In this January 2011 interview, MAJ Cochran Pruett, US Army, Field Artillery, discusses his deployment to Iraq as a battery commander and operations officer (S3) for Bravo Battery, 2d of the 320th Field Artillery in 2005 through 2006 in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). MAJ Pruett talks about his mission of being a battlespace owner in the Tuz area, providing security for the large area, conducting raids, and doing both mounted and dismounted patrolling. He describes how he traveled all over the area of operations and talks about some training issues he dealt with. He discusses some challenges he faced in country and shares his change of responsibility with the move to the Kirkuk area. He shares a specific memory having to lean a lot about oil production and discusses the handoff to the incoming brigade. MAJ Pruett closes his interview by stating, "So, in that case, I think, with that problem in particular, one of the things that the Army might could learn from -- and I think we're probably doing this much better now than we were at the time -- of leveraging assets outside of the Army's expertise to help handle [inaudible] and educate on those types of problems."

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