a comfortable, deeply intellectual environment. They expected me to attend college, like my sister and brother, but I grew up in the Reagan years, when optimism and nationalism were fundamental aspects of American ideology. I believed in “the Evil Empire,” as Reagan famously called the Soviet Union, and wanted to do my part to topple it, even though I was only eight at the time of his speech. When the United States invaded Grenada in 1983, there was talk among my father and uncles, all Cuban refugees, that maybe Cuba was next. Not militarily, at least in my father’s mind. He had been very much against the Vietnam War; he believed in economics and ideas, not blunt-force weapons. I believed sacrifice and hard work were required to change the world, and that meant action. So I defied my parents and enlisted in the Army on the day I turned seventeen. I spent the summer after my junior year in high school in boot camp. I was there when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and the U.S. military, along with a broad coalition, drew a line in the sand. I was hoping to serve in the first Gulf War, but by the time I turned eighteen and graduated from high school in June 1991, the “100-hour war” was already over.
I spent the next decade in the Army as an enlisted grunt, graduating from college and getting married, training my body and mind. I knew we were going to go back to the desert. There was unfinished business, and Saddam was a wild joker in the Middle Eastern deck of cards. I just didn’t know how we were going to get there. I was enrolled in the officer training corps at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., when the answer came in a cloud of smoke rising from the direction of the Pentagon. I called my infantry National Guard unit and told them, “I’m ready to go. Just tell me what to do.”
It took two years, but when the fight arrived I was ready. More than ready, I was eager. I believed: in my country, my Army, my unit, and myself. Defending my country and securing freedom for the people of Iraq? That was my purpose in life. My task? That was Al-Waleed and Iraq’s border with Syria.
Al-Waleed was the largest of only two functioning border crossings (known as ports of entry, or POEs) between Syria and Iraq and a notorious cesspool of corruption. For months, foreign fighters and weapons had been pouring across the border into Sunni-dominated Al-Anbar Province, which by the fall of 2003 was on the verge of revolt against the American occupation. So, in late September 2003, command sent my platoon—White Platoon, Grim Troop, Second Squadron, Third Armored Cavalry Regiment—to staunch the wound at Al-Waleed. Our job was to establish a forward operating base (FOB), secure the port of entry, and neutralize the flow of contraband and enemy fighters across more than one hundred linear kilometers of border and thousands of square miles of Anbar desert. To do the job right, it would take a few hundred troops. But the overstretched Third Armored Cavalry didn’t have a few hundred men to spare. As platoon leader of White Platoon, I was given three Humvees and fifteen cavalrymen.
We tore into our assignment, working from the basics out. Our first
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