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Military Oral History Interview Transcript
Lieutenant Colonel Haimes “Andy” Kilgore
Boone, North Carolina
20 August 2010
JB: Judkin Browning
HK: Lt. Col. Haimes Kilgore
JB: It is August 20, 2010. We are in Boone, North Carolina on the campus of Appalachian State
University. I am interviewing Lieutenant Colonel Haines of Appalachian State University. I am
Dr. Judkin Browning of the History Department at Appalachian State University, and we will
begin the oral history now.
HK: Where were you born and raised?
HK: I was born and raised in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a small, little town in the central part of
Mississippi, close to Meridian.
JB: When were...I should have asked you your birthday.
HK: My birthday is 4-5-67. April 5, 1967.
JB: When and why did you choose to join the military?
HK: I joined the military when I was 17. I enlisted in the Mississippi Army National Guard
when I was still in high school. I went to basic training the summer between high school and
college. And I joined because it was something I’d always wanted to do. I knew I was going to
be in the army, and… college was nothing more than a means to an end. It would get me a piece
of paper that I needed to be a commissioned officer. That’s all it was.
JB: So you enlisted before you went to college?
HK: Yes. I was enlisted in the Guard and then when I was in ROTC in college, I was what we
call a simultaneous member program member, which we still have in ROTC. That’s where
you’re enlisted in the Guard or Reserve, but you’re also in ROTC, so it allows you to serve while
you’re in college.
JB: Now, was there a family history of military service that inspired you or were you one of the
first in your family to join the military?
HK: No, there was a family history. It’s not a glorious history or anything; it’s just that most of
the males in my family were in the military. My father retired as an E-8 out of the Mississippi
National Guard. He had been active duty in the Air Force. His brother, my uncle, was a Marine
in Vietnam and then had come out of Vietnam and gotten in the Air National Guard and he
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�retired, I think, as an E-8 out of the Air National Guard. Yeah, there was a little bit of a history
and I mean, it goes back to pre-Civil War, but no general officers or anything like that in the
past. Mostly enlisted.
JB: Did your family relate their experiences? Particularly your uncle in Vietnam? Did you grow
up hearing of those experiences?
HK: A few, not very much, and virtually none of the combat experience. That’s something that’s
not really talked about that much.
JB: Now, tell me about your basic training experiences. Anything memorable from that time in
your life?
HK: When I went to basic training was summer of 1985. I’d just graduated from high school and
I went to Fort Dix, New Jersey. Because I was in the Guard, I went with what was called a
“buddy platoon,” 62 members of the Mississippi National Guard. And so I knew, I think there
were nine total people from my high school in that basic training class, so my basic training
experience is not typical.
My ranger buddy, the guy that lived on the top bunk while I lived on the bottom bunk, was a guy
I’d known for probably 15…15 or 16 years out of the 18 years of my life at that point. So it was
not where I went off in the middle of strangers. I had a blast in basic training (Browning
chuckles). It was…it was fun. It was challenging, but it was only as challenging as you were
willing to challenge yourself. It could have been a lot easier if you just wanted to skate by.
JB: Have you ever been deployed into a combat situation?
HK: Yes. I’ve been deployed twice into combat. The first time was when I was a young 2nd
Lieutenant on active duty. I was with the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Squadron, Ghost
Troop, and I was a tank platoon leader. We deployed to Desert Shield, which evolved into
Desert Storm. The second time was more recently in 2004. I deployed at the battalion XO
[executive officer] for 3/8 Cavalry, which is a tank battalion in 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry
Division. We deployed to the Green Zone in Baghdad with the rest of the division. Most of the
division was kind of headquartered at BIAP, Baghdad International Airport, so we were the
brigade that split the Green Zone.
JB: So for your first combat experience…when did you learn that you would be deployed during
Desert Shield? How did that process work to get your over there?
HK: Well, it was an ongoing situation, when I actually PCS’ed to Europe. When I got there in
August…
JB: Of 1990?
HK: Of 1990. And I went to First I.D. Forward, which was down in Stuttgart. There was one
brigade, which was forward in Germany. The rest of the division was back at Fort Riley.
