An Iowa National Guardsman, First Sergeant Christopher Fox was mobilized in February 2003 for service in Operation Iraqi Freedom, went through predeployment training at the Fort McCoy, Wisconsin mobilization station, and then in April arrived in Iraq with his unit, the 186th Military Police Company - for which he served as company first sergeant. He was demobilized in April 2004. "For the first six months of the deployment," Fox said, "we were at Baghdad International Airport on the west side of the airport - Camp Cropper … and then when the Abu Ghraib Prison became functional, our platoons were used to continue a jail mission" in downtown Baghdad. Fox begins his interview by discussing the "terrible" support his Guard unit received in terms of resources and equipment throughout their tour, which ominously began with being given a bunch of "bright orange Mercedes-Benz dump trucks from the early 1970s" that they had to transport themselves to Baghdad in. "It was like an Army circus," Fox quipped. Fortunately, he explained, he was the "king" of what he termed "drug deals" - that is, "making deals with other units without using the chain of command." By these means, Fox was able to obtain all sorts of necessary parts and supplies for his Guard MP company, oftentimes by bartering with members of Active Component units who would not have otherwise helped them. In fact, he said, the principal challenges his unit faced were "logistics and the active duty requiring us to do a mission and not outfitting us to do it. I had a lot of problems with that." In this interview, Fox also discusses (to the extent possible) the operation and complement of the Camp Cropper detention facility, living conditions for his soldiers that he described as "hell on earth," his thoughts on the prison abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, and the unique perspectives and skill sets that National Guard soldiers brought to the mission. In addition, Fox talks about the family support aspect, stresses the essentialness of treating every moment as a training opportunity, explains why morale in the 115th was "mediocre most of the time," and reflects on his unit's accomplishments. "The biggest thing was that we brought everybody home alive," he said. But beyond that, "the fact we built the corps holding area from the ground up with the capacity to hold 1,200 people and, over a period of time, we had 11,000 Iraqi EPWs. We provided escorts of all kinds that covered 250,000 miles, which was a lot for an MP company." Furthermore, "Our maintenance level remained at 94 percent with only three mechanics and 57 pieces of rolling stock."

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