Sunday was my final day of work at the 17th Fires Brigade.  The three months I spent with this active duty artillery brigade made this deployment worthwhile.  It was nice finally being in a public affairs environment were we had a focus and a purpose.  The 17th FiB has a great commander and group of officers that get the importance of the media and keeping those informed back about what we are doing in Iraq.  The NCO’s I worked with always had two priorities, the welfare of their soldiers and the accomplishment of the mission.  I got some good NCO mentorship over there and remembered why I love being an NCO and why public affairs needs good NCOs.

Everything I’ve learned about how to run a public affairs shop, I learned from my public affairs officer, 1st. Lt. Chris Dunphy.  He has a ton of experience as an enlisted public affairs soldier and did a great job handling his lane while I took care of mine.  We made a good team.

I’ll especially miss Spc. Maurice Galloway, the lone public affairs representative of the 17th Fires Brigade.  I hope we provided him with a little bit of guidance to help him with the rest of his deployment.  He’s a good Soldier with all the potential in the world.  Galloway is one of those natural leaders you meet that if he decides he’s going to accomplish a task, he will.  I look forward to the next time our paths cross.

I no longer regret reenlisting for three years because of these three months with the 17th FiB.  It’s always the good things we remember the best.  I’ll never forget my time with the 17th Fires Brigade.

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This is probably going to be it for my blog until I get home.  The fact that my posts have been sporadic since I got back from leave is no accident.  I found it nearly impossible trying to write a blog about my experiences in Iraq while also trying to maintain some semblance of professionalism.  My biggest regret with this blog is attaching my name to it.  I should have kept it hidden as long as possible and only given out the address to close friends and family.  My chain-of-command never censured me or even asked me about my blog.  I knew that would have changed if I had written about my real experience.  I’ve seen too many sites taken down in the past year because Soldiers wrote about the real deployment experience.  I didn’t want to be one of them.

After leaving my wife for the second time in a year this past May, I struggled with why the hell I was putting together products that I knew had no audience and was viewed as propaganda by those who actually watched it.  It wasn’t until I was sent to the fires brigade and started learning from Lt. Dunphy that I started enjoying public affairs.  It was because he gave our shop a purpose.  Tell the American people what we are doing and show them the missions we are supporting in Basra Province.  Many times our stories were about a civil affairs company from Georgia,  MP’s from New York, or guardsmen from Wisconsin and not about actual soldiers of the 17th FiB.  All of our work pointed back to showing families the work we are doing here and why it’s important…..even if we dime out our boss by publishing a photo of him enjoying a nice tasty float.  That’s just a perk of the job.

Maj. Kellard Townsend (the effects cell coordinator, or the PAO boss) reaches for a tasty strawberry soda float from CH (Maj.) Mark King of the 17th Fires Brigade.

Now I’m in Kuwait — the land of perpetual boredom — waiting on a flight back to Fort Dix, NJ. Hopefully by this time next week I’ll have a plane ticket in my hand and wondering how I’ll catch a ride to the Philadelphia airport.

This post is tagged 17th FiB, 17th Fires Brigade, 343rd MPAD