In this interview, COL Monty Willoughby, US Army, Armor, discusses his deployment to Afghanistan as a task force executive officer with 3-25th Cavalry in 2004 through 2005 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). COL Willoughby talks about his mission of keeping two arguing warlords separated in the Zerkoh Valley and working the United Nations disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) program. He describes the conditions in far western Iraq and the make-up of the task force. He discusses some difficult challenges the unit faced when it lost three Soldiers and shares their successes in the area. He also discusses the handoff to the incoming unit. COL Willoughby closes his interview by stating, ". . .whenever you authorize a mission, especially with nefarious forces on the other side and weapons, something's going to happen and most likelihood someone's going to get injured. We all hope that it's not our forces that get injured. That is a blinding flash of the obvious, but I don't think a lot of people -- sometimes you don't realize that until you get into that situation, "I'm authorizing the use of lethal force." That means that somebody is going to most likely get killed. As a leader, that's the first time. We always talked about it, you kind of do it, you do do it in training and this other stuff. I think that's it. I don’t think any of the others resound to me as much as that one."

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