Col. Marshall Goby
U.S. Army (Ret.) Medical Service Corp.
Iraq – Afghanistan
1968-2006

 
“You could go to sleep at night and never get up in the morning.”
 
Marshall Goby was born in Chicago in 1946.  Marshall’s dad came from a family of eight with three brothers.  He lost his youngest brother in WWII.  He was a controller for a commercial laundry company that served the Great Lakes Naval Station.  Marshall, his brother and sister spent their developmental years in Chicago.  Marshall attended Von Steuben High School and graduated in 1964.  Marshall was not motivated at the time.  He was considering learning to be a tradesman, but his father discouraged it.   “They're limited in terms of lifespan”.
 
Marshall made up his mind to attend college and apply himself.  “I decided I was going to make that a personal challenge”.   He competed his associates degree at Chicago City College, a local community college and then attended Northeastern Illinois State College.  He graduated in 1968 and took a job in a public junior high school teaching social studies.  He began attending Graduate School on a part time basis and at the end of a year he was accepted on a full-time basis at Illinois Institute of Technology where he completed his PhD in Psychology.
 
It was 1969 and Marshall was going to school, serving as a Reservist and dating a local girl.  While attending a party with his girlfriend “I saw this young lady…who was a friend of the person that invited me to the party”. Things didn’t work out between Marshall and his girlfriend and when he returned from Reserve training, he called his friend and asked about the young lady he remembered from the party.  She gave Marshall her number and he called Darlene Smith and asked her for a date.  “I went out with her on a Saturday and hit it off and asked her to go somewhere on Sunday.   On Monday, I asked her to get married”.   It was October of 1969, and the couple was married in 1970.
 
The Vietnam draft was in full swing.  Marshall’s lottery number was 13 and it was very likely he would be drafted.  “I decided that I wanted to have a choice on what I did if I served. I looked around at my options”.  Marshall originally thought he would be a school psychologist but at that time, “you couldn't make a decent living as a teacher for a family”.  After exploring all of his options Marshall enlisted in the Reserve for a six-year commitment.  In 1968 they did not rely as heavily on the Reserve Forces or National Guard as they do today.
 
He completed basic training at Fort Jackson in South Carolina, found it was very challenging but particularly enjoyed the camaraderie.  Marshall was initially assigned to  a personnel function.  While in the Reserve, he met a young physician who was an officer.  He saw Marshall was an enlisted soldier and asked why Marshall was not an officer?  He said, “I'm a physician and they took us in to be physicians because they had a draft on for physicians”. He introduced Marshall to a psychologist that was part of his unit, and he told Marshall he could become an officer, and suggested he transfer to their unit which was a general hospital unit.  They all formed a bond while working at a Naval hospital at the Naval Station in Great Lakes, IL.  “The more I got into it, I met a lot of good people”.  By the end of his six years, he was commissioned as a first Lieutenant and was with this mental health team.
 
Marshall met a Colonel who was a nurse anesthetist who encourage him to stay in the Reserve.  “To make a Long story short, I just stayed with it”.  It wasn't popular then.  The Vietnam War was coming to an end, but you didn't talk about being involved in the Army, whether it was full time or as a reserve person.
 
Throughout the 1980’s and early 90’s Marshall worked for a hospital group, had his own private practice and also did some consulting work as a psychologist in his civilian life.  He was also the chief of a mental health clinic at Naval Station Great Lakes where he did his Reserve training.  In 1993 Marshall decided he liked Military and took a full-time civilian job with the Department of the Navy in the hospital at Naval Station Great Lakes.  From 1993 until 2004, Marshall was a full-time civilian psychologist with the Navy and an Army Reservist.
 
Marshall went on numerous missions over his 30+years.  “I went to Europe and went all over the United States as a Reserve officer. You continue to train. I went to Europe a couple times as a Reserve officer for giant exercises.  I commanded a Public Affairs unit so when my unit went on those missions, we covered the public affairs for those exercises”.
 
When the Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm, began Marshall was a chief of personnel for a 16,000 person Headquarters Reserve unit.  “We had 40 different units all over the country and the headquarters was in Chicago. The units were in10 states around the country”. Marshall was responsible for identifying Reservists to send to the war.  Part of Marshall’s job was to visit every unit, meet with the soldiers and their family members.  Marshall and his staff helped them understand their rights and their responsibilities and what privileges the soldiers and their families had.
 
