March 2007
Many people would undoubtedly greet the prospect of
spending a year in Iraq with trepidation. But Army Capt.
Christopher Botterbusch, ’03, viewed deployment to Iraq as just part
of the job.
Botterbusch attended University of Richmond on a
four-year ROTC scholarship. The Army commissioned him as a second
lieutenant the day before his college graduation in May 2003, and he
began his active-duty service that June.
After his assignment to the Signal Corps, which
operates and maintains the Army’s communication and electronic
systems, Botterbusch underwent intensive communications training. He
reported to Fort Stewart, near Hinesville, Ga., in January 2004, four
months after the 3rd Infantry Division, to which he had
been assigned, returned from its first mission to Iraq.
“From day one of my arrival we [members of the 3rd
Infantry Division] were combat focused,” Botterbusch said. “I found
out even before I got to my unit that we would have to redeploy to
Iraq in a year.”
During the ensuing year, Botterbusch and his fellow
soldiers focused on training while transforming their brigade to
conform to the Army’s new standards for more flexible and modular
units. Botterbusch felt well prepared when he deployed in January 2005
for a one-year tour of duty as a platoon leader supervising 31
soldiers.
Botterbusch and his soldiers first stopped in Kuwait.
“There’s a much lower security concern there,” Botterbusch explained,
“so all the freight is shipped to Kuwait and units rehearse their
mission.” After two weeks in Kuwait,
Botterbusch’s platoon embarked on a two-day convoy to Baghdad,
arriving in February.
The signal platoon set up its communications
operation in a military compound that had served as a ministry under
Saddam Hussein’s regime. Members of the platoon assumed responsibility
for maintaining a communications network to support the Army’s 2nd
Brigade with tactical telephone and Internet access.
Aside from several routers and encryption devices
mounted on the back of a Humvee, the platoon housed most of its heat-
and sand-sensitive communications equipment in the air-conditioned
headquarters. As a result, each member of Botterbusch’s platoon left
the relative safety of the military compound only about two dozen
times during the year they spent in Iraq.
“It became almost too comfortable,” Botterbusch said.
“A lot of people lost their tactical edge. I struggled as a leader to
keep people from thinking they had a Homer Simpson job just hanging
out in a room monitoring computers.”
About midway through his one-year tour of duty in
Iraq, Botterbusch received a promotion from platoon leader to
executive officer of his company of 72 men and women. His new position
required him to focus on issues associated with logistics and
sustainment in a broader context than he had as a platoon leader.
Botterbusch also assumed command of the company for a month while the
regular commander took vacation leave.
Almost daily communication with family and friends
back in the United States via email or telephone helped maintain good
morale, Botterbusch said. The vacation leave afforded to anyone
serving in Iraq or Afghanistan for a year also offered a pleasant
reprieve from life on the base.
Botterbusch, for example, took a cruise with his
wife, Lauren Nardella Botterbusch, W’03. He also returned home to Pennsylvania for a
week to serve as best man in a friend’s wedding.
Sports provided another outlet. “A group of 12 to 18
people in our battalion would play pick-up volleyball on Sunday
afternoons, even during 120-degree temps,” Botterbusch said. “It was a
good stress reliever and sanity check, and there was, of course,
plenty of sand for the court!”
Botterbusch’s battalion returned to Fort Stewart in
January 2006 having suffered only one serious injury and no deaths
during its deployment in Iraq. Originally scheduled for redeployment
in August 2007, members of the battalion recently learned that the
date for their redeployment had been moved up to May to accommodate
President Bush’s surge strategy.
“The soldiers in my battalion are very accepting of
deployment,” Botterbusch said. “There’s a degree of predictability in
the armed services—you’re going to deploy. I’m really proud of our
soldiers and their families. They’re adapting to changes in plans and
taking things in stride.”
This time, however, Botterbusch won’t be deploying
with his battalion. He will command the battalion’s rear detachment,
and his duties will include training new soldiers and getting them
ready for deployment.
Botterbusch is currently weighing several options for
the future: extending his service in order to pursue a full-time
graduate school program to which he’s already been accepted and which
the Army would fund in full or returning to civilian life and
financing his own graduate school education in business or human
resources.
Either way, Botterbusch had no regrets about the time
he’s spent in the Army. Some of the lessons he learned as a leadership
studies major helped make him a better officer, he said.
“I think I bring a different approach to looking at
problems and how people can work through problems,” Botterbusch said.
““There are a lot of set ways for solving problems in the Army.
Sometimes I challenge norms that the Army has drawn because of the way
I learned to think at Jepson.” |