Lt.Col. Deanna Brown: Never be Weak, Never Back Down - Conclusion

 This time she assigned herself to the civil affairs unit working with the Iraqi people. Since the overall mission in Iraq at that time was to help get the Iraqis back on their feet, she figured, where better to work. Maybe that stuff she learned back in Haiti would pay off.

     Iraq’s Ministry of Agriculture had lots of vets. They estimated at least 10,000.  The problem was, to be effective, they had to have a system that allowed them to get drugs and equipment they needed, a system where farmers paid for their services, and at a higher government level, a plan for how to prioritize and control the many diseases that plagued their livestock and poultry.  Saddam did not allow “Thinking for self” for his vets, or anyone else, for that matter. So now, they needed to be taught these things.

     And, we added to the problem. Many of the Iraqi leaders were deposed, with all new people brought in after the US invasion

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      Deanna’s second tour in Iraq accomplished a lot. So it was a good tour. But it had a very bad personal aspect to it, for Deanna.

     Five vets were needed for the civil affairs mission. Deanna assigned herself, as I mentioned. Another was her friend, Lt. Col Daniel Holland, who wanted to go. But he told her his wife would kill him if he volunteered. Since Deanna was in a position to influence who was assigned, she asked the Vet Corps if they could get Dan assigned.  Dan was a very good man, and was on a path to becoming the Vet Corps’ General. Deanna knew that to be successful in their mission, she needed a man like him.  After completing her team, they headed for Iraq. She had a pretty good idea where her Civil Affairs vets should be placed, but the decision makers had different ideas. Two were assigned to the same desk northeast of Baghdad (Diyala Province), the most junior vet was sent alone to a pretty hot area (Mosul), and Deanna and Dan were assigned to Bagdad.

     Soon after getting in country, Dan and Deanna started meeting regularly for lunch to discuss their missions and to figure out how to influence the decision makers to change how they were being used. 3 weeks into the tour, Dan’s bosses wanted to send him to a very dangerous area, to deworm animals. This was something that many military leaders thought would help win the hearts and minds of the locals… they were used to operating in places where there are almost no vets, not like Iraq where they had vets on every corner.  Deanna’s team wanted to stop this kind of mission since they felt it did very little good, and put people’s lives at risk unnecessarily. But… being new to theater, they both knew it would take time to change that way of thinking.  Dan said he needed to go to prove he wasn’t scared. Two days later, Dan was dead; killed by an improvised explosive device while on that mission.  In Deanna’s mind, it was largely because of her. She escorted the bodies of Dan and the three other Soldiers killed with him home from Iraq.  This was the low point of her career.

     Lt. Col. Daniel Holland’s love for animals and compassion for people were profound. He served in Germany, Bosnia, Honduras, and Haiti. He was posthumously awarded the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, and the Purple Heart. Other awards included four awards for Meritorious Service, Armed Forces Expeditionary medal, and The Humanitarian Medal. He was a favorite of many in the Veterinary Service. A very, very good man.

    After the initial challenges, Deanna and the other vets finally started being able to do what they came there for.  Finally, they were able to organize the vets of Iraq, working toward being more functional, and think more for themselves. Deanna knew they couldn’t do this alone.  She enlisted help from many vets in the United States, from the University of North Carolina, Texas A&M, the University of Kentucky, and Colorado State, as well as the USDA and the American Veterinary Medical Association. They planned a large workshop to bring all these people together with the veterinary leadership from all parts of Iraq.  They held the workshop in Northern Iraq, the Kurdish area, where a large gathering would not be as dangerous. This workshop stressed the importance of Vets of Iraq working together to agree on priorities and function as a country wide group. All in all, this was a very successful meeting, and it spawned ongoing relationships as well as many more projects and programs that would be used to help the Iraqis toward their goals. The meeting helped identify some of the key things they needed to move forward.  One of them was more advanced lab equipment so they could identify organisms.  The team arranged to have this lab equipment brought in and to train the Iraqi vets how to use and maintain it.

     One USDA vet, Paula Cowan, who was very important for the meeting, was wheel chair bound. She was discouraged from coming by many, but she would not hear of it. The security people finally agreed, and they assigned her a personal body guard, a very large man, whose job was to pick her up and get her out of there if trouble arose. Luckily this was never necessary

     Through most of her tour, Deanna was assigned to cover all of Iraq south of Bagdad as well as the very large western province of Anbar so she was out a lot. During one mission, she was in Fallujah, to help the Marines in establishing a slaughter house. She flew in by helicopter, but was unable to fly back as the helicopters were grounded by a large sand storm. She spent two nights at the airfield.  After the second day, still unable to fly, she was told a convoy headed to Baghdad had one more space. It consisted of three heavily armored SUV’s. Security was provided by a private contractor, Aegis, Britain’s version of Black water.  About halfway back, they were ambushed by about 30 men. They were shooting mostly small arms, thank goodness, and the upper part of the cars were armored. They were shooting at the tires. Three on Deanna’s car were shot out, two on another, but they were “run flat” tires, so they managed to keep going. After they were out of danger, or so they thought, they stopped to assess the problem and came under fire again. A rocket hit between two of the cars, so they quickly got going again, and traveled the last ten miles to Abu Ghraib Prison on the rims, where they could stop inside the walls and change tires. Deanna assured me, they played no role in the infamous activities at that place. They were only there to change their tires behind a wall.

     After returning from Iraq, Deanna’s family wished to stay at Fort Bragg, where they had bought a house, but Deanna was needed to take a command at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, where she traveled around a lot, supervising Vets in half a dozen eastern states. To my knowledge, she never parachuted in to these locations, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she did.

     When Deanna retired, our entire family breathed a sigh of relief. My brother Harold, the Patriarch of our family and an old Air Force man himself, lectured Deanna years ago. “You need to stop volunteering for all these hots spots in the world. Sooner or later, that will come back to bite you!” Deanna just respectfully smiled, nodded her head. Then she was off to find her next exciting adventure.

     Deanna now works for the USDA Food Safety Inspection Service where she is assigned to a chicken plant in Arkansas. I’m not really sure how, but some way, somehow, Deanna will find a dangerous mission that’s attached to chicken inspecting. It’s just, I guess, Deanna being Deanna.