'You never find the IEDs; they always find you'

Senior Chief Petty Officer Jason Taggart was more cop than sailor during his first tour in Iraq.

After arriving in Iraq in April 2003, Taggart was assigned to the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team as head of a Personnel Security Detachment for a British general.

Over time, the team’s missions expanded to include route security and guarding Iraqi security forces graduations. After one such graduation in December 2003, Taggart’s Ford Explorer was hit by a roadside bomb.

“You never find the IEDs; they always find you, and as we were driving, one of the IEDs, a 155 (mm) round, found us,” said Taggart, 35, of Wellsville, Ohio.

Taggart suffered a separated shoulder and perforated eardrum but refused to be evacuated, staying on the scene to help clear the area and make sure there was no secondary assault.

When he was treated later, he was offered the chance to go home but turned it down.

“I didn’t want to let the team down, and I also knew that with me going home, someone would have to come and replace me,” Taggart said by e-mail. “Bottom line, I wanted to finish out my tour and not let others down.”

Taggart, now a chief warrant officer 2, would continue serving in Iraq until the end of March 2004, earning a Bronze Star with “V” for leading five security detachments during his first deployment to Iraq.

When Taggart volunteered to go to Iraq as an individual augmentee, he was a submariner based in Bangor, Wash.

At first, he was working on communications for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which was then in charge of Iraq.

But then he learned that a British general in the CPA needed a security detachment and was looking for someone to run it, he said.

Taggart had served as a reserve police officer in Poulsbo, Wash., for close to seven years, and had also volunteered for security work in South Korea and Japan during previous shore duties, he said.

“I was pretty used to walking to beat with a weapon,” he said.

Taggart inquired about the position and was then put in charge of four British soldiers.

He said working with the British troops “had its fun moments, and it had its trying moments.”

The British troops would tease him about what a submariner was doing in Iraq.

“I told them we were dredging the Tigris River to try to get submarines up there,” Taggart said.

As a member of the CPA, Taggart was able to get the supplies and intelligence that his team needed.

And while he had received between two and three weeks of training before coming to Iraq, he would rely mostly on his police training in his new role.

He said one lesson from police work that he took to heart in Iraq was, “Nothing is ever routine.”

His instincts were on display in one incident in which his team was helping guard an event intended to try to get some former Iraqi officers to come back to the new Iraqi army.

Taggart said he noticed one vehicle that kept driving by.

“You can always see when people are acting suspicious,” he said.

After the fourth or fifth drive-by, it was clear that the occupants were potentially dangerous.

Taggart moved close to a building to watch. The people inside got out of the car and began firing AK-47s.

Taggart shot back with his M-4 rifle, hitting some of the attackers.

He declined to give a lot of details about the incident, saying he does not like to talk about it.

Taggart said he would have rather used “other means” to respond to the situation, if they were available.

“But the vehicle was occupied by four individuals, and three of them did not make it,” he said.

Taggart is now on his third tour to the Middle East with Naval Expeditionary Combat Command’s Mobile Security Detachment 25, based in Portsmouth, Va.

He would not say specifically where he is, only that he is in the 5th Fleet theater of operations conducting anti-terrorist missions.

Taggart said he was surprised when he learned he had earned the Bronze Star with “V” for his first tour in Iraq, and that the real heroes of this war are the fallen servicemembers.

“Most of these men and women have themselves just begun their life and in turn given that up so that others may live.”