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“We’ve all responded to a telephone call,” Eaton said, “And our higher headquarters that said, ‘Sergeant, lieutenant, colonel, general – hence get thee to Iraq in “x” number of days and assist in building the Iraqi armed forces.’ “And we have built a team that is very high performing where people have operated outside of their comfort zone,” Eaton said. “Outside of their experience, outside of their competence, and have risen to the occasion and have continued to keep moving this very important project and very demanding project down the road. Eaton's pride in his team is matched by the inspired affection Eaton’s soldiers and coalition partners feel for the soon-to-be departed commander. “I’m not saying it’s unusual that leaders inspire loyalty in the workforce,” said Office of Security Transition Deputy Commander, British Army Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster. “But he inspired an unusual degree of loyalty in the workforce. “As much as anything it’s his compassion and his care for his people,” Aylwin-Foster said. “That’s what really sticks in my mind. His loyalty downwards which is unusual. “And he’s meant everything to the organization,” he added. “He’s taken it from nothing, literally five guys standing around at the back of the Coalition Provisional Authority headquarters with the instruction, ‘Build an army,’ to now the Office of Security Transition. “It’s gone from five to 863 in the space of a year and a mission which started off just, ‘Build an army’ … to ‘Build an army and air force and navy. Take on the ICDC – the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps; take on the Iraqi Counter Terrorist Force; the Iraqi Police Service; the Border Police; the Facilities Protection Service ….’” “He’s the father of the Iraqi army,” Aylwin-Foster said. The soldiers agree. “He put the first block in our army. The first brick of the building,” said Iraqi army Lt. Col. Ahmed Lutfi Ahmed Raheem. “He gave us the confidence inside us to do our duty and showed us that there’s no difference between a small duty and a big duty,” he said. “When you speak with him and ask him a question, he doesn’t move his shoulders or his arms,” said Raheem. “He’s like a machine. But he’s a good man. You find the answer in his eyes before his mouth.” “God loves men like this,” Raheem said. “This country will never forget him.” Talking about his tour in Iraq and experiences over the past year, Eaton’s eyes do reveal his answers, and he speaks candidly about the bad as much as he does the good. In particular, this April’s Fallujah incident, a turning point for the fledgling Iraqi military, is a topic he willingly volunteers to discuss. In April 2004 an Iraqi military unit tasked with its first mission had an operational breakdown. Ambushed around Baghdad by insurgents, the unit repelled an attack, and many Iraqi and Coalition soldiers fought bravely. The unit regrouped and reassembled at an airfield and was dispatched to return to the clash to quell the insurgent uprising. Some of the soldiers in the unit refused to go – the willing fighters verbally fought with the unwilling. The mission was scrubbed and critics of the Coalition’s mission were quick to pile on. “It was the 2nd Battalion refusal to get on helicopters and go to Fallujah,” Eaton said, “Which was a public embarrassment to the Iraqi army and a very personal mistake on my part for having asked that unit to do it … I regret that. “And commanders are responsible for everything that happens or fails to happen in their units. The good and the bad,” Eaton said. To be fair, though, the Iraq army is really only months old. The U.S. Army was once also beleaguered with serious tests in the heat of fire in its own infancy more than 200 years ago. In fact, to characterize the Army in the first months of creation as an unflinching professional force would be to rewrite history. But since that early April operation that drew so much criticism, that very same unit has melded. In fact, history in this country may well look at “Fallujah” not so much as a critical hour when things went wrong, but rather a clarifying crossroads. The 2nd Battalion now regularly and enthusiastically performs critical Coalition missions with great and habitual success. Within the last month they have found six tons of illicit weapons and nabbed thugs from the streets bent on preventing democracy from setting root. Like its U.S. counterpart, the Iraqi army also has improved through defeat and disappointment. “We learned, and we got better from it,” Eaton said. Now Iraq approaches sovereignty with police and military forces in place where none stood before. And the unassuming man will continue to work behind the scenes and do what he has done for decades: build soldiers. Eaton will be the training officer for the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command in Fort Monroe, Va. And in a few days, he will leave Iraq with little fanfare, but he will leave behind the house he built. |
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