2:00 P.M. EST 
Real Audio of Briefing
MODERATOR: Thank you for coming to the Washington Foreign Press Center. We are extremely pleased today to have Lieutenant General Jack Stultz, who is the Commander of the U.S. Army Reserve. He has been since 2005. He's had a nearly 30-year career in the Reserves after an active duty career and he has been deployed overseas on multiple occasions, including Desert Shield, Desert Storm, into the Balkans, and most recently, in Iraq.
The General is going to speak for a few minutes here. We also have some members of the Reserve who have also served in different parts of the world here to also answer some of your questions and we'll have a Q&A session afterwards.
General, thank you so much for coming.
LTG STULTZ: Thanks for giving me the opportunity. I never pass such an opportunity to talk about the great heroes we've got in America in the form of our Army Reserve soldiers. We call our -- or I call our Army Reserve soldiers warrior-citizens. People ask me, well, what do you mean by that, warrior-citizens? What it is is they're a warrior for this country defending our country, but they're also citizens. They've got another job.
And the challenge we've got is really balancing that warrior-citizen beat, because I can't allow them or force them to make a choice. If they choose just to be a warrior, they end up being a full-time soldier on active duty, where if they choose to just be a citizen, they end up leaving the military just to become a citizen. (Inaudible.) So we've got to balance both of them.
The good news is we got a lot of heroes that are doing exactly that. You're going to hear from three of them here in a few minutes, but let me just tell you a little bit about what's going on in the Army Reserve. The Army Reserve, just like the Army, is in transformation. We're transforming from what we used to be, as a strategic reserve, into really what is now part of the operational Army.
And by that, I mean back when I came in the Army Reserve years ago, what we used to advertise to our soldiers or to our citizens trying to get them to join is, "One weekend a month, two weeks in the summer, that's all we ask." Because as a strategic reserve, you really were -- you did a drill weekend one weekend a month to train and then usually, two weeks in the summertime, you trained in some type of an exercise. But you weren't really expected to be full-time except in lieu of a major conflict.
With the advent of the war on terror, with Operation Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom, we have now become part of the operational force. Since 2001, we have mobilized over 170,000 Army Reserve soldiers in support of the war. That's out of a 205,000 person force. Now that doesn't mean we only have -- you know, 27 or 30,000 left. What that means is we continue to replenish our force with new recruits as we have people retiring.
But the point being is we have maintained an ongoing commitment to this war. And so if you're in the Army Reserve now, it's not one weekend a month, two weeks in the summer. It's on a regular basis; about once every four to five years, your unit is going to be expected to be mobilized to support the war and be called up for up to one year -- not in all cases, but in some cases, up to a year. And then you return back to your civilian job and you'll train for another four years until you're expected to get called up again. And that's the goal of where we're going. To do that, we've got to transform a lot of our units from the legacy structure we had into the new structure that we need.
The other thing I'll tell you about the Army Reserve is that the warrior-citizen brings an added value to the force. It brings an added value in several respects. One, when we call our warrior-citizens up, we bring the community with them. You see, the Reserve forces are community based. We don't live on installations. We live in the community. Our friends are in the community, our roots are in the community and so when we call those citizen soldiers or warrior-citizens up, that community spirit comes with them. That community interest comes with them. A lot of times the local media, just as you, come with that soldier as embeds within the unit or come to theater and do stories on them back to the community back home.
So there's a public support, a public will that comes with that soldier. But the other things they bring with them are civilian skills because a lot of times our soldiers have great civilian skills that we can't replicate in the Army on the active side. Because for instance in our civil affairs community, civil affairs soldiers, we'll have people that are city planners, fire chiefs, police chiefs, waterworks directors, power plant operators, those types of skills that you normally don't find in an active military that when we put them into the theater -- and you'll hear that, I'm sure, from some of these soldiers that talk about that civilian side of the business they bring to them, our law enforcement officers that are in our military police corps -- those civilian skills are taught to be a civilian law enforcement officer: negotiation capability, maintaining calm under heated situations, domestic disputes where you're trying to keep people, a husband and wife apart from each other, you don't really train that in a military environment. But quite often, you find yourself in a situation in Iraq or Afghanistan where you've got to use those types of skills.