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�And…as soon as I got there it was announced that they were going to be drawing down. So I was
with, basically, a non-deployable unit…the first day that I met my battalion commander, me and
two other second lieutenants who had just got there, we went up to him and introduced ourselves
as his new lieutenants and told him that as soon as we got out of Grafenwoehr, where we were at
a gunnery, we were going to go look for a new job.
Basically, thanks for letting us come to your battalion, sir, but you all are not doing anything fun
and sexy, so we’re going to go find a job. And we all went to 2nd ACR and found jobs. The
thinking was: something’s fixing to happen…in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and if anybody goes
out of Europe, it’s going to be 2nd ACR or 11th ACR, so, you know, we’re tankers, armor guys,
so that’s where we want to be. And it just so happened that 2nd ACR did get deployment
orders…but my battalion commander was not…pleased with us.
He pretty much cussed us out on the spot, looked us up the next morning bright and early; we
were all on a .45 qualification range for our pistols—and he apologized for cussing us out and he
told us he still wasn’t going to let us go. I think the XO talked some sense into him and he let us
go find other jobs, but he didn’t release us. I actually had to take a leave, and because I was
brand new in the army I didn’t have any leave built up. I went a hold on leave to go to predeployment gunnery with 2nd ACR.
Gunnery got extended, and I had rented a car because I didn’t own a car at that time in Germany,
so I was a week late on a German rental car which cost me about three or four thousand marks…
that hurts on a 2nd Lieutenant’s salary, but in the end I got my deployment gunnery, did very
well, and I got notified on 29 November that I was going to 2nd ACR. Pack your stuff, leave,
leave now.
I landed in Saudi Arabia on the first 747 out of Europe on 1 December. We would have landed
about a day earlier than that, but there were problems…since we were the first planeload out of
Europe…there had not been the diplomatic agreements made with countries so they didn’t give
us over flight rights. We had to land in Switzerland, and we stayed there on the ground at
Switzerland, where they wouldn’t let us deplane for almost 20 hours.
JB: On the plane?
HK: On the plane. Ran out of all food, water, all the toilets overflowing. It was not a fun flight.
We were very happy to get to Saudi Arabia.
JB: I imagine. When you were in Saudi Arabia, did you participate in any battles?
HK: Yes, we participated in the Battle of 73 Easting. What 2nd ACR did...2nd ACR was the
lead element for 7th Corps. The 7th Corps was basically the main elements of what was the
Allied battle plan. While the 1st Cav held their nose and their attention around the southern part
of the Al-batin Wadi, which is the border between Kuwait and Iraq that goes down and hits the
Saudi Arabian border. 7th Corps would go do a wide flank out to the west and hit the Iraqi forces
on the northern side of Kuwait, so coming in from the west. And we led 7th Corps.
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�If you read in some of the history accounts, they say it was a lightning strike and it was a fast
move, but it was very, very, very slow for us. It was: travel a little bit, stop, wait for a couple of
hours, travel a little bit more, wait for a couple of hours. It was anything but a lightning strike.
Of course, we were the first guys up there, so there was nobody in front of us. And the way 2nd
ACR went about it, they put squadrons on line and they had two squadrons on line and they had
one back in reserve.
2nd squadron was up in front, on the left front, or the northern edge of that as they turned to the
east. 3rd squadron was to the south of us. And then on the afternoon of 26 February, there was a
Shamal, basically what you call a sandstorm. And if you can imagine hurricane force winds
blowing across the desert picking up anything in its path, that's a Shamal. You couldn't see
without artificial assistance. We could see with our sights, because we had thermal sights and
stuff, but you couldn't see hardly with the naked eye. If you tried to see with the naked eye, all
the sand flying around would damage your eyes. And so we were just basically creeping forward
when we met elements of the Tawakalna Division.
Now they'd been some combat with 2nd ACR elements prior to that, but I was a tank platoon
leader. Tank platoon leaders usually are back behind the scouts. Our scouts had seen contact
and we had an advanced element from the squadron out front from Fox troop, and they had seen
quite a lot of combat, but it was not the sustained, main defensive belt of the Iraqis. And what
2nd ACR was aiming for was the Republican Guard divisions from Saddam's forces. Basically,
those were his elite professional army. The regular army units were kind of conscripts, and so
that's what we were going for.
