Group Interview
XVIII Airborne Corps History Office

SGT Randall M. Yackiel
SPC Randall R. Anderson

Interview Conducted 22 August 1991 in Building AT-3058, Fort Bragg, North Carolina

Interviewer: Dr. Robert K. Wright, Jr.

Oral History Interview DSIT AE 111

DR. WRIGHT: This is an Operation DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM interview being conducted on 22 August 1991 in Building AT-3058, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The interviewing official is Dr. Robert K. Wright, Jr., XVIII Airborne Corps Historian. Gentlemen, if I could get you to give me your name, rank and serial number.

SGT YACKIEL: SGT Randall M. Yackiel; serial number ***-**-****. MOS is 25S Visual Documentation Specialist.

SPC ANDERSON: SPC Randall R. Anderson; ***-**-****; 25S also, Still Documentation Specialist.

DR. WRIGHT: Okay, gentlemen. You're both assigned to the Photo[graphy] Lab[oratory] at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, permanently.

SPC ANDERSON: Correct.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes.

DR. WRIGHT: For Operation DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM, what was your duty assignment?

SGT YACKIEL: Special duty assignment to the Corps Historian's Office for documentation purposes.

DR. WRIGHT: When did that begin?

SPC ANDERSON: 17 October [19]90.

SGT YACKIEL: Was when we deployed. We were assigned to the History Office approximately the 3d or 4th of August of '90.

DR. WRIGHT: To start covering the documentation here?

SPC ANDERSON: For this deployment.

DR. WRIGHT: What kind of missions did you work on during the deployment coverage?

SGT YACKIEL: The initial deployment coverage was everything. Documenting everything from shipment at the port in Wilmington, [North Carolina].

SPC ANDERSON: PORs [Processing for Overseas Replacement].

SGT YACKIEL: PORs, equipment issues to ...

SPC ANDERSON: Painting ...

SGT YACKIEL: ... National Guard and Reserves.

SPC ANDERSON: ... of the vehicles.

SGT YACKIEL: Everything the Corps had to go through in order to ... the rest of the Corps other than the ready response teams had to go through.

DR. WRIGHT: As you look back on that, was it a factor that you were part of the garrison here at Fort Bragg that enabled you to get in and get that stuff done quickly, rather than say an outsider who was brought in and would have to try to learn where everything was?

SPC ANDERSON: I believe so because areas on post. We knew most of the people.

SGT YACKIEL: Our contacts within Corps itself.

SPC ANDERSON: Helped out a lot.

SGT YACKIEL: Major factor. I believe somebody that wasn't familiar with the operation or the people in the operations themselves would have been at a loss.

SPC ANDERSON: Would have caused some serious trouble.

DR. WRIGHT: At the same time you were doing your documentation, were there other photographers involved trying to get the documentation as well?

SPC ANDERSON: Yes. The PAO [Public Affairs Officer]. The 49th P[ublic] A[ffairs] D[etachment].

SGT YACKIEL: At Fort Bragg, yes, PAO was covering it. They were mainly concerned with the actual departure of the units out of Pope Air Force Base [adjacent to Fort Bragg]. We didn't seem to run into them in any other areas ...

DR. WRIGHT: And you pretty much tried to take every step of the process that any individual would go through and get coverage for that?

SPC ANDERSON: Yes.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes.

DR. WRIGHT: Everything from drawing equipment and getting shots through to last-minute purchases at the PX and stuff like that?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes.

DR. WRIGHT: What kind of film did you use?

SGT YACKIEL: Documentation covered out of Fort Bragg covered everything except for color photos. We did color slides and black and white print, but we didn't have the capability to shoot color print because Fort Bragg at the time had limited facilities to process the film.

DR. WRIGHT: Where did you draw the film from?

SGT YACKIEL: Fort Bragg TASC.¹

DR. WRIGHT: In terms of going through and taking that kind of documentation photography, how different was that from what you had ever done before, or was it pretty much the same old thing?

SGT YACKIEL: For myself it was pretty much along the same lines as training I've had at other units, at other deployable units during EDREs and FTXs,² but for Fort Bragg and for the unit (USAG³) being a nondeployable unit, it was something brand new. I don't think any photographers have ever been deployed from USAG before.

DR. WRIGHT: What about you, SPC Anderson?

SPC ANDERSON: It was totally new to me. This is my first assignment at Bragg and I never went on EDREs, never went on FTXs. This was just a shock. It was awesome how we moved everything out.

DR. WRIGHT: In terms of taking the pictures, you used still picture cameras. What type of equipment was that?

SPC ANDERSON: I had an F-1 ...

DR. WRIGHT: Canon.

SPC ANDERSON: ... Canon. Basic issue.

SGT YACKIEL: It was basically just 35mm single-lens reflex cameras, all of them manual operation. It's the standard Army outdated issue camera.

DR. WRIGHT: Okay. Resuming. In terms of taking the pictures early on, in the phase when you were still here at Fort Bragg, that was part-time duty while you also split time working in your regular jobs in the lab.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. It was. At first, we were totally dedicated to the History Office. After approximately two weeks, it began to look like we weren't going to deploy immediately. The Training Support Center decided that they needed us back at the Photo Lab. So we did a little bit at the lab and a little bit at the History Office so it was 50/50 for a while.

SPC ANDERSON: Time sharing.

DR. WRIGHT: When you were put out on your photographic assignments, were you pretty much on your own?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes.

DR. WRIGHT: Allowed to use your judgement?

SGT YACKIEL: We got with the Corps historian in the mornings and got a general idea of what was required, what type of ... what areas needed to be covered, and we'd go from there on our own and cover it to the best of our ability.

SPC ANDERSON: And try to find out more of what's going on, what's deploying, thus ... to our friends, whatnot.

DR. WRIGHT: Now that networking is done out at the enlisted level?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes.

DR. WRIGHT: Your friends?

SPC ANDERSON: Oh, yes.

SGT YACKIEL: Yeah. Every time a photographer comes up to photograph stuff on a higher official level, you usually get blocked for about a half a day until you have everything in writing and so-and-so calls this person and they call that person. If you just go within the enlisted ranks, everything gets taken care of immediately almost.

DR. WRIGHT: In the photography you did back here at Fort Bragg, did you run into any technical problems?

SGT YACKIEL: No. Everything here was all the same. It's standard procedure, standard film use and everything. With the training, we were up to date on it.

DR. WRIGHT: What about capturing pictures in reduced lighting. Say, for example, when you went down to the Port of Wilmington. A lot of that photography had to be done at night because the load out was done at night. Did you run into problems with that?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. There was a few problems there. Some of it was technical. Mainly not having high enough speed film to shoot with or ...

SPC ANDERSON: ... not enough flashes.

SGT YACKIEL: Or that. Yes. Not enough power in flash. One of the other problems was a little bit lack of coordination between ourselves and the dock workers and ship workers, but we managed to smooth that over in about an hour and a half once we arrived there and then everything went pretty well smooth.

DR. WRIGHT: Okay. October 18th, I guess it is, the History Office finally gets to deploy.⁴ Because you were garrison, you had to go through an equipment draw--issue--correct, because you don't normally have in Garrison TA-50⁵?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. We're not issued deployment bags, deployment equipment. Just training purposes is all we get.

DR. WRIGHT: But you were supported fully by Headquarters Company, [XVIII Airborne] Corps then to draw the stuff?

SGT YACKIEL: Oh, yes.

SPC ANDERSON: It was great.

SGT YACKIEL: In one day's time they gave us all the desert issue we needed, insured that we had all the paperwork we needed to go over to CIF⁶ and draw the rest of our combat issue, and in one day's time issue equipment-wise, we were ready to go.

SPC ANDERSON: I was surprised because everything went smoothly there. Issue. They had everything we needed.

DR. WRIGHT: No problems on shortages of anything then?

SGT YACKIEL: Well, they had a few things that one day they'd run out of and when we went in to pick up our issue, they didn't have a few things here and there. Minor stuff. Flags for uniforms.

DR. WRIGHT: But you were able to get all those?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes, at a later date. Yes.

DR. WRIGHT: Deploy over to Saudi Arabia how? Talk me through that procedure.

SPC ANDERSON: 747.

SGT YACKIEL: Well, first we went to the hangar.

SPC ANDERSON: Stayed there for 20 hours.

DR. WRIGHT: At Green Ramp⁷?

SPC ANDERSON: This is at Green Ramp.

SGT YACKIEL: Green Ramp. Went to Green Ramp. Sat there long enough until SPC Anderson and myself and Dr. Wright were laughing idiots from being bored out of our minds. Finally, approximately 2:00 in the morning the civilian aircraft landed and about an hour later we finally boarded and from then, I'm not sure because I fell asleep until we were in New York.

SPC ANDERSON: I couldn't sleep. I didn't know what to expect.

DR. WRIGHT: This wasn't a classic military deployment bouncing in the back of a C-141 [Starlifter]?

SGT YACKIEL: My God, no.

DR. WRIGHT: This was one of the regular commercial ...

SGT YACKIEL: [Northwest Orient] 747.

SPC ANDERSON: 747.

SGT YACKIEL: With stewardesses and everything.

DR. WRIGHT: And where did you sit in the aircraft?

SPC ANDERSON: First class. Lounge chairs.

SGT YACKIEL: First they bumped us into the back until the gracious imperial historian decided, hey, I got a seat in the front, I want my two guys with me. So we got up front front. Couldn't get any more closer to the front.

DR. WRIGHT: And then the flight went by way of New York?

SGT YACKIEL: New York to [Rhine-Main Air Base], West Germany where we stayed approximately a day and a half due to aircraft ...

SPC ANDERSON: Engine trouble. We blew an engine.

SGT YACKIEL: ... breakdowns. They transferred us to another aircraft and, from there, we flew into Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

DR. WRIGHT: And got in about what time in Dhahran?

SPC ANDERSON: Fourish, 3:30.

SGT YACKIEL: About 3:30, 4:00 in the morning and started sweating bullets.

DR. WRIGHT: It was a tad warmer?

SGT YACKIEL: The first day was ...

SPC ANDERSON: Oh, hell. It was hell.

