School of War - Ep 215: Ryan McDermott on Invading Iraq in 2003

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

Ryan McDermott, Army veteran of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and author of Downriver: Memoir of a Warrior Poet,  joins the show to talk about his combat experiences. ▪️ Times      •   ��  01:13 Introduction     •      01:55 Seeking purpose      •      04:11 West Point       •      06:48 9/11      •      08:41 3rd Infantry Division            •      10:12 Platoon tactics         •      14:51 “Crossing tonight”     •      18:08 Preparing for combat     •      23:40 Tired       •      29:37 Baghdad     •      35:51 Thunder Runs Follow along on Instagram, X @schoolofwarpod, and YouTube @SchoolofWarPodcast Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

I have an ambition to do more interviews with veterans about their tactical experiences and lessons learned. Tactical lessons, but also life lessons, with School of War, and this episode is in that vein. My guest today rolled up the Euphrates River Valley to Baghdad with a third infantry division in 2003. This is his story. Let's get into it. It is for war this Milwaukee invasion of the way. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infantry. The importance of Vietnam is to end in a state. We continue to face the great situation in Iran.

We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing ground. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. For more, follow School of War on YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and Twitter. And feel free to follow me on Twitter at Aaron B. McLean. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War.

I am delighted to welcome to the show today. Ryan McDermott, the author of a memoir, Down River, about his experiences in the Army and beyond. Ryan, thank you so much for joining the show. Aaron, thanks for having me on today. You're a veteran of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and I want to get to that and spend a fair amount of time on that, because it's occurred to me. It's sort of an oversight of School of War thus far. We've spent a lot of time on strategy and on policy.

We have dipped into combat here and there, but not nearly enough, and it is a resolution of mine to talk a little bit more about that and about the tactical side of things and about the human side of things by those who were who were who were on the ground which you most certainly were but before we before we get to the war tell me a bit about yourself tell me about where you grew up tell me about how the army first came on your radar oh yeah no absolutely everyone's got their own story into service i grew up in orlando florida you know part of my story is i grew up in sort a lower middle class background, blue collar background, born out of wedlock, actually. My mother, married my stepfather when I was about five years old. Had a normal suburban life. The army kind of came

onto my radar as I was seeking sort of my sort of a foundation or a down payment on the American dream. I think the military is a great pathway for anyone, for any, for anyone of any background to sort of have a foundation for their life. It's a great experience. And so that was, how the army. One, I don't, I'm not big on the water. Two, I'd never flown at that point in my life. So I kind of gravitated towards the Army, the West Point. I got a flyer based upon an SAT score or something like that. And once I learned about it, I was just fascinated by it and became very committed towards the transformation. And I think that's something I have to appeal to a lot of young people is that the military is a transformational experience and you build relationships

and become a part of a warrior community. And those were things that I wanted to sort of have by pursuing that career. And a right of passage, too. I mean, I think that seems to me what from time to time the services lose sight of, not necessarily my service, the Marine Corps, but I look at the marketing materials for the other services and depending on the year, there's a lot of emphasis on skills and jobs. And I'm not saying people don't join the military for those reasons. I'm sure there are quite a few who do. But in the combat arms community,

you tend to encounter people who have joined the service to prove something to themselves or to your point about transitions to become something. Absolutely. And it later manifested into choosing the infantry and wanting to go into, go through Ranger School. That was a big challenge that I wanted to take on

and to prove to myself that I could do it. and then ultimately through combat. What is the West Point of the late 1990s like? I just had a couple guests a few weeks ago who were sort of during, in the wartime West Point, and I have some experience of a different service academy at the peak of wartime. What's the pre-war, post-Cold War,

holiday from history, West Point as a student? That's a great question, because it's hard for me to sort of frame it because I experienced what four years. I will say the general, a future four-star general, General Abysade, was our Commandant for a couple of years. They did two-year rotations at Commandant, the four-year sort of General Christman was our superintendent. The Commandant's really in charge of military training. And one of the things that General Abizaid wanted to do is to try to institute more practical stuff.

So the West Point of the early 90s and 80s was still kind of hung up in what they call the fourth class system, where it's like more hazing, not hazing, but, you know, that type of leadership. And there was a transition towards a little bit more of real military leadership and inspirational leadership. You know, it's hard to sort of, you know, I will say that the expectations were, okay, we might get a Bosnia rotation or Kosovo rotation. There was no, and, you know, at that time, China was our, you know, we had, China was still kind of like, we were very friendly with them.