I'll give you a couple of examples. I was in Kosovo in February visiting our hospital unit that's there, running the hospital at Camp Bondsteel, and I was talking to one of the doctors and one of the doctors said, you know, when we first got here, we were having trouble because our MRI, our magnetic resonance imaging machine, wasn't working properly. And we had a couple of x-ray machines that just weren't working -- your sergeant fixed them all. And I said, "What do you do for a living, Sergeant?" And he says, "I'm an engineer for Toshiba Medical. I do this for a living. So I'm over here in a different capacity, but I know how to fix these machines. So I've got him -- and I'll run them for you now." I mean, that's the kind of skill sets that you bring.
The other thing that I want to emphasize to you is as the Army Reserve, a lot of people are focused on the Iraq-Afghanistan theater of operations. We're employed around the world. I think right now we've got soldiers in probably 20-25 different countries around the world, doing a lot of great stuff. I just mentioned Kosovo. In April I was in the Horn of Africa in Djibouti. I was out with a group of our soldiers vaccinating goats from the local Djiboutian population. That's their food sources.
Our civil affairs soldiers who -- we have veterinarians embedded with them, have worked with the local population to keep their food source healthy. I was out with the engineers and we were drilling wells for water sources for the animals and the population. In May, I was in Panama and Belize. Now, down in Panama, in the remote areas of Panama, where you have certain Indian dialects that don't even speak Spanish, they have their own language, we're building schools. And we're building schoolhouses for them so that they can -- the small children can go to school and learn the Spanish language so that they can have better futures in Panama. We were providing medical services and dental checkups for a lot of those children that have not had access to medical care in that area. So the point being is we've got a lot of Reserve soldiers around the world doing great things, capitalizing on their civilian skills as well as their military skills.
Now the other piece of this is, when I talk about this warrior-citizen, there's another side of this citizen and that's the employer. Now, one of the things that we've had to really work hard at is how do we balance the needs of the employer and the needs of the military. Because as an employer of an Army Reserve soldier in the past, that one weekend a month, two weeks in the summer, I could work with that. But now as an employer you're telling me you're going to take this employer away from me for a year at a time, and I've got to make plans for that. And so we're working very hard with the employers of America to talk about providing predictability so that they can predict when that soldier's going to have to leave and be in the Army and when he'll be back, and they can make plans around that. We've got to get to that predictability cycle.
We've got to get to -- look at sharing some of the cost, if there's a cost of benefits that that employer's providing for the solider, maybe we need to share a part of that cost with them so that that soldier's -- if he's got a health care plan maybe stays in effect while he's gone, for him and his family, instead of having to change plans between the military and the employer.
But the good news of it is I've been out recently meeting with a lot of the employers of America, talking to them in various forums. They see the value of hiring and employing a citizen soldier, a warrior-citizen. Because what they're telling us is when that person comes to work for me he comes with a different level of maturity, a different level of leadership, a different level of responsibility. And so we see the value of hiring and employing these soldiers, so it's worth the cost of having to give him up every four to five years. Especially true, I'm finding when I'm talking to some of our law enforcement agencies -- police departments, sheriff departments and all -- and they they're talking about when they bring a soldier into their ranks, it's a different soldier. I think you're going to hear from one here in a minute that I've got, one of my soldiers that works for a law enforcement. And he'll tell you his department views him in a different aspect than they do the other law enforcement officers they have in their ranks because of his military training.
So a lot of operational tempo, a lot of strain on the force right now, but a lot of good news story. Our recruiting efforts are doing well. Our retention efforts are great. Our soldiers are staying with us. Our reenlistment rates -- our retention is the highest it's been in years. So the soldiers that we're getting into our ranks now feel good about what they're doing and they want to stay. Again, the recruiting is good. We are -- I'd guess you'd say in competition sometimes with ourselves in trying to recruit soldiers into the Reserves that the active Army is trying to recruit in the active Army, but that's okay; we work together. But it's a positive story.
