When talk of the U.S. invading Iraq first began, retired Marine Corps Capt. Matthew Hoh was a junior officer for the Secretary of the Navy and a White House liaison officer.
“I kind of was a fly on the wall for a lot of things,” Hoh said. “… Because of my role as a White House liaison officer, I ended up becoming an accidental casualty officer for many of the families during that first year of the war … So it became very personal to me very quickly.”
After a White House condolence letter intended for the second Marine killed in Iraq was returned due to a bad address, Hoh was tasked with calling casualty officers to verify addresses of the deceased. As he did that, Hoh would ask if there was anything he could do to help.
“I started getting hit back with these stories one after the other of the Marine Corps failing and letting down families of those killed,” Hoh said.
His time as a casualty officer was frustrating and very angering because he said he saw “a fundamental dysfunction” in the process.
“You had an organization that was accustomed to handling the casualty process in small numbers,” Hoh said. “ … [They were] not prepared at all to handle the magnitude of the war.”
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Since March 19, 2003, the Department of Defense has reported nearly 4,500 military and DOD civilian casualties from Operation Iraqi Freedom alone – more than 3,000 of which are considered hostile deaths.
And it was a war he opposed from the outset.
“It didn’t seem to make sense to me,” said Hoh, who entered Marine Corps Officer Candidate School in 1998 and was an active-duty Marine until 2004. “In the sense that Saddam [Hussein] was contained, whatever was happening in Afghanistan didn’t seem to be finished or complete. Certainly [Osama] bin Laden had not been captured.”
‘Added color to a picture’
Hoh first deployed to Salah al Din Province as a Department of Defense civilian from May 2004 to May 2005 with a state department reconstruction and governance team. He said it was an opportunity where he could “potentially do something worthwhile to help rebuild.”
But landing in country just reinforced his negative views of the situation.
“I think it added color to a picture I think I already had,” Hoh said. “I had had plenty of friends who had been there already, as well as too, just my position’s sake being able to read the intelligence and have an understanding of what was occurring.”
From March 2006 to July 2007, he mobilized as a reservist to Anbar Province as commanding officer for Charlie Company, 4th Combat Engineer Battalion, 4th Marine Division.
“When I got the email looking for volunteers to mobilize for that cycle of Iraq deployments, my attitude was, my feeling was that, ‘I’m a good officer, a better officer than other guys are … [I have a] better chance of bringing them home,’” said Hoh, who spent four years in the Marine Corps Reserve, with one-and-a-half years mobilized and the rest in the Individual Ready Reserve.
That rationalization was something he said was done to help others.
“I think the takeaway is no matter how moral you think you can be in the war, you don’t have your own agency,” Hoh said. “The immorality of the war, the force of the war itself … is that it’s going to make you an agent of it. And that you think you are going to be doing things around you that are going to be good and you will be good … but you just get consumed by the greater immorality of the war.”
Though most of Hoh’s Marines in Iraq were college students, many squad leaders had already experienced an Iraq deployment.
The reserve component, he said, brought a variety of experience and skills that the active-duty side, by its nature, didn’t have.
“I had one kid who was a welder, and back home in real life if you will … and what he ended up doing was cutting bodies out of Humvees [using welding equipment], and I remember him doing that on Christmas Eve,” Hoh said.
D.C. disconnect with Iraq War
Having been involved as a service member and in D.C. working on policy, Hoh said there was a “disconnect.” One interagency item, the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, was put out to “great fanfare,” according to Hoh, but when a reporter questioned a three-star in Iraq about it, he said he had never heard of it.
“So much of what was being done in D.C. had no impact whatsoever on what was occurring there,” Hoh said.
Still, the Iraq War couldn’t have happened without the National Guard and reserves, according to Hoh. Hundreds of thousands of reserve component service members were mobilized, with Army Guard and reserve troops accounting for more than 60% of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom troops in FY 2008 and the Marine Corps making up “another 12%,” according to a 2009 Congressional Research Service report.
One thing about reserve component that was different “in a bad way,” according to Hoh, was the speed with which reservists were demobilized when they returned home.
“We had no ability to follow up with them in any type of organized or formal manner. And no way to make sure that they were doing OK and no way to make sure that the resources they should have, they are getting,” Hoh said.
It was up to the individual to seek out VA care since they weren’t living in a barracks or reporting into a unit every morning.
“When you’re still with the team, you’re with the team. You get through it together. With the reserves, [demobilization] happens right away. Within a couple weeks of coming home, you’re demobilized … and you’re not checking in with other people.”
If you are a veteran or service member in need of mental health assistance, contact the Veterans Crisis Line. Dial 988, then press 1. Visit veteranscrisisline.net. Or text 838255.