We targeted for the Tawakalna and kind of hit them in the side. They did have a little bit of
warning that we were coming that way so they had dug defensive positions, but when we hit
them, they were not prepared. Vehicles were not cranked, vehicles were not manned. They were
hunkered down with the sandstorm thinking there's no way the Americans are moving in this.
And to an extent they were right, there was nothing flying because you...well, there was nothing
that could see the ground that was flying. There was plenty of aircraft flying above the Shamals
and all the bad weather, but they couldn't target anything in a raging sandstorm, so it was just the
ground forces that were moving.
And our movement at that point, when we gained contact, was literally about as fast as a man
could walk. You were feeling one-track pad hit the ground at a time. There were other elements
of our squadron that were getting contact. Our troop commander, Captain Sardiano, felt that it
was imminent, so what he did was he pulled his scouts in and he put his troops online. So now
he's in the center of the troop. He's got a tank platoon on each side of him so he's got his tanks in
the middle and he's got his scouts spread out to the side. Now this made it easy to command and
control, but when he did that, our frontage dropped substantially. And we had another cavalry
troop that was beside us that our scouts were supposed to be maintaining contact with. Well,
they lost contact with Eagle Troop in the sandstorm.
And Eagle Troop got into a large fight with basically, at least a battalion of T-72s and some other
vehicles and there's a pretty famous account of that. The Eagle Troop commander was Captain
McMasters…when we were in Sardiano, he knew we were going to hit something. Well, the first
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�inkling that we were moving into their defensive belt was, we saw through our thermal sights
some mounds out in front of us and what you're basically seeing is a green, grayish picture on a
little TV screen that anything out there that has heat in it shows up as white.
So the hotter, the whiter. We were watching these two mounds and we see people coming out of
one mound, and it was like, they were glowing, they were so hot in contrast to everything around
them. And we knew there were no Americans in front of us, so that was probably the only
correct fire command that I gave the whole time.
Gunner Coax Troops he puts .762 into the guys that were coming out of the bunker and it was
like kicking over an ant bed. And so what they did was they were coming out of the bunker...
and they were running from one little mound to another. Now I'm a dumb redneck, but I can
figure one's a mound and one's an armored vehicle and so I told the gunner to shoot the vehicle,
and that's probably a little bit calm for what I said (laughter), I know I did not give a good fire
command and I probably kicked him a couple of times as I was telling him to shoot it. But he
put a heat round into the vehicle. It turned out it was a BMP 1....and about the time that...
JB: A BMP is?
HK: A Soviet-designed infantry carrier. It has a short-barreled 73 mm cannon and it has a small
sagger rocket mounted above the cannon, and it has a lot of room in the back for a squad of
dismounted infantry. So it was pretty potent weapon in its day, but it was quite obsolete when
you look at the Bradley. And there were other types of BMPs on the battlefield so it was real
important that we identify what type of vehicle that it was.
So later on, I got kind of quizzed on what we had killed. Was it a BMP 1 or was it a BMP 2?
BMP 2 had an upgraded missile system and an upgraded gun. Much more capable than a BMP 1.
But the troop commander shot the vehicle probably not more than a second after I did. And now
if you can imagine that the sandstorm was blowing from right to left as you're looking, and now
added to 70-75 mile per hour winds that are going from right to left with all the sand in front of
you, you've got smoke from a burning vehicle that had...was full of fuel, full of ammo, white hot,
and now you've got this dense, black, hot smoke, and you're looking in thermal sights.
So you can't see through the smoke, it's whiting out your sights. But every once in a while, if
you've ever seen a leaf blow in a wind, it never blows in a straight direction, it's always twirling.
But every once in a while you can see the smoke part and you can see past it to vehicles being
cranked, guys running around, everybody is now alive. What they didn't realize was that that
vehicle had been killed by a ground...an American ground vehicle. Everybody thought was, it
was killed by the air, because they didn't see us, they didn't hear us, they had no way of detecting
we were even there. But they were getting ready anyway. And we think that the way that the
guys in the bunker actually knew to come out of the bunker that something's up was they could
actually feel the ground shaking from all the armored vehicles, because it will do that. Even just
a couple of tanks will make the ground shake for a while.
