Interview with Maj Rich Dimeglio

MAJ Rich DiMeglio served as the brigade Judge Advocate General (JAG) at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Kalsu in Iraq during 2006 and 2007 in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). In this February 2009 interview, MAJ DiMeglio discusses the wide variety of duties of a brigade JAG, the loss of one of his paralegals in an attack on a convoy, and the importance of his brigade Family Readiness Group (FRG). During the course of the interview, MAJ DiMeglio observes, “ I think that’s one thing the Army needs to look at, is deployment times. It needs to be shortened. Your perspective is where you sit. I’m not sure sometimes that people who make the decisions understand where some of these people are sitting on a day-to-day basis. Neither do I fully; I told you, my quality of life compared to a lot of people was very good; I had my own place and there were guys who lived on bunks for a year. There were guys who slept on the ground for a long time, so I’m not complaining about my particular situation, but it’s a different environment for some people that make the decisions than for some people that face it. That’s the difficulty.”