So I don't have anything negative to say to you as a press audience. Everything's a positive spin from the Army Reserve in terms of what we're doing and what we're seeing and we're just proud of our soldiers. And rather than me standing up here talking to you, really, I want you to hear from them because that's really why I came here is to let you hear from our soldiers and let them talk to you about their experiences.
We brought to you a group of different soldiers that have a wide variety of experiences both from their deployment side of the house, of what they've done, but also from their civilian side of the house, of what they do in civilian life.
So let me turn it back over to you and you can introduce our soldiers.
MODERATOR: All right. I'll do so. Well, let me start on my far right here. This is Lieutenant Colonel Jay Shiffler and he is with an Army Reserve Communications unit in Atlanta, Georgia and if you are interested in getting hooked up with the Reserve in some way or doing stories on the Reserve, he is the person to talk to.
Let me -- this is Major Christopher Matson and he has recently, or fairly recently returned from Iraq where he was training Iraqi forces and where he was also wounded by an improvised explosive device.
This is Sergeant Robert Rose and he is from Richmond, Kansas and he's with an aviation regiment. He's with the Chinook helicopter unit and he served in Pakistan and Afghanistan. And his unit was the subject of a recent PBS documentary called "From Kansas to Kandahar."
And finally, we have Specialist Miles Noonan. He's with the 94th Military Police from -- and his hometown is Fairfield, Maine. And he's been deployed to Panama, where they did civil affairs and co-training with units from around the region. And so --
PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.)
MODERATOR: Excuse me, yes, I did introduce him -- I'm sorry, I don't know if there's anybody in particular who would like to go first, but Major, would you like to say a few words?
MAJ MATSON: Yeah.
MODERATOR: Yeah, go ahead.
MAJ MATSON: Thank you, sir. As you said, my name is Chris Matson. I'm from Charlotte, North Carolina. I'm a soldier in the Army Reserves down there based out of Charlotte, North Carolina.
In terms of what I do at the military, on the background, I'm an infantry officer. In Iraq, my mission was part of a small team embedded with an Iraqi infantry battalion. We had a unique opportunity in that many, many American soldiers have worked with Iraqi soldiers in operations. We not only did that, but we lived with them 24 hours a day. I ate my breakfast, lunch, and dinner with the Iraqi soldiers in the Iraqi dining facility.
So I got to know these men not only as soldiers, but as men, and we became -- they call it being brothers and that's the one thing that I think I pulled from my time in Iraq, is not only how similar we Americans are to the Iraqis in certain respects, but how many things that they wanted was exactly what I wanted. And so when things got difficult, and there were some very difficult days and challenging days, I always fell back on that and knew that what I was fighting for was not only my family, but the families of those men that I served with. And I can think of countless times where we stood shoulder-to-shoulder in combat and it wasn't an American soldier to my right or my left; it was an Iraqi soldier. And I felt just as safe and protected as I would if it was an American soldier.
It was a tremendous experience. We got to know these men just like our own. We celebrated weddings, births of children. We even unfortunately had to bury some of their brothers and that was tough, but it was something that's part of the job and I inevitably certainly expected it. The job itself covered everything that you can imagine about running a military, whether it was planning operations and executing them, to how do you get food and vehicles repaired, things like that. We had all sorts of things to do and it was a tremendous experience. And as a reservist, I'll never forget it and I'll certainly always look back on it with a smile on my face.
MODERATOR: Thank you.
Sergeant.
SGT ROSE: Hi, my name is Sergeant Rose. I'm out of Gardner, Kansas, Reserve Unit Bravo Company One, 7-158th Aviation. I live in Richmond, Kansas. And we was deployed to go to Afghanistan in the late year of '05 and a big earthquake hit in Pakistan and they called our unit about two days after we got to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, then told us we have less than a week to bring down 12 Chinook helicopters and have them up and running in Pakistan, out of Islamabad.
And then that week, we had our Chinooks up and going. We didn't have them all, but we had a couple of them running missions, doing humanitarian relief, get out there, give them clothes, food, and shelter, whatever needed that you needed to live on. We were there for about four months and we then continued our mission to Afghanistan where we helped support all the FOBs and other areas around there that needed supplies and also what they needed in Pakistan as in food and ammunition and whatever was needed to help support the war on terrorism.
