Interview with MAJ Jeremy Lewis

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Major Jeremy Lewis, Infantry, deployed to Iraq for a second Operation Iraqi Freedom tour as an advisor to a special police transition team (SPTT) from November 2005 until April 2006. His previous tour had been as a company commander with the 3rd Infantry Division. As a SPTT advisor, Lewis mentored and trained the men of the commando in an on-the-job manner as the 1st Battalion, 1st Brigade Special Police (later rolled into the Iraqi National Police) went directly into the fight. Despite constant logistics issues with all classes of supply, the operational tempo was brisk. Multiple missions daily ran the gamut from establishing checkpoints to executing cordon and search operations. When intelligence allowed, the commando Lewis advised would arrest high-value targets. Some 18 to 20 commando members lost their lives during Lewis' tour. The bombing of the Al-Askari, or the Golden Dome Mosque in Samarra, Iraq - a Shi'ite shrine in a predominantly Sunni city - provided the most significant event of Lewis' rotation. 1st Battalion's commando was first on the scene soon after the tremendous explosion ripped a large hole in the dome of the mosque. Elements of the Special Police unit quickly apprehended 10 Iraqis whose hands tested positive for explosives residue. Quickly, however, the command for American forces to evacuate the city came down through channels though the element of the 101st Airborne Division that controlled the battlespace. Lewis found this order difficult to pass to his Iraqi counterpart, but the wisdom of this proved out in the coming days as an anti-American public information campaign blaming coalition forces for the bombing swept the city. Lewis found the tour worthwhile and rewarding. He put together the experiences of his previous tours in Iraq and Bosnia to come to grips with the challenges of advising and training the "Bad News Bears," as he called them. Progress in planning, coordination and execution might have been hesitant, but it was consistent. The need to pull in intelligence and share it among the Special Police and the American units in the battlespace provided a daily challenge. Meeting this challenge was a central component in accomplishing the police missions.