But I got on the radio and I called my troop commander and said, "Sir, there's something going
on behind the smoke. Request to take my platoon and punch a hole in the smoke and sees what's
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�on the other side." He waited a second and told me "Roger, do that" and then at that point, I
dropped off troop net and talked to my platoon sergeant and told him that I was going to operate
on platoon net, I need you to monitor troop. We had two radios, but you could only talk on one.
We had M1A1 tanks with a 120mm main gun; they were very modern, but we still didn't have
good radios.
So I dropped down to platoon net and about the time I'm dropping to platoon net the troop
commander is calling me to tell me stop, wait, I'm coming with you with the rest of the tanks.
Never heard him. Because I'm on platoon. And oh, by the way, my platoon sergeant got excited
and never went to troop net. So we take off, disappear on the other side of the smoke, and about
the time our tanks disappeared, all hell broke loose. Because when we punched through, we were
looking at least a company plus of dug-in BMPs and tanks with infantry running all over the
place.
So as soon as we went through, and I did not issue, I don't think, a platoon fire command, where
I, as a platoon leader can give a report to all my tank commanders to be ready, I'm going to shoot
you all at once. It's a massive volley from a tank platoon, but we didn't do that. We...everybody
was on their own. Each tank engaging whatever targets that were in his sector, and if we're tanks
online, everybody knows where their sector is. So they're shooting in their sector and they're
killing anything in their sector. And that's exactly what they were doing. It was main guns, it was
.50 cals, it was 240s, it was loaders and tank commanders shooting off the top of their tanks.
Because what was happening was the bunkers were getting engaged and destroyed, the tanks and
BMPs were getting engaged and destroyed, and if you were in front of our tanks, you were going
to get shot. You were going to get killed. It doesn't take guys in combat long to figure stuff like
that out. So, the infantry was trying to stream past our tanks and Bradleys because that's behind
us. Now, I can swerve my turret and I can shoot anything behind me, why am I going to shoot a
guy running, screaming his head off, that's trying to get out of the way versus shooting a T-72
that's trying to kill me. So, the infantry's running... we were basically leaving them alone for
machine guns, and the guys behind us, when they popped through the smoke, they were getting
cut down.
But, that didn't last but maybe three or four minutes. Now, at the time it seemed like it lasted a
lot longer. And...When I finally went back up on troop net to give a spot report, which is
basically to tell my troop commander Hey, this is me. This is what I'm doing, I need to give you
an updated situation. Tell him what I'm engaged with, what actions I've taken, have I killed
anything, what have I killed. Have I taken casualties and all that. And you try to do that very
quickly. Let's just say that he was not happy to hear from me at that point, since I had not talked
to him since I started firing. And that had been a couple minutes.
And he was on the other side of the smoke with the rest of the Cav troop, not knowing exactly
what to do, and if there's 120mm tank rounds and large caliber machine guns going off, you
probably don't want to just drive up into that. So, he waited till I got on the net. He told me to
get my ass back on the other side of the smoke, so I pulled my tanks back. It took me a little
while to get my tank commanders back on the radio, because you're fighting your tanks. You can
either fight your radio or you can fight your tank.
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�Usually you can't fight both. So I basically had to scream and holler and get my platoon sergeant
to scream and holler, get them up on the radio and get them to pull back. We pulled back and...
We had basically killed everything that was up there. And it was just a small strongpoint about...I
think there were 13 vehicles we killed in that spot, and untold number of infantry.
JB: And how many tanks were in your platoon?
HK: Four. Typically the way a Cav troop is set up is you have a tank...well, you have a
commander that's in a tank. You have two tank platoons, each with four tanks. So you've got
nine tanks. Your XO is usually fighting a TOC, which is a non-tactical big box on tracks. But
that is your tactical operations center, your TOC. Our TOC had broken down, so our XO, our
executive officer, the 2IC of the troop was basically fighting out of a Bradley. He had made the
crew compartment of the Bradley into his TOC, or into our TOC.
And then additionally, you have two scout platoons. Scout platoons have Bradleys, and they
have six Bradleys per scout platoon, and you also have a mortar section, with two mortar tracks.
So you've got, in our Cav troop, thirteen Bradleys, nine tanks, two mortar tracks. Very, very
lethal combination.
JB: Did your platoon suffer any casualties in this conflict?