We lived every day just like we would at home, be a lot different than being at home with the wife, whatever, and just getting to know one -- each other. It's different than working your average day job because it's continuous, nonstop. There's no days off. You might get a little bit of down time here and there, but it's nonstop, 12, 14 hour days, flying anywhere from 8 to 16 hour a day -- or 16 hours a day. We hauled over, I believe, it must have been about 10 million pounds of supplies, both through Pakistan and Afghanistan, carried thousands of people to whatever location they needed to be, hospitals and so forth and one of the few units that actually brought all of our -- or made it home without losing -- aviation unit without losing anybody.
And I believe that all of our Chinooks are still flying over in Afghanistan, you know, it's just hard to say. I'd recommend that if you guys get a chance, to watch the "Kansas to Kandahar" video. It's a very good documentary. The producer -- I can't think of his first name, his last name is Skaggs, but he did an excellent job, so if you get a chance, find that up and watch it.
MODERATOR: Thank you.
Specialist.
SPC NOONAN: Good afternoon, my name is Miles Noonan. I'm a military police soldier with the 94th Military Police Company out of Saco, Maine. In the civilian job, I work as a law enforcement officer. So, one of the main reasons and motivators for me joining the Army Reserve was that I could better myself in my civilian law enforcement career and also have some coins to bring to the table as far as the military police corps is concerned. So it really has been a two-way street for me.
When I got back from training in military police corps, my department looked at me with more open eyes as far as giving me details, promotions, the job areas that I wanted to work in because they said, well, you know, he went to military police school and he graduated with honors from that and we'll start looking at this kid more often.
Recently, I just got back from Panama and I was deployed there for three months in military police support of the New Horizons Project. And what this project was was a task force consisting of solely Army Reserve and National Guard soldiers. And our mission there was humanitarian assistance and civil affairs. We are doing things such as building schools, roads, clinics, delivering running water, running pipes, whatever we could do to help better their area. And the Panamanian people themselves were very appreciative of what we are doing there. And I remember right before I deployed to Panama, one of my friends was saying, you know, "Why are you going to Panama with the Army? You know, there's no war going on there."
And I said, well, no, there's not a war going on there, but it's a good mission for us to go to, because we get to apply our skills as engineers or as medics or as helicopter pilots or military police in an environment where it's non-hostile, so we have this real world mission, excellent training for us, and we get to do something good for a lifelong friend of the United States of America, which is Panama itself.
I worked directly with the Panamanian National Police which was a very, very beneficial experience for me because I got to learn about their culture and how they do things. And I also learned that, you know, around the world, our law enforcement -- we're all brothers. We call it the "thin blue line" back here in the United States. I don't know if they have a metaphor for it there or what have you, but I obviously felt a natural affinity towards the law enforcement there. Getting a chance to work with them and learn about them and meet their families and just experience their lives -- you know, I was really grateful for the experience.
And I would have to say that the real hats-off are, as far as accomplishments for this mission is concerned, has to go to the engineers that were there and working around the clock day and night pouring concrete, digging holes, doing whatever they were doing, just working really hard to give these people something that they wouldn't have had. And here I am just protecting them and providing their security and -- but are very glad to have the opportunity to come here and tell their story and mine.
And just real quickly, I would like to kind of touch base on how I was working with the Panamanian police, though we had this one family in a village called Via Saron (ph) and they didn't have any electricity in this village and it was fairly remote. And I apologize because I might get a little emotional as I tell this story, but there was a girl in one of the families that had about 13 or 14 children in this family -- I don't remember how many for sure. But she was up studying by candlelight because it was dark out and like I said, they had no electricity. And she ended up falling asleep and knocking the candle over, which lit the house on fire. And having a wooden house with a grass roof, you can imagine it went up pretty quickly. And this family lost everything; had almost nothing to begin with, but they lost everything, including two of their children, who unfortunately weren't able to be saved.
And when we heard about this, because we had just been recently in that village, you can -- you could imagine it sunk in our hearts pretty heavy. So what we did is we got a team together of a few military police, a translator, a couple Panamanian police, and some other soldiers that had been in that village earlier for one of the medical exercises. And we got together some spare food and equipment or, you know, like clothing or what-not that we weren't just using anymore and we literally were going to throw away. And we made a mission to bring it to this village and to give it to the family and offer our condolences.
