Jane Cook - Stories of Faith and Courage fron the War in Iraq and Afghanistan

Dear God, I want to love you with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind, and I want to love my neighbor as myself. Please fill me and increase my love day by day.

“Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.” (Leviticus 19:18)

During my time in Iraq I found ten quotes and phrases that define my view of leadership.

Number 10: “It doesn’t matter who gets the credit.” I hated hearing someone trying to take credit. It doesn’t matter who gets the credit. That was one of the biggest differences between my peers and me. They were trying to take credit for everything. You should reward your people for initiative, bravery and ingenuity. Harry S. Truman once said, “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”

Number 9: “ Respect is hard to get; you have to earn it.” It may be hard to get, but it’s easy to throw away. You have to work at it every day. The very first time a leader does something immoral or unethical that leader loses respect. You will earn respect by taking care of your people and keeping your word. It happens one day at a time.

Number 8: “Don’t micromanage.” Empower your people. Our pilots went out and did an amazing job. We let them make decisions. Many of the active duty organizations would require their people to call back to get permission to do anything. “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” (Lao Tzu, 4 thcentury BC).

Number 7: “Take the initiative.” Things will only happen that you make happen. It is incumbent on leaders to encourage their people to take initiative. Weak individuals sit back and let others do the hard work. If everybody took this approach nothing would ever get done.

Number 6: “Customer service.” You have to have a customer service attitude. Many days we would get feedback that we screwed up a mission. I learned there are always two sides to every story. Instead of going down and chewing out somebody I knew the truth lay somewhere in between the two sides of the story and usually the first story is wrong.

Dear Lord, please strengthen my heart and please make me fully devoted to you.

“For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.” (2 Chronicles 16:9)

Number 5: “Commanders in the field are always right, and the command pukes in the rear are always wrong.” General Metz used to say this. Our helicopters had three different flare types to defeat the surface to air missiles the enemy was using to try and shoot down our aircraft. Our higher-ups at headquarters said that we only needed one type, but we had to say no. I went with the intelligence our guys had and sent it up to the General to sign off on the risk involved in not having all three flares. The general sided with the guys in the field, and we got our flares.

Number 4: “Force multipliers.” The National Guard has multiple military operational specialties (MOS) per soldier. There may be only one military MOS but several civilian ones as well. When we applied what we knew in civilian life, our forces multiplied their capabilities significantly above the active duty’s ability to conduct missions. We can make the operation more efficient.

Number 3: “The center of gravity in peacetime is operations but the center of gravity in war is aviation maintenance.” It takes ten to fifteen hours of maintenance to fly one hour in a Black Hawk. We put the emphasis in supporting our maintenance guys. They kept us flying. We were able to fly twice the missions with half the helicopters in the first six months than the active duty element flew the entire year before us.

Number 2: “Leadership is an attitude.” My leadership philosophy used to be “competence and character,” but now it is: “Leadership Is an Attitude.” Whatever the attitude of leaders is, that is what the whole organization is going to adopt. What the leader portrays to his subordinates will be carried down throughout the organization. I believed in open and honest communication. That was a key component of how I wanted to define our organization.

Number 1: “A leader cares more about his troops than what his boss thinks.” I saw many leaders that were more concerned about impressing their bosses and getting good evaluations than they were about genuinely caring for their troops. You always care about your troops; everything else will fall in place.

Dear Lord, may you make me a man or woman after your own heart. May I lead others with your wisdom, power, and grace.

“The LORD has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him leader of his people.” (1 Samuel 13:14)

I arrived at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Warhorse in March 2006. That was one of the more dangerous provinces since it was split 50 percent Sunni and 50 percent Shiite. When the tension grew between the religious factions the violence grew as well. FOB Warhorse was surrounded by major Iraqi roads on three sides. The Tigris River was on the other side and on the far side of the bank there were nothing but palm trees.

We were getting our stuff out after we arrived and I paused long enough to look up at the gate on the north side of the base and watch a convoy going by. There was an IED (improvised explosive device) that exploded on the convoy right in front of the base. The device had been planted at the front gate between the two guard towers. It hit an explosive ordinance truck and fortunately, no one was killed. But it shocked me that they could put an IED at the front gate of an American base between two guard posts.

When you feel like things are happening out of your control it is unsettling. Not only was it right under our noses, but it gave us the sense that no where was safe.

No matter what happens, Lord, I know all glory, majesty, power and authority are yours. Please keep me from falling. May I enter your glorious presence with great joy, knowing I am completely righteous in your eyes because of the ultimate sacrifice that Jesus Christ made for me.

“To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.” (Jude 24–25)

We had an artillery unit of paladins on the base. They would fire outbound a good bit. Some of it was counter battery fire; some of it was indirect fire mission supporting our guys. Sometimes they were shooting illumination rounds around our base to help base security detect people setting up mortars or sneaking close to the perimeter. The base would get shelled a fair amount but until your ear gets finely tuned its hard to tell whether or not a round is coming in are going out. Both are extremely loud. The UAV runway strip was right next to where we slept, and that created a lot of noise as well. It was a hot refuel point for helicopters too. It was very loud.

One night I was in my trailer winding down. We had just finished planning a mission for the next day. My roommate and I were sitting in our trailer talking. Suddenly there was a large boom. My roommate joked with me as he saw me flinch. He asked, “Don’t you know what a paladin sounds like by now?” I had come out of my seat and gone down to one knee. He said, “Graves, come on man, that’s the paladin shooting.” I told him he was right and started to return to my seat, feeling embarrassed, when shrapnel started raining down on the roof of our trailer. I looked at my roommate and said, “When a paladin shoots, stuff doesn’t land on our roof.”