“We mobilized probably thousands of soldiers from different parts of the country.  I went and visited all those units and that was my first real experience with war.  My job was to do everything I could to make the family members aware that the Army was going to support their service members and support them, and they had all kinds benefits available. I remember very, very clearly and vividly seeing the family members and their faces and the soldiers and their faces and thinking to myself, ‘you know, some of these people are not going to come back’”.  There was a significant strain placed on each family, particularly if the primary bread winner was deploying.  Marshall and his group helped to establish support groups and networks, so no family ever felt like they were going through the deployment alone.
 
The U.S. Military was expecting a long and difficult war because their intelligence indicated Iraq would be a formidable enemy.  Reservists were deployed not only in Iraq but throughout the Middle East.  In short order it became clear that was not the case.  The war was quickly concluded, and Marshall did not recall losing any of the soldiers from the Headquarters Reserve Units.  He did recall that another Reserve Postal Group was hit by a suicide bomber.  “That's another thing that people don't understand.  You don't have to be a frontline soldier to be at high risk or be killed.  I learned that”.
 
Marshall stayed in the Reserve program for 38 years.  The Army provided Marshall with ongoing training at various military training schools, the opportunity for multiple promotions, deep lessons in leadership and the opportunity to utilize the leadership training by placing him in the position of commanding officer.  “I had four different commands”.
 
Marshall balanced his Reservist’s commitment with his civilian profession, which was as a psychologist.  “People don't understand that when you're a senior person in the Army Reserve, for instance, you have responsible jobs. It's not two days a month and, and two weeks a year.  I went every week to the Army.  In the evening or on Saturday or Sunday.  I spent an enormous amount of time actively involved in the Army Reserve…” and at the same time Marshall had a fulltime civilian job with the U.S. Navy.  “When you’re in the Army you get different opportunities, and they ask you to do different things”.   Another thing most civilians don’t know about the career of a Reservist.
 
After the 1st Gulf War Marshall remained a Reservist, worked in the mental health field and commanded a training brigade that provided training for medics and LPN's.  Marshall also served in a Combat Stress unit as a psychologist and commanded a Medical Group comprised of a variety of medical specialties.  That required a significant amount of travel to places such as Kansas City, Milwaukee, Madison, Wisconsin and throughout Illinois.
 
On September 11th of 2001 the world changed forever when four suicide attacks by the Taliban killed nearly 3,000 Americans on American soil.   The U.S. led coalition first focused its attention on Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom.  Reservists were called to active duty throughout the first two years.  In March of 2003 a U.S. lead coalition began military operations against Iraq and Reservists continued to be called for both Iraq and Afghanistan.
 
At that time Marshall was part of a training unit and was a section chief for medical training   Reserve forces that became a crucial piece of the U.S coalition war fighting capability.  “The active-duty army had been scaled down…and they couldn't really fight wars without the combination of the active duty, the Reserve and the National Guard”.  Every state has a National Guard and as soon as the Iraq War started, the Military began activating Reserve units.     “If you were a psychologist, you were getting called to active duty”.  Marshall knew he would be activated, and he looked forward to serving.
 
In August of 2004 Marshall got a phone call asking if he knew of any Senior Psychologists that could deploy to Iraq.  Marshall knew he was going to deploy so he volunteered at the age of 58.  He joined a mental health advisory team, working for the Army Surgeon General's office.  “At that time, they were very concerned about the well-being of soldiers. We were so short of soldiers we would send them to combat zones for 15-18 months. It was way too long for anybody.  We had suicides, we had homicides with people returning from deployments, we had a lot of difficult situations with service members”.
 
The Army Surgeon General's office formed a 30-person team, including Marshall who was the only Reservist.  The balance of the team was active-duty psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers.  Their mission was to conduct research about how well service members transitioned to a war environment.  How were they coping with it? What kind of symptoms did they have? What kind of family problems developed?  What could the Army do better to help prepare them to transition back?
 
The teams met in Kuwait and split up into five and six person teams. “Then we went all over Iraq.  In my case I went to Baghdad and lived in one of Saddam Hussein's palace properties.  Camp Victory, it was called”.  There were thousands of soldiers based in Camp Victory.   The teams used questionnaires, interviews and focus groups to gather data.  They talked with chaplains, mental health professionals, and commanding officers to get a feel for what was going on in their environment and the impact on the soldiers. “I ended up fortunately working with some of the best and brightest mental health people in the Army”.
 
