MAJ Mark Kovalcik served as company commander with 1st Squadron, 10th Cavalry (1/10 CAV) in Babil Province, Iraq during 2005 and 2006. In this September 2011 interview, MAJ Kovalcik discusses the takeaways from his pre-deployment training, particularly the counterinsurgency (COIN) instruction at the COIN Academy, the sense of training their replacements that he and his Soldiers felt when working with the Iraqi Army (IA), and the last few months in the training and operations section (G3) after transitioning out of company command. MAJ Kovalcik concludes his interview with the observation, "For some of us it was a whole new concept when we went from the high intensity to the COIN fight. The culture piece -- really studying the culture more -- maybe identifying the key books we should read. Maybe we could have had real Iraqi nationals come talk to us; maybe someone who has immigrated to the US could come and speak to us or hang out with us for a week or a couple of days. Things like that could build that cultural knowledge or understanding and give us more comfort when we started. When you get there you're going to figure out a lot of things and build some understandings but to get that up front probably would have been the most useful."

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