Assigned to 1st Squadron, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, Major Mike Kirkpatrick served as the Headquarters and Headquarters Troop (HHT) commander during Operation Iraqi Freedom I, moving into Iraq on 13 May 2003. In this interview, he begins by describing the very cursory handoff he received as his squadron moved into an area of Baghdad, taking over territory that had previously been controlled by only a section of Bradleys from the 3rd Infantry Division. Kirkpatrick also at the outset expresses a great deal of praise for his squadron commander, Lieutenant Colonel Mark Calvert. "He went in with a warfighter mentality but, at the same time, instilled the mantra of treating the Iraqis with dignity and respect. It proved beneficial, especially in the area we had," Kirkpatrick continued, "because we were right next to Sadr City, which was a severely oppressed part of the city under Saddam Hussein. He had thrown all the Shi'ites in there and just didn't resource them. They were really the have-nots. Further south was a little bit more affluent community, so there were a lot of cultures and a lot of differences we had to mix with. We found, though, that if you treated everyone across the board with dignity and respect, you gained more cooperation from them. We had Shi'a, Sunni, Kurd and Christian neighborhoods all within our AOR and we didn't notice any friction between them at all. That kind of surprised me too." Responsible during his deployment for base camp security and everything logistics related as the HHT commander, including convoys, Kirkpatrick was also tasked on occasion with augmenting the line troops with personnel. "If there was a large squadron-level operation going on," he explained, "I was usually the senior guy in the FOB in order to command and control anything going outside the wire, as well as internally. For the most part, one of us would go along on the patrols. A lot of times we'd go on patrols with the squadron commander and the XO just because they needed an extra truck." Responsible for food service and medical support, he discusses these aspects of his six-month deployment at length as well. Moreover, Kirkpatrick talks about the squadron-level detention facility they ran on the FOB and, among other things, relates how the detainees "were treated better than the soldiers were." Kirkpatrick also talks about interactions with the local populace, his work with Task Force Bullet, as well as the "great guilt" he felt after coming home early while the squadron remained in country another nine months.

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