BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 14, 2004 — Less than a year ago an unassuming man from Weatherford, Okla., arrived in this country to guide an organization that didn’t even exist – to build an army that wasn’t there.

There was no plan, no force, and only slight guidance.

And 363 days later – despite a host of staggering setbacks and difficulties with logistics, contractors, funding, cultural differences and a plan that changed in scope, size and overall delivery – Iraq’s armed forces and civil security forces total more than 230,000 people. In only a matter of months, the army will consist of a 27-battalion, nine-brigade, three-division army and air force, navy, coastal defense force, civil defense corps, police service, facilities protection service, border police force, customs police force, immigration police force, national security police force and a diplomatic protection service officers force.

“There’s nothing that could have prepared me for what I’ve encountered here – but a number of things have happened to me in my career that have proven helpful,” said U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, the former Office of Security Transition Commanding General.

Eaton recognized the parallels between his career and the huge assignment to rebuild the Iraqi Armed Forces and civil security forces. A duty that brought him here June 13, 2003 – and one which true to his modest reputation, he quietly handed over to the current chief, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, on June 6, 2004.

“When I was commissioned, the Army was a conscript army,” the solidly built, slightly grey-haired 54-year-old Eaton said, recalling his early beginnings with the U.S. Army in 1972 as a fresh graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.

“One year later when I took over my platoon,” Eaton said, “It was an ‘all volunteer’ platoon. We had become a professional army.”

“The analogy,” Eaton said from behind his desk at the headquarters of the soon to be disbanded Coalition Provisional Authority, “Coming out of the Vietnam War – having lost it – and going into a professional army from a conscript army is precisely what we have done with the Iraqi army. I trained my own platoon. And that’s what I’m asking these cadre officers and non-commissioned officers to do.

“So a lot of what we are doing here is a direct reflection of what I’ve done in my career,” Eaton said.

What Eaton’s done is spend 32 years serving his country in various capacities and stations beginning with his first assignment as that young platoon leader with the 4th Infantry Division in Fort Carson, Colorado. Most recently he served as the commanding general at the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning, Ga. – as a master of training soldiers and instilling in them the values and ethos of being a soldier.

It was with that in mind that Eaton was brought to Iraq only weeks after U.S. officials disbanded the old Iraqi army in May 2003.

Eaton was brought to Iraq originally to command the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team. The team was specifically created to train and equip the Iraqi armed forces. After delivery of the Eikenberry Report, though – an assessment of Iraq’s security forces authored by Maj. Gen. Karl Eikenberry earlier in the year – the mission was greatly expanded and escalated. The result was a recommendation that the Civilian Police Assistance Training Team be generated and subordinated with the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team under the umbrella organization now known as the Office of Security Transition.

In a year, Eaton has grown the police and military teams to an all-encompassing unit that has overcome a withering daily storm of shortfalls, disappointments, changes, barriers, timelines and a myriad of other problems that never make the headlines. Amidst the reports, as well, a wave of silent successes has gone largely untold.

One is simply that the organization formed of Coalition servicemen and women even exists and if that isn’t enough, continues to perform a complicated mission having been but a handful of individuals less than 12 months ago.

Eaton arrived in Baghdad to little fanfare.

Two days later, though, the first training base was selected and the organization was off and running. Five men. 130 degrees. No air conditioning. From there, the mission evolved, and the personnel came later. Different services. Different countries. Different backgrounds.

“This organization is an ad-hoc organization,” said Eaton, married with three grown children, including two sons also serving in the Army – one in Iraq.

“We’ve all responded to a telephone call,” Eaton said, “And our higher headquarters that said, ‘Sergeant, lieutenant, colonel, general – hence get thee to Iraq in “x” number of days and assist in building the Iraqi armed forces.’

“And we have built a team that is very high performing where people have operated outside of their comfort zone,” Eaton said. “Outside of their experience, outside of their competence, and have risen to the occasion and have continued to keep moving this very important project and very demanding project down the road.

Eaton's pride in his team is matched by the inspired affection Eaton’s soldiers and coalition partners feel for the soon-to-be departed commander.

“I’m not saying it’s unusual that leaders inspire loyalty in the workforce,” said Office of Security Transition Deputy Commander, British Army Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster. “But he inspired an unusual degree of loyalty in the workforce.

“As much as anything it’s his compassion and his care for his people,” Aylwin-Foster said. “That’s what really sticks in my mind. His loyalty downwards which is unusual.

“And he’s meant everything to the organization,” he added. “He’s taken it from nothing, literally five guys standing around at the back of the Coalition Provisional Authority headquarters with the instruction, ‘Build an army,’ to now the Office of Security Transition.

“It’s gone from five to 863 in the space of a year and a mission which started off just, ‘Build an army’ … to ‘Build an army and air force and navy. Take on the ICDC – the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps; take on the Iraqi Counter Terrorist Force; the Iraqi Police Service; the Border Police; the Facilities Protection Service ….’” “He’s the father of the Iraqi army,” Aylwin-Foster said.

The soldiers agree.

“He put the first block in our army. The first brick of the building,” said Iraqi army Lt. Col. Ahmed Lutfi Ahmed Raheem. “He gave us the confidence inside us to do our duty and showed us that there’s no difference between a small duty and a big duty,” he said.

“When you speak with him and ask him a question, he doesn’t move his shoulders or his arms,” said Raheem. “He’s like a machine. But he’s a good man. You find the answer in his eyes before his mouth.”

“God loves men like this,” Raheem said. “This country will never forget him.”

Talking about his tour in Iraq and experiences over the past year, Eaton’s eyes do reveal his answers, and he speaks candidly about the bad as much as he does the good. In particular, this April’s Fallujah incident, a turning point for the fledgling Iraqi military, is a topic he willingly volunteers to discuss.

In April 2004 an Iraqi military unit tasked with its first mission had an operational breakdown. Ambushed around Baghdad by insurgents, the unit repelled an attack, and many Iraqi and Coalition soldiers fought bravely. The unit regrouped and reassembled at an airfield and was dispatched to return to the clash to quell the insurgent uprising. Some of the soldiers in the unit refused to go – the willing fighters verbally fought with the unwilling. The mission was scrubbed and critics of the Coalition’s mission were quick to pile on.

“It was the 2nd Battalion refusal to get on helicopters and go to Fallujah,” Eaton said, “Which was a public embarrassment to the Iraqi army and a very personal mistake on my part for having asked that unit to do it … I regret that.

“And commanders are responsible for everything that happens or fails to happen in their units. The good and the bad,” Eaton said.

To be fair, though, the Iraq army is really only months old. The U.S. Army was once also beleaguered with serious tests in the heat of fire in its own infancy more than 200 years ago. In fact, to characterize the Army in the first months of creation as an unflinching professional force would be to rewrite history.

But since that early April operation that drew so much criticism, that very same unit has melded. In fact, history in this country may well look at “Fallujah” not so much as a critical hour when things went wrong, but rather a clarifying crossroads. The 2nd Battalion now regularly and enthusiastically performs critical Coalition missions with great and habitual success. Within the last month they have found six tons of illicit weapons and nabbed thugs from the streets bent on preventing democracy from setting root. Like its U.S. counterpart, the Iraqi army also has improved through defeat and disappointment.

“We learned, and we got better from it,” Eaton said.

Now Iraq approaches sovereignty with police and military forces in place where none stood before. And the unassuming man will continue to work behind the scenes and do what he has done for decades: build soldiers. Eaton will be the training officer for the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command in Fort Monroe, Va.

And in a few days, he will leave Iraq with little fanfare, but he will leave behind the house he built.