Battlefield Fallujah Warriors: Captain Brian Mulvihill, USMC

Battalion Advisor (Iraqi Forces), attached to Alpha Company and Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines

Episode 3, 6, 7, 11, 12
Interviewer: Lieutenant Colonel John Way
Camp Fallujah, Iraq - November 26, 2004
Courtesy of the Department of Defense and the U.S. Marine Corps History Division

Background and experience: Served his first tour with 1/2, mostly in Weapons Co. He then went to DLI and conducted immersion training in Spanish. He then reported to 2 MEF.

Captain Mulvihill volunteered to serve as an advisor to the new Iraqi Security Forces / Iraqi Army. He had some background in advisory work from working in Colombia. He arrived in Kuwait April 13, 2004 and then got to Baghdad. There were 24 officers, SNCOs and NCOs in the group he came with. They are trained and sent over by SCETC (Security and Cooperation Education Training Command), which is based in Quantico and trains Marines to be teachers for foreign militaries.

His team was based at Taji or Camp Cook, an Army FOB to the north of Baghdad. Each battalion advisory team had 10 members: 2 officers and 8 SNCOs/NCOs. He and a first sergeant were the only active duty Marines, the rest were reservists.

Their initial task was to process 1200 new Officers and NCOs. It took 6 weeks to process the Iraqi soldiers, issue them uniforms and get them sent to their new units. Of the officers and NCOs about 75% had been in the old Iraqi Army.

Source: U.S. Marine Corps History Division