Like I said, it wasn't much, but we did what we could. And I think that just speaks on the -- you know, the generosity of the American people and the American soldier, which isn't always something that makes it to the news.
And real quickly, also, when we were doing that, one of the Panamanian police officers that was with me who spoke very good English and I got to develop a very good relationship with him, he came and talked to me and he said, you know, "They've done nothing for you." And I said, "They don't have to, you know; we're doing this for them." And I said, "Well, honestly, though, how does that make you feel?" And he goes, "It makes me feel pretty good." And I said, "So that's what it means to be a cop. It's about helping people." So I'm glad that I was able to leave that impact.
All right, thank you very much.
PARTICIPANT: Thank you.
MODERATOR: All right. Now we're going to have some time for questions and answers. As usual, please identify yourself and your media outlet. And since we have a group here, please be clear who you're addressing the question to. And finally, wait for the microphones, which are on either side of the room. Thanks.
Questions? Yes.
QUESTION: Well, my name is Olivia Schoeller. I'm with the German newspaper, Berliner Zeitung, and I guess my question is probably for one -- for Major Chris Matson. I'm just speaking to you now because I would be interested -- when you joined the Reserve, did you know that you would be in -- deployed for a year? And how did your family react to that? How did they cope with the fact that you were suddenly gone for such a long time? Thank you.
MAJ MATSON: I think I -- I recognize the obligation that one makes when you join the Reserves that there may be extended periods of time when you're going to be gone. Did I expect it? I certainly didn't anticipate it when it did, but obviously -- I've been in the Reserves for 13 years now, so I've been there a long time and I know that this thing happens and it happens to certain soldiers more often than others.
So I knew that this was coming up for me at some point in time, this particular mission. And my family had an opportunity to prepare themselves mentally for it. The Reserve unit that I'm from has a very family group -- support that they could fall back on, if that's something they wanted. And upon returning, even after I was wounded, I had constant communication not only to my family, but to myself from the commanders within my division just checking up on me.
So I think for my family, it was actually a challenging but interesting experience. They'll look back on it and recognize, you know, we've learned new things about ourselves and what we can do. So it was, all in all, a good experience for all of us, I'd like to say.
Did that answer your question?
MODERATOR: Okay. We have a question in New York. Go ahead, New York.
QUESTION: Thank you. My name is Jean Claude Mvodo. I'm from the Cameroonian magazine Ici. I would like first to thank the U.S. Army for the good job they do around the world. I would like to thank all the soldiers.
So I have two questions. The first one is: What I see here in New York, I try to see that U.S. Army has many difficulties to recruit the new soldiers. So for me, I think it is a program that has to be solved as soon as possible because when I try to have a look around the world, there are many other countries who try to do efforts to increase their army. So if the U.S. Army -- if the United States wants to be the first U.S. Army in the world, I think they have to solve this problem. So how you do -- to solve this problem?
The second question is a kind of proposal. If there are so many difficulties to have new soldiers in U.S. Army, is there any possibility for the Army, for the government to try to create a kind of foreign army you need and then try to recruit around the world, maybe in Africa? I'm from Africa. Thank you.
PARTICIPANT: Well, I think that's yours.
LTG STULTZ: Yeah, all right. To address the first question on recruiting: Recruiting is a challenge, granted. And recruiting is a challenge for several reasons. One is we are in competition with not only the military, we're in competition with other government services that are trying to recruit the same soldiers that we're trying to recruit. We're in competition with business of America that's trying to hire these soldiers and we're in competition a lot of times with foreign businesses that are also looking for bright young Americans to hire into their companies also. And so, you know, the question -- you really are saying is, okay, what is it that causes a -- an individual to join the Army instead of going into some other profession, especially when we're talking about some of the risk associated with it?