The teams could not leave the theater until they had prepared a summary of their findings.  The first recommendation was soldiers should not be sent to a combat zone for 15 to 18 months.  It was unreasonable to expect them to come home and assimilate into their families and society at large without any negative impacts.   Stress can build up from a variety of sources beyond the stress of combat.  Dealing with Spartan living conditions over an extended period and the constant threat of death was a source of mental stress.   The intense heat of 100 to 120 degrees took its toll on men and women wearing long sleeves, long pants and often carrying up to 40+ pounds.  “I was a Colonel.  It didn't matter how senior you were, you lived wherever there was opportunity. I lived in warehouses. I lived in tents. I lived in trailers”.
 
In Mosul, Iraq, “there were two sides to the base and there was a road in between. The enemy was on that road every day, all the time, looking for opportunity.  I asked a soldier to give me a ride over to the other side…” of the base where the U.S. hospital was located.  “He looks at me like, what?  He said, ‘no, I don't go over there’”.  Marshall learned that enemy targeted the road, looked for the opportunity to strike and were often successful.
 
The stress was everywhere and constantly in the mind of the soldiers, either consciously or subconsciously.  Marshall recalled a beautiful brand-new dining facility.  “One of the highlights of being at these places was mealtime because they had catered meals.  Going for meals with your buddies was the highlight of the day.” Local nationals employed on the base would also eat there.  Marshall went for a meal one day with one of his buddies.   His buddy said, “There are no local nationals in here today.  We need to get the hell out of here!”.  Ten days after Marshall left the base to go back to Camp Victory “a local national walked in with a bomb on his person, blew up their dining facility and killed and seriously injured a number of people and did a lot of damage to the facility.  The reason I'm telling you this, is people don't understand we had spies coming on the base every day.  They had people going back and forth bringing information to the enemy.  There was no way to truly know who was your enemy and who wasn’t.”.
 
Forward Operating Bases are routinely rocketed at night.  Standing in the wrong spot at the wrong time could mean death or serious injury.  Everything happened at night to create more stress and uncertainty.
 
Marshall told the story of another factor that adds to the stress in a combat zone.  “There was a rocket that hit a trailer with two soldiers in it and cooked them in the trailer. Died on the spot in the trailer. I still have images of that trailer, and the sad part was that the rocket came in and missed the vacant property.  They were in the first trailer in the village, and they got hit. We had a lot of casualties that way.”   
 
“I was there three months… traveling and living in those different bases.  The experience there was excellent. The learning that I did from my colleagues was spectacular.  The mission was very rewarding”.
 
The teams returned to Washington, DC and Marshall was based at Walter Reed Army Hospital during his last two years of Reserve duty.  They took their findings, prepared a report and presented their findings to the Secretary of the Army and the Surgeon General of the Army.  “Out of that we got to influence policy changes. They immediately cut the deployments back to a year.  By the way, the other services didn't even do a year.  The Navy six months.   The Marine Corps six months.  Special Forces never went for lengthy periods of time, three months”.  Special Forces Operators went on multiple deployments but often for three months at a time.
 
Marshall had another very interesting observation from his research.  “You're putting people in harm’s way for extended periods of time and it's wearing”.  The longer an individual is exposed to all these factors the greater the likelihood their personality will change in a way that helps them survive in a combat environment but is incompatible with civilian life.  When a soldier is taken out of that environment, such as returning home, the time required to ‘decompress’ and unwind the personality changes can be lengthy.  “In some cases, it's permanent.  The other problem is some people get accustomed to it and they miss it.   Special Forces people, they can't wait to go the next time.  They're adrenaline junkies. They love their craft.   Marshall pointed out that not everyone who is exposed to trauma displays residual symptoms.  “But a good percentage do.”
 
While at Walter Reed, Marshall worked on a variety of studies and presentations.  The Army Chief of Staff requested the Army Surgeon General to look into recruiting and retention issues.  “We had a hard time recruiting and we were losing way too many people early in training.   In basic training they would be pushed out.  They were not adjusting well to training for various reasons”.  There is a significant cost to recruit a soldier, and the Army cannot afford to have that soldier wash out in six weeks.  Marshall really enjoyed his time at Walter Reed.   “I really had a good experience”.
 
