MAJ Timothy Diley served as the Battery Commander of 3rd Battalion, 18th Field Artillery in the Sunni Triangle, Iraq during 2003 in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). In this October 2009 interview, MAJ Diley discusses the hardships of this deployment particularly in regard to basic life support, the challenges of keeping his soldiers motivated when the mission return was unclear, and the loss of a platoon sergeant and his driver early in the deployment. MAJ Diley concludes his interview with a discussion of the importance of the soldiers understanding the impact of the mission, and the observation that when the soldiers could make the direct link between how what they were doing directly benefited them in some way, his job as a leader became easier.

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