What I see in the Army Reserve, and I'm speaking from the Army Reserve now, is I'm offering that soldier or that individual both. You see, when the active Army is recruiting an individual, they're looking for an individual that really doesn't have a plan. He's not sure what he's going to do; he may be graduating from high school or college; doesn't have a job yet; his parents might be telling him it's time to move out of the house; and so the Army to him is a pretty good option and a career and so he joins the Army. I'm not looking for that individual.
I'm looking for the individual that's got a plan. And that individual says, when I graduate from high school I'm going to college; or when I graduate from high school, I've got this job; or I want to get into law enforcement or I want to -- whatever. And the Army Reserve offers him an opportunity to help achieve that plan. We can do that. Just as you heard one of the soldiers saying that what really appealed to him was the military police training -- helped him in his civilian career as a law enforcement officer.
So it's a little bit of a different spin that I'm a looking for. Now, why else -- when I go back to my original question, why does somebody join the Army? I think first and foremost because their patriotism. We're getting a lot of individuals that are joining the American Army, especially after the September 11th, because they love this country, they love what this country has given them and they're joining the Army because they feel obligated to defend this nation.
I've got a soldier just recently who was in my -- is in my ranks right now. Her name is Sergeant Sandy Kitzinger. Sergeant Kitzinger was a German citizen. Sergeant Kitzinger was working here in the United States when 9/11 occurred. She felt so obligated, because this country had been so good to her, she became a U.S. citizen and joined my ranks in the Army Reserve. Now she's working full time for me in the Army Reserve and was deployed into Iraq. But she said, you know, I just felt so dedicated to this country because they'd been so good to me that I wanted to defend it. So I think first and foremost people are joining because of patriotism.
Secondly, there -- it's an opportunity to improve their life, in some cases; like I said, with the educational benefits or with other job opportunities.
And I'd say the third thing is the adventure. I think the Army is a -- attracts soldiers who are looking for an adventure; looking to test themselves -- can I really do it? You know, we have this phrase we call ‘Army Strong.' Can I really be ‘Army Strong,' you know. In the last eight months I've been in Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Djibouti, Kosovo, Panama, Belize, you name it, seeing our soldiers around the world doing great things, feeling good about what they're doing. And some of them -- and a lot of them say, "You know, sir, I could never have imagined I would be here doing what I'm doing, but I feel good about it."
So recruiting is a challenge because we're all looking for that same individual. You know when I go out and talk to the police forces of the world and I say what are you looking for. They say, well, an individual that's about 20 to 25 years of age, physically fit, drug free, whatever. And that's a recruiting poster for me; I'm looking for the same guy. So it's a challenge. But as I said earlier, we're meeting the challenge. We're getting soldiers coming into our ranks in the numbers that we need, but it's still going to be a challenge.
Secondly, your other question about looking at foreign armies, I don't think the -- from my perspective as a chief of the Reserve, we've really taken into consideration forming a foreign Army under the flag of the United States or things like that. Now, what we have looked at and we've done very successfully is where other countries have armies, us working together. Just as some of the soldiers talked about working to help the Iraqis stand up their army and working together with them, I've seen the same thing. When I was in Afghanistan in December, I went to one of the Afghan training centers. My soldiers are over there teaching the Afghans how to stand up their own training centers.
You know we have drill sergeants in our Army -- the American Army. You've seen the drill sergeants with their hats that are out there screaming at those young recruits when they first get in and making them cut all their hair off at the basic training centers. Well, we're teaching the Afghans how to have their own drill sergeants so that they can train their own soldiers. And as they develop their own Afghan Army as a professional army, we're there hand-in-hand.
So rather than saying we would look at trying to bring soldiers from around the world or citizens from other parts of the world into our ranks, what I would like to see is us to help other countries stand up their own armies that we work hand-in-hand together, and especially in the areas such as Africa where there's such need. We're working together in some of the areas like I mentioned in Djibouti, Kenya, Uganda and those areas help them stand up their armies so that they can defend their own countries and protect their own people and we'll be partners with them.
MODERATOR: Other questions? Yeah, go ahead.
QUESTION: Hi, Tim Shipman from the Sunday Telegraph in London. Also for Major Matson: The debate here and in Britain is all about, you know, the Iraqi Army and their capability and how they're going to be able to take over at some point or not and there seems to be a great deal of skepticism about how prepared they are. Can you sort of reflect from your experience, you know, what are they good at, what are they not good at, what more can you guys be doing to help them along? Should more people spend time as you did in a trench with them?
