Interview with Maj Darren Keahtigh, Part I

From January 2004 through January 2005 in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Major Darren Keahtigh served as commander of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry - part of 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division - and was based variously in Baghdad and Fallujah. In this two-part interview, he discusses his company's operations based out of Camp Victory and work in the Khadamiyah District of the Iraqi capital. Among his initial challenges was taking over an area of operations with his one company that had previously been controlled by two companies. Keahtigh talks about conducting cordon and search missions, doing a wide variety of stability and support type missions, establishing a great many reconstruction projects, working with local sheiks and mullahs, as well as neighborhood advisory councils, and also the time his unit shut down a brothel at the request of local religious figures. His company additionally worked with Iraqi Police. In August 2004, Keahtigh's company was sent to Najaf and participated in combat operations there, including one particularly intense battle fought in a cemetery. Back in Baghdad again where they would remain until November, Bravo Company would fight again on the notorious Haifa Street before being sent to Fallujah to do battle in that city as well. Throughout, Keahtigh shares a warrior's perspective on leading troops in combat, dealing with the loss of comrades in arms, waging full-spectrum warfare, the often-murky moral and ethical dilemmas that leaders face in wartime, and the consequences of taking another's life, even if that person is the enemy. "We all like to think we're hard and we all like to think we're tough, but none of us want to kill anybody for no reason" he said. "I don't mind killing the enemy, but I won't just go out and kill people just to be killing people. When a man does that by tragic accident, he carries that with him for the rest of his life." Keahtigh closes his interview by saying that, far beyond the many personal and unit awards he earned, the "ultimate reward I received was that I took 140 boys there and I brought home 140 boys. We were the only company who accounted for all of our boys."