Performing a mission readiness exercise at the Joint Readiness Training Center when 9/11 occurred, Major Brian Harthorn - then the commander of Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division - tells how he and his soldiers desperately "wanted to respond and be part of that effort as one of the first responders in our operations that would take place shortly thereafter in Afghanistan," but instead were sent on a prescheduled deployment to Kosovo. He and his first sergeant thus "had to convey to them to not worry, that they would get their chance, and they did," eventually becoming the most deployed company in the division. For his own part, Harthorn himself supported Operation Iraqi Freedom from February through May 2003 not in a direct combat capacity but rather as aide-de-camp to the 82nd Airborne Division commander. Having initially served as the aide to then Major General John Vines, Harthorn became the aide to Major General Charles Swannack during OIF after the two generals changed command and Vines went to Afghanistan to become the senior US military commander there. "As the aide-de-camp," Harthorn explained, "my primary mission in life was to ensure that the CG could do his job, which was to command the division. My job was to remove the distracters that would prevent him from performing those command-related tasks and responsibilities. That involved managing his daily schedule, making sure his transportation between any two points was planned, coordinated and resourced, making sure he had the resources he needed to conduct his own troop leading procedures, because even the division commander conducts TLPs at his level with his staff. Making sure that was resourced, with maps and whatever it took to make sure he had a command post that he was comfortable with and could operate in." In this interview, Harthorn further discusses the big adjustment he had to make from "being the company commander and the big fish in a small pond to subordinating yourself, because I was supporting another commander at that point. My job was to support him." Talking about the functioning of three-NCO and one-officer team dedicated to "making sure we had the bases covered for the commander," Harthorn recounts the full range of his "quarterbacking" duties and also comments on the challenges of adjusting to how General Swannack "operated under stressful conditions within a real world environment."

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited