Inside Iraq — Zach Basford, ’97 BSAME

Sitting in an electrical engineering class one day, Zach Basford, ’97 BSAME remembers the professor asking why they were learning this material, besides trying to pass the next test.

“Because when you are career engineers, you won’t be intimidated by these seemingly difficult problems,” the professor said.

Basford was not intimidated. He got his B.S., joined the Army, tested high on his aptitude and language tests, as well as physical fitness tests, and sailed effortlessly through ROTC. Then it was time for a real challenge--the Army’s elite Special Forces. Only 18% make through the physical, intellectual and language tests and only 3% ever become Special Forces personnel. Basford is one of them.

The Viterbi School alum, now a Captain in the U.S. Army Special Forces, has been fulfilling his second Iraq tour of duty and began a journal of his adventures.

Left to right: Zach Basford, Sheik Nah Ils, and Jimmy, a Special Forces interpreter.

“Recently, I have been meeting with a lot of key individuals: commanders of different units, Iraqi military leaders, sheiks, and important people that have to do with special projects,” he writes in his first letter. “We are building relationships and figuring out how we are all going to work together and what our relationships will be. We have just finished our transition with the guys we replaced. They have done a lot of good things here, and now I not only must fill their shoes, but take what they have done to the next level.”

Basford was living “a pretty rustic life” on a small base near the Syrian border, west of Mosul in northwestern Iraq. His mission was to train, advise, and assist Iraqi security forces, including the Iraqi Army and police forces, to conduct counter-insurgency operations. He conducted numerous combat patrols as well as gathering intelligence.

“Because my commander trusted us more than anyone else, he rewarded me and my team with the hardest mission in the most remote area under his command,” Basford writes. Unlike some Special Forces teams, who live in opulent Ba’ath palaces with large swimming pools, he and a dozen others were sleeping on cots in a tent in a decrepit warehouse.

“If I have one team out in the hinterlands and I lose communications with them, I want it to be you and your team,” Basford’s commander said.

Basford was there to keep the peace and safeguard the region from insurgents. “The Iraqi leaders know that we are not ‘normal’ U.S. soldiers,” he writes. “They think we are CIA, or something similar, and very dangerous. We get a lot of respect. I am secretly amazed at how much influence I have.”

He is also amazed that a mechanical engineering degree could serve him so well. “Eighty percent of all engineering students change their majors before graduating, so I knew that you had to love it to stick with it,” he says. Later, as a Special Forces officer, he realized that his work with the Iraqi community was just as challenging as any job in mechanical engineering.

Basford stands in front of a deserted Iraqi mosque in the heart of a small town abandoned after an attack by U.S. soldiers.

Basford writes mostly about life on the compound — poignant descriptions of the Iraqi landscape, the people, the food, the villages, the customs and the tragedy of war. He describes driving through “wastelands of burnt earth” and villages where people “looked like they didn’t want you to be there, or other times, you just knew the guy you were looking at or his cousin had set up some IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) — roadside bombs to kill U.S. or Iraqi soldiers.”

Garbage litters streets of ramshackle houses and open-air food markets. An absence of running water has created huge sanitation problems for the Iraqis, but they fail to realize it. “Most villages have a well or two that they draw water from. Other villages get water from one of the many aqueducts. On our outpost base, we live side by side with an Iraqi army battalion. We have hired a local man to fill up a water truck from the nearby aqueduct daily and replenish the water tanks for our latrines and the Iraqi’s latrines right next to them,” Basford writes.

“The running water amazes them, but I don’t think they fully understand it,” he continues. “They don’t understand that it can run out. They will often turn on a faucet and leave it on even after they leave. They will wash their feet five times a day. They will turn on a fire hose-size spigot full blast to wash their clothes. The water in the tank will run out and they do not understand why.”

To meet with Iraqi VIPs, the Special Forces units have to drive through town, which meant driving fast and aggressively, Basford notes. “The Iraqis respect aggression…They pull off the road for all U.S. convoys.” But it’s also safer to drive fast because it gives insurgents less time to correctly time the detonation of a roadside bomb.

Meetings were never less than three hours long — that’s considered short in Iraq, Basford notes — and the meals were always the same: sheep or goat meat served on a platter of rice.

“They bring in huge plates, two feet in diameter, of rice, with about half a sheep on it.…They don’t use utensils or napkins; people eat with their fingers…You have not fully become friends [with the Iraqis] until you have eaten with them.”

Basford, center, talks outside with Iraqi Army officials during a U.S. Special Forces meeting with the Iraqis.

Basford’s unit practices combat maneuvers, firing a variety of foreign and domestic weapons, each week. They also receive extensive combat trauma medical training, learning to administer IVs under the most extreme conditions. They practiced with night-vision goggles in blackout conditions after the men had sprinted several hundred meters or finished an obstacle course, Basford says. “That’s the condition someone will be in when they need an IV.”

Despite the gravity of his situation, Basford discovered some of the simpler pleasures in life — such as adopting a stray puppy — and a lighter side to the Iraqis as time went by. Comically, when a cell phone rings, everyone jumps to answer it.

“It’s the most important thing in the world,” Basford writes. “No matter what you are doing, the cell phone takes priority. You could be in a heated conversation with a sheik or Iraqi military commander, but if his cell phone rings, he will always answer it.”

In July, the USC engineer took a leave of absence to return to Tacoma, Washington, where his wife, Heidi, gave birth to their first child. Chances are that little Claire, born July 24, will soon be jumping to the jingle of her mom’s cell phone.