There was military would be, you know, visitors would come. And actually, West Point is a very popular place to visit. So it's an interesting thing because we were still at this pinnacle of our military might prior to 9-11 and seemingly invincible. You mentioned that the same sort of transformational ambitions led you to choose the infantry. Was that common coming out of West Point at the time? How does West Point think of the infantry? Well, I think West Point, at least then, and I assume now, really tries to push

its graduates into the branches where it feels like you're going to have the most impact. Not to diminish any branch. Every branch is important in its own way. As you think about the combat arms, infantry, armor, field artillery, etc. Those branches tend to where the future chiefs of staff of the army come out of. Because the military, as you know, offers pathways for people to transition, from a combat arms to a non-combat arm. So it's, yeah, so they've always been big on that.

Engineer branched back in the 1800s and through the early 20th century was kind of the branch of choice by many infantry armor. And it's kind of all a little bit over the place depending on who you talk to. And then you graduate, you go into this line of work. 9-11 happens shortly thereafter, but are you through Ranger School by that point?

Yeah, that's actually a great. I actually go into this in my book a little bit because Ranger, I spent about a year at Fort Benning, Georgia training. And so I, you know, one of the people I ended up, and these were people that ended up fighting the global war on terror. We were, we were new lieutenants. There was no war going on. One of the guys I met was a guy named Travis Captain, he was later, Travis Patrick when he became famous during the SUNY awakening. He and I were buddies, sort of battle buddies on one field problem. I went to Ranger school in, in some, summer, sort of almost a year after graduating West Point just because of the way the training timeline works. And I recycled Mountain Phase and hit my unit around August, September.

Now, September 11th, 2001 was the day I signed into my unit. And so the morning of I'm going with my roommate and we signed out as in between the planes hitting. And so I think a plane that hit one of the towers, it was on the news as we were sort of going into the company area or into the battalion area. And we were signed out as we were going to go back on leave. And so it was sort of, as we hit our units, it was like just a shock to the system of like, pre, you know, pre-9-11 to now, you know, we're at war in the preparation was very serious. Yeah, you and your peer group, unbeknownst to you all, sort of timed it perfectly to catch,

if you wanted the whole, the whole life cycle of the post-9-11 words. I guess your peers you stayed in would be colonels now, right? Is that about right? Yeah, they're colonels, brigade commanders right now. I think I don't know if we have any one-star generals, but they're, you know, they have, I would have to say, have spent their entire career, you know, on the forefront. Yeah. Tell me about the third infantry division.

This is a storied unit. I have a family connection to it. So I have a soft spot for the third infantry division, though I have no personal experience of it. But what is it at this point in time? that is to say what is its job so when there's a when there is a crisis the third infantry is expected to deploy and be ready it's high high high op tempo it was a high op tempo unit before 9-11 after 9-11 it just sort of accelerated the history the story you know the rock of the marne goes back to world

war one there's various battles that it fought you know fought in there's 2 7 infantry which is what what unit i came from the war of 1812 Andrew jackson there's a famous song from that. And but it's interesting because you mentioned that because what third infantry division was known for prior to 9-11, I thought it was a reputable organization that was a storied history. 2003, I mean, I think third infantry division's reputation certainly increased through the years that followed. Well, the seventh infantry regiment itself is a story, you know, John McManus, who's been on the show, has written a couple of volumes about the regiment's history. And it's this You say mechanized, so it's this sort of Cold War, ground maneuver, force designed.

It's almost like sort of a descendant, essentially, of Litzkrieg operational concepts, you know, armored, fast moving. It's kind of perfect, actually, ultimately for the mission that you initially do, which it's really the third infantry division, right, and then the first Marine Division. Those are the two units driving north to Baghdad. Yeah. No, so this is a great point. I think you bring up about the tactics.

One, what did we see in Desert Storm? How many days of bombing before we had the land forces go in? There was a decision made very early, I don't know, in the planning, that we would be basically, we would not be doing a massive air campaign before moving ground forces in. And so it was simultaneously. So I was on the border watching the first rockets kind of go overhead when I was told, hey, we're crossing tonight. And so that was March 19th of 2003.

