"We definitely needed something more, more armor than just plywood and sandbags because that wasn't really going to stop much”

Joseph Woods participated in the invasion of Iraq and he spoke to Traveling Soldier's Tom Barton.

Barton: Let’s start with your branch of service, unit, M.O.S.
Woods: I was in the U.S. Army, 82nd Airborne Division, and I was Infantry 11 Bravo.

B: What was your period of active-duty service?
W: I was on active duty from August of 2000 to June of 2004.

B: And how much of that period was spent overseas?
W: Approximately fourteen months, seven months Afghanistan and seven months Iraq.

B: You were in Afghanistan in which year?
W: I was in Afghanistan from August of 2003 to March of 2004.

B: And then you came back to the U.S.?
W: I was back in the U.S., still active-duty, for a couple months Then I got out and moved on with my life.

B: What part of Afghanistan were you stationed in?
W: In Afghanistan, I spent the first couple weeks there in Kandahar, then moved onto Bagram. I was there for about a month, month and a half. Then I went to Khost for about two months. After that I went back to Kandahar for the remaining, I think it was about two months.

B: And where did you go after that?
W: Back to the U.S.

B: When did you come back here?
W: I got back from Afghanistan to the U.S. in January of 2003.

B: And when were you deployed to Iraq?
W: So then I went to Iraq seven months later, August of 2003.

B: Was your force expecting to be sent to Iraq?
W: We were not. They were telling us at the time – one brigade of the 82nd was sent to Kuwait prior to the initial wave of the invasion – and they had told us there were no plans on going to Iraq. There were a lot of rumors, but there was nothing official, so we’d be back in the States for a while. But the six months in between Afghanistan and Iraq we had no word of going anywhere until we found out we were going to Iraq and we left two weeks later, so it was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing.

B: There have been a lot of reports on how well prepared the equipment was for different units that were sent over there. How was yours?
W: It was pretty unprepared. In Afghanistan we were conducting operations [with the] use of helicopters. In Iraq, once we got where we were going, they told us we were going to be a mobile unit [with] trucks. So we got a bunch of trucks from God knows what other units. They’re stripped down, they were Humvees but they were like pickup trucks basically. With no armor at all.

B: None!
W: None.

B: None?
W: No armor at all, not until we went to. … We got to Iraq, I remember the first couple days we were there, that was the objective, to get to Baghdad International Airport. The first day, the first two days, everybody was, we were armoring our trucks. But – it was with plywood and sandbags.

B: So you’re way of entering Iraq itself was by air to Baghdad?
W: Yeah, to Baghdad International Airport.

B: How long were you in Baghdad and what came next?
W: We were in Baghdad for two weeks, approximately two weeks. I think there were two missions that were conducted out of there by air. I didn’t personally go on the missions because I was on a support channel and there was no need for me to go. But the unit my company did go on missions with did go on Chinooks. We were there for two weeks, and then we did a convoy up to Fallujah.

B: Roughly when did you arrive near Fallujah?
W: We got into Fallujah, I’d say beginning of September, first week of September.

B: September of ‘03.
W: ’03, Right.

B: Were people at all at that point in time concerned about the lack of armor, or was that not yet a big concern?
W: It was a concern because he had already heard on the news … I mean, going into Iraq we knew the biggest, the leading cause of casualties was the roadside bombs. I mean I remember going on the convoy up to Baghdad being scared. I was like on the back of an LTV with a bunch of duffel bags with little, like no protection whatsoever. It was probably a thirty Humvee convoy, thirty vehicle convoy. And so it was clear that we definitely needed something more, more armor than just plywood and sandbags because that wasn’t really going to stop much.

B: Were you given any explanations by command or promises about that, or was it talked about at all from the top down?
W: It wasn’t even talked about. I never heard anything about it. It wasn’t until we got to Fallujah and shortly thereafter, our guys were getting hit with IEDs, guys were getting injured, and it wasn’t until – I can’t remember the exact dates – but it probably wasn’t until October, the next month when we started receiving sheets of armor, which is called “armor x” or something. We had welders, engineers or whatever they were cutting it up and drilling it to the sides of the Humvees, and putting doors on the sides. Before that people were getting – several people got injured, one of our guys died before the armor got there.

B: Was this a subject of discussion among the rank and file?
W: Well I remember, from my experience, I remember talking to guys, we were like: “what the fuck? Where’s our armor?” It was an open bed Humvee. On [the] one hand we were like, yeah we kind of understand why it has to be open, so we can have guys pointing weapons and whatnot, but once people started getting blown up, it just wasn’t really cool anymore. We were just like, how is our administration, how are our leaders going to handle this, and make sure our guys don’t keep getting shrapnel ones and whatnot.

B: In some units it was reported that the senior officers got the armor first.
W: I don’t really remember that being a topic of any of the discussions I had with the guys, but yeah definitely I would say that the sergeant major and colonels’ trucks were probably the first ones to get armored, yeah definitely. Not to say that they weren’t going out into Fallujah, but yeah I would say they were one of the first vehicles to get armored.

B: Coming into 2003, there was still a view that the mission was a good one, that this evil dictator had been gotten rid of. Then as 2004 moved along, there were more and more reports of resistance by the Iraqis. How did that look to you first-hand?
W: Well, as soon as we got to Fallujah, we encountered resistance right off the bat. We were told going into Fallujah that they called it the “wild, wild west,” and that we were going into this area that was very pro-Saddam, there were a lot of Fedayeen soldiers there. We knew what to expect. And within the first week, I think the first week, we had our first major fire-fight. One of the platoons of my company was involved with that, a platoon that I had once served in, a lot of friends in were in that, where seven policemen, seven Iraqi policemen, which wasn’t sure whether or not whether they were legit or not, but these seven policemen end up dying, getting shot by our guys, and it was this huge fire-fight right outside their compound in Fallujah. But to answer your question, we knew that that area was very high in anti-U.S. sentiment, anti-U.S. sentiment was very high.

B: Fallujah had around 400,000 people living there at the time. How many forces did you have to hold it down?
W: The battalion I served in had about 900 guys or so, plus some attachments from 10th Mountain Division, and some engineers from some other units, I’m not sure. But basically our battalion was in control, basically we were assigned Fallujah, we did all the operations in Fallujah. Another battalion in our brigade had conducted operations on the outskirts of Fallujah. It was divied up to different battalions, so it was pretty much about under 1,000 guys doing missions in Fallujah.

B: So you had about 1,000 up against 400,000, assuming of course that not all the 400,000 are combatants. That sounds like rather thin odds.
W: Yeah. Yeah, you can say that.

B: You mentioned before the interview that your command had a somewhat more laid back attitude than the marines that came after?
W: When we first got there, we were the first…. Prior to us being there, I think there was a group of military police from some National Guard unit that were there, but they weren’t really pulling full-on operations going into Fallujah, so I’m pretty sure that we were the first units since the initial wave of the invasion that had gone up through there. The command figured out what would were right to do, what were not, as far as avoiding casualties, while still conducting a lot of missions but doing things in a smart, tactful way to avoid harm on the guys. So as time went on, we realized certain things like what areas to avoid that weren’t necessary to conducting operations, what areas were prime spots for IEDs, that sort of thing. In the seven months that we were there, we only lost, we only had one guy killed. There were a lot of injuries, from various IEDs and shoot-outs that happened, but only one KIA. The marines came in and lost like three guys within the first week.

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