In this May 2013 interview, MAJ Joe Komanetz, US Army, Logistics, discusses his deployment to Iraq as the contracting officer and as a Forward support Company commander for 18 Infantry, 3d Brigade, 4th Infantry Division in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). MAJ Komanetz talks about his mission of managing contracts and FOO funds. He describes how he had to reconcile all the contracts and talks about some issues dealing with large contractors like KBR. He discusses some challenges he faced and talks about taking command. He shares some memories of putting himself in unnecessary dangerous situation and discusses the handoff to the incoming brigade. MAJ Komanetz closes his interview by stating, ". . . there are a lot of times where it's the worst day of your deployment, but you're never going to remember that day ten years from now. Your time in the Army is going to be short, when looking at your time in life. So, unless you really know how to take care of those things for yourself, and for your Soldiers, most importantly, you are really going to set conditions for stuff to happen in people's forties and fifties, and later on in life, that they could have dealt with in their twenties as they were going through it. I think there is a much larger issue that we tend to just sort of brush off and say, "Oh, they'll get through it. I went through that, too. They'll have to go through it themselves."

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