Bound for war, set to blog

David Montero, Rocky Mountain News

Published June 23, 2007 at midnight

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JUNCTION CITY, Kan. - Maj. Andrew Olmsted has had to grow a mustache. He has learned to take off his sunglasses when speaking to Iraqis. But he knows that, despite his training, he'll face the unexpected in Iraq - and he plans to write about it.

It's the last day of training before he's deployed to Iraq and Maj. Andrew Olmsted is rubbing where the bright red blood is pooling in his short, bristly hair.

There was a small accident. It's made him mad, self-deprecating and pragmatic all at the same time.

Olmsted was climbing up a Humvee when he slammed his skull into the hard, black metal of the .50-caliber machine gun mounted on the roof.

The Fort Carson-based soldier is miffed because he wasn't wearing his battle helmet. He made fun of his awkwardness. And he saw an opportunity for his medic to get in some real-world work.

"The .50-caliber is deadly without even shooting it," 1st Lt. Todd Bradford said, laughing, as Olmsted takes the big roll of white gauze bandage from the medic and holds it hard to his head.

He's perspiring on this muggy afternoon at Fort Riley. The sun beats down on the unit, giving them a small dose of what they'll experience during the Iraqi summer.

Olmsted figures it's going to be uncomfortable to wear the helmet now. He can already feel the welt forming. And then, with his typical dry humor, he says the sweat will probably infect the wound and give him some horrible, incurable disease.

As some of the men around him chuckle, Olmsted quickly gets back to studying a map representing an Iraqi village where they are supposed to help locals root out an insurgent.

He's got a job to do in Iraq, and he's going to give it a shot.

"I want to see if I can help the Iraqi Army understand a little bit about the rule of law and the importance of being professional soldiers devoted to something higher than just the local tribe or their family," he said.

"But I don't know how realistic that is. I don't expect to make any huge changes. If I can make some incremental changes that's about the best I can hope for," he said.

Readers of RockyMountainNews.com will be able to follow those efforts, because Olmsted will be blogging about his efforts and experiences beginning today.

Political theory in action

Olmsted calls himself "the intellectual runt" of his family.

His father has a doctorate in chemical engineering, his mother has a master's in mathematics and teaches at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. His brother has a doctorate in economics. His wife has a master's degree in biology.

"I'm struggling along with a bachelor's degree," he said.

The 37-year-old augments his self-described lack of education by reading voraciously, consuming books like Restoring the Lost Constitution by Randy Barnett and The Future and Its Enemies by Virginia Postrel.

The last one will send Olmsted into a short, passionate soliloquy about people who embrace stasis and those who follow dynamism.

It doesn't take long to note that political theory is an Olm-sted fascination.

"It's hard to have a conversation with him without it coming out," said Maj. Dave Willis, a friend who has known him since college.

"He gets much more into details than I tend to, but we also tend to bounce ideas off each other. He'll kill me for saying this, but he tends to be a little more liberal than me and I tend to approach from the pragmatic, engineering perspective."

But Olmsted would hardly call himself a liberal. Libertarian is closer.

He would rather government got out of the way and, at one point, even throws out an idea that questions if government should even be involved in building roads.

It's just a thought, though.

The medic on his team, Staff Sgt. Brandon Shaw, notes an irony - namely that Olmsted is going to Iraq to help establish a government that could very well grow into the kind of large, bloated bureaucracy he would loathe.

However, Olmsted is willing to take that chance.

"It's that old Churchill saw that says democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others," Olmsted said.

"If we are successful in Iraq, it will grow to be a big government like the one in this country. That's just what happens," he said.

Love of all things Disney

Amanda Wilson, who lives at their home in Colorado Springs, doesn't really remember how Olmsted proposed to her about 10 years ago.

"It kind of just happened," she said.

But after the murky proposal, he was deployed to Korea while she stayed back and planned the wedding. Wilson and her mom began scouting out places and stumbled upon a castle in Gloucester, Mass.

She e-mailed him in Korea, pitching the castle option, along with three other places.

But she had a hunch that the Dungeons and Dragons aficionado might lean toward Hammond Castle - built for and named after John Hammond Jr., also known as "The Father of the Remote Control."

Olmsted was sold.

They got married Oct. 12, 1997. About 100 people showed up. The wedding song was "A Whole New World" from the Disney film Aladdin.

Make no mistake about it. The couple are Disneyphiles.

Wilson, 38, said they have a time-share at Disney World. They have most of the classic Disney films on DVD.

When visiting the amusement park, they often have dinner where they get served by various characters, including Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. Olmsted can do a pretty good impression of the henchman Kronk from The Emperor's New Groove.

Oh yeah, and they kept their vacation plans to Disney World on Sept. 12, 2001.

While stationed at Fort Carson, Olmsted was scheduled to take his leave beginning that day. Then Sept. 11 happened. Flights were grounded. His commander told him to take his leave anyway.

So they drove, from Colorado to Florida.

"Straight there in 24 hours," Wilson said. "We took turns. When we got there, it was a lot more deserted than normal."

Olmsted also remembered the helpless feeling that came with the terrorist attacks and wanting to do something.

More than five years later, he will sardonically recall the trip: "The U.S. has been attacked. I'm going to Disney World."

Practicing for Iraq

Now he's going to Iraq.

Wilson said she's worried. Olmsted tries to blot out the possibilities of what can happen. It's his first trip to the war, and he's spent a lot of time preparing for it.

That preparation is evident when his team engages in a training mission in which the soldiers meet with the leadership of a fictitious Iraqi town.

Fort Riley in eastern Kansas is the epicenter for Army troops sent to Iraq.

The post comes complete with paid actors and sets designed to look like inhabited Iraqi villages. Bombed out cars litter the roadside and several Arabic-speaking actors stand on the side of the road and eye the convoy suspiciously.

Olmsted has learned that it's not considered culturally correct to talk to an Iraqi while wearing sunglasses. It's also not good to shake hands with gloves still on. It's considered bad form to look at the translator instead of the person you're trying to communicate with.

The major remembers to do all of those things and it is noted during the evaluation by the trainers.

Master Sgt. Joseph McDuffie, who has already been through the real Iraq, notices Olmsted's diligence. McDuffie will be Olmsted's right-hand man during their tour in Iraq.

"Oh yeah, he's a good listener and he knows he can't know everything," McDuffie said, smoking a cigarette while standing outside his Humvee. "That makes him a good leader."

Olmsted also showed he's not willing to put his men in unnecessary danger.

During the mock exercises, he questions a plan by Iraqi police to raid a two-story house. His disagreement is marked by an arching eyebrow and he then points out that his men could easily run into the Iraqi forces, resulting in a deadly crossfire between allied units.

He holds his ground and, as the plan eventually unfolds, he keeps his men in a secure peri-meter and lets the Iraq forces do the raid.

This goes a long way for Olm-sted's men. Part of the training at Fort Riley is meant for them to bond - to get to know and trust each other. He has also already stuck his neck out for some of them individually - including Sgt. 1st Class, John Bennett.

The chain-smoking Bennett was supposed to retire in January but got called for another tour in Iraq.

Olmsted tried to at least get him some leave before the unit deployed near the end of this month, but couldn't make it happen. Bennett was grateful, but at 44 and with a long career in the Army, he's also realistic.

"He did what he could," Bennett said. It frustrated Olmsted, though. It's one of the few things that can really get him angry - when there's no clear answer to a problem.

Kind of like the place he's deploying to.

Baggage from the war

Olmsted toys with his new mustache, a foreign thing to him. He grew it because in Iraqi culture, men without mustaches are considered suspicious. He hates it, though, and can't wait to shave it off when his deployment is over.

He admitted he doesn't quite know what to expect when he gets there.

"Initially what I'm going to have to do, more than anything else, is demonstrate I'm willing to listen to them. I have to earn their trust first," he said.

"I can't just come in there, no matter how good I may be tactically or how knowledgeable. As I said, I'm the second or third or fourth or fifth American he's seen. Who knows how his relationship was with those guys?" he said.

It's the end of the training day. The mission to root out the insurgent was successful - no American casualties and the guy was captured.

At one point, the Iraqi police began beating and kicking the insurgent on the ground, looking like a Third World version of the Rodney King incident. Olmsted's team quelled it quickly, however.

When the team rolls back to the main base and prepares to turn in the training equipment, Olmsted jokes around with a few of the soldiers. They quote lines from the movie "Wedding Crashers," "Star Wars" and the infamous "More cowbell" skit from "Saturday Night Live." Olmsted takes off his helmet and the medic asks how his head is doing.

Better, Olmsted said.

He's told he might still have a headache later - and he can take some aspirin for it. The headache that is Iraq will just have to wait a few more weeks. That cure, however, is above his rank.

"I think Gen. (David) Petraeus has the right idea - which I'm sure he'd be thrilled to know some obscure major approves of his plan," Olmsted said.

"The problem is it's taken us four years to get to this point and you've got all the baggage built up along with the American people who are tired of being told, 'Oh well, this will fix it.' I guess more than anything else, I'd like to leave Iraq a little better than I found it."

He pauses and smiles.

"Sounds like I'm a camper or something, doesn't it?"

From the front lines

• Army Maj. Andrew Olmsted is a soldier and a blogger. Beginning today, he will combine both occupations and take readers of RockyMountain News.com to the front lines of the Iraq war.

Based at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, Olmsted has been deployed to Iraq for his first tour of duty there. He plans to arrive in Kuwait at the end of next week, and from there head into Iraq. His mission is to help train soldiers in the Iraqi army to take over the fighting.

Maj. Andrew Olmsted

Age: 37

Born: Bangor, Maine, but grew up in Massachusetts.

Family: Wife, Amanda Wilson. Married 10 years in October. No children.

Education: Clark University in Worcester, Mass., studied history and government; graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1992

Military:

• Joined the Massachusetts Army National Guard in August 1988 as a TOW missile gunner.

• Discharged from the National Guard in December 1989 to accept an ROTC scholarship.

• Commissioned a 2nd Lt. in January 1992 in Army.

• Stationed at Fort Carson from 1997 to 2002. Left active duty March 31, 2002.

• Mobilized January 2003.

Hobbies: Boston Red Sox fan and member of SABR, the Society of American Baseball Research

Favorite books: To Kill a Mockingbird, Huckleberry Finn, Black Hawk Down

Favorite movies: The Princess Bride, Rocky, Casablanca, Bull Durham

monterod@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5236

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