Frontline Leadership: Insights from Combat Experience

Leadership in Combat: Lessons from the Front Lines

Reflecting on my early leadership experiences in combat, I am taken back to my first real position of leadership. Between 2005 and 2008, I deployed three times. My first deployment was in the outskirts of Fallujah, in the Karmah area of Iraq. As a young machine gunner, I lived in the turret of a Humvee. My second deployment was the Battle of Ramadi, marked by months of continuous combat and chaos. This is where I learned true fear and built absolute resilience. I also received my Purple Heart on this tour. My third deployment was with the 22nd MEU, where my journey into leadership began. However, it wasn't until 2010-2011 in Marjah, Afghanistan, that I held a real leadership role, where lives were in my hands.

I was the section leader of a truck section, providing QRF, resupply, and essentially anything my company needed us for. I had spent years in trucks as a machine gunner, so I knew the ins and outs of a truck section. But being in charge of the entire evolution was challenging. I had to be confident in my decisions and responses, ensuring my quick decision-making was on point.

I vividly remember our first IED strike, which hit my truck’s mine roller directly. It felt as if it happened yesterday. We were returning from a resupply, heading back to COP Kelly. As we approached a left turn about 500 yards away, my first truck disappeared. That moment stands out the most. By then, I had been around IEDs quite a bit. As a machine gunner in Iraq, my own truck had been hit numerous times. I remember the smoke, always being engulfed in smoke in an instant, followed by the sound of an explosion. You sit there and wait for the air to clear to see if you're injured. It happens so fast. Everything goes black, with smoke, followed by the boom. In Afghanistan, as the leader, watching this happen to my guys in the first truck was painful. They hadn't experienced that yet, and I knew what they were going through. Those seconds feel like an eternity, but you have to wait for the smoke to clear. When it did, all I saw was a mangled mess of steel and a mine roller that had been thrown into a building a few hundred meters to our right. My Marines were fine, thankfully. I had to call in a medevac for one, who ended up with a concussion, but all in all, they were fine compared to what could have been.

Here’s the hard part: knowing exactly what I would do in that situation if I were in that truck. I had been there numerous times before, inside the destruction, and I knew how to keep myself calm and check on myself and others. I knew the steps to take to cover sectors, get out of the kill zone, and try comms. This time, however, I had to trust that I had prepared them enough to do that themselves while I talked to command, the helo pilot for the medevac, and positioned my other trucks to prep for an ambush. But all I wanted to do was jump out and run up there to tell them what to do. Tell them it would be fine, and we could get through this. I had to do my job and trust them to do theirs. If they didn't do their job, then I failed at preparing them. That's the cost of leadership. They have to have faith that you have their best interests at heart and have prepared them for mission accomplishment. You have to trust that they can do what they were taught to do, trust each other to cover their respective responsibilities, and trust the process. Then there is the courage. Not the courage to fight the bad guys, but to do the hard things. Like me forcing myself to have the courage to accomplish my "easy" job of communication and placement of troops and trusting them to do the hard stuff, the stuff you sign up for.

This is true in so many organizations. You may not be fighting a war, but you do have people's lives in your hands. Their livelihood, their sanity, their self-awareness, and their self-doubt. Your leadership is important to them and to yourself. We are not here to mentally break down people and make them feel incompetent. We are here to lift them up and prepare them for what's to come. To climb, and hopefully one day, fill your shoes and lead the new teams. Follow the Faith, Trust, Courage mindset and make sure when the time comes, you can do your job and be proud of the job those you lead are doing.

I was so proud of my Marines, I could barely stand it. They never saw this, but when we got back that night and finally settled down, I couldn't help but let the tears flow as I wrote a note to my wife in my deployment journal. I found that journal the other day and read what I wrote, and I started to tear up again. It says,

"Hey Kelli, I know it's been a few days since I wrote in here but I wanted to share some things. We were hit by our first IED today and man was it crazy. It took me right back to Iraq to when I was a gunner. It felt like Ramadi all over again. But man, I wish you could have seen these guys in action. They were rockstars, absolute rockstars. Koloski basically could do my job without me being here. He was on point, took over comms, and made things happen. To have him as my driver is a gift that I never could deserve. Truck one got hit, but those guys rocked it out as well. They didn't panic and jump out of their truck laying on the ground, but went through the procedures that needed to get done. They were trying comms, covering sectors, trying to get out of the kill zone, it was crazy. These Marines are awesome babe, absolute bad-asses. I've never been so proud, hun. I am so lucky to have these Marines on this deployment. So proud. Well, I wanted to write this down, but I got to get ready for tomorrow. Love you always...kiss Carter for me."