We crossed. So it's an interesting thing you bring that up because the tactics. I was actually organized at a platoon level with two Bradley's, a dismount squad attached to that, and two tanks. And my tanks had the plows affixed them. And so if you think about this, why, you know, within the, and so there was another platoon configured the same way. And we were configured that way as like a hunter-killer concept in which I thought at a tactical level was just amazing because you could you could put your tanks up front when you knew enemy contact was was likely or imminent or was already happening. Or you could have

your Bradley's out front sort of maneuvering to when you're trying to like close with when you're sort of in a movement. That's usually we led with the Bradley's when we were moving out just between places to navigate. But when we knew that enemy contact was imminent or we had made enemy contact, put those tanks right up front. Bradley's could actually shoot H high explosive rounds off to the right and sort of flanks without too much concern for the tankers in front because there's no pedals. Now, the Sabo rounds, you have to be a little bit more careful because they have pedals that can cause some damage if you're not careful. Tell me about your platoon, who were these guys, did they come from? How did you adjust to them? How did they adjust to you? So my platoon sergeant,

Brett Creeley, this guy, he went to the universe. It was interesting because I got my platoon sergeant assigned to me like a month or so switched out a month or so before we deployed. And I had a different relationship with his predecessor who had a transition to another organization right before we deployed. So I had like a leadership change. And Creeley, he was, it was interesting because he had a ranger tad he had he was a master gunner which meant he was fully qualified tactically he was fully qualified from a sort of understanding the bradley mechanics and everything plus he had a four-year college degree and so it was interesting we had and he was new to the platoon so we were we had a little bit of a feel out but we ended up having a great relationship because he was just very

competent and i had a high degree of trust with him but you know it's an interesting dynamic because that, you know, the, you know, the way the soldiers sort of gravitate towards NCOs and, and so forth. My gunner, Edward Verdun, he, you know, he's from Georgia. He, you know, he's a quiet guy, you know, I've stayed in touch with him. You know, it's been a long time. You know, when you're in the Bradley with the guy 24-7, you can, I don't know, it's, it's an interesting dynamic, one being an officer, if people treat you differently, but

he put up with a lot of my sort of idiosyncrasies, as did my gunner, or as did my driver, driver was more vocal, Luis Rosa, Staff Sergeant. Luis stayed in touch with him over the years. He actually deployed another, he did a second deployment after this one, after 2003, and was a squad leader and ended up severely wounded and was a triple amputee. And really inspirational to me to see his resiliency. He's a painter now. He has like artwork and prestigious institutions.

You know, there's Sergeant Anderson, Sergeant. Sergeant DeAndre Tyler. You know, there's, there's, you know, I've connected, you know, what's great. What's interesting about this, our generation is I've connected with a lot of them, a lot of my guys on Facebook. And I mentioned, and I actually have an acknowledgement page where I list out all the guys that we could remember because we didn't really stay in touch right afterwards. It was kind of like we went to different units.

But we've, you know, I've got them all listed here. Brett Creeley, Andrew Sorenson, Randall Scott, Corey Anderson, Pat Doug. Troy Favor, John Barfield, Jason Chase, and the list goes on. So we're in March of 2003. You know you're going to Baghdad. Tell us about your first experience of combat. So I was covering, my platoon was north of lane five. There's like multiple lanes.

The Marines had the one through four or something like that. And I was on a screenline mission to basically watch the border. I get a call for my company commander who says, we're crossing tonight. And so we get in our mop gear. We get to the LD, the line of departure as soon as possible. And we began to see, I saw rockets going overhead. It was pretty crazy to see that. And then we crossed.

And it's, hey, everything we talked about, like, so our first mission was to take out an observation post. And one of the other platoons went off. So it was like three platoons, basically going off in slightly different directions to destroy observation post. We destroyed ours. I don't think there was anybody there, but we just, we destroyed it, we cleared it. And then we, you know, it's, it is quite an adrenaline rush because, you know, until you've gotten to that point, and this is a sort of tactical leader, it's all sort of training, but like the reality that it's no longer training targets that there's people on the other

side that are trying to survive. It's a, it's sort of a primal thing that, you know, as a combat leader, you got to be prepared for. And there is definitely a switch. you know, after that initial assault, it was kind of like we, we didn't see any contact for like another day or so, like directly we see people. You know, it's like, do we shoot these, you know, do we engage these people or do we just keep bypassing, you know? And so at first it was sort of just bypassed. But once we got to Najaf and the escarpment, that was a different story.

Yeah, you know, I remember when I was teaching being asked by students who were, you know, going to be commissioned and go off and join various combat arms specialties. They would ask, you know, how on earth can they be ready when they show up on day one to lead in combat? And I would tell them, I said, you're going to be surprised, actually, at the quality of the training you're going to get. You actually will feel confident.

