Daniel P. Driscoll

So got to 10th Mountain Division after Ranger School, 2nd Brigade.

We were there about eight to ten months.

We were originally supposed to go to Afghanistan, got swapped out to go to Iraq.

We deployed in kind of the tail end of the surge, so 09.

It's like right at the end of the surge, right before the handoff, through kind of the handoff.

And so the way I summarize that time is, like, I think when I talk to other buddies who have deployed there at different periods of time, I'd like to think that perhaps we were there at, like, peak stupid, where we would go out on these missions and we would be told the number one thing to optimize for was not getting hurt.

Like, just Americans had no appetite for soldiers getting hurt anymore.

And I can remember talking to my captain and major and colonels and saying,

Well, if that's the thing we're optimizing for, just like don't send us out.

We might as well just sit here because like we can't do our job if that's what you're telling us to do.

And so I can hit some of the more insane stories from that time.

But it's like it just makes me so angry to think back on you were risking the lives of me and the guys beside me and under me.

And for something that just, like, there didn't seem to be a purpose or a mission at that point.

So, by the time we were there, most of the dumb ones had been killed.

So, we would have IEDs and mortars, but no sort of, like, direct...

engagements of any sort of substance.

We would do—one of the highlights of stupidity to me was, like, they sent in a camera crew.

We were going to go after this ID factory.

And it's like, you just imagine it to be a certain thing, and you maybe have experienced something similar, but you're doing a factory raid.

And so they took two of the platoons.