MAJ MATSON: Well, I can speak from my perspective and the battalion that I worked with is up in Mosul, Iraq. The battalion was predominantly former Peshmerga that had been brought in and became part of the Iraqi Army. They were actually one of the first Iraqi Army brigades to assume control over their own sector in Iraq, which essentially means they run the show in their sector. Even though there may be American forces there they stand back in what we call strategic over watch and just watch, and if there are emergencies and they need it, they can call us and they would do that through guys like myself, some MiTT teams that had access to the radios that we could talk to them. My guys were in control of their sector. They ran their own sector. They ran the show there 100 percent of the time. And we were there just to advise and if they needed anything -- provided. And it was rarely a situation where we had to call in the coalition across the river to bring them into our sector.
Now I imagine it's different in other aspects -- other areas of Iraq, but I can speak for the soldiers that fought up in Mosul that they had a very firm grasp of what they were doing. I think where we helped them the most was not in the fighting; they've done that for decades and know how to do that and do that very well. It's the basics, the administrative aspects of running a military and perhaps even more so at the battalion level, but up at the division level and the MiTT guys, the guys that were doing my job, but at division levels. We're working with those folks trying to get the logistical system functioning, so when a jeep broke down, the parts got shipped where they needed to be shipped so the vehicles could get repaired.
But in terms of restoring security and bringing it to the cities, it's beginning and it's -- it was improving on a daily basis while we were there. And I think the biggest thing that I think we had as a team is I worked with our battalion commander and got them to be working with the Iraqi police. That was a difficult relationship to get them to work together, because the ultimate goal was to leave it in such a situation that the police kept the police in the cities -- you know, long-term, the Iraqi Army could focus on the concerns and the borders outside. But we did get that. We began doing operations with the police chief in our area. And that was incredibly satisfying.
MODERATOR: Other questions please.
Yes.
QUESTION: Again, Olivia Schoeller, Berliner Zeitung. There are a lot of private contractors. Is that -- are they competitive to your recruiting as well?
LTG STULTZ: Yes, in a lot of your -- I think one of the things we had to do as an army is this term we use called "contractors on the battlefield." Throughout the period of the '80s and the '90s, as we, in a lot of respects, drew down the American Army in size from an army of 780,000 on the active side down to about 435 and on the Reserve side, we drew down from a force sort of around 400, 450,000 down to about 200,000.
So we greatly reduced our size of our armed forces during that period of time. What we always said is, if we have to go to war, what we will rely on is a lot of contractor support for logistics and other types of support -- maintenance, medical, logistics, what -- because we envisioned the battlefield to be what we were always used to, and that would be -- it would be a symmetric battlefield where you would have a front line. You know, if you go back to the World War II battlefields and all -- the front line and then you had the division rear and then you had the theater rear. And so where you would use your contractors would be in the rear area where there would be a lot of security.
Well, today's battlefield is asymmetric, it's not symmetric. Today when you cross into -- we have convoys driving, you know, four or five hundred miles into Iraq to deliver supplies. There is no rear. It's all one large battlefield because of the asymmetric type of warfare.
And so that presents a unique challenge because where do you use the contractors effectively and where do you not use the contractors effectively? And what -- from my experiences, where you had a secure environment, the contractor worked very well. If I had a secure operating base and I could bring in contractors to do maintenance support to repair my vehicles, it worked very well. If I had a secure operating base and I could bring contractors in to provide the food in the dining facilities, it worked very well. When I brought contractors in to drive trucks, where it was in a danger, hostile environment, it didn't work as well because they were out exposed and we'd get attacked. And so I would have to provide security forces, command and control, and other things to control them.
And so I think, you know, one of the things we've got to do as we move forward in this new environment of what we would call an asymmetric warfare, we've got to look at -- reevaluate how we use contractors and where we use contractors.