It's hard to believe, but you will feel confident, like literally your first day on the job. And then, as you point out, certainly after you've done a workup as a unit, that if, you know, the company commander comes to you and says, hey, destroy the enemy at 1, 2, 3, 4, five, six, seven, eight, you'll be able to do it. You really will. There will be other things that you're not necessarily going to be prepared for. There's a lot of human stuff on the leadership side that you're just too young. Like, unless you've bailed people out of jail, you know, offered, had a side hustle as a marriage counselor. Like, you're probably not going to be prepared for some of that stuff and you'll

just have to learn as you go and listen to your NCOs. And then there's obviously, and this, you're sort of alluding to this. I'm not, I actually don't really know how to articulate it. You'll be tactically prepared to command because our training is actually pretty good. But there's that last emotional piece, the actual experience of the danger itself, of the two-way rifle range and all the emotions that come from that, which generally speaking, for most people who have made it that far and have these jobs won't really affect your performance. But it is a total, it is, it is different in kind. It is different in kind. And then obviously, if you take casualties, it takes on a whole new register. It doesn't really affect your ability to do your job necessarily,

but it is it is something that you can't really you just have to live it you know i don't i'm not doing a great job of explaining no i think you're doing this is excellent erin i think you're hitting on something that is fundamental you know the differentiating training from actual combat experience is that you're going to be ready tactically the the thing that's different you know because you do rock drills you actually do rehearsals that's part of you know any mission preparation you're going to do rehearsals for it. You know, I think one of the, you know, there's the balance beam, you know, every, the obstacle courses, right? There's a team building. I think those are actually very valuable for combat because the, the balance beam one is probably the one from a mindset

perspective is closest to what I experienced going into a battle because your brain is telling you, I don't want to have to walk across this balance beam, but you have to. And the more confident you are, I mean, the easier it's going to be. That's where the sort of killer mindset of like, you know, you learn in combatives and all that is really important. You know, there's a battle that we fought that's sort of reminiscent because we did a train up in October where we rehearse this. There's a battle of the escarpment.

There's high ground east of the west of Najaf. There's this lowlands where there's like marsh. I can't really describe it. It's not, there's no vegetation. It's just like if you go off the cause. way it's basically mud. And we had trained a mission almost just like it, sort of simulated that way, and we were all waxed out. They basically sort of kill us all, the observers at the National Training Center, because we didn't move fast enough. And so getting there, leading up to that battle,

the first thing I see is I see the remnants of a prior battle that the unit ahead of us had engaged. And so you're seeing carnage. So one of the things you have to be, I think unit leaders, have to be prepared for is seeing death and destruction before your time is you're probably going to go through a zone where they haven't cleaned it up yet and that's that is kind of a gut check and we made a little bit of humor out of it i mean i literally saw this vehicle blown up and all i can make out of it were ribs you know just like charred you know what used to be an iraqi soldier and so that's what you see and you're like wow this is this is game on And so we start we took this as we took the escarpment, you know, the Air Force, this is where

war today then is so much different today is our Air Force dominated the skies, but they took out one area to the east, but they didn't actually take out the area that we had to assault through because it needed to be trafficable. Right. And so we assaulted a fully defendant. We got pictures of it like the Iraqis defended the high ground. They had RPGs. But the thing is, we weren't really.

because they couldn't really engage us like we could engage them. We can out and range them. And so I remember it just being, you know, your adrenaline is up. Your focus is like very attuned to what's going on. And then you just have, that's where the training takes over that you just got to do what you have to, you know, you got to, you have to execute. One thing I think, a great piece of advice, and this ties to what you were saying earlier, that my company commander gave, And he was, I think, probably the best operational level commander, I could imagine. And he's still in the Army. He's a colonel up at a West Point.

He said, your soldiers will never be more calm than you are. And I thought it was profound because you have to keep, if you are spazzing out as a leader, your soldiers are going to spazz out even more. And so there's a certain reservation of like calm and steady that you got to keep. in control because your guys will and gals will look to you to how to be responsive. And so that there is that even if it's a false sense of confidence or just pretend like a fake, you have to like show that to your troops. Yeah.

