Michael Schoenfeld, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by John C. Worsencroft, August 31 and October 6, 2009: Saving the Legacy tape nos. IA-3 and IA-9

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Michael choenfeld 1 u u t 2009 to do? I would say we were prepared as anybody to go do what we did. But v n cti duty, some of the active duty units were worse off than us because right bef re the ground invasion they get this whole dump of Marines that were coming out of the ch of infantry, a bunch of privates and PFCs, where at least I had for the most part, at least corporals in charge of all my fire teams and sergeants in charge of my squads. Some of these active duty units, they had lance corporals. They were really short. Overall, I think we were actually more experienced in our enlisted ranks than them. Our officer ranks, probably not. We had the experience; we just didn't have the daily experience that an active duty unit has because our platoon commanders were primarily captains, where the active duty units were primarily second lieutenants. But we just didn't have that daily operational experience that they had. JCW: So the unit got the order to be activated again. You tracked everybody down. They're back in Camp Pendleton and ready to go. Why don't you pick up the story from there. MS: It was actually an extension of our orders, not necessarily another activation. They just extended orders and they did it indefinitely. But, once again, rumors always fly. People speculating what's going to happen, this and that. I tried to tell my Marines, "Hey, look, this is the way it is. We hurry up and wait. We'll be told what we're going to do. What we do know is we're going to be involved in this to some degree." There's a book out there on killing, there's a couple of others [books]. We would try and discuss the aspects, what to expect, combat. My platoon sergeant would talk to the Marines. I had a couple other good sergeants that hadn't necessarily been involved in 23