HK: None. But, about... well, I won't even try to tell you how long it was before this happened,
because I have really no idea. Time is... time is a resource that you use, but you don't really
understand how long it's taking you to do stuff in combat. You have no idea of time. You want
to do everything in a hurry. So, you're blood's pumping, you've got adrenaline going, and you're
really not sure how long it's taking you to do stuff. Probably a couple of minutes after we pulled
back, the closest Bradley to our left, 1-6, First platoon, number 6 track, Staff Sergeant Caffey's
track, was hit by a cannon, a 73mm cannon from a BMP.
Now the only BMPs were the ones that we had just engaged. Now when the first round hit, his
gunner, Sergeant Andrew Moller, looked at Sergeant Caffey and went, "What the blank is that?"
Then about one second later, the 2nd round hit, and it punctured the turret of the Bradley. You
have to understand that where it hit was below the tow launcher for the Bradley. In the stow or
travel position, that tow launcher is down and it's covering a weak spot on that turret. But when
he's stationary, and that tow is engaged, that tow comes up and out, and is sitting above the
turret, leaving a vulnerable weak spot and this cannon projectile happened to hit that weak spot.
2nd round penetrates the turret of the Bradley, decapitates Sergeant Moller.
I believe, looking at the AAR he died sometime around 1430 to 1500 on February 26, 1991. That
was really the only killed in action we had that day. Now, the rest of his crew on that Bradley,
they took some busted eardrums, some shrapnel...Staff Sergeant Caffey was kind of screwed up
with shrapnel for a little while, but he managed to evacuate himself out his side of the turret. The
over pressure of the explosion jammed all of the doors on the Bradley, so the guys that were in
the back in the back of the Bradley and the crew couldn't get out except through the driver's hole,
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�and you could go around the turret on the left and get out where the driver's seat is. The driver
had his hatch cracked, so it didn't get jammed.
They actually left the vehicle running and evacuated their wounded. First sergeant comes up and
he's evacuating wounded. Somebody else had to go turn their track off. At that time they should
have evacuated the track, they didn't. They left it sitting up there, and what the... what the track
had done, the track commander, the BC, Bradley Commander, had decided he wanted to get a
better look at the battlefield, so he went to the highest piece of terrain in that desert, which was
only a couple of meters higher than everything else, but he skylined himself, and he got killed.
And I'm pretty certain to this day that the BMP that got him was probably one that was sitting
unmanned that we probably put a couple of holes in with Sable rounds, but not a heat round.
A Sable round is nothing more than just a big steel dart. And it will just punch a hole in it. But if
it doesn't hit something vital, like engine, ammunition, fuel, it just punches a hole in it. So that
track probably had a couple big holes in it, but it was still functional, because there was nothing
else left over there that could have done that and so that was very...well, it really took the
motivation of the troop down when Sergeant Moller was killed, but they got the rest of the crew
evacuated, and basically on a larger scale what had happened was that 2nd Squadron, 2nd ACR
had been coming in from the west. The Iraqis were trying to retreat from Kuwait and were going
basically straight north. We stuck out and formed a salient into their escape route.
And so what they were doing was they were bumping into Eagle Troop on our right and kind of
flowing around the front of Eagle Troop and Ghost Troop, and wrapping around Ghost Troop,
trying to get back into Iraq and escape towards Basra, to the north. And so, throughout that
afternoon, we kept on coming into contact with what we thought were people that were...were
units that were basically attacking us. They weren't really attacking us, we know that now. They
were just trying to escape. They were trying to get out of the way and we were stuck in their
way. And the reason I say they were hitting Eagle Troop to our right was the other troop from
our squadron had not moved up as far as Eagle Troop and 3rd squadron on its right was still
behind them. So we were sticking out. We were the lead element, the sharp point of 7th Corps
there for a while.
Now we had some bad reporting going on. The platoon leader for first platoon called that he was
black on ammo. Black means: I'm less than 40 percent, which is: I don't have enough ammo; I
need help immediately. Well, he was not black on ammo. He was black on Tows, but he still had
25. Well, he didn't clarify that. So his report goes up, incorrect, to the troop XO, who goes "Oh,
shit," calls up squadron and says "Ghost troop is black on ammo." That causes a huge stir
because we can carry a whole lot of ammo, and so they pushed a tank company up to basically
take over our fight for us.