Likewise, that poses the next problem you -- or the question you ask is, I'm trying to get military truck drivers and the contractors are trying to hire truck drivers. And so in a lot of cases, we did find ourselves competing with each other and the bidding goes up, you know, because if they're going to hire away one of my truck drivers and give him more money to drive for them, then I in turn say, well, I'll give you a larger bonus to stay with me.
And we got to get out of that business of bidding with each other. And I think part of that would be if we said, okay, maybe all our truck drivers need to be military; we wouldn't be bidding with each other. Maybe all the mechanics down in the bases need to be contractor; we wouldn't be bidding with each other.
But you're right. It is -- we do get into a bidding battle sometime because we're both looking for that expertise. What's very frustrating for me is when I train them and I spend all the money to train them and then they hire them away, you know, I've lost that valuable soldier. Now, hopefully -- again, hopefully, in the Army Reserve, I can retain that soldier even though he's working for the contractor. I just -- I don't have him available to me at the time when he's working in theater for the contractor.
MODERATOR: Other questions, please. Yes.
QUESTION: Heather Yamour, Kuwait News Agency. I wanted to ask you about reports or suggestions for extending the tours of duties in Iraq. Now how -- if this were to happen, excuse me, how would this affect the predictability cycle you had mentioned before, cooperating with employers and what's the likelihood or the likely effectiveness of extending these tours of duty in Iraq?
LTG STULTZ: That question comes up quite often. First of all, let me say this. The Secretary of Defense, the new Secretary of Defense Dr. Gates, stated in a policy in January that the tours of the Reserve soldiers, the mobilization tours, would be 12 months. At that point, they also extended or announced they were going to extend some of the active units up to 15 months in theater. And that was -- the policy was put out for the active up to 15 months; for the Reserve, it was 12 months. He has not changed that policy. So right now, we are not looking at extending any Reserve forces beyond a 12-month tour in theater. And our planning is to be able to replace those forces when their time is up in -- you know, at the 12-month period of time.
I think personally, you know, if we're looking at that warrior-citizen that's balancing a civilian career and a military career, we can't extend them. We can't call on and ask for them to do more than 12 months at any given time because they've got a dual life to live. And so from the Chief of the Army Reserve perspective, we're not looking at anything beyond 12 months for our Reserve soldiers. We're looking at trying to get that predictability back into their life and we're telling the Army we have to if we're going to sustain this long war. From the active perspective, I've heard nothing about extending anything beyond 15 months. And that's going to be the Secretary of the Army, Secretary of Defense's decision, not mine. But from the Reserve side, 12 months is 12 months.
MODERATOR: Maybe one more that's out there? Anyone? Yeah, all right.
QUESTION: Nidal Ibourk from -- with Al Mustaqbal Al Arabi magazine. And my question is going to be to Major Matson. I would like to know from you as a person who was in the field in Iraq, how hard was it for you and to your unit to deal with other soldiers in the field and with other civilian people?
MAJ MATSON: Were you referring to other Iraqi soldiers?
QUESTION: Mm-hmm.
MAJ MATSON: Okay. You know, it was actually -- it was quite easy working with the Iraqi soldiers. It was much easier than I expected it to be. We used a compliment of interpreters that lived with us. We had five interpreters that lived with my small man team that kept with us 24 hours a day. So anytime I needed to communicate with my Iraqi soldiers where it was encouraged for Arabic, I had somebody that I could grab and communicate with.
And one of the things that we tried to do on a daily basis in getting out and doing operations was to get out of the vehicles whenever it was potential and mix with the population. And in cases, when we did this, I found them more than generous. The generosity surprised me, to be quite frank. I'd get out, talk with the fathers and mothers and ask them and try to get my Iraqi soldiers to interact with them as well because the goal was to get them recognized as somebody as a sign of security, rather than as being someone there that was going to potentially cause problems. And it was something we tried to do daily, get out and mix with the local people.
We did several missions where we took boxes of notebooks and pencils into local children's schools and called the kids into the playgrounds and let the Iraqi soldiers mix with them as well as American soldiers and those were good things that we did because they not only did that, but they also led to -- they felt comfortable enough to share information with the Iraqi army if they had information about insurgent activity in the area. So it was challenging at times, but it was very rewarding.
MODERATOR: Thank you all.