And it's not easy. I mean, that's why people end up. I mean, I probably did sort of it sounds like bravado, especially on the radio. You know, it sort of sounds cocky, but it's actually kind of a performance of confidence when your heart's racing. And it's challenging. I remember towards the end of my combat deployment, I spent a lot of time acting company executive officer,

which means I run the operation center. And you could tell immediately when you would get a call from a unit in contact, they wouldn't have to say it because you could just tell from the sound of the voice of the patrol leader. You know, there was a motion where, you know, a minute earlier there hadn't been. So like mastering these things is huge, not just for officers, but NCOs and any unit leader. And I also found, you know, I'm curious,

your experience, but that sort of one of the dirty secrets of combat that the general population may not appreciate is at first, until somebody, you know, you know or you're responsible for gets seriously hurt, let alone worse, it's a little bit fun. It's kind of fun. It's kind of like the most awesome game of Cowboys and Indians you've ever played. And I'm not saying, you know, my adrenaline wasn't running. It certainly was. I don't have ice water in my veins. But, you know, I had trained for this. I had a, I had a theory of what I needed to do. I was doing it. And it was exciting. And then somebody gets hurt, someone on your team gets hurt.

And it changes instantly. It changes instantly to a much rar experience that is sort of physiological. Like it's not intellectual. It's like your body feels this anger and this fear. And it's a completely different, completely different animal all of a sudden. Absolutely. No, you're right with where I am in my story, which is after we assaulted through Najaf, and we ended up in a sort of holding area north of Najaf.

There's the red sort of the sandstorms and so forth. One of the things, you're right, absolutely right. Like there's nothing more exciting than, you know, in a raw form to be, and to be very honest about it, it's very, there is a fun and excitement about it because you're winning and you're doing something that is, you know, historic. There was a moment where, you know, I remember seeing the smoke in the distance where one of our, another unit, Bravo company, 27 infantry, they had a couple of guys who were searching a vehicle and there was an Iraqi sort they blew it up it was a it was a

probably the first sort of act like that that happened I can't remember if there were how many guys there were killed in that moment I think at least at least two or three and I didn't know them personally but my gunner did and it was and this is an important thing in wars as you're dealing with like you're losing people and and you're right a lot of the range of emotions and it changes so You know, several days before, we might have, you know, as we're rolling in, we're like, do we need to engage these guys who are, these Iraqis who are armed? They're legitimate sort of targets. Or do we just keep driving? And, you know, different mindset.

As soon as that, as soon as the car bomb took out our guys, it became a different, it created a different mindset. Totally. Talk about fatigue. I mean, how much rest are you and your soldiers getting at this point? I don't know how many days. You're basically moving up to Euphrates River Valley. I'm not sure how many days in of the story at this point, but I can't imagine it's long relaxing nights and then a few hours drive.

Like, how's it actually working? So the first, the way I thought, I think about our initial sort of assault was there was the phase where we didn't sleep at all. We got like one night's sleep all the way to Nizhaf fought that battle. And, you know, there was a point where like the night after that battle in the Javre, we had to do maintenance. And our guys were so tired that we could, I mean, we were, you start to get to a point, that's a very dangerous time,

because you start to lose like almost, like you'd rather, you don't care if you'd get killed. You just want sleep. It gets to be that bad if you're not careful. But so that first, the first sort of several days, like 20, 20, 23rd to the 24th, until we got into objective Rams and Raiders, which is north of Najaf. And that's where we basically had like a perimeter.

And we started doing, as the sandstorms came, in. We started doing missions. And the opt tempo at that point was more manageable. So we kind of got a refit. Our logistic supply chains caught. I think the point was to let them catch up. And on, I think, on or about March 30th, April 1st, that's when we got the next sort of, hey, we're going. So we kind of got rested up. And then once that assault went, because the game plan was basically to go from the south of the Carbola, shoot through the Carbola gap, go north to the crossing point at Objective Peach, which is kind of the small little town around. It's very small. It's kind of rural to secure that bridge and then hold that bridge and then move into Baghdad. We didn't know how fast. I initially thought we were going to hold up after that. But to try to be succinct, I can't remember. This is reliving the assault. through Carballa. During the day, it's either March 30th or April 1st, we get, hey, you're, you're going tomorrow. That night you can't sleep because you know that it's going to happen.

