The Mississippi National Guard in Iraq

Andrew Wiest’s Dogwood explores the experience of a Mississippi National Guard unit’s 2005 deployment to Iraq from its inception to its aftermath, in keeping with the tradition of looking at a specific military unit to better understand a larger conflict and the society that sends their soldiers off to war. It is not merely a memoir, rather it is also a look at the National Guard itself, and how this important citizen soldier institution adapted over time depending on what the Pentagon and other policy makers decided was the best way to use it amid shifting doctrine.

Wiest organized the book into eight chapters, which chronologically tell the gut-wrenching story with an emphasis on primary accounts, especially interviews. Mirroring his Boys of ’67: Charlie Company’s War in Vietnam (2012), which used this approach to tell the reader more about the Vietnam era by focusing on a particular unit in detail. A color photo section accompanies the text between pages 176-177, along with three maps, an index, a “cast of characters” (useful for keeping track of so many different people) [pp. 300-311], an appendix and a bibliography.

Wiest wisely chose to chronicle the experience of Mississippians; in that they would often reflect America’s reality given their socio-economic backgrounds and motivations. The focus of the story is on the 150th Combat Engineer Battalion, which transformed from the 150th Quartermaster Battalion in the late 1990s when it was decided that Mississippi would field a brigade-level unit. The new 155th Armored Brigade needed a combat engineer capability that exceeded the existing 134th Combat Engineer Company. The new 150th Combat Engineer Battalion incorporated the old 134th as Alpha Company, transformed the former 786th Transportation Company into Bravo Company and rounded out the battalion with Charlie Company which had been the 785th Engineer Company intended for construction tasks, not combat. [pp. 46-47] Of course, these changes led to personnel adjustments as well, as some elected to retire or transferred to other units once the new plan commenced. Many personnel required retraining, other adjustments made, and the unit transformation was finally completed in 1997. Fortunately, experienced Guardsmen remained, even if they were not necessarily combat engineers, meaning that the 150th would go into Iraq with a modest range of knowledge and skills, even if they were new to combat engineering expectations.

When the 150th got to Iraq in February 2005, it soon found itself not doing the mission it planned for, rather, most of it would be assigned to a dangerous forward operating base (FOB) called “Dogwood” in Al-Anbar Province which Wiest described as, “the heart of the insurgency in Iraq” [p. 93] within 30 miles of both Baghdad and Fallujah. The bulk of the battalion (two companies plus HQ and other attachments) would be conducting an infantry mission on the west side of the storied Euphrates River; without the same vehicles a Regular Army unit would have had and stretched thinner than the units they replaced but, frustratingly, with the same responsibility. The 150th had less troops to patrol the same large area with less well-protected vehicles, although they up-armored their M113s and HMMMWVs with scrounged “hillbilly armor,” [p. 90] and possessed limited initial intelligence about the insurgent threat.

In the face of those challenges, they still tried to perform their job in the “Triangle of Death.” [p. 94] Add to that the local insurgents boasted many weapons caches, therefore trying to tame the area was never going to be easy. Unfortunately, the 150th lost SFC Sean Cooley, an important senior NCO, on the second day they were at Dogwood due to a pressure-plate improvised explosive device (IED). [p.105] His death left a profound mark on the unit, forced to deal with tragedy right away without any adjustment period. In the wake of Cooley’s death, the 150th dealt with a range of emotions, which differed from typical Regular Army units in that they had much longer connections going back years, not the usual culture of transfers in and out. While Cooley was the first, there would be more losses in the grueling months ahead.

The 150th continued to serve in Al-Anbar Province, adapting to fight deadly foes in the “insurgent hotbed of Owesat” [p. 176] and nearby, with limited personnel and often improvised means. There would be more tragedies, and more losses to IEDs as the beleaguered unit learned how to deal with their new reality while not losing their humanity. The Mississippians had to learn to survive the relentless, grinding cycle of cat-and-mouse style counterinsurgency: patrolling, raids, weather extremes, nerve-wracking convoy runs, dealing with military bureaucracy & inefficiency, performing humanitarian and medical projects, discovering sometimes massive weapons caches, cooperating with local informants and interpreters, interacting with reluctant villagers terrified by the insurgents, scrounging due to supply shortages, numbing monotony punctuated with sheer terror, dodging incoming mortar rounds, experiencing wrenching heartbreak, etc. When the 150th departed in December 2005, they could argue they had weakened the local insurgents, captured or destroyed copious amounts of weapons and equipment but contrary to their best efforts, the insurgency continued unabated.

Wiest’s Dogwood: A National Guard Unit’s War in Iraq offers a sharp, often visceral, unvarnished glimpse into the lives of the average citizen soldiers of the Mississippi National Guard who served in Iraq in 2005 with an objectivity that makes it a superlative account. It honors them, their sacrifice, and their families in doing so. Further, it makes an argument for the National Guard itself as valuable in the dangerous combat zones since 9/11, contrary to the old “weekend warriors” stereotype. Since it is among the first attempts to give the National Guard perspective in recent wars, it should be on the bookshelves of casual readers, historians, and policymakers alike.

---///---

Our Reviewer: Professor Schultz (Luzerne CC) has taught history and political science to community college undergraduates for over 20 years. Specializing in military history, particularly World War II and the Cold War-era, he has presented papers at the McMullen Naval History Symposium, the Society for Military History Annual Meetings, the Midwestern History Conference, and other venues. He contributed Chapter 12 “The Reich Strikes Back: German Victory in the Dodecanese, October-November 1943” to On Contested Shores: The Evolving Role of Amphibious Operations in the History of Warfare, edited by Timothy Heck and B.A. Friedman (2020). His previous reviews for us include Warrior Spirit: The Story of Native American Patriotism and Heroism, Home Run: Allied Escape and Evasion in World War II, The Spanish Blue Division on the Eastern Front, 1941-1945, The ‘Blue Squadrons’: The Spanish in the Luftwaffe, Malta’s Savior: Operation Pedestal, Flawed Commanders and Strategy in the Battles for Italy, and Lawrence of Arabia on War.

---///---

Note: Dogwood is also available in e-editions.

StrategyPage reviews are published in cooperation with The New York Military Affairs Symposium

www.nymas.org