It happens sometimes. A man is seeking direction in his life and sets out toward a goal only to discover that providence has other, better plans. Leo Kaalberg Jr. was just such a man. Recently, he told me about the circuitous path that led him to the sorts of intense experiences from which movies are made.
Kaalberg grew up in East Moline, Illinois, graduating high school in 2000. After a gap year, and after he started dating his girlfriend, to whom he’s now been married 21 years, he decided to grow up.
His grandfather had been a tank driver. His father was a ranger in Vietnam. So Kaalberg chose to enlist in active duty.
At the multi-service recruiting center, he started with the Air Force. This was a few months after 9/11, but it still wouldn’t take him due to his credit rating.
The next room was for the Marines. Kaalberg had a friend who went away to become a Marine and returned extremely intense. The Marines are awesome, but Kaalberg passed.
Since Kaalberg had worked for a sailboat company, he figured he’d try the Navy. The Navy people had chosen that time to head to lunch, and so played a big role in choosing Doc’s destiny.
The Army was last. The soldiers were excited to see him. His ASVAB test score gave him a choice of jobs. Kaalberg, who enjoyed the TV show ER, thought he’d be a medic. “Great choice, son!” the recruiter said. “We’ll get you a nice job in a hospital in Germany.”
Beware the silver-tongued promises of recruiters.
Months later, after basic and medic training, Kaalberg was in a German bus center looking for transportation to his duty station. At the last moment, his destination switched from Heidelberg to Vilseck. A noncommissioned officer told him, “You’ve been reassigned due to the needs of the Army. You’ve been assigned to 1st Infantry Division. You’re going infantry, son.”
Kaalberg was surprised but also a bit awestruck. He’d been assigned to the legendary Big Red One.
Not long after reporting for duty, he was told, “You want to get some sand in your boots because guess where we’re going?” It was an all-expense-paid trip to Iraq. By Valentine’s Day of 2003, he and his fellow soldiers were in Kuwait, waiting for body armor to arrive. When it finally showed up, Kaalberg found himself, similar to many soldiers in those days, including your favorite Washington Examiner columnist, wearing the tan desert combat uniform with the green woodland pattern armor vest.
Eventually, Kaalberg and his fellow soldiers convoyed into Iraq. The liberation was well underway. The Air Force was bombing everything. Most of the Iraqi Army had surrendered. Kaalberg and 70 other men were finally stationed at an abandoned Iraqi police station, a small outpost they named Comanche.
These soldiers were assigned up to four patrols a day in Humvees or Bradleys on the old mission to change Iraqi hearts and minds to favor America. They received no guidance for how to accomplish that task. Classic Army logic.
Doc Kaalberg remembered the first time he rolled out on patrol. Riding in the armored Bradley Fighting Vehicle, they rounded a corner and a group of insurgents opened up on them with a machine gun.
“I remember hearing the plinking on the armor,” Kaalberg told me. At first, he didn’t recognize the sound of hostile bullets. “That was my very first mission outside the wire. I thought, ‘All right. This is how it’s going to go for the rest of the time I’m here.’”
And for the next four months, that’s exactly how it went. The man talks about it all so casually, as though describing how he might leave for an average workday. But his service, far from average, was extraordinary, and the most intense of it was yet to come. He’d enlisted to grow up. He was growing up real fast.
*Some names and call signs in this story may have been changed due to operational security or privacy concerns.
Trent Reedy served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
