MAJ Charles Eckstrom served as a combat engineer with the 588th Engineer Company supporting the 2nd Brigade Combat Team (BCT), 4th Infantry Division (ID) in Al-Khalis, Iraq during 2003 and 2004 in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and with the 479th Field Artillery shadowing Task Force Paladin in Gazni, Afghanistan during 2007 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). In this February 2010 interview, MAJ Eckstrom discusses the initial push into Iraq and the lull that followed the high-intensity conflict, the ramping up of violence and especially improvised explosive devices (IEDs) toward the end of this first deployment, and his mission with Task Force Paladin and how that work influenced his subsequent training mission. MAJ Eckstrom stresses the importance of "COIN; you have to understand everything about where you're going and how you fit in to that environment and it's totally different from province to province. You can go back to the same province; I've had friends go back to Diyala and it's totally different. It just changes so rapidly. OIF I is totally different from OIF III and OIF VI. The biggest observation I had was to take the time and learn on your own because we don't have the time to teach everything at the school house. You have to take your own time to learn about some of the geopolitical stuff; some of the history stuff in some of these countries. That way, as an officer, you can kind of find out the big picture of how you and your unit fits in and then explain to your subordinates how they can nest their efforts to support the whole thing."

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