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Echevarria served 33 years

-Messenger photo by Chad Thompson
Tony Echevarria, a U.S. Army and Iowa Army National Guard veteran from Fort Dodge, served a total of 33 years in the military.

Tony Echevarria, a U.S. Army and Iowa Army National Guard veteran from Fort Dodge, had the privilege of training second lieutenants who would ultimately lead others during combat in Iraq.

“The most rewarding thing I did in my career other than lead soldiers, which is an awesome thing to be able to do, was teaching lieutenants to lead a platoon,” he said. “They were coming from all these colleges, the National Guard, they were coming from the Army Reserve. You’ve got all these guys getting commissioned from 2006 to 2009. I trained these second lieutenants and they were going to Iraq soon after my training.”

He added, “There’s nothing more important in the Army as a whole than to have good leadership training for those people who are going to lead soldiers in combat. I took that very seriously — getting those second lieutenants trained.”

It was just one of many experiences for Echevarria, who served his country in the military for 33 years. He retired in August 2017.

Echevarria grew up on South 27th Street in Fort Dodge. He attended Fort Dodge public schools.

-Submitted photo
Tony Echevarria, a U.S. Army and Iowa Army National Guard veteran from Fort Dodge, stands on top of a gun truck in Camp Tallil in Iraq in 2005.

At 17, he joined the U.S. Army as a junior.

“You didn’t have to be a high school graduate like you do now,” he said. “My parents just had to sign.”

Echevarria left Fort Dodge on a bus to Chicago, Illinois, took a plane to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and then a train to Fort Dix, New Jersey, where he completed basic training.

His first duty station was in Pinder Barracks, at Zirndorf in the former West Germany, as a field artillery man. He spent 18 months there before returning to the states to Fort Stewart, Georgia. He earned his GED there.

“In the Army you have two kinds of people — lifers and people in to do a tour or two and get out,” Echevarria said. “All the old lifers are preaching to keep getting an education. That’s how it always was. My platoon sergeant at Fort Stewart made me go get it, even though I didn’t want to.”

Echevarria said he’s glad his sergeant pushed him to better himself, though.

After a year-and-a-half in Georgia, Echevarria re-enlisted with the Iowa Army National Guard in 1986.

“I was the first person to do a concurrent enlistment from regular Army straight into National Guard without a break in service,” he said. “Now it’s common, but I was the first case they tried to do it with.”

During the same time, Echevarria attended Iowa Central Community College for business administration for a semester.

In the National Guard, he was assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Battery, 1st Battalion, 194 Field Artillery, in Fort Dodge.

“I was assigned to the communications section for the battalion headquarters,” he said.

In 1987, he went back to the regular Army.

He attended chemical training at Fort McClellan, Alabama, before being sent to South Korea for one year.

“I was a team leader in a chemical company,” Echevarria said.

His focus there was on nuclear biological decontamination.

“We can brush nuclear right off you,” he said. “Not gonna get rid of the radiation.”

When he returned to the states, he was assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division in Fort Hood, Texas.

“That was a pretty cool assignment,” Echevarria said. “I was actually attached to the Army wrestling team and I wrestled for the team for a year until I was injured. I had an ACL tendon ripped. I totally tore it and had to have reconstructive surgery and I returned back to my unit.”

He said during the same time period, Iraq invaded Kuwait and his division was put on alert.

“I shipped out the entire 1st Cavalry Division to go to Desert Storm,” he said. “I was on rear detachment since I had that recent knee injury.”

Echevarria was medically discharged out of the Army in 1990.

He took a year off from the military.

“I had worked on the problems with my bad knee and everything else,” he said. “I was able to pass the Army physical exactly a year later. At that time they weren’t taking prior people who served to active duty, so I enlisted as nuclear biological chemical specialist with the Army Reserve over in Sac City.”

For eight years he spent time in Army Reserve units in Sac City, Sioux City, Des Moines, and Lincoln, Nebraska.

In 1999, he was working at Fort Dodge Laboratories.

