Interview with Maj Mark Gilmore, Part II

Major Mark Gilmore deployed to Iraq for his second tour of duty in Operation Iraqi Freedom as the leader of a military transition team (MiTT) in September 2006. He reported first to Fort Riley, Kansas, to undergo immersion training at FOB Victory, Camp Funston. Characterized by Gilmore as similar to a National Training Center rotation with observer-controllers and scenario-driven training, his impression of the training was that it was "somewhat disconnected" with a sequencing mismatch between supporting and supported tasks like those requiring combat medical skills. Veterans of OIF like himself had to carve out time to integrate complex skill sets like mounted operations in contact. Training continued for the new MiTT members in Kuwait with live-fire battle drills and weapons re-certification conducted by MPRI contractors. Gilmore and the other team members then flew to Taji, Iraq, for yet more training at the Phoenix Academy, this time centered on cultural awareness, negotiations and in-country relationships based on ethnicity. Then the MiTT element fell in on Kirkuk under the tactical control of the 25th Infantry Division, eventually ending up at Camp Gaines-Mills, 40 kilometers from its 3rd Brigade at FOB Warrior. After an abbreviated relief in place/transition of authority, Gilmore had to negotiate to move his MiTT down to Gaines-Mills to be close to his Iraqi units: battalions of the 3rd Brigade, 4th Iraqi Army Division. The largely Kurdish 3rd Brigade units that Gilmore's MiTT advised and mentored guarded critical infrastructure including oil pipelines. Many of the individual soldiers had previous, individual experience in the Peshmerga militias, but unit knowledge and skills had to be developed from scratch while negotiating the peculiarities of army life in a developing country, such as the absence of a banking system which required pay in cash then furloughs to return home. Endemic corruption was an issue, especially in newly-professionalizing Iraqi units often recruited from communities with kinship and other ties. The advised units had almost daily contact, receiving mortar and intermittent small arms fire. Training proceeded in a building-block fashion, teaching crater analysis, for example, as a precursor to planning a subsequent operation to ambush potential firing points. Gilmore and his team later rotated into Baghdad to support their Iraqi units as a precursor to what became known as the "surge." Tensions arose from ethnic friction between the Shi'a and Sunni Baghdad residents of the new area of operations and the largely Kurdish 3rd Brigade units, especially as the op tempo increased. Working with elements of the 1st Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, operations were complicated by complex command and control relationships but focused on intelligence-driven pursuit of high-value targets. Gilmore concluded that MiTTs should be "married to an Iraqi unit for the duration of the tour" and aggressively pursue missions. In addition, he discusses the important, sometimes aggravating differences between internally and externally resourced MiTTs; the often difficult relationships between MiTTs and their partner American brigade combat teams; as well as the challenges he personally faced from some of his own MiTT members who were "dragging the team down." Gilmore also insists that "trying to use our value system to convey a point [to the Iraqis] was a futile effort."