From the beginning of the ground invasion up through the brigade's arrival in Baghdad, Lieutenant Colonel Ed House served as the logistics officer (S4) for 3rd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, at which point he transitioned to become the operations officer (S3) for 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry until redeploying in July 2003. In this, part one of a two-part interview - the second of which covers his January to June 2005 deployment back to Iraq as the 3rd Brigade S3 - House begins by outlining what he considered the principal challenges he faced in Operation Iraqi Freedom I, namely "distances and the rapidness of our movement," which resulted in what he terms "strained logistics." He then discusses his duties and experiences as the brigade attacked north into Iraq, focusing on such things as ammunition, fuel and assorted maintenance issues. Once in the Iraqi capital, House's battalion tactical operations center was at Camp Victory and his battalion was responsible for the Abu Ghraib area and western Baghdad, and from this vantage point he talks about the wide variety of Phase IV, stability and support operations, duties they had - from stopping the looting to rebuilding/reopening an agricultural university in Baghdad. "Having been on the brigade staff before I moved down," House said, "I knew there wasn't any higher-level plan on transitioning to Phase IV. That being said, as soon as we were set, Colonel Daniel Allyn, the brigade commander, started giving guidance on doing transition ops while maintaining force protection and continuing to attack those targets that wanted to do us harm." House says that he doesn't think "any of us anticipated or were educated on how brutal Saddam had been and what 35 years of oppression means to a population that's now free." As such, the Iraqis had unrealistically high expectations of what Americans could provide them - and what's more, the state of the infrastructure was far worse than anyone thought.

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