During OIF, my battalion was operating in the Salah a Din Province. The majority of daily operations were conducted at company level or below. After about 9 months of combat operations, many in the ranks suffered from the fatigue and frustration often associated with combat.
Early one Tuesday morning in Iraq, months of work gathering intelligence came to a head. With the help of a valued informant and weeks of patrolling, my company knew the identities and whereabouts of seven members of an improvised explosive device (IED) cell.
As an incoming company commander conducting my change of command inventories, I soon discovered there were a number of unaccounted pieces of government property and equipment. I noted this and brought it to the attention of the outgoing commander in an effort to locate the missing items.