MAJ David Sandoval served with the 3rd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division (ID), assigned to the 1-8 Infantry Battalion. during 2007 and 2008 in Baghdad and Mosul, Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). In this November 2009 interview, MAJ Sandoval discusses the elevated operations tempo (OPTEMPO), a typical day patrolling his unit's area of operations (AO), and the hardest parts about serving as a field grade officer as opposed to an enlisted soldier or NCO. MAJ Sandoval observed that, "The thing that I take away is that as long as we're in these COIN environments we have to continue to rely on our soldiers at all levels. You have to start at your sergeant level all the way up through your officer leadership. You have to rely on the lower levels in your smaller units to really accomplish the tasks and objectives we want in a dispersed environment, either Iraq or Afghanistan."

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