A veteran of two deployments in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, US Marine Corps Major Dave Banning commanded Alpha Company, 1st Tank Battalion, attached initially to 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment and later to 1st Marines, in theater from January through May 2003. Then, from February through May 2004, he served as a future plans officer in the 1st Marines regimental operations (S3) shop. In this interview, he starts off by discussing in great detail the initial invasion of Iraq in support of 7th Marines' seizure of the oil refinery at Az Zubayr, being attached to 1st Marines for the attack to Al Kut, and the follow-on movement and attack on Baghdad. Among the many harrowing events Banning relates is a friendly fire incident - a Hellfire missile attack from a Cobra helicopter - that destroyed his own tank on the evening of 20 March. He also talks about frustrations that resulted from "zero parts support" and says that if they hadn't had a stockpile of "squirreled-away" parts they brought with them or a "maintenance chief or a maintenance section that were as good as they were, we would have been non-mission capable after the second or third day." As to the hardest part of urban combat, Banning says it was "trying to find the guys who needed to be killed." During his second tour in the regimental S3 section, Banning was involved in planning for the ultimately aborted April 2004 assault on Fallujah: Operation Vigilant Resolve. As he explained, "I got to observe the build-up for the first Fallujah and watch how it all was dissipated. I got to watch the decision-making process that ensued after the Blackwater contractors were killed. I saw the decisions that were made to put the battalions on the initial cordon. I also got to sit in on about 75 percent of the meetings between Major General James Mattis, Colonel Toolan and the Iraqis who ended up coming out of Fallujah who would end up becoming the leaders of the Fallujah Brigade." Banning has high praise for General Mattis. He also shares his own views of some of the key Iraqi figures who claimed to be representing insurgents in the city, Generals Saleh and Latif. "They were all very friendly guys to talk to," he said, "but you didn't trust them as far as you could throw them." Banning talks about the too-soft living conditions he thought they all had in OIF II, the differences he saw between his first and second deployments, the key professional lessons he took away from both, his thoughts that people need to spend more time in most billets, the Army's over-reliance on gadgetry, as well as his "phenomenal crew." "I couldn't have had better timing or a better cast of characters to work with when I was in Iraq," he said.

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