And I don't think the tank company got much of a fight after they got there because there was not
much left. But that was a...a little bit of a scary...a relief in place. Because there was still a fight
going on, and you've got…and then it was starting to be dark and you've got a tank company that
hasn't seen a whole lot of fighting and there seeing hot spots in front of them. Some of them were
our vehicles; some of them were the enemy's vehicles.
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�They're seeing what they think is rounds being shot at them, tracers, and they can tell that it's
enemy tracers by the color, because their color tracers are different from ours, but when you hit a
vehicle filled with ammunition, it burns. It burns, it explodes, tracers go off. There were no shots
coming against Hawk Company coming up behind us, but they came up firing. Between me and
my wingman at that time was about 500 meters because we had spread out.
Sandstorm was over by that time. We had good visibility so we spread out. I had four tanks come
up firing between me and my wingman and we had not seen an alive target in hours by that
point. Three tanks from Hawk Company shot 1-6, our Bradley. So we were never able to
evacuate Sergeant Moller's body from the battlefield. He was cremated where he died in the
turret of Ghost 1-6. And if you...a Bradley is an aluminum fighting vehicle and aluminum burns.
It burns very, very hot. I think they hit it with two heat rounds and a Sable round. We went back
a couple days later and evacuated that vehicle from there.
JB: Now, were you awarded any medals or citations for your service in Desert Storm?
HK: I got a Bronze Star for valor...let me see, I had two Silver Stars in my platoon, I think three
or four more Bronze Stars with Valor, three or four more Bronze Stars. I think I had the most
decorated platoon out of Desert Storm. But I'm not sure about that. But I think it's true.
JB: After Desert Storm was over, what were your other duty posts after the war?
HK: Well, when we got back to Europe, 2nd ACR basically drew down after about a year. I
didn't want to come back to the States. I was having a ball as a single Lieutenant with nothing to
spend money on for six months during the war, so I'm flush with cash. I stayed there. I went to
Schweinfurt to 3/4 Cav which was a Division Cavalry squadron with the 3rd I.D. and I think I
came back in '94, a few years later...to go to my Captain's career course. After that I went out to
Fort Bliss, the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment where I worked as a staff officer, then a troop
commander. While I was out there they actually moved the regiment north to Fort Carson.
I got a second troop command at Fort Carson, and that was all fun and games. And then, after
being a troop commander, I was allowed to go back to Mississippi, and I went to Camp Shelby,
by Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where I was the Cav team leader for a training command basically.
What we did was we trained the National Guard. So I got to go to this TSB, Training Support
Brigade, and I was in an armored task force as the Cav team leader. And I actually worked with
the 155th Mechanized Infantry Brigade, which I had been a member of when I was in college,
and so all the people I'm working with, or most of them, I knew. It was a great experience. I got
to go back and help train some of my friends. I did that for a few years. In 1999... or 2000,
excuse me, 2000-2001, I went to Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth.
Do that for a year, got a master's degree and then in 2002... And I was there for September 11, at
Command and General Staff College... I got to go to 1st Cav, and the reason I went to First Cav
was we knew something was fixing to happen in the Middle East, and I just knew that 1st Cav
would be in on it. So I actually changed the unit I was going to--I was supposed to go to Fort
Lewis to be in a striker unit--but who want to be on a striker if you're going to get shot at, I'd
rather be in a tank, so I went to 1st Cav.
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�JB: Now, when did you learn that you were going to be deployed a second time to the Middle
East?
HK: Well, we thought we were going to be deployed for the initial push into Iraq. In fact, our
division commander told us we were. But we were on one of the original troop lists, but they
took 1st Cav off. They basically dumbed down the amount of troops going in, so we did not get
deployed. The division just across post--the 4th Infantry Division, at that time nicknamed the
Indoor division because they usually didn't do anything…they did get deployed...in the plan they
were supposed to go through Turkey but it didn't work out with the Turks.
So they ended up coming in later through Kuwait and going north. But we sat out the initial push
at Fort Hood. And then we were told we were going to be in what was called OIF 2, Operation
Iraqi Freedom II, so we were one of the first divisions out of the United States to go over and
relieve the guys that went in first. We actually took over for a division out of Europe, 1st
Armored Division.
JB: And what month was that when you...
HK: I went over in February. The rest of the unit got over in March. I was the advanced party for
our brigade.
