In command of the 7th Transportation Battalion for 11 months in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) II beginning in January 2004, Lieutenant Colonel George Akin was an Active Component commander working under a Reserve Component corps support group (the 172nd), and under him personally were all National Guard and Reserve companies. As he put it, "So when they talk about 'one team,' you can see it gets really complicated." In this comprehensive interview, Akin constantly reiterates the reality in Iraq that, "There wasn't any of this World War II or Desert Storm idea that your area was secure. You were never secure. If you were on an Iraqi road, you were never secure. That was the bottom line." As such, accomplishing their increasingly dangerous mission and getting all his people home alive was his overriding goal, something made all the more difficult due to his transportation battalion being called on to operate much like a combat maneuver unit. "You have to think of your convoys as 'platoons in contact,'" Akin said. "It was always an engagement." He discusses a number of training and doctrinal modification issues, such as his decision to put NCOs in charge of convoys at times, and his distinction in being "the first joint transportation battalion." In addition, Akin talks at length about the travails the 7th Trans went through during the April uprising by the Moqtada al-Sadr Militia, including cutting of the main line of communications, emergency fuel shortages and, above all, a casualty-producing ambush against one of his convoys. "After that, everybody realized that if you're going to go out the gate, you're going to get shot and attacked, and we were going to play worst case scenario. If you're on this road, we're going to expect another super complex ambush, so we're going to let you know up front that it's a high-risk convoy." Added Akin: "I had a whole roster of Purple Hearts, people who had been wounded by IED attacks, small arms and mortar fire. And of course I started having people killed like every month" - challenges he discusses in great detail.

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