SGT YACKIEL: A definite memory. Lack of--a lot of loss of communication on the Corps' part. They were expecting us but they had no place to put us, no idea what to do with us. They didn't even know what part of the city we were supposed to work in.

SPC ANDERSON: So we sat in the parking lot all day.

DR. WRIGHT: In the sun?

SPC ANDERSON: Underneath shade, overhead.

SGT YACKIEL: In a parking lot.

SPC ANDERSON: Flies everywhere.

DR. WRIGHT: And eventually it settles out then, I guess, what? In the evening that they finally decide.

SPC ANDERSON: About 6:00.

SGT YACKIEL: In the evening time about 6:00 or 7:00 P.M., SFC [Elijah] Payne from G-3 finally got us a place to stay for the evening which ended up our place to stay as long as we were in Dhahran.

DR. WRIGHT: And this was where?

SPC ANDERSON: Dragon City outside of Dhahran.

DR. WRIGHT: Where the Corps Main was?

SPC ANDERSON: Corps Headquarters.

SGT YACKIEL: Correct.

DR. WRIGHT: And you were put up in buildings or in tents?

SPC ANDERSON: Tents. Sharing it with critters, flies, saw a yackiel, once. Gosh. That was hell by itself.

DR. WRIGHT: It was what, one of the transient tents that they just dedicated to you guys for a while?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. I think what mainly happened is they put us up for the night and then we didn't make any noise about it so they forgot we were there and we stayed there for a while. After a while, they finally got ... I think at this time still Dr. Wright ... got him in a tent with his peers and left us alone and just started the mission from there.

DR. WRIGHT: Okay. And you were located ... that tent was located where, out by the basketball court and volleyball court?

SPC ANDERSON: By the mosque.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes, we were centrally located. Nowheres near ... well, there was latrines around but we were by a basketball court and the mosque.

DR. WRIGHT: Which then caused problems because of the calls to prayer early in the morning?

SPC ANDERSON: 4:45 every morning we'd wake up screaming at that thing.

SGT YACKIEL: First morning, first thing, both of us, sitting up bolt right. What's going on?

SPC ANDERSON: ... I want ammo!

DR. WRIGHT: In the early days in Saudi Arabia during the DESERT SHIELD phase when we were down in Dhahran, what kind of missions did you start off working on?

SGT YACKIEL: Our very first mission, our very first ... I guess you'd call it big mission ... was to go with the resupply 'chopper, a [CH-47D] Chinook up to Hill 505 where the forwards observers,⁸ I believe they were, were at. Basically we just documented the resupply and familiarized ourselves a little bit with the aviation operations.

DR. WRIGHT: And, in addition to that, you were also doing on a daily basis opportunity shoots in the immediate environs of the headquarters.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. Everything from ...

SPC ANDERSON: Soap dishes in the showers.

SGT YACKIEL: ... laundry services, child services, the signal operations.

SPC ANDERSON: Facilities.

SGT YACKIEL: The facilities that were offered and the biggest problem was lack of transportation.

DR. WRIGHT: And that remained a problem until sort of mid to late December, I guess?

SPC ANDERSON: Yes. Oh, God, yes.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. Our only means of transportation was bumming, borrowing and stealing vehicles occasionally just to get out into an area. And it got to the point where the only way we would get out was if we happened to hear of somebody leaving Dragon City and had an open space.

DR. WRIGHT: And again you rely on your enlisted network to make those sorts of contacts?

SGT YACKIEL: Towards the end, yes, but in the very beginning, it all fell on Dr. Wright to get us out and around.

DR. WRIGHT: Early on, I guess it must be about late October or early November, you make contact with the Combat Pictorial Detachment and you start doing some cooperative work with them?

SPC ANDERSON: Correct.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes.

SPC ANDERSON: They helped out a lot. Getting rides with them, they'd tell us about missions, we'd tell them about missions.

SGT YACKIEL: It worked out really well. I think if the CPD wouldn't have been in our area and interested in covering parts of the Corps as their requirements, our coverage would have been a lot more limited. We got to go to a lot of operations and exercises that otherwise we wouldn't have seen. We wouldn't have even known about probably.

DR. WRIGHT: What about the compatibility of your equipment and their equipment?

SPC ANDERSON: Theirs were up to date. Theirs were high speed.

SGT YACKIEL: Most of their equipment was video and still video. That's what they concentrated on. And as far as still photo, they just concentrated on slides whereas we shot every type of film available to us.

SPC ANDERSON: We could get our hands on.

SGT YACKIEL: Color print, black and white print, color slide. As far as equipment swapping or anything they had that we needed, if they had it and we needed to switch stuff, there was no problem but most of their equipment was ...

DR. WRIGHT: Incompatible?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes.

DR. WRIGHT: The type of missions you cover early on range from what kind of things?

SGT YACKIEL: Let's see. Back in November, live fire exercises out at Faisal range, the Presidential visit in ...

DR. WRIGHT: Thanksgiving dinner?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. Thanksgiving dinners. A lot of aviation jobs. Just going up. I think most of the aviation jobs you had coordinated.

SPC ANDERSON: Deception.⁹ Aerials for deception.

SGT YACKIEL: Deceptions.

SPC ANDERSON: Live fire with the Brits.

DR. WRIGHT: Did a lot of soldier life stuff, too, correct?

SGT YACKIEL: Correct.

DR. WRIGHT: So you helped with, what, postal operations, things like that?

SPC ANDERSON: Yes.

DR. WRIGHT: Largely a function there of that they were accessible?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. They were in the immediate area. If we had been forward, we probably would have had maybe one day's coverage of them, maybe two days, due to lack of transportation. But since they were in the immediate area, we had repeated opportunities.

DR. WRIGHT: You got to do a little bit of direct support work, too. The deception mission that you mentioned was a mission that you could cover not only as historians but also had some immediate payback for the Corps staff?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. Well, [a] prime example--the deceptions. We needed it for the History Office and the deception cell themselves needed coverage so that they could look at what the enemy would see from the air or in the distance and make changes or any adjustments needed. And due to the fact that PAO had a Photo Lab on the [King Abdul Aziz Royal Saudi] Air Base, we had the capability to give them immediate photos.

DR. WRIGHT: Same way, I believe, you did some work for the [XVIII Airborne Corps] Rear CP¹⁰ and the 139th RAOC¹¹ in terms of working with them to get them some views of base defense and stuff like that?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. A lot of it. The Corps rear, a lot of we did was just the bases right in Dhahran in the city and the little detachments spread throughout. And I don't think we ever got the negatives back from that.

DR. WRIGHT: In terms of some of the other opportunity-type shoots: visiting VIPs, celebrities, the Bob Hope show, things like that?

SPC ANDERSON: Jay Leno.

SGT YACKIEL: Basically everybody, all the celebrities that came to Dragon City, we had an opportunity to cover that.

SPC ANDERSON: And enjoy it.

DR. WRIGHT: One of the things there would be are those the kind of jobs that the PAO, the 49th PAD photographers, were covering as well or did you run into them very often when you were out in the field?

SPC ANDERSON: No, not really.

SGT YACKIEL: In the field, no. The only time we ran into them, it seemed like, was when there were celebrities around. Celebrities being any high ranking military officials or just civilian celebrities coming over to visit the troops.

DR. WRIGHT: So, in essence, the kind of photography you were doing did not duplicate what the public affairs guys were doing?

SGT YACKIEL: No.

SPC ANDERSON: Not at all.

SGT YACKIEL: Our documentation was specifically that, for historical documentation, not for publication so everything ... what the PAO wanted was a lot of different than what we needed.

DR. WRIGHT: As you go through that period during the rest of DESERT SHIELD, did you have any problems with your equipment or with learning to adjust to shooting under the bright sunlight?

SPC ANDERSON: Yes. For slides especially. Usually back here we have to shoot exactly on what it is, the ASA. Over there we had to turn it down one stop. Say it was like 125 film speed. We'd shoot it at 100.

SGT YACKIEL: Yeah. You had to pump it up. But yes, technical problems were mainly with the films required a different exposure, not what the camera called for, due to the reflections from the sand and everything. Equipment breakdown and maintenance was a major factor. Lenses would break down three times as fast in the Saudi conditions as they would in North American conditions.

DR. WRIGHT: Partly due to the bouncing around and partly due to the permeation of the dust ... ?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. Microfine sand would get down in the gears and everything and destroy the equipment.

DR. WRIGHT: Did you use canned air to try to keep the equipment maintained?

SPC ANDERSON: Yes, we did.

SGT YACKIEL: Until we ran out.

SPC ANDERSON: We also found out that batteries, they had a shorter life span over there because it was hotter.

DR. WRIGHT: Now, were you able to get replacement batteries, replacement canned air, additional film? How did that work?

SGT YACKIEL: In the beginning, of our resupply for photo equipment came from Fort Bragg through couriers or other people deploying over after us that we could get messages to. And after a while, once we got to know where everyone was located and who had camera equipment and supplies, we started just borrowing equipment and expendables from other offices.

DR. WRIGHT: Now you talk about the Photo Lab over at the air base which was the only functional Photo Lab that the Army had access to. You guys became very deeply involved in operating that?

SPC ANDERSON: Correct.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes.

SPC ANDERSON: Just about running it.

SGT YACKIEL: At the Corps level ... [Building] 495 was the only Photo Lab operational. The 101st [Airborne Division] had a photo van that goes on the back of a deuce and a half¹² but it was not operational until mid to late December.

DR. WRIGHT: And that pretty much only will handle black and white film, too. Correct?

SPC ANDERSON: Correct.

SGT YACKIEL: Mostly. It has capability for color slides but unless you have somebody that really knows what they're doing, it's almost impossible to do it.

DR. WRIGHT: So you would work, do rotations, over at the Photo Lab to sort of do a "we help them, they help us"?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. That was our whole working basis was they let us use the equipment and their expendable supplies and in return we would print and process some of their film if they were getting behind. Because they didn't do just their own photo equipment. They did everybody's in theater. Everybody came to the lab. If it wouldn't have been there, there would have been no photographic support at all.

DR. WRIGHT: That isn't a doctrinal thing. It's just it worked out they had the only lab so everybody found out and came to them?

SGT YACKIEL: Correct. Just luck.

DR. WRIGHT: In terms of your relationships back here at Fort Bragg, you know their photographers, they know you so therefore anything ... again, that informal network made things go a lot smoother.

SPC ANDERSON: A lot easier.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. It seems ... well, like you said, if we would have had to go through the rank structure constantly, we would have been bounced back and forth days on end. The way it was, SPC Anderson knew the guys in the PAD ... which after all I got to know them, but because he knew them from here, it made the transition a lot easier. We'd just go over and say, "Hey, can we use it?" If they weren't using it at the time, there was no problem at all.

DR. WRIGHT: Were you able to get your film processed quickly enough so that you could make the adjustments to the shooting techniques that you talked about?

SPC ANDERSON: Yes. That helped out a lot.

SGT YACKIEL: Within reason, yes. If we wouldn't have had the use of their facilities or any place to process the film, we probably would have shot the whole deployment, the whole war, on the wrong settings but...

SPC ANDERSON: Plus, we found out that the Ilford film, the black and white, went bad after a while.

SGT YACKIEL: After about two to three weeks of processing the film and looking at end results, we finally got the technical problem solved and started getting good results.

DR. WRIGHT: Looking for primarily heavy color saturation in the slides so that they would be reproducible?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. That was a big, big problem. The slides didn't ... photograph with normal training, normal shooting, they weren't ... you couldn't see anything just because of the light reflections.

DR. WRIGHT: In terms of some of the equipment issues that you had, do the standard Army kits come with adequate filters to do the things you need to do?

SGT YACKIEL: The full kits do. Yes. The KS-99C, which is the Canon F-1 Army-issue kit, has filters in it that would have helped. And a ... the whole ... a full kit would have been perfect but we're not issued full kits. SPC Anderson had a partial KS-99C, and I myself had an Olympus 35mm that was kind of just thrown together out of equipment laying in the lab.

DR. WRIGHT: I was thinking here particularly about the standard Army kit doesn't come with, say, a polarizing filter.

SGT YACKIEL: No, it doesn't. It just has a yellow, red and orange filter which for black and white film is fine because it just adds contrast. But there's no haze filters or polarizers or anything like that.

DR. WRIGHT: So for deployments to the desert condition, that would be a recommendation you'd come up with right off the bat--that the filter variety needs to be loaded up. What type of lenses did you find most useful?

SGT YACKIEL: Most of the lenses used was ...

SPC ANDERSON: Wide angle.

SGT YACKIEL: Well, the 28 and 35mms. And then switched to the 80[mm]-200[mm] or 210[mm telephoto] zoom lenses. The 50mm lens was hardly used at all because either you were right on top of something and you had to use the wide angle, or you weren't allowed to get close to it at all and you had to use the zoom.

DR. WRIGHT: In terms of other things as you got into the live fire exercises which become partially a train-up for combat coverage, do you come up with any other piece of equipment that you'd like to have? I'm thinking here along the lines of an auto winder or a power drive or something like that.

SPC ANDERSON: Power winders, definitely. Probably ... well, for like tanks or whatnot, if you don't have an auto winder, it's just pot luck if you get it or if you don't.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. There was a lot of great opportunities for some really good historical photos of live fire exercises that were missed by us just because you had one shot. If you missed it, it was over. If you had had a motor drive that was fast enough, you would have got it. Prime example, MLRS¹³ live fire that I went on. It was myself, a PAO guy, and another PAO guy from 24th Infantry [Division]. The guy from 24th Infantry had a motor drive on his. He got excellent shots and all I got was ...

SPC ANDERSON: Big cloud of dust.

SGT YACKIEL: A cloud of dust with a flame shooting out the end of it. That was it.

DR. WRIGHT: In terms of your ability to get around in the desert when you went out on these missions, the camera gear on top of your protective mask and the other equipment, does that become a burden?

SPC ANDERSON: It's heavy.

SGT YACKIEL: In a way it does. A lot of it depends on who you're with at the time. Like when we went with CPD, we were always lucky enough that we weren't going to be any more than two or three miles away from the vehicle so you could look at the mission and say, "Well, it's a live fire and they're going to drop some bombs, they're going to do a couple of MLRSs and some mortar fire and some tank fire." So you just figure out the equipment you're going to need for that one day, fill your pockets up with film and the right lenses and cleaning tissues and leave the rest of it in the vehicle.

DR. WRIGHT: What kind of bags did you have to carry your camera gear in?

SPC ANDERSON: Tamarac.

SGT YACKIEL: Big ones.

DR. WRIGHT: And that was a necessity?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. If the Photo Lab wouldn't have just gotten them in about three months before we deployed, we'd have had equipment sticking everywhere, in our rucksacks, in the gas mask.

DR. WRIGHT: Okay. Resuming on side two. In terms of that particular piece of equipment, the Tamarac bag, that's a professional model bag with the movable dividers and everything. You could carry an adequate supply of film ...

SPC ANDERSON: Correct.

DR. WRIGHT: ... as well as ...

SGT YACKIEL: Oh, yes. You could ... the Tamarac is big enough that had we had the equipment, we could have carried the basic camera equipment you need, which is the camera body and then your three basic lenses with whatever filters you may have and a back-up camera body and a back-up standard lens along with the flashes, and then a good 20, 25 rolls of film.

DR. WRIGHT: What would you consider a basic load of film for that kind of operation?

SGT YACKIEL: No less than 20 rolls per day to leave your office with.

DR. WRIGHT: And a mix of ASA speeds and...

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. Once again, that comes down to the day, the mission of the day. Because if you knew you were going out on a shoot that you weren't going to get to the location until about 8 P.M. that night, you wanted to definitely take a high speed film. But if you were going to be shooting in the day time in the morning, you wanted to try and take a slower speed film so that you could get better results.

DR. WRIGHT: [ASA] 100, 64, 25 even?

SPC ANDERSON: [ASA] 25.

DR. WRIGHT: You mentioned shooting a variety of different kinds of film, largely because you had to shoot whatever you could get your hands on. What type of film did you find most useful during the entire deployment?

SPC ANDERSON: Ektar 25 color print. That was awesome. That was incredible film.

SGT YACKIEL: Ektar film was the best for color print.

DR. WRIGHT: That's the professional ... ?

SPC ANDERSON: Professional film.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes.

DR. WRIGHT: What about black and white?

SPC ANDERSON: Kodak [Tri-X] 400.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. Believe it or not, 400 came out good but there again we say Kodak 400 because we had like an unlimited supply of 400 and a very limited (to almost no) 125 or lower speed black and white.

SPC ANDERSON: It was Ilford.

DR. WRIGHT: Very little [Kodak] Plus X [125]?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes.

SPC ANDERSON: Hardly any.

SGT YACKIEL: The Ilford film that was sent to us was, just wasn't any good. I think it had something to do with the processing using Ilford film with Kodak chemistry and it just didn't jive correctly like it should.

DR. WRIGHT: In terms of the color slide film, again, the professional type film rather than the garden variety tourist film?

SGT YACKIEL: Ektachrome.

SPC ANDERSON: EPS [Ektachrome Professional Series].

SGT YACKIEL: EPS?

DR. WRIGHT: That Kodak professional slide film you got late in the deployment. We had several rolls of that.

SGT YACKIEL: Okay. Yes.

DR. WRIGHT: In terms of when things start changing ... you're pretty well incorporated by, say, mid December into the rhythm of the headquarters. You were accepted. Everybody knows who you are. There's no problem then when you're walking in and out of the TOC¹⁴ and things like that.

SPC ANDERSON: Right.

DR. WRIGHT: Then we start getting the augmentation from the Reserve history detachments that start coming in.

SGT YACKIEL: That's when the stress built up.

SPC ANDERSON: Basically.

SGT YACKIEL: When the Reserve and National Guard MHDs¹⁵ began to show up, there was a lot of confusion and stress as to the fact of there was not enough office space for such a large sized history unit. I imagine by now large would be twelve people.

DR. WRIGHT: Which is quite large for a history operation.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. And then there was the fact that all of the people, all the MHDs had to be trained up on camera techniques and styles, equipment use, not to mention basic combat skills.

DR. WRIGHT: Yes. It was a mixed bag in terms of what their backgrounds were.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. It made for some interesting conversations.

DR. WRIGHT: Most of the MHD photographers are, by MOS, 46Qs as opposed to 25Ss.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes.

DR. WRIGHT: Did you notice any distinct difference in the kind of background and training you had?

SPC ANDERSON: Yes. Lots. The 46Qs, they shuffle paper for story lines while we shot overall. We tried to get every aspect instead of just one.

DR. WRIGHT: Do you think just you were better prepared by virtue of the kind of training you get for what this specific mission was?

SPC ANDERSON: Right. I think the 25Ss came out ...

SGT YACKIEL: Part training.

SPC ANDERSON: ... we knew more.

SGT YACKIEL: Mostly experience.

DR. WRIGHT: 25Ss spend more time in the field than 46Qs do.

SPC ANDERSON: Right.

DR. WRIGHT: They tend to be assigned primarily to public affairs offices, not even detachments, but to offices, where they do what's called the 'grip-and-grin' type of photography.

SGT YACKIEL: Most journalists ... all the photographers I've ever come across, they call journalists camera illiterates, because what they're taught in AIT¹⁶ doesn't cover anything and even in the IPC course¹⁷ where they teach journalists how to take pictures, they're still not taught hardly anything. And their composition is off. They're really not sure what they're after, unless it's just a basic boom-there-it-is photo for a newspaper story.

DR. WRIGHT: In other words, you're saying they don't have the detailed technical training in how the equipment functions and particularly the lab side of it, so they don't really have the sense of being able to see the picture as a process.

SGT YACKIEL: No, they don't. It's almost as if ... well, like with me. When I look at a scene and I know I ought to be photographing it, I'll look at it as what it's going to look like as an end-result photograph. That has a lot to do with this training and experience.

SPC ANDERSON: Experience.

SGT YACKIEL: Whereas the journalist, once again, they've got little or no experience with any of the aspect of photography itself, for a record. To take a picture for a story or for an article or something along that line, it's a quick shot and it gets put in the paper and that's the end of it. When we shoot something, it's used to document and to show, until somebody's not interested in it any more, what happened, how it happened.

SPC ANDERSON: When and where.

SGT YACKIEL: And then we have to know the technical side: the best way to shoot it to show what you're looking at, what units it's of ... .

DR. WRIGHT: Say, for example, shooting a [M-2] Bradley [Infantry Fighting Vehicle]. You were ...

SGT YACKIEL: Prime example. Bradleys at the ASP¹⁸ that were on guard duty. When we went and shot it, not only did we shoot the Bradleys ... just the Bradley, just the Bradley for it as a record ...

SPC ANDERSON: Piece of equipment.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. But also how it was set up, how it was used, camouflaged, the positionings. Camouflage. Every aspect that you could think of. What did they do? Like right now if somebody asked you, "How did they set it up?" You can take our photographs and look at it and, because we knew the different angles to shoot it from, and everything we're trained on, you have a photograph that's not really artsy but it's interesting to look at and it shows you what you need to see.

DR. WRIGHT: And it tells the story of how that piece of equipment was used whereas to the journalist it might be come in, snap one shot.

SPC ANDERSON: Right.

DR. WRIGHT: Possibly, if they knew anything about composition, looking for a pleasing picture but not necessarily one that would--because they don't have the training--not necessarily one that would show how that vehicle was situated to protect the ASP or whatever.

SGT YACKIEL: Correct.

DR. WRIGHT: Also, you guys shoot a lot more frames on a mission than an average journalist would do.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. There's a prime example there. The CPD, they had a specialist who, until he deployed, was a journalist for ...

SPC ANDERSON: He was 25S.

SGT YACKIEL: He was a different MOS, and then he cross-trained into a 25S. Had the limited training of AIT, no experience at all, and he would shoot maybe one or two pictures ...

SPC ANDERSON: 25S.

SGT YACKIEL: ... to where somebody with a little more experience would shoot ...

SPC ANDERSON: A whole roll.

SGT YACKIEL: ... everything that was required which could be anywheres from one to five rolls of film.

DR. WRIGHT: Bracketing and things like that?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes.

SPC ANDERSON: Correct. Different angles, same shot over ... just, you know, back-up, back yourself up.

DR. WRIGHT: Which again turned out to be one of the critical success stories, then, for you guys was that because there was so much to pick from when we recovered back to Fort Bragg and went through the supporting briefings and whatnot, we could support them whereas the other photography efforts really couldn't because they would have holes in the coverage or they would have a picture but it was, you know, somebody in the background had a chin strap unfastened or something so it couldn't be used. In terms of getting along with the other people as they came in, did you find that it kind of depended on the individual's background as a photographer--how willing they were to listen?

SPC ANDERSON: Right. That's a lot, because ... 25Ss, we know what we're looking for and then when the Qs, when they go looking for something, you know, like the mail situation when we photographed the mail, they went for like the people like it was going to be on the front page of a newspaper and we shot the whole aspect of it. We tried to give them a little hand, you know, tell them what MAJ Wright's looking for and sure, they blow it off. And then they just get stressful.

DR. WRIGHT: As the war starts and we get the office thinned out a little bit with getting the teams pushed out to the other locations, does that improve matters a bit?

SPC ANDERSON: Seems to get worse.

SGT YACKIEL: From what I understand, for a while when the unit moved forward, things were quite stressed out. When I came back off of emergency leave, finally found out where you all were at ...

DR. WRIGHT: Because at that point we had moved from Dhahran up to Rafha?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. I had gone back to Dhahran, found an empty base, and people with Reserve patches looking at me like I'm out of my mind. Once everything, everybody got spread out, it got a little bit better.

SPC ANDERSON: You found out who you could work with and who you couldn't work with.

DR. WRIGHT: And that's really one of the key successes to an operation that's unconventional like the history operation is, is that it really does boil down to being able to work as human beings with each other.

SPC ANDERSON: Like me and SGT Yackiel, we know what ... I know what he's going to shoot and then he knows, you know, what I'm going to shoot. So that's why we work good together. He'd shoot color, I'd shoot black and white and then he'd go to one part of the subject and I'd go to another and we'd just work around. We worked pretty good together I thought.

DR. WRIGHT: And that really is a key, is that teamwork down at the individual level and the ability to work alone or without any kind of the more traditional supervisor being on the scene.

SGT YACKIEL: Micromanagement.

DR. WRIGHT: Yes. To do your jobs effectively--if I understand you correctly--you're saying you need maximum freedom to go out and somebody has to trust your judgment.

SPC ANDERSON: Correct.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. Prime example was go out and photograph one specific Medevac unit, air ambulance. Instead of an individual sitting down with us and saying, well, I want you to photograph this helicopter and these people doing this with a gurney coming off the helicopter, or so on and so forth, it works out a lot better if the mission is just go out, document this unit and that's the end of it.

SPC ANDERSON: What's real. Exactly, exactly.

SGT YACKIEL: With the experience ... it all boils down to experience basically, because ...

SPC ANDERSON: Trial and error.

SGT YACKIEL: ... if you know what you're after, even if you don't know what you're after, you just go out there blind but you've been on other missions and you've seen your finished product, and you know basically you're just after documentation and you have somebody you can work with, you can cover the entire unit with a minimum of film and a minimum of time but still have more than enough coverage.

DR. WRIGHT: Would it have helped you more had you been more briefed up before you went out on missions on what the functions of a particular type of unit was that you were going out to cover? I'm thinking of one day you might be covering a water purification unit and the next day an infantry company in the British Army. I mean, you were hopping around pretty fast.

SPC ANDERSON: It was interesting though.

SGT YACKIEL: Occasionally advance information was good but what I found most of the time was you go out on a mission, make a ... find a point of contact, find an NCO someplace, explain to him who I was, where I was from, what I wanted to do with his unit. And then he would let me know what they were doing for the day, what their mission was while they were in a certain location, and I would cover it from that angle. So that most of the information I got was when I was actually with the people.

DR. WRIGHT: When you were out doing some of the missions, I guess particularly early-early on, you had sort of a letter, an authorization letter from the Corps G-3.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. Once we got told we couldn't take pictures of the post office and all their backed up mail, and raised a little stink ... finally got the letter authorizing us to photograph anything and everything in the Corps, it made life a lot easier. People would take one look at it and it would just be okay, you're authorized.

SPC ANDERSON: They stare at it ... they don't question us, they'd stay away from us, let us do our job.

DR. WRIGHT: During the phase down in Dhahran after the war started, there were a couple of SCUD¹⁹ attacks. SGT Yackiel, I think you were on emergency leave at that time. Do you have any memories of those, SPC Anderson?

SPC ANDERSON: Boy, do I ever. Holy cow. I remember we were sitting in the office one night--I believe it was the first one--and I just got a letter from this girl. She was just writing, you know, and just wanted to know if I was scared or whatnot because the war had started. I said, "I don't know. Not really. I'm sure I will once we move up north." And as I put my period down, I heard this huge explosion right overhead it seemed like. The building shook and me and MAJ Wright looked at each. I said, "Oh, shit." Dove on the ground and heard somebody screaming, "Get down, get down, incoming." I mean we didn't know what to do so we put on our chemical suits and our masks and everything. Scared shitless trying to wait. That whole night was just hell. It was going off every couple of hours. Take off your suits or whatnot, ten minutes later there would be another warning so you'd throw it back down. I don't think anybody slept the first night.

DR. WRIGHT: But after time, you got pretty used to it?

SPC ANDERSON: Oh, the first couple of days was hell. I mean somebody would slam a car door and you'd throw on your mask and jump out of bed. It was hell. But then you kind of got used to it. Kind of like in basic [training], you know. They teach you how to put on your stuff and they time you and everything. But that didn't mean a thing out there. I mean you grab what you need and go with it.

DR. WRIGHT: Towards the end of the period in Dhahran, that's right about the time of the football play-offs and everything. Did you spend some time watching the TV and documenting that sort of stuff?

SPC ANDERSON: Oh, yes, I had to keep up with my football and the [Buffalo] Bills. MAJ Wright was a [New York] Giants fan. When they first played in the play-offs we had a bet that if the Giants won, I'd shoot camels for a day and if the Bills won, then I get the next day off. Of course, the Bills won that first one. I don't want to talk about the next little game.²⁰

DR. WRIGHT: But you did get your day off?

SPC ANDERSON: I sure did. I had to push but you gave it to me.

DR. WRIGHT: When you deploy forward, how do you deploy forward?

SPC ANDERSON: Vehicles. I drove in a little sedan with a MAJ [Robert B.] Honec, [III], from the 116th history department. Gee, that was hell by itself. That was torture.

DR. WRIGHT: The two-day-long convoy up to Rafha and sleeping in the vehicles?

SPC ANDERSON: Forty miles an hour, 200 miles and just seeing nothing. I mean all the way across Saudi Arabia I didn't see a damn thing. Everything was the same. All the towns were the same.

DR. WRIGHT: When you get up forward to the Rafha location and you're getting now reoriented to a new way that the units are laid out, what do you initially spend most of your time covering? You, too, SGT Yackiel because you rejoined the group coming off leave shortly after they got to Rafha.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes.

SPC ANDERSON: Spent a lot of time talking ...

SGT YACKIEL: Log[istical] Base CHARLIE. Everything and anybody. Scorpion crawled across the road and we found it and shot it.

DR. WRIGHT: Were you able to make any contacts through doing your photography down in Log Base CHARLIE that helped out with some of the logistics issues then?

SGT YACKIEL: Oh, yes.

SPC ANDERSON: Good stuff.

SGT YACKIEL: Go down and find the supply guys. Hey, come here, I want to take your picture. I need a couple of these and a couple of those.

SPC ANDERSON: Then give them a picture and they'll give you that.

SGT YACKIEL: If ... once again, that fell down to the lower enlisted NCO level of hey Bud, you do this, I'll do that.

DR. WRIGHT: But that's a survival technique for small units doing these kinds of off-the-wall missions, that if you don't do something like that, you starve to death.

SGT YACKIEL: Exactly. We tried a couple of times official channels and, as far as I know, the stuff we requested is still on order. Probably some place over there now. Just arriving.

DR. WRIGHT: How were you configured, then, for when the ground combat phase began? How did the teamwork break down there?

SPC ANDERSON: Everybody worked together.

SGT YACKIEL: Basically, we were sent out. The teams were broke down into MHDs that worked together originally and then ourselves and the 116th--members of the 116th--that were good, were just good troops went together. And people that ... not to say they weren't good troops, it's just that they weren't up to par on combat operations and general combat common sense were left in to run the admin part of the office.

SPC ANDERSON: And the back operations, the rear operations.

DR. WRIGHT: So you went forward to the 101st [Airborne Division]?

SPC ANDERSON: Correct.

DR. WRIGHT: Who was in the group that went forward to the 101st?

SGT YACKIEL: I'd say it was a combination of XVIII Corps History, 116th MHD, Combat Pictorial Detachment. And the three of us more or less formed the new Corps history. It worked out really well. We had a lot of experienced people. I'm sorry, one or two inexperienced people, but common sense pretty much prevailed. Pretty much.

DR. WRIGHT: The working team notion of the 25S photographers coupled with the historians coupled with CPD people worked out as a pretty useful technique, then, to get you all kinds of different coverage?

SGT YACKIEL: Extremely. Once again, you had the ... okay. Example. PFC [John F.] Freund who by nature is an artist. He was looking for things from an artistic point of view. Myself and SPC Anderson were looking for things from a strictly documentation point of view, which CPD guys were doing the same thing, but they document a different way. They document for DA whereas we do it pretty much just for the Corps, and we try and show off the Corps a little bit more.

SPC ANDERSON: Bias.

SGT YACKIEL: And everybody's opinions together.

DR. WRIGHT: Well, it's also a function there, too, of still video shoots for one thing, the motion video shoots for something else.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. And all the different ideas. For a while it was almost like being in an artists/video/photo school because you'd be bored out of your mind and yet you'd start talking about well, do it this way, do it this way, or you'd be out shooting something. And the way we broke up into separate little teams was like one still and one video and one still video guy with one still photo guy and you're shooting the same subject matter. It's just that you're shooting it a little bit different and you get ideas from each other.

DR. WRIGHT: So that cross-fertilization then becomes a big plus?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. It became a major factor, I think. With myself working with the video guys, they gave me a lot of new ideas ...

SPC ANDERSON: Definitely.

SGT YACKIEL: ... of ways to cover it. Again, you get just a better documentation.

DR. WRIGHT: As you go forward, you only have one vehicle so that produces some movement liabilities?

SPC ANDERSON: Definitely. Yes.

DR. WRIGHT: It would have been better if we had split up into two vehicles.

SGT YACKIEL: Would have been perfect if we could have had either another vehicle or a dedicated aircraft, preferably a UH-1²¹ or ...

SPC ANDERSON: OH-58.²²

SGT YACKIEL: ... an OH-58. No. An OH-58, not enough room.

SPC ANDERSON: Blackhawk--UH-60.

SGT YACKIEL: UH-60. Yes. My suggestion after the fact, if we ever get to play again, we want a CH-47 and a UH-60. That way we've got our office in the CH-47 and we've got the other one to move around in.

DR. WRIGHT: In terms of going up forward, you go up with the 101st's 1st Brigade ground convoy up MSR²³ NEWMARKET.

SGT YACKIEL: Which we got kicked off of the initial assault for the civilian press.

SPC ANDERSON: That sucked.

SGT YACKIEL: That was one thing that I think the Army should make a big change and make it fast.

DR. WRIGHT: Because you had dedicated seats set up to go in on the air assault and then you were ... ?

SGT YACKIEL: The morning of the assault ...

DR. WRIGHT: ... knocked off so they could use those seats to put in a DOD pool?

SGT YACKIEL: Exactly. There was two aircraft filled with civilian press. Since there was little or no resistance on the initial assault, the civilian press shot nothing. They had no documentation, no footage at all of the initial assault of the 101st whereas if they would have let the Army photographers get on, we would have had it whether there was resistance or not.

DR. WRIGHT: You'd have been able to be parceled around so that you could have covered the different maneuver companies and things like that and the plan was that you would have gone well forward to get the initial contact-type pictures and then collected back together?

SPC ANDERSON: Right.

SGT YACKIEL: Whereas what it was ... the way it was we went up in a ground convoy. By the time we got there, everybody was dug in, happy go lucky, waiting for it to rain, and then the sand started.

DR. WRIGHT: Yes. The dust going up on the convoy?

SPC ANDERSON: Incredible.

DR. WRIGHT: And then almost immediately after arrival then there's the rain storm followed by the shamal, the day-long shamal.

SPC ANDERSON: Staying in a hole.

DR. WRIGHT: And that pretty much trashed equipment?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. After the rain storm, we probably had an area outside the CP to set up a tent. And we set up the tent²⁴ and set up our area. The rain stopped. We had about an hour or two hours of peace and then shamal started.

DR. WRIGHT: The tent didn't last?

SGT YACKIEL: No, the tent started to fall down and thanks to the wind from the shamal, the mud dried up enough that we could get the truck unstuck. We got the truck out, anchored the one side of the tent down, went in and went back to sleep. Forty-five minutes later I looked out and I was no longer in the tent. I was on the outside of the tent.

SPC ANDERSON: ... with a couple of poles.

SGT YACKIEL: Screaming at people, "Get out of your bed. Help me put this thing together."

SPC ANDERSON: Meanwhile, Doc Wright is safely in the truck sleeping, happy; and we're all fighting in our boxer shorts trying to get this tent down, trying to gather our equipment. Couldn't find anything. No flashlights.

SGT YACKIEL: In the rain. Finally, after ...

SPC ANDERSON: Wrestling with the tent.

SGT YACKIEL: ... about an hour fighting with the tent, we gave up, got all of our people and equipment that we could find out, set up on the side of the truck. Passed out until morning. Woke up, started digging in. We dug in for about approximately a day.

SPC ANDERSON: The wind was so bad that morning, when I peeked out of my sleeping bag, I got my ass kicked by sand.

SGT YACKIEL: Without goggles you could not operate.

DR. WRIGHT: And the equipment took a real beating from the sand?

SGT YACKIEL: Didn't dare open the bag. Even if we'd have gotten hit, the only way I would have broke the equipment out was if there would have been an attack or something that had to be covered.

DR. WRIGHT: Because to open the bag was to lose the equipment?

SGT YACKIEL: Exactly.

DR. WRIGHT: Would a piece of equipment in the inventory that you could have had sort of stuck in an outside pocket on the bag, one of those sealed underwater-type cameras, work?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes.

SPC ANDERSON: Yes. Definitely.

SGT YACKIEL: An underwater, any type of vacuum--not even vacuum. Just an underwater housing would have been perfect. There's plastic bag types that cost like maybe 15, 20 bucks that the Army doesn't have. There's plastic housings that you can buy. The Army has no equipment for environmental protection.

SPC ANDERSON: Found that out with the CPD team with their still video cameras.

DR. WRIGHT: They all crashed?

SPC ANDERSON: Was it McIntire²⁵?

SGT YACKIEL: I can't remember the name of the camera.

SPC ANDERSON: I mean when we'd get a sand storm, they'd break down because of sand.

SGT YACKIEL: The only thing that survived over there the longest and the best was the sports cams²⁶ used by the CPD because sports cam is in a sealed case.

DR. WRIGHT: And the all-mechanical 35mm cameras held up longer?

SPC ANDERSON: Except for SGT Yackiel's Olympus which died three or four times.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. My Olympus ...

DR. WRIGHT: I mean they're not perfect but they lasted longer than the high tech stuff?

SPC ANDERSON: Yes.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes.

DR. WRIGHT: Simply because it was mechanical and ... if you could find a still area and use the canned air you could sort of keep it limping along?

SPC ANDERSON: Correct.

DR. WRIGHT: In terms of the combat mission, you don't get a chance to do much shooting of shooting of shooting because there isn't much. But you do get out to start doing some of the traveling around in the forward area in Iraq and get to start taking some of those pictures?

SPC ANDERSON: Like the refueling of the helicopters. That was awesome. That was a story by itself.

SGT YACKIEL: Hot refuels; the forward operations on a daily basis; graves registration people, I think.

DR. WRIGHT: Okay. Resuming on side three. We were talking a little bit about the missions you were doing after the cease-fire up forward, the POW interrogation, operations like that. And then watching, I guess documenting a little bit of the soldier life again, up forward as the guys were reacting to the news of the victory and stuff. Where were you when you learned that the war was over?

SGT YACKIEL: Back in a truck with a broken back. Sleeping on something hard. I think it was tent poles.

SPC ANDERSON: I was on the bed of a truck. What time was it? It was about 12:30, 12:35, something like that.

SGT YACKIEL: I don't know. All I know is I looked out of my sleeping bag and everybody was huddled around a little radio in front of an old [M]-880 [1.25-ton truck].

DR. WRIGHT: Those were the civil affairs guys that were in the fox holes next?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes.

SPC ANDERSON: Some people came up to me and said, he was looking for somebody, and I was a head ... and he said, "The war is over. Get in their trucks." Because we were on a convoy ready to move up to the Euphrates River up near Tallil, you know, in a couple of hours, you know, so we were getting plenty of rest. He tells us it's over. I thought he was dreaming or something. I said no way. He said, "Yes, it over." We stayed in the trucks until morning to find out the news and whatnot, to get our instructions. So I went and woke up everybody. It's over.

DR. WRIGHT: Did that come as a surprise to you that the ... ? Were you mentally prepared for a longer war?

SPC ANDERSON: Yes.

SGT YACKIEL: Actually, it sounds weird but I was pissed.

SPC ANDERSON: Yes. Definitely.

SGT YACKIEL: I was mad because I was totally psyched to get some good documentation of the U.S. Army in action. And, I mean, we got, as far as actual combat operations, nothing.

DR. WRIGHT: Yes. The frustration factor. You were all prepped up. You trained and prepared and suffered for six months.

SPC ANDERSON: Psyched ourselves. You look back at the history books, they got action photos. They look like Life [magazine]. This was our chance to do like color photos and get better photos and such.

SGT YACKIEL: Once that flash was over though, because that's all it was was a flash of being annoyed that we didn't have the opportunity, and then the realization of hey, I don't really want the opportunity to be getting a picture of myself getting shot at.

SPC ANDERSON: I felt that way.

DR. WRIGHT: How do you get back to Rafha from the forward area?

SGT YACKIEL: About 90 mile an hour down an MSR with some PAO guy that doesn't know how to drive.

SPC ANDERSON: 101st.

SGT YACKIEL: It was 101st PAO²⁷ who ...

SPC ANDERSON: Used to be in ... race or something.

SGT YACKIEL: ... needed to get back or wanted to get back to his headquarters. And SPC Anderson and myself, after a discussion with MAJ Wright, decided that it was time to get the equipment back since the cease-fire ... we didn't think we were going to go anywhere except sit around for a little while.

SPC ANDERSON: Get the film developed.

SGT YACKIEL: We managed to get ourselves out of the AO and back within ... which was a good thing because the day we got back, the next morning myself, I got a chance to go up on a BDA mission in the DCG's bird²⁸ and that was, I think that was one of the two or three times that anybody from the office got to go forward in an aircraft and get any kind of aerial photos of BDA in French and U.S. sectors. And other than that, it was all ground. It worked out really well.

DR. WRIGHT: And you were able then to get back to the Photo Lab which had not displaced forward? It was still back in Dhahran?

SPC ANDERSON: They had some units with ...

DR. WRIGHT: Had brought little van-type ... ?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. The PAO didn't move forward as a unit. They sent two people out here, two people out there. In which case they, the people that went forward from the PAO, a couple of them ended up not being PAOs at all because there was nothing to cover.

SPC ANDERSON: One turned out to be a door gunner.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. One or two of them. Didn't both of them?

SPC ANDERSON: SPC Dyer may ... SPC Hahn now SGT Hahn. They ended up being a door gunner and getting a flight metal.

SGT YACKIEL: But it was not, there was so much waiting and then when it started ...

SPC ANDERSON: Finally.

SGT YACKIEL: ... it was started and over so quick that as far as documenting it, there wasn't that much to document. Because some of the things that went on you really didn't want to shoot and ... just being able to get to it again.

DR. WRIGHT: Again, that lack of mobility because of the firefights being so short in duration, you had to be with that unit before it got into action to be able to cover it. You couldn't react to it?

SPC ANDERSON: Right.

SGT YACKIEL: Plus I think if we had had another vehicle, a little bit more coordination when we were at FOB²⁹ COBRA, I think the day spent sitting in the shamal we could have, since we couldn't get up in the air, at the very least we could have maybe found out where there was some forward elements and split ourselves up.

DR. WRIGHT: To try to get somebody up forward with them? Use that dead time to move?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes, but since the lack of transportation.

SPC ANDERSON: Plus we didn't know anybody.

DR. WRIGHT: That's the other thing. As opposed to covering the Corps Headquarters where you knew everybody, you dropped down to the 101st on the eve of the war and it's really hard because you don't know anybody to work up that stuff?

SPC ANDERSON: Correct.

DR. WRIGHT: You mentioned the one PAO person from the 101st that was the 1st Brigade. That individual was also, I guess he was all alone, and ... ?

SPC ANDERSON: We kind of adopted him. Got him under our wing. He had a vehicle so that helped out, too.

DR. WRIGHT: How did you get the film developed when you got back to Rafha?

SPC ANDERSON: Me and SGT Yackiel went on supply birds back to ... well, we drove to Log Base CHARLIE, got on a C-130 [Hercules] to Dhahran where the rear ... the rear CPD picked us up and drove us to ...

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. Once again, it was all well, I know you guys are here so can you do me a favor and give us a ride to this place and then we can get on a bird and go down to this place and then we've got some more guys there that we know that we can ...

SPC ANDERSON: ... coordinate with.

DR. WRIGHT: And again it was a networking type of thing rather than any kind of formal structuring.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. A combination of two or three offices working together. If we would have fought each other about getting stuff done, nothing would have got done. But once we got back to Dhahran, everything was nice for us.

SPC ANDERSON: Yes, a shower. [LAUGHTER]

DR. WRIGHT: And you were also able to get your film processed before the big surge of stuff came in?

SPC ANDERSON: Yes.

SGT YACKIEL: We managed to beat all of the other PAOs back. Partially due to the fact that we left the morning of the cease-fire, got back to Dhahran not the next day but the following day. Two days after the cease-fire, we got back and no one else had been released from their units as of yet.

DR. WRIGHT: So by virtue of that independence and getting a chance to move on your own ...

SPC ANDERSON: Correct.

DR. WRIGHT: ... you were able to beat the system.

SPC ANDERSON: Correct. And that worked out great.

SGT YACKIEL: Exactly.

SPC ANDERSON: Because we beat the surge but then when the surge came in, we were still doing our stuff. We found out we had to work at night, the late hours to early morning, to do our stuff and help them out the best we could.

DR. WRIGHT: As you had a chance to process some of that film for other folks, what did you feel about the photographs you had gotten versus what other people were getting?

SPC ANDERSON: We had more variety.

SGT YACKIEL: We had a bigger variety of stuff but some of them had nothing as far as coverage and then a few of them, the same sergeant from the 24th--the 24th PAO--managed somehow to finagle his way in where there was action and he had some outstanding photographs.

DR. WRIGHT: Do you remember his name?

SGT YACKIEL: No, I don't but it's on the MLRS shot that I gave you. It should be on the back, his name and unit.

SPC ANDERSON: It's so hard to pronounce.

DR. WRIGHT: In terms of one other area to sort of jump chronologically back, early on we were under a lot of restrictions that we couldn't shoot Saudi facilities, particularly the [King Abdul Aziz Royal Saudi] Air Base. How do you guys work around that?

SGT YACKIEL: We ignore it.

SPC ANDERSON: Sneak in. Sneak in.

SGT YACKIEL: You don't really sneak in. You go in and you know that once you leave the country there's going to be something that people are going to request for briefings and they're just going to need for documentation on how the U.S. interacted with the foreign militaries. So you go in and you look around and you be careful and you document what you can without getting caught.

SPC ANDERSON: Or if you get caught, you play stupid.

DR. WRIGHT: Yes. You ran into a problem with that, too, I think back when you were at Half Moon Bay.³⁰

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. There was a ...

SPC ANDERSON: Little incident.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. There was a US MP³¹ that felt he was hot to trot and he didn't want us photographing the area set aside specifically for female soldiers. We had a big problem with it--with me [LAUGHTER]--which ended up to the point where I had to destroy the film due to the fact that there was other documentation from the signal elements on the same roll of film that I hadn't finished.

SPC ANDERSON: Me, too.

SGT YACKIEL: That was another case where we needed the letters.

DR. WRIGHT: That was early on before you actually physically had the letter?

SPC ANDERSON: Correct.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes.

DR. WRIGHT: In terms of working with other nations, you mentioned you had been up and done coverage of a British unit.³² Did you have a chance to see the French at all?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. We went forward with MAJ [Dennis] Levin and his team, went forward up into the French area, once again just for BDA shots. It was after the cease-fire. We didn't have that much interaction with them officially. There was a lot of swapping equipment and things of that nature. It ... .

DR. WRIGHT: As we look at possible contingency operations in the future, the sort of assumption that a lot of people have is there will be multi-national events. Are there any tricks you picked up on how to get along and create that friendship network when you're dealing with soldiers from other countries?

SGT YACKIEL: Bring a lot of stuff for trade. That breaks the ice immediately. You can ... if you have an extra beret or if you have some patches or head gear or anything extra that you don't need for your combat issue or operations, if you can trade it with them or just give it to them, it breaks the ice immediately and they're willing to do almost anything for you.

DR. WRIGHT: Did you have a chance to try their food?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes.

SPC ANDERSON: Yes, we did. In fact, we were going down the road one time going to Log Base CHARLIE. Me and SSG [LaDona S.] Kirkland were in the back of the truck. And a French ...

SGT YACKIEL: Foreign Legion.

SPC ANDERSON: ... Foreign Legion vehicle pull up behind us and they're hitting their horn and waving to us and everything. They pull up alongside us. They're doing 55 or 60 miles an hours down the road and they hung out the window and give us some rations. I couldn't even believe it. It was awesome. We broke into them and there was sardines in there. Everything we didn't have. It was damn good food, too.

DR. WRIGHT: Did you find anybody interested in taking your MREs³³ in exchange?

SGT YACKIEL: No. Matter of fact, we offered a couple of people and they looked at it and said, "Ah, we tried it. Don't want it. Get it away." [LAUGHTER]

DR. WRIGHT: Thinking back now to the kinds of pictures you took, what ones do you feel will have the most enduring value?

SPC ANDERSON: Those with us in it. [LAUGHTER]

SGT YACKIEL: The individual soldiers with their equipment.

SPC ANDERSON: Expressions.

SGT YACKIEL: The facial expression shots. We had a lot of facial expression shots just of our own detachment when we were going forward. That those shots pretty much echo what I think every American soldier that was over there felt. Bare emotions. Just a face that was like not happy.

SPC ANDERSON: People ... how they adapted out there like how they shaved, how they took a bath.

SGT YACKIEL: They used an MRE carton.

DR. WRIGHT: The alternate uses for the MRE carton?³⁴

SGT YACKIEL: Yes.

DR. WRIGHT: In terms of equipment shots, do you think the pictures you took are going to be more valuable to the Army over the years than, say, the more static ones that the PAO types tend to take?

SPC ANDERSON: I hope so.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes, I believe so. I think they tell other than just the standard piece of equipment sitting there, a lot of our shots were concentrated on the crews cleaning equipment or ...

SPC ANDERSON: Maintenance.

SGT YACKIEL: ... just doing, yeah, maintenance on it.

DR. WRIGHT: The piece of equipment rigged out to go forward with the way the extra rations are slung on the side or things like that?

SGT YACKIEL: Exactly.

SPC ANDERSON: And what names they had on it.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes.

DR. WRIGHT: You got a chance to do some aerial photography basically using UH-1s and UH-60s. Had you had much training in doing aerial photography before?

SPC ANDERSON: Never. I never had.

