Interview with Maj Marty Deckard

Major Marty Deckard, a Field Artillery officer, deployed to Iraq in February 2007 and redeployed in February 2008 as a border transition team (BTT) chief. Upon being notified of his deployment while instructing at the Captain’s Career Course, Deckard began training at Fort Riley, Kansas, in November 2006. He felt that the training with the team’s various weapons systems was the most valuable aspect of the training. His team received additional training in Kuwait and Iraq but none of it addressed the border police mission. As a result, he said, his team had “no idea how the border patrol, the border police were organized.” In Iraq, his team was stationed at Camp Delta, which was in the Multinational Division-Center South (MND-CS) sector owned by the Polish Army. He was specifically responsible for the 1st Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 3rd Region of the Department of Border Enforcement located in the town of Zurbatiyah. After becoming familiar with how the police operated, Deckard felt that the biggest problem he faced was logistics, especially with the supply of fuel and ammunition, and he considered the team’s ability to get the traffic control points up and operating as their biggest accomplishment. While his team faced a steep learning curve in Iraq, Deckard closed the interview optimistic about the general trajectory of the advisory effort.