Like, you might die, the adrenaline's running. There's an artillery barrage that night that's just something that a spectacle, 50, you know, artillery rounds just glowing in the, in the, in the, in the sky at one time. It was like a, you know, sort of Fourth of July experience you can't imagine. And then it's go. And, you know, we're assaulting through. It's, it's sort of slow. You know, you're just, you know, it's tanks driving at night. You can't really drive that fast. You know, and then we hit some pockets a little resistance, you know, assaulted and, you know, had to secure some, you know, dismounts and so forth. And then, you know, it's go to the bridge. Now this is the big battle, objective peach. And I'll come back to this if you want to. We secure the bridge,

really got one night of sleep but not much. It's like, you know, three or four hours at most, maybe a cup, I don't know, I can't remember. And then we're told, hey, we're going to the airport tonight, which is the next day. And then we spend all day driving through, you know, the back sort of rural areas and small towns by these canals. And then the next night is taking Saddam International Airport. And then the next day is securing Saddam International Airport. And then only after we secured the grounds, where is it like, okay, now we can get a little bit of rest. So I don't know how many days it was, but it wasn't, it seemed like a nonstop sort of operation from south of Karbala all the way until we got the Baghdad.

It is a very army story. You could say the same thing about the Marines or maybe the whole U.S. military, that it's the need to service the equipment and the weather that give you a break. It's not the humans. And it's sort of the style of warfare too, right? to my point about the third infantry division being organized for this fast moving, again, for lack of a better word, Blitz Creek, some maneuver warfare, we're going to move faster than the other guy, we're going to cut off his lines of supply, we're going to confuse him. Like, that requires a tremendous human effort.

So you mentioned the carbolod gap. So you basically go up the Euphrates and you cross the Euphrates and drive into Baghdad. You know, what are your thoughts as you approach the city itself? What do you think is going to happen when you actually get into the city? Oh, I will tell you that at that point, I hadn't slept in like a day. The bridge, the battle at objective peach was a significant battle. It's been, it's one I think doctrinally it needs to be studied more because it had smoke. They blew up, the Iraqis blew up one span of the bridge right before we crossed.

The other span they had like civilian cars drive out. So I had to like tell my, I had to tell one of my tankers, hey, listen, I don't care. drive, you know, you got to get to the far side of the bridge. If somebody's in the way, you've got to run them over effectively. And that's kind of decision you're going to have to be told, you know, sort of make. And so that battle, but like going to, you know, going to, you know, what we're thinking is I want to get home, you know, that I remember that being the thought, like, let's get this done.

let's get to the airport and get this done so we can go home. So there was, I mean, Aaron, I'll tell you, there was this sort of naive sort of perspective because that's where our planning kind of ended at our level. Right. We knew securing objective lions was the last big objective we were responsible for. So once we got there, assaulted through, and, you know, it was, you know, they weren't expecting us to have vehicle. They were expecting an airborne assault. You know, they were expecting, you know, some other means of securing the airfield.

Whereas, you know, once we had tanks there, it's like it was a turkey shoot. as somebody described it. And so I, you know, I didn't have, like my night vision was actually out on my vehicle, so I couldn't really participate as much except for, you know, kind of navigating my guys. I didn't want to take myself out of the battle because, you know, or takes another track because I was like, you know, let's just work it this way. I'm not a tanker. I didn't want to take over my platoon sergeant's track necessarily. But yeah, you're just thinking, I want to get to the end and go to sleep. And you're trying to get through it with your guys all alive. Like, you don't want to I mean, you're trying to, I mean, it's, it's eliminate the threat, make sure your guys, I mean, it is, are not, you know, put in danger that they don't, you know, there's danger you can put yourself in without if you're not being assertive enough on the battlefield.

So there's the balance of let's not be too aggressive where we do something stupid, but, but the, the, the op order, this is interesting, this, there's this cliche about op orders. Like, my company commander literally gave the op order to secure the, to go to Saddam International. airport on an MRE box. It was like you're gonna here's the order of March. This person's gonna lead follow the leader. And it was that's it. It wasn't it was sort of this is the route we're gonna take. We're gonna enter here. And I go into detail because it was because at night you get all we got all bunched up. And so the first platoon, you know, the first in order of movement took the wrong, you know, took a direction where they couldn't move forward anymore. So we instead of backing out, like the second platoon then had to become the lead. And my platoon was usually

held in reserve when moving because we had the plow tanks were kind of like breach force. We ended up having to be, we ended up in the front when we were securing the tarmac. And my platoon sergeant, Brett Creely, basically communicated with the company commander because at that point in time, only the company commander and the executive officer had a blue force tracker. You know, everyone had the, you know, the old school, like, here's, here's my grid location, but that's really difficult to plot. You know, you can't really just plot that real time. The Blue Force tracker was only on two tracks.