SGT YACKIEL: I've had a little bit here and there. Well, actually a lot. I spent a lot of time flying when I was in Germany and a lot of time when I was in Combat Experimentation Center in California. So the flying wasn't new, it's just the environment, flying in the environment was a lot different.

DR. WRIGHT: What techniques did you use as photographers to make the adjustment to trying to get the pictures from the helicopters?

SPC ANDERSON: Trial and error.

SGT YACKIEL: It was the same as on the ground. You had to just not shoot what you're trained to. You had to change film speeds. Shoot it ... if the camera said to shoot it one way, you had to change it a little bit so you knew it would come out better.

DR. WRIGHT: Lenses?

SPC ANDERSON: Filters.

DR. WRIGHT: What about trying to change film while you were in the air? How do you achieve that?

SGT YACKIEL: Do it fast and hold on. I lost a lot of equipment, a lot of lens caps and film, when I was flying.

DR. WRIGHT: How do you do it? Would it be better to do something like that in a standard issue flight suit with the leg pockets, the zipper pockets down on your lower leg, than say in the standard fatigues that had the ... pockets up high?

DR. WRIGHT: That would help a lot because when you're sitting ... almost every bird we got on, you sat down and the space your feet and butt took, that's all the space you had. You didn't have the space ... the option to have your camera bag where you could reach it. You either had it on your lap, under your legs or you didn't have it.

SPC ANDERSON: Or tucked away somewhere. We had to leave room for our weapon where we could get to it in case we came under fire.

DR. WRIGHT: You guys, in contrast to the CPD people, you guys carried M-16s instead of pistols. Can you talk about the pluses and the minuses of that?

SPC ANDERSON: Sure. At the beginning of the war it was a pain in the butt. I remember SGT Yackiel one time went to take a shower and left it there.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. I took a dump and left it there.

SPC ANDERSON: But, you know, some days you wish you had the 9mm [Baretta pistol] when you had your camera bag and the protective mask and all the other equipment. You know, when the war started, I'm glad I had my M-16.

DR. WRIGHT: Yes, because it gives you a ... well, for one thing, it makes you a little more acceptable to the infantry guys you're covering ... ?

SPC ANDERSON: Correct.

DR. WRIGHT: ... that they don't have to worry about protecting you. That you can protect yourself?

SPC ANDERSON: We didn't look like REMFs.³⁵

SGT YACKIEL: Because we had the M-16s, we had the capability of being on our own and having our own security teams whereas if we had all had .45s³⁶ or 9mms, it would have been a lot more scarier and probably wouldn't have ventured a few places here and there.

SPC ANDERSON: Frequently.

DR. WRIGHT: In the team when you had the seven guys up forward, you basically had enough personnel there to do a defense of your position had that vehicle broken down some place. There were enough ... you had enough bodies available so that you could have worked in shifts and protected yourselves 24-hours around the clock.

SGT YACKIEL: Oh, yes.

DR. WRIGHT: Whereas had you been out like the PAO sent the guy out all alone ...

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. The unit that we broke down into, we had the option to be totally independent of any other unit. The only thing that we needed anybody else for was diesel fuel, food and water. Everything else we were self-sufficient on. Ammunition, had we needed it or expended what we had. And other than that, we were a totally independent unit. I think if we'd had another vehicle, a different way of transportation, another form of it ... it would have been a lot better. We'd have had a lot more photos.

DR. WRIGHT: It just would have kept you from being tied to the one ...

SPC ANDERSON: Options.

DR. WRIGHT: Yeah, options. It would have given you options to pursue multiple things simultaneously. In terms of the period then after you're back and you come to Rafha from developing the film, what kind of missions are you put on then?

SGT YACKIEL: Mostly BDA.

DR. WRIGHT: Which is battle damage assessment.

SGT YACKIEL: Correct.

SPC ANDERSON: Rafha.

SGT YACKIEL: More local things in the Corps area, getting stuff that we didn't have time for before.

DR. WRIGHT: So working through a checklist of stuff. Now, were you getting any input from the Corps staff about things they wanted to make sure you had?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. By this time they had gotten to know that we had cameras, we had video capability, and we had dubbing capability thanks to CPD. And it started turning into where we were TASC and everybody needed something. And I think if we would have had more equipment or the proper equipment we could have supported the Corps itself and the TOC a lot more than we did.

DR. WRIGHT: What particular additions would you like to see?

SGT YACKIEL: A lot more video equipment. Access to dubbing equipment for the video and audio, which audio we can pretty much wait for until we get back, but even a little boom box with a little cassette speed dubbing would have been fine.

SPC ANDERSON: Better dark rooms.

SGT YACKIEL: Enclosed cases for the still photo equipment. Equipment-wise, just those things and dedicated transportation equipment.

SPC ANDERSON: More equipment. Because we only had one body.

DR. WRIGHT: Yes. That becomes another issue. Sometimes when you're out on a shoot you don't have the luxury of being able to swap out lenses, especially in a heavy dust environment. Two bodies to a kit makes a lot more sense.

SPC ANDERSON: Make it a lot smoother, a lot easier. Motor drives would help.

SGT YACKIEL: If you'll compare a professional civilian photographer's camera kit with the Army's basic camera kit, it's pretty much a joke. Because a civilian photographer, a professional, can survive on his own equipment for days compared to us. Our equipment, one piece of it goes down and you're almost dead in the water.

DR. WRIGHT: As you start then preparing for redeployment, you can't keep getting back to Dhahran because that chews up a lot of days just in transit time. You go back with some excess film that ... when it's actual redeployment, we got a bunch of film that hasn't been developed?

SGT YACKIEL: Correct.

DR. WRIGHT: How does that get back to the States to be developed?

SGT YACKIEL: Hand-carried. We hand-carried it back all the way once we got our orders to get on the bird. Brought it back here. And then once it got back here there was a lot of hari-kari confusion.

SPC ANDERSON: A lot of extra hours.

SGT YACKIEL: And actually it took until the Corps historian got back in country, in his office, to get things straight again to where stuff could be processed. Because you had too many people with their fingers in the pot and nobody wanted to do just what we had been instructed to do. Everybody had a contract here or a contract there to go civilian. It's quicker, it's easier but then is the stuff classified? Yes, because we don't know what's on it exactly. Then they're all afraid. Well, we can't contract it but there's too much. We don't want to put it in the TASC. We don't have the equipment to do it correctly. It was just a lot of confusion.

DR. WRIGHT: But the bottom line was, then, that during the month of April it got unscrambled and we were able to get the film processed?

SGT YACKIEL: Correct.

DR. WRIGHT: Contacts made.

SGT YACKIEL: Processed, contacted. And then recaptioning everything.

DR. WRIGHT: Now, that leads into the next question. How prepared were you from AIT and previous to the assignments for the kind of captioning that the history photograph requires as opposed to a normal mission?

SPC ANDERSON: I never had a problem.

SGT YACKIEL: From AIT, zero.

SPC ANDERSON: Zero.

SGT YACKIEL: From my previous experience, about 70-75 percent prepared.

DR. WRIGHT: What are the differences between how the history captions are done versus what you had run into before?

SGT YACKIEL: Well, the standard caption is the basic who, what, where, why and where it was at. History encompasses that, plus you have to put in ...

SPC ANDERSON: Types.

SGT YACKIEL: .. kind of the feeling that was involved in it.

DR. WRIGHT: A lot of equipment nomenclature that wouldn't necessarily matter ... ?

SPC ANDERSON: Yeah. You just couldn't put down tank, got to put down an M-1 and keep going from there.

SGT YACKIEL: Well, like basic caption would be M-1A1 loading on the HET for transportation back to docks.

SPC ANDERSON: From the 24th ID, or ...

DR. WRIGHT: Identifying the unit, the type of the equipment, what the function was that was going on. In other words, just much completer?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. It's a combination of basic photo captions, PAO-style captions, and then more or less boom captions.

DR. WRIGHT: How do you do the captioning? There are issue caption books, photographer's caption books. Does that work on a practical basis when you're doing a lot of shooting?

SPC ANDERSON: Sometimes.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. It takes too much time. You waste time writing. The best way to do it, in my opinion, would be to issue with the camera a small hand-held voice-activated ...

SPC ANDERSON: Recorder.

SGT YACKIEL: ... cassette recorder where you can take the picture and have the cassette recorder in your pocket and just talk to it and say, frame one, da-da-da-da-da, give it the information. And then go on about your business. That way, while you're going from frame one to frame two, you've got the caption and you're ready to go in a matter of seconds instead of minutes.

DR. WRIGHT: How do you get some of that detailed equipment nomenclature and stuff like that? Do you get it from the units you're talking to during that period where you're doing your contact with the NCO or whatever on the scene to ask for it?

SGT YACKIEL: That would be another use for the cassette recorder because you can almost do an interview at the same time you put your caption down, because all you got to do is ask them, well, what is this and what are they doing? I mean I can see it but why don't you tell me anyhow, and that way I'll be sure to get it correct.

DR. WRIGHT: And it also gives you the ability then to get guys' full names and stuff like that.

SGT YACKIEL: Spellings correct and everything.

DR. WRIGHT: When you have to sit down to do the recaptioning from the rough captions to the finished captions, that's a pretty time consuming process?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes.

SPC ANDERSON: It's dreadful.

SGT YACKIEL: Once again, a cassette recorder, if it was on a cassette, one person could sit down, listen to it, put it in the computer and then it's over with. The way we had it all written down, you had to interpret somebody else's writing and what they meant, and then rewrite it in a better form and even your own, a lot of times you'd look at it and you weren't sure what you were trying to put across.

DR. WRIGHT: Okay. Before that interruption, we had been talking about the refinement of the captioning and the value of that little small cassette recorder. Is there any other piece of equipment, as you've had a chance now to think back, that would be particularly useful?

SPC ANDERSON: Fly swatter.

DR. WRIGHT: Yes. Beyond the basic quality of life type stuff. Say, any standard Army item of issue or is most of the stuff that would really help us outside the system?

SGT YACKIEL: Pretty much. Yes. It's all civilian market, commercial. The Army doesn't deal in it too much. They give you what worked in the '60s and they think ... the figure it'll work now. Most of the time it does, but ...