JB: What year?
HK: That would have been 19...2004, excuse me.
JB: When you were in Iraq the second time, did you see any combat?
HK: Saw a little bit, but it was a different flavor. When I went over, I was the battalion executive
officer for a tank battalion, and our job basically was we owned the Green Zone, the international
zone, and some of the areas around it that affected it. And our brigade owned all that and a little
bit more area. Our battalion, an engineer battalion, a field artillery battalion, and our brigade
headquarters, along with a national guard infantry battalion that belonged to us from Arkansas,
and another national guard infantry battalion from Washington State, were all stationed in or
contiguous to the Green Zone.
But it was basically my battalion's battle space. We owned all the checkpoints and entry control
points, ECPs, for the Green Zone. So it was more of an urban fight. You've seen the footage on
TV of the VBID, the vehicle-born-improvised explosives devices. Basically we lost, I think we
had 17 VBIDs on our checkpoints while we were there, with a little bit of loss of life, with a few
Americans killed, a few more Iraqis killed of our soldiers. Now there were a lot of civilians,
because basically what they would do was wait until there was a crowd.
They'd actually call in a bomb threat on a northern checkpoint, force everybody to come in to the
southern checkpoints, and then blow them up. They loved to target civilians. Then I was doing
that for only about three months of that deployment and then I moved up to be the brigade
10
�executive officer for 3rd brigade, so I was responsible for most of the logistics of the brigade and
we had, I think at the height of it, we had about...about 10,000 soldiers under 3rd brigade, just a
little bit short, which is a whole lot of people for a brigade.
JB: How long did you stay in Iraq on your deployment?
HK: Altogether, it was about 14 or 15 months. I ended up also being one of the last guys out of
Iraq for the division, and I had been one of the first in for the brigade. But our brigade was the
last one in, so we were the last one out.
JB: And so that would have had you leaving May or June of 2005?
HK: It was around April... April, first part of May, 2005.
JB: Where were your duty posts after that stint in Iraq?
HK: I got to go to United States...basically, Southcom, which is in Miami. And that's...what the
U.S. military does is they divide the world up into areas, then they assign a four-star
headquarters to all areas. Southcom is United States Army Southern Command, and it is
responsible for everything in South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. But they had
just stood up a small joint headquarters for Southcom for the four-star, called a standing JointForce Headquarters. The way we fight now is...really the Army doesn't ever go in and do
anything by themselves, they go in as joint force, with the Air Force, with the Navy, if possible,
with the Marines.
They'll be multiple services in there. The way you do that is you form a joint force headquarters.
What our unit did, was we had people from all different services in one small headquarters, and
we could fall in on your service headquarters, be it Marine, Army, Air Force, Navy, and we
could "purple-ize" you. You know you think of the Air Force and Navy being blue, and the
Army being green. Well, we think of the joint force being purple. So we can fall in with all these
different types of people in your headquarters and we could instantly turn you into a joint
headquarters. And that was interesting. I got to go a lot of places in South, Central America and
the Caribbean, you know, that were not usually places you think of U.S. Army soldiers
deploying to.
JB: And then you...wound up in Boone?
HK: And then I got to be a professor of military science, and I got to come to the infamous
Mountaineer Battalion and been here for two years, got one left and having a blast.
JB: You had two different stints in Iraq, and I'm curious if you could speak to what were the
differences in your two trips a decade apart into Iraq?
HK: Well, the first one was real simple. It was just desert warfare. You didn't have to worry
about any civilians. You didn't have to worry about any politics. And for me, where we were
located within the American forces, anything in front of me was enemy. I didn't have to worry
11
�about shooting it. I didn't have to go: Is that guy pointing a weapon at me? If he's out in the
middle of the desert and he's wearing a uniform, he was dead. Point blank.
Now, the second time we went in, we were in the city, it was an urban environment. Everybody
over there looks the same. And you're an American, you don't speak Arabic, you don't speak
their language, you don't know their culture. It was hard for you to tell the difference between a
good guy and a bad guy. Now, if you took a regular Iraqi and you stood a Jordanian guy up in
front of him, he was instantly [snaps his finger] tell you, that's not an Iraqi, he's from Jordan.
Don't you hear that? Can't you understand that? And it's like, you know, taking a Chinese guy
and having an American from Boston and an American from Atlanta speaking.