“They laid off a couple hundred people that year and I was one of them to get laid off, but instead of waiting for that I put in an application for full-time reserve,” he said. “They didn’t have a vacancy in any one of my job specialties, so they offered me a job as a recruiter.”

He was a recruiter in Waterloo for three years.

In 2002, Echevarria moved to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, where he was the operations non-commissioned officer for a one star general.

“While I was doing that job, I was deployed twice,” he said.

In 2004, he deployed for Operation Noble Eagle with the 3/10th Personnel Group.

“It was really short, like a 90 day deployment,” he said.

It was in 2004, when Echevarria had his most exhilarating experience.

“I went to airborne school,” he said. “It’s just really cool.”

Being inside the plane was loud.

“It’s a prop plane, for one,” Echevarria said. “It’s got these great big propellers. Then they open the side door for you to jump out.”

When the red light turns green, it’s time to jump, he said.

“I get up to the door and it’s like you’re standing next to a freight train flying by you, then you hand your static line off to jump master and they shove you out,” Echevarria said. “After you jump it’s complete silence. The sound gets sucked away.”

He said floating in the sky is peaceful.

“Really quiet, really peaceful,” he said. “Then you get that sensation you are getting closer to the ground and you need to land.”

He said it lasts about 20 seconds, but that it takes the lighter guys a little longer to come down.

In 2005, Echevarria was cross-leveled, so he could deploy to Iraq.

He said that’s where they take a soldier who is qualified in all the areas they need for one unit and are moved to another unit that is deploying.

“It was a PLS truck unit, but they were to be gun trucks,” he said.

In Iraq the gun trucks were used to run security missions to protect the convoys from attacks, he said.

“We had 180 man company,” he said. “I ended up being the company first sergeant in Tallil. But we were everywhere, we went all over the country of Iraq, doing our missions.”

He was only in Iraq for a few weeks before mortars were launched in the area.

Echevarria was parked at Camp Anaconda near Baghdad, Iraq.

“We just got done driving eight to 10 hours and they were dropping mortars,” he said. “That’ll make you a little worried on if you’ll get to dinner or not.”

This particular mortar was about 150 yards to 200 yards away, he said.

“We were walking back to these chicken coop tin buildings we get to stay in,” he said. “For the transit people going through. First you hear a pop, then you hear a whistle just a few seconds before it comes. So if you hear a whistle you’re good.”

“The less you feel it, the further away it is,” he added, “When you hear and a feel a big rumble, you know it’s closer.”

Echevarria grabbed his helmet and ran for the barriers.

“As soon as the first mortar gets shot, as soon as it’s identified, there’s a big warning,” he said. ‘Take cover immediately, mortar fire has been detected.’ At the end they come back with an all clear.”

In 2006, Echevarria returned to Fort Benning, Georgia, to be an instructor for the basic officer leader course.

He would be an instructor for about the next four years.

“After doing my time there, I was reassigned to Fichenz, Italy,” he said. “I was what they call a manpower and reserve affairs NCO.”

He deployed National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers throughout the continent of Africa.

“I was assigned to the Southern European Task Force, United States Army Africa,” Echevarria said.

In 2012, he was deployed to Djibouti, Africa.

“I was the liaison NCO, working between American forces, the Djibouti Navy, the French Marine Corps, French Foreign Legion, and the Korean Navy,” he said.

His job was to coordinate logistics and execute training with joint forces.

“We would have the Korean Navy doing an exercise with the Djibouti Navy,” he said. “It could have been safety training, it was whatever the host country requested.”

He added, “I had a Korean linguist and a French linguist with me, because pretty much everyone in the heart of Africa speaks French. My horrible, atrocious French got me by.”

While in Italy, he traveled somewhere in Africa at least once a month during the four-year period.

When he returned to the states in 2013, he was transferred to Fort Knox, Kentucky.

There, he was an instructor at the Army Reserve Readiness Training Center.

After two years, he moved to Brownsville, Texas, where he was senior truck master.

Echevarria retired there in August 2017.

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