DR. WRIGHT: It also leaves you behind the power curve?

SGT YACKIEL: Exactly.

DR. WRIGHT: In terms of a standard deployment contingency package for a history office that would function like we did initially when we first deployed, how many rolls of film do you think you ought to bring?

SGT YACKIEL: About 1,500.

DR. WRIGHT: Pretty much the heavy load like the [49th] PAD brought?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. I wouldn't suggest any more max of 2,000 rolls, because anything more than that you have a change of it going bad. If you shoot the way we shot, you'll use that up fairly quick.

DR. WRIGHT: What's the best way to try to work the resupply of your expendable items, those unique things? Scrounging film like we did obviously isn't a good solution.

SGT YACKIEL: The best possible way, I think ...

SPC ANDERSON: Dedicated courier.

SGT YACKIEL: ... is either dedicated courier or a large or unlimited account at the local photo shop.

DR. WRIGHT: In other words, a Class A agent type of approach?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes.

DR. WRIGHT: That's fine if you go to a place that's got that kind of service. If you go someplace else, then ...

DR. WRIGHT: Okay, continuing on with Side Four. If I understand you correctly, then, you're saying for a contingency kind of like what went on initially, the best solution would be to have the rear element here at Fort Bragg make up push packages and just automatically put them on the next log bird going in. And say every couple of days or once a week or something like that to create that ... yeah, continuous flow. You're not worried about trying to hoard film and maybe pass up opportunities because you're not sure whenever you're going to see anything again?

SGT YACKIEL: You can't ever have too much expendable supplies as far as photo equipment is concerned because if you do, there's always other units, other PAOs, CPDs. Like in our instance, that could always use stuff. It's a bargaining chip. Fuel, food. Anything you may need that if you're in a situation where it's a limited supply and you need it bad and so does somebody else, it helps. It's a bargaining chip.

DR. WRIGHT: In terms of film selections, you'd bring primarily just those professional films whether you're talking slide, black and white, or color print?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes.

SPC ANDERSON: Only the best.

DR. WRIGHT: Then it really pays ... it really pays off in terms of the quality of the finished product.

SPC ANDERSON: Definitely.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes, it does. It saves a lot of wasted time going out and shooting something and then the film not being what's required.

DR. WRIGHT: To what extent is it useful to have a checklist made up in advance of the kinds of things that you ought to get pictures of?

SGT YACKIEL: It helps. It helps about 50 percent of the job. About half of it is pre-planned, knowing what you should be looking for; and then half of it is on the spot opportunity.

SPC ANDERSON: Stumble.

DR. WRIGHT: It's like, for example, I was thinking of just in working up the checklist during those last days of March when we were getting ready to redeploy. Like you had said, to look for ... was there anything we might have missed? Canvassing around the Corps headquarters for suggestions on what do you think you'd need when you get back to do a briefing? One of the things that's cropped up is the fact that we got the only SLGR³⁷ pictures anybody took in the theater. And, in fact, that shot that, SPC Anderson, you did with the SLGR, that's the one of a kind. That's the only one that exists and we've been bombarded with requests from all over the Army for copies of those pictures. Can we anticipate things like that or is that just something you sort of maintain a running checklist on in your own mind?

SPC ANDERSON: Experience. Dr. Wright, you had plenty of experience so you knew what to look for. That helped a lot. Teaching us so maybe next time we'll make a checklist next time and pass it on to others and they'll pass it on to us.

SGT YACKIEL: I think it's a 50/50 also. Like I said, if you don't have checklists, you're going to miss stuff. If you have a checklist, you're going to get everything that's on the list plus whatever might happen to be there.

DR. WRIGHT: Yes. The checklist is never going to be the whole answer.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. Like the SLGR. That was brand new. I'd never heard of it. I had no idea what it was.

DR. WRIGHT: That made three of us because I never heard of it either.

SGT YACKIEL: If somebody wouldn't have been talking about it, we never would have got it.

DR. WRIGHT: Accessibility, working under the G-3 auspices, that worked out okay?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. Usually when you said "photographing for the Corps historian and the G-3," the Corps itself, people stopped and got out of your way whereas if you just said, well, "I'm documentation for the Corps," they kind of looked at you like well, for all I know you're some supply clerk with a camera.

DR. WRIGHT: Redeployment. How do you come back?

SPC ANDERSON: Again 747. Commercial.

SGT YACKIEL: 747 from Dhahran to West Germany, where we ...

SPC ANDERSON: Went to London.

SGT YACKIEL: Oh, that's right.

SPC ANDERSON: London to Newark.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes, London to Newark.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. London to Newark. London, we stood in the airport terminal and stared at the Brits and they stood there and stared at us until we got back on the plane.

SPC ANDERSON: Women.

DR. WRIGHT: Didn't have a long layover?

SGT YACKIEL: No. About an hour, hour and a half.

SPC ANDERSON: Couldn't touch any beer.

DR. WRIGHT: And then what happened when you got back here to Fort Bragg? Was there a welcoming ceremony or anything?

SPC ANDERSON: Sure was.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. It was a real big ceremony.

SPC ANDERSON: His wife and kids, his parents, my parents. It was awesome.

SGT YACKIEL: Everybody, a lot of people. It lasted for about 10, 15 minutes, then they had us go get our gear and everything. Then we got back here.

DR. WRIGHT: Got released pretty quick?

SGT YACKIEL: No. I released Anderson but I got to play nursemaid again. I don't know if nursemaid is the correct word or not, but I had to take care of the Reservists again. They had no idea what they were supposed to do. They were all just wanting to get in their cars and drive away and they had weapons and sensitive items on them that they hadn't considered. Basically, it took me the better part of the rest of the day to get them situated where they had a place to stay, food, a way to get food for the week end and a place to secure their sensitive equipment.

DR. WRIGHT: We had a mixed bag in the History Office, male and female. Any feelings on the role women can play in this documentation stuff?

SGT YACKIEL: I think they can do pretty much as good a job as we can. Better in the administrative areas. That was proven. Maybe just more experience in that area, some of them.

DR. WRIGHT: Could they have gone forward with the 101st like you did?

SPC ANDERSON: The ones we were with, I don't think so. I'm sure there are some of them that could have.

DR. WRIGHT: You did run into women out there?

SPC ANDERSON: Sure. Driving trucks--88Ms. Putting out supply.

DR. WRIGHT: So that there is nothing inherently blocking of a woman who had the field soldier skills ... could do the mission?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. They can go forward.

SPC ANDERSON: Yes. ...

SGT YACKIEL: A day and a half in a hole.

DR. WRIGHT: How confident do you guys feel if you had to go out and do another deployment like this all on your own? Do you feel now you would be capable of doing it without anybody else around?

SPC ANDERSON: I think just with SGT Yackiel ...

DR. WRIGHT: Right. I mean just say the two of you.

SPC ANDERSON: Okay. I mean we learned a lot definitely.

SGT YACKIEL: Yes. Other than the initial coordination, once we got to where we were going, we could run it ourselves if we had to.

DR. WRIGHT: Do you feel that you're going to have any chance to use some of those skills again in the Army or do you think this might have been a one shot?

SPC ANDERSON: I hope so. But then again I hope not. I don't want to go to another war.

DR. WRIGHT: Get out to the field, even if it's just training exercises and stuff?

SGT YACKIEL: Yes.

SPC ANDERSON: I can't say I was out on [Exercise] INTERNAL LOOK, but I went to Saudi.

SGT YACKIEL: Yeah.

DR. WRIGHT: Anything else you can think of?

SGT YACKIEL: No, not now. Not at this time.

DR. WRIGHT: I thank you gentlemen for taking the time. Appreciate it.

1. Training Aids Support Center, headed by Mr. Ray Johnson.

2. Emergency Deployment Readiness Exercises; Field Training Exercises.

3. United States Army Garrison, Fort Bragg.

4. Also see DSIT-C-082.

5. Field equipment under Common Table of Allowances (CTA) 50.

6. Central Issue Facility.

7. The personnel and equipment departure area at Pope Air Force Base.

8. Actually, XVIII Airborne Corps' liaison (LNO) team 2.

9. The activities of MAJ Gary Melton's XVIII Airborne Corps deception cell (BAT-D).

10. Command Post.

11. 139th Support Center (Rear Area Operations).

12. 2.5-ton truck.

13. Multiple Launch Rocket System.

14. Tactical Operations Center.

15. 116th (Virginia Army National Guard from Manassas), 130th (North Carolina Army National Guard from Raleigh), and 317th (Army Reserve from Atlanta, GA) Military History Detachments.

16. Advanced individual training.

17. An additional two-week pictorial skills class taught at the Defense Information School to confer an additional skill designator of photojournalist on the basic 46Q.

18. Ammunition supply point. In this case, the theater stockage point near Dragon City commonly called the Quarry ASP, because it was situated in a quarry.

19. Soviet SS-1C SCUD-B medium range ballistic missile.

20. The two teams met again for the National Football League championship ("Super Bowl"). The Giants won. MAJ Wright had tried to get SPC Anderson to "bet a stripe" on that game--if the Bills won he'd promote Anderson to SGT, if the Giants won he'd reduce Anderson to PFC. Anderson refused to bet.

21. Iroquois ("Huey") utility helicopter.

22. Kiowa observation helicopter.

23. Main Supply Route.

24. A General Purpose, Medium (GP Medium).

25. Actually, CPD used the Mavica still video system.

26. A small Super-8mm format video camera.

27. SGT Janutulo from the division public affairs office, who had been sent out alone with the 1st Brigade in an M-1009 and joined up with the history team for support.

28. BG(P) Scholes' personal helicopter.

29. Forward Operating Base.

30. An ARAMCO (Arab-American Oil Company) recreational facility near Dhahran that was given over to US forces.

31. Military policeman.

32. Company C, 1st Battalion, the Staffordshire Regiment.

33. Meals, Ready-to-Eat.

34. The MRE carton developed a huge number of alternate uses that became a matter of humor throughout the Army. The "in" joke in this interview involved MAJ Wright's use of one in Iraq as a field-expedient latrine.

35. Rear-echelon Mother F***ers, a derogatory term.

36. M-1911A1 .45-caliber pistol.

37. Global positioning system equipment.