We hear the difference but they don't. We don't hear the small little subtleties in their language.
So it was very, very different. We were also there at a time when the coalition was trying to
stand up a Federal government for Iraq. And so, we were the forces making that happen. There
was a State Department presence there, but they weren't doing very much. So we were actually
trying to be the peer mentors to stand up their Congress. We were standing up their armed forces.
We were...we had a U.S. Army major with a finance degree was the one trying to set up their
stock market system. Because we couldn't get the state department to come in with pure mentors.
A lot of people don't understand that when we went to war in World War II, if they needed an
expertise...if you were a small town mayor and they needed a mayor for a town in Germany,
they'd draft your butt, and you were in Germany several months later running that town. We
didn't have anything like that, and we still don't. We...we are a pretty pure combat and logistics
oriented force, and we contract out a lot of our upper level logistics, because we just don't want
to spend the money on the force, because it's very expensive. But it was a totally different
situation the second time. We were involved in politics, which is never a good thing for a
military force.
JB: You've been in the army now for 25 years. How have you seen the army change during your
tenure?
HK: Well, first off, I'll speak to the Reserves. When I came in the Reserves were just that, just a
part time force. Some units were better than others, but they had never really deployed in a long,
long time, and they were not that professional. That's not the National Guard Reserves that you
have today. These guys are deployed as much or more than their active counterparts. And if you
had the unprofessional people before, they're not in it now. They either got out quickly, or they
didn't survive the environment and they were fired. So the reserves are tremendously better. I
can't even...they're exponentially better than they were for the active force, I think it's gotten
better and better.
We've survived some political regimes that took us way down, but we're...we stayed a very
professional force. We've got the best hardware in the world, and I think we've got the best
soldiers and best NCOs in the world. The only thing that kind of bothers me sometimes is that
some of our senior leaders seem to be more political than anything else. Maybe that's the state of
affairs that we live in today, but it's pretty shallow for some of the stuff that's done.
12
�JB: Is there anything else that we have left out that you would like to speak to, or a closing
thought?
HK: [long pause] Not right off the top of my head.
JB: Well, if not, I thank you very much for your time. It's been a very enlightening and
pleasurable interview.
HK: Alright, thank you, sir.
JB: Thank you.
13
�
https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/33574704758452eb7fa251886f3a1593.mp3
dc584703cbc09affd99f6a6be485a4dd
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Appalachian State University American Military History Course Veterans Oral History Project
Description
An account of the resource
Each semester, the students of the American Military History Course at Appalachian State University conduct interviews with military veterans and record their military experiences in order to create an archive of oral history interviews that are publicly accessible to researchers. The oral histories are permanently available in the Appalachian State University Special Collections. The project is supervised by Dr. Judkin Browning, Associate Professor of History at Appalachian State University and all interviews are transcribed by the student interviewers.
Copyright Notice:
Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project’s audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Veterans Oral History Project, University Archives and Records, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC).
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed.
Kilgore, Haimes
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview.
Browning, Dr. Judkin
Interview Date
8/20/11
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
42:23 min
Copyright
Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project's audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Veterans Oral History Project, University Archives and Records, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC).
Tag
Mississippi National Guard, ROTC, Fort Dix, Desert Shield, Calvary, Baghdad, Fort Riley, Germany, Bronze Star, Army Southern Command, Southcom
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Haimes Kilgore, 20 August 2010
Subject
The topic of the resource
Operation Desert Shield, 1990-1991
Persian Gulf War, 1991
Kilgore, Haimes
Veterans
Personal narratives, American
United States
Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Haimes Kilgore, interviewed by Judkin Browning, enlisted in the Mississippi National Guard at age 17. He was deployed into combat twice, the first time during Operation Desert Storm and the second time to Saudi Arabia, and speaks of his experiences.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Kilgore, Haimes
Browning, Judkin
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a title="UA.5018. American Military History Course Records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/167" target="_blank">UA.5018. American Military History Course Records</a>
Extent
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13 pages
Language
A language of the resource
English
Battle of 73 Easting
commissioned officer
Desert Storm
Fort Dix
Green Zone Baghdad
Lieutenant Colonel Haimes
National Guard
Saudi Arabia
Shamal