The Daily was able to correspond with Sgt. Treseder via email.

Where are you stationed in Iraq?

I am stationed, along with almost all other Marines, in Al Anbar province, the Western “bulge” of Iraq. It is mostly comprised of desert, but it houses several population centers including Ramadi, Hit, Haditha and Fallujah (where I am stationed). Camp Fallujah, a former army and “freedom fighter” training center just east of the city proper, is home to the first Marine Expeditionary Force Forward [I MEF (fwd)]. This is the unit I was attached to after completing a “combat refresher course” in the [Marine Corps Base] Camp Pendleton during the first eight weeks of my recall.

What are your duties?

I work in the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) section, specifically the Department of Border Enforcement (DBE) cell, overseeing all the Border and Port and Entry Transition Teams (BTTs and POETTs) on the borders of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria. The slogan for all the military stationed here now is “Transition is the New Mission,” and that impacts everything we do. Most units operate in a “Train, Mentor and Advise” status, providing hands-on help to the Iraqi units they are paired with. In some ways, these aren’t totally unlike the Combined Action Platoons (CAPs) of Vietnam, except for the environment they are operating in.

My job is semi-autonomous — particularly for an enlisted Marine — and I do most training and movement with my officer counterpart, Captain Justin Betz. This is a one-year tour for I MEF as a whole, though Capt. Betz and I are only supposed to be here for approximately seven months of that.

Sgt. Treseder described the difficulties he and his unit have faced during their deployment in Iraq.

The unit we replaced, an East coast version of us called II MEF, had about 60 percent more personnel than we do, so we find ourselves short-staffed in pretty much every way. My job used to be performed by two Staff Non-Commissioned Officers (SNCOs) totaling close to twenty-five years of experience in the Corps, while I have spent a total of five years in.

Because a recall is financially and (potentially) politically costly, they rarely occur. This means there are very few people in the Department of Defense who know exactly what to do. When my peers and I were mobilized for this tour, we found no help from any higher command, instead getting conflicting reports of where we were going and what we would be doing when we got there.

What is your “normal” daily routine?

To get p.m. time, subtract 12 hours from Zulu time.

A normal day doesn’t really exist here. I can classify the two types of days as either administrative or training days. There are no days off, but we are allowed a few hours of Sunday for worship services.

Administrative days start around 0730 with a briefing to the Head Officer about what will happen that day or any red flags thrown during the night. [These red flags] could be prisoners captured, enemy or friendly Killed in Action (KIA), accidents or missing gear. From there it is “chow time” and then the individual cells in Iraqi Security Forces — military, police or Special Forces under control of the Iraqi government — get to work on whatever needs to be done.

For me, the Transition Teams [U.S. Coalition Forces that work together and train Iraqi Security Forces] often have problems with equipment, logistics, maintenance, supplies and so on. We help to fix Iraqi problems (actually responsible for many more headaches than things on the Coalition side) like pay, training and food. I coordinate with people all the way from Husaybah (on the Syrian border) to Baghdad depending on the mission at hand. The day is marked by a 1700 briefing touching on all the daily issues that came up, and then we work through until around 2130 or 2200.

On a training day, we either do training tasks, patrol or movement. We move in helicopters, which only fly at night here. I’ve been up all night catching catnaps whenever possible, staying warm with my body armor and combat load on. The desert gets very cold at night during the winter, trust me.

We do a pre-movement brief and conduct an after-action debrief and report (AAR). This could be anything from a class on optics, night-vision, firing crew-served weapons, patrolling, talking to local leaders or any number of other things. A lot of what units do out here is just show up. The presence of the “Marine Tribe,” as we are thought of out of the Iraq boondocks makes a huge impact. We have earned the respect of these tribes through bloodshed and deaths on both sides.

How is the environment right now? Could you describe it?

The environment is a huge question. I suppose the biggest difference is a personal realization (it was for me, anyway) of how much the value of a life is inflated by Western culture. The Hobbesian reality for most of the people here is depressing for someone raised in a warm and safe American cocoon. Everything about Iraq speaks of an imagined past, glorious in its poorly-defined majesty. The culture, the people, the climate, the architecture — they all say the same thing to me.

The people in charge of the country are unsure of their temporary importance on the world stage, untrusting of the new civic structure being constructed around them, myopically focused on ancient religious divides, wary of their Shiite and Sunni neighbors alike yet still hopeful. It is beautiful to see children still react the same way to a small gift, still organize games in the streets, still smile and laugh for no discernable reason and seem innocent despite everything around them. The most amazing thing is to see how little a foreign culture glosses over the same motivations and love we all share for our family and friends.

An interrogator friend of mine told me it is odd how easily the “fundamentalist Muslim” can be stripped away when talking to an insurgent, how quickly the poor, disillusioned, twenty-something with no prospects emerges.

How are you and your fellow colleagues experiencing Iraq?

The most interesting aspect of this deployment has been taking note of the various reactions to the loss and separation everyone deals with here. A distressing number of my peers — single Marines from their mid-twenties — tend to bury themselves in technology when not working. They have the ability to get iPods, PS3s, laptops and various other mind-numbing devices over here, though we sometimes lack the electricity to use them.

Most guys just want to forget about where they are, I guess. This is understandable but still disheartening. Fortunately, we almost never get a chance to be alone, so that makes any self-pity hard to incubate. Since almost all people serve in platoons or squads, they build a lot of camaraderie with the other members and that takes the edge of all the heartbreak.

Nothing dulls pain like sharing it, even if only through a half-finished sentence cut off by the knowing nod of the guy sitting next to you.

Have you interacted with Iraqi civilians?

My interactions are mostly through interpreters (or terps, if you prefer), particularly one we just call “Moe.” He is attached to our unit and helps us pretty much every day. Things would be impossible without [interpreters].

As for the general public, I don’t interact with them much. Additionally, I feel it is appropriate here to distinguish between Iraqis at the border and in central Iraq. Basically, they are much less connected out here, and I’ll relay a story illustrating this point. A transition team was doing patrols in between two of the border forts lining the “no man’s land” between Iraq and its Western neighbors when they came across a Bedouin with a few mules taking some supplies across the desert. When questioned, he stated he remembered hearing something a long time ago about a guy named Saddam, but nothing ever came of it. He had never heard of the war, did not know who Bush was and didn’t recognize the Iraqi flag. This is a striking example and by no means the norm, but it does illustrate an interesting point — there are guys out here belonging to nomadic tribes who have roamed these deserts for millennia, and they may very well continue on roaming them for the next few thousand years. Of course, most of the people on the border are aware of what’s going on. The Anbar Awakening Movement [of Sunnis in support of the Coalition] is quite strong in most places.

When will your deployment end?

I am legally obligated to serve until the Expiration of Official Service (EOS), which for me is April 19, 2009. That doesn’t mean they will keep me until that date but they could. I was told in my orders before reporting in that I would be activated for a year, ending October 12 [2008]. We will see what happens with that.

To this day, I still have yet to receive any kind of definitive word. I take offense at this not for me (well, a little for me) but for my friends, the ones with children waiting for them or being born, as was the case with one of my colleagues. [Some of them have] wives who thought this was all done or [who] never knew the military life and were totally unprepared for it.

To not know is the worst thing in the world and none of us that were recalled do. A pretty sad state of affairs, you’d agree.