And so they would communicate with each other. And then we were on the tarmac. And there's a story there about how two civilian airplanes got blown up by a tanker. I don't know who that was, but. Their name has been lost to the, to the, time. It's not in the book. It's not in the book. What happened is we get online.

This is so this is an exclusive for you. We get online on the tarmac and we haven't slept, you know, and one of my tankers is like, hey, I see a plane out there and can I, can I shoot it? And I was like, I can't see it. I, you know, and so he calls up, we get permission, we shoot, he shoots it and it blows up. And then, you know, and then another couple minutes go by, he blows up another one. Anyway, the picture of these are on like many of the securing of the airfield. these pictures of the planes became sort of notorious for the securing of the airfield.

Well, I want to hear about that in Baghdad. I mean, it's this strange operational situation you guys are in where you're facing this enormous army. I mean, the Iraqi army is no joke on paper. But then it's sort of collapsing in front of you as you go north. And the casualties I've heard you describe seem like they're from paramilitaries. You know, I mean, like the Iraqi army is not operating car bombs, right? It's it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's fedeying and maybe guys who were in the army,

but they're not operating as Army anymore. Or maybe I'm wrong about that. Well, there are some, there was some, I wasn't, so after we took Objective Peach, there was a counterattack. I wasn't on the front for that fight. One of my fellow platoon leaders was on the front for that, but they, I think, attempted to sort of send track vehicles to retake the bridge.

But, you know, our overmatch at night is just huge. And so, you know, rolling through the objective area after, you know, after Objective Peach, you know, you know, to be candid, you're going through an area where there's bodies, you know, there's Iraqi bodies and trenches. They look like they're sleeping and they've got sand covered on them. And it's quite an experience when you see that, the reality of it. You're seeing dead people.

You're just still on the battlefield as you continue to move forward. Yeah. So these thunder runs, you know, sort of they're famous. Again, I sort of put myself in the place of the operational planners and the higher level commanders. I mean, you look at Baghdad on the map. And it's a worry. I mean, like, this could take a while. This could lose you a lot of Americans if the Iraqis are smart and if they want to fight.

And these thunder runs are these sort of probes or raids. I don't know exactly know what the term of art is. Maybe that's why they end up getting called thunder runs because they're sort of unique. But they end up showing that actually the city is sort of there for the taking. Tell us about them. I think the thunder runs have gotten a lot of attention for what they were because of the storytelling. But the whole point was to show the Iraqis we could go. in and out of Baghdad without, you know, it was a, you know, I don't know, like a raid.

It's the purpose is almost more morale and just sort of showing, hey, we have control here. And once you start broadcasting that to the broader people, they start to realize, hey, you know, this is to the Iraqi people, people that the city is following. You start to lose the resistance of the Iraqi army. They realize it's game over, at least for that phase. Yeah, I remember watching this on TV. I was still in college. and post 9-11, I had given serious thought to joining the military, like a lot of people, and seeing this, and then, you know, not long after what you're describing, you know, Saddam's statue comes down or probably a bunch of Saddam statues come down, all in April of 2003.

And I remember thinking, well, I miss the war. There it is. It's over. I, you know, and I actually decided. I was like, oh, well, I guess I'm not going to join the military. I mean, it seems kind of grim, you know, waking up really early, getting yelled at. Like, that's not for me. And obviously I was wrong about that, but that was the powerful impression in April 2003 that it was over. And it sounds like you were kind of on the assumption that you'd be going home pretty soon and it was over.

Well, at least based on what we were told like mission-wise, but what I would say is by the time our mission ran out, I was convinced it was nowhere near going to be over. So what happens? So after we, after the thunder runs and there's literally over. night, it changes. You know, we start doing peacekeeping operations. I ran into some Air Force Iraqi engineer who worked on planes. He was very distraught that somebody blew up his airplanes. I told him the Air Force did it. And so he was very distraught. But the, we started, then we went over to the other side. And there was a moment, you know, it's hard to say what could, what could have should have happened. But disbanding the Iraqi army, there was a couple of things strategically that were made

decisions that were made, you know, debathification and so forth, that made it, you know, this is where the political object is such an important thing in the study of warfare. Ryan McDermott, author of The Memoir Down River, it's been a great pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks for taking us through your experiences. Aaron, thanks for having me on today. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.