Young Historians Chronicle First Cav history

[SR-25]

By Spc. Joshua McPhie

May 6, 2005

FORT HOOD, Texas (Army News Service, May 6, 2005) -- When the 1st Cavalry Division first started preparing to go to Iraq in 2003, Chris Caesar, a Killeen High School world geography teacher, saw an opportunity to turn the deployment into a teaching experience.

His efforts culminated May 4, when a group of his students met with more than 20 recently returned First Team Soldiers to document their experiences in Iraq. The students, in groups of three, used video cameras to preserve Soldiers’ accounts of their time in Iraq as part of an oral history project.

Caesar said it all started last school year with an e-mail to Maj. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the division’s commanding general. As a result of the e-mail, Chiarelli came and spoke to Caesar’s students. Once the Cav was in Iraq, the students were able to attend several video teleconferences, including one with Iraqi high school students. As a new school year began, a new group of students had the opportunity to attend VTCs with Chiarelli.

Once the division had returned home, Caesar teamed up with the 1st Cavalry Division Museum to record Soldiers’ oral histories. Steven Draper, the museum director, taught the students how to take down the histories, which the museum will use to create a history of the division from Sept. 11, 2001 to the present.

The project may have been about history for the museum, but the students had a chance to learn about the Army, Iraq and the Soldiers’ lives there.

“Talking to the Soldiers and the general we got to know what was happening in detail,” Caitlin Hall said.

“It was pretty cool,” Russell Monfore agreed. “We learned things most people don’t know.”

“It’s been fun being able to find out things newspapers and TV don’t tell us,” Ashley Johnson said.

When she first heard about the project Johnson thought it would be boring. But her opinion changed after meeting with the Soldiers.

“Talking to them made it real,” she said.

Johnson wasn’t the only student whose opinion changed after meeting the Soldiers. Hall said she thought the Soldiers would act like they were celebrities and have an “I’m better than you” attitude, a preconception she admits was wrong.

“Once you get to talk to them, they’re real people, too,” Hall said. “Soldiers have feelings too. They get scared like other people.”

The students weren’t the only people who got more than they expected from the project. Staff Sgt. Brian Garling, a member of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team’s Headquarters Company, was told a few weeks ago that kids would be interviewing the Soldiers for their project.

“I thought they would just ask a couple of question and that would be it,” Garling said. “These guys are really organized. I’m surprised. I wasn’t sure about it this morning, but it’s fun.”

Garling sat down with three students -- Johnathan Edwards, Taylor Bennett and Amber Hinson -- to answer their questions about his time in Iraq. They asked him questions about his job his living conditions, some of the challenges he faced and many other topics.

Garling said he was impressed by the questions the young historians asked. Their time together was educational for the students as much as Garling.

“He was describing how the [living] trailers worked,” Taylor Bennett said. “I was expecting tents. I didn’t know they had quarters.”

When the project ended, some of the Soldiers even stayed to have lunch with the students.

Editor's note: Spc. Joshua McPhie writes for the

1st Cavalry Division Public Affairs office.


http://www4.army.mil/news/article.php?story=7295

[AmericanGirl]

Great Teacher, good lesson!

[Turtledrive]

I wish more teachers would take that kind of interest.