What does Josh do in the Army? (part 2)

Hi there,

Joshua here. I'm up at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, for the Army's Command and General Staff College course. That's a course that all Army majors have to attend, so I'm here. While I do miss Rachel and the kids, this is a pretty good course. My classmates (other Army majors) are a pretty good group and we always have some interesting discussions.

A while back I made a length post about what I do in the Army, back when I was at the U.S. Embassy in Morocco. So, this is a follow-up explaining what I'll be doing once I leave here and head to Iraq.

I will be deploying as part of an MTT (Military Transition Team). MTT teams are small (10-11 people) teams that work directly with an Iraqi military or police unit. Our job is to help support them in their operations.

For example, if the Iraqi battalion needs some equipment, such as rifles, boots, body armor, etc. we coordinate to get it for them. If they are conducting oprations and need fire support (artillery or air support) we request and coordinate it for them. We also conduct and supervise training. The whole point is to make them more effective at doing their job, securing their country, and fighting the bad guys.

In some ways this will be similar to some of the work I did in Morocco.
There, I helped coordinate training for the Moroccan Army. Several of the US soldiers I worked with said that they found working with Iraqi soldiers to be easier than working with Moroccans. If that's true, I should be okay, because I had a pretty good time working with the Moroccans. We'll see.

Here's a picture of me with some Moroccan soldiers at a training exercise near Marrakech.

I'll follow up again with my next post about why we're in Iraq, and why we need to stay until the mission is finished.

If anyone has any military-specific questions I'd really love to discuss them.

Take care,
Joshua