Through the grapevine Marshall heard they were forming team to go to Afghanistan.  He told his boss he would like to go.  He was selected and headed to pre-deployment training.  “Every time you go to deploy, you have to go through a pre deployment training event. You have to make sure you can shoot and that you have all the gear that you need”. Marshall went to Fort Benning in Georgia for his pre-deployment training. After training they flew to Germany and boarded a C-17 and began a 14-hour flight to Afghanistan.  There were no friendly places to refuel so after seven hours the pilots conducted a mid-air refueling. They landed at Bagram Air Force Base during the night and when “we got up in the morning and there was 360° of mountains”.
 
Marshall arrived in Afghanistan in January which was winter there.  The temperatures were mild in the valleys where the base was.  “I’d go running outside during the day in Afghanistan, and there were signs that there were mine fields along the edge of where you ran.  So, it was interesting”.
 
There were six men and they broke into two teams to interview as many soldiers as possible.  They went to three different places. Marshall recalled flying to visit a Forward Operating Base (FOB) Organ-E.  This FOB was located in the mountains 7,000 feet above sea level close to the Pakistan border.  “That was another experience”.  Marshall recalled few roads and any place they travelled they went by Chinook helicopter.  “You just can't even fathom what Afghanistan looks like (outside of the major cities).  It's so desolate and they live like they did 1,000 years ago”.  The FOB was a 90-minute flight and “was in the middle of nowhere”.  “I get on this helicopter with my buddy and it's cold.   There are two machine gun guys in the front of us. It's wide open. There are two pilots in front.  There are two guys in the back.  They go to lift off and they pick up a Humvee underneath the helicopter.  The floor is open, just like the windows were open with the machine guns.  There are no roads and there's no refueling opportunities either.  It was 0°. The higher you go, the colder it is.  It, it was the coldest thing I've ever experienced in my whole life”.
 
“We spent a week there, I think.  It was so desolate. The food was so bad. I don't know how those soldiers survived. I could barely eat anything.  They hired a local Afghani (to cook).  He didn't know what we eat or how to prepare it.  And I don't know how often they got provisions either.  I don't know how many soldiers lived there.  The week before I got there, they killed a medic that was out in the wrong place at the wrong time”.   Marshall and his colleague spent time with the men helping them deal with the loss of their medic.
 
The men lived there for twelve months which was their entire deployment.  “That was a year living in hell…they were a target all the time”.   Unlike Iraq the FOB had toilets, showers and rooms with four walls.
 
As in Iraq, the team could not leave until they gave a summary of their findings.  When they did leave Afghanistan, they flew to the Ramstein Air Base in Germany to visit the Landsthul Regional Medical Center.  This is where many of the casualties were flown for long term medical care after they were stabilized in the field.  “We were studying the people that we sent back” to the states for mental health reasons.   “We tried to determine what happened to those soldiers later in their treatment”.  After a week In Landstuhl studying their medical records they flew back to Washington, DC.
 
“In DC we prepared a report with recommendations and made presentations to the Army decision makers.  We did make a lot of recommendations in terms of things that we thought would help and they actually implemented those things.  We created a much more significant pre-training time.  We created a lot more available activities to prevent mental health casualties in-country.  They shortened the length of the deployments, and we also put in a lot more extensive redeployment activities. The problem is, if you're an active-duty unit, you come back to your home base.  Then they give you leave for two weeks to stay home and do whatever you want to do. The problem that we found was when we did that, we ended up with a lot more suicides and a lot more homicides, a lot more spousal abuse.  We got the policy changed to where they had to come to work for half a day every day to stay connected with their colleagues and we did some preventive things, and we eased them back into their home and assignments.  We did studies and found out that the incidence of suicide, the incidents of homicide, the incidence of bad outcomes were diminished.  In that sense, all of this time and effort that our team devoted seemed to have an impact.  We got the attention of the people in authority”.  Marshall indicated that the other branches of the military picked up on what the Army had done and implemented programs of their own.
 
It was a great life experience. It was rewarding.  I met a lot of great people.  It was rewarding to me to have been able to do the things I did and survive and feel good about, you know, as a team what we were able to accomplish”. After his two years at Walter Reed Marshall retired after 38 years.  “It was a great way to end my Army career”.
 
The Navy held Marshall’s job for him in Great Lakes Naval Hospital, but he felt it was time for another challenge, and he left his civilian Navy job.  The Veteran’s Affairs Department was very interested in learning more about deployments and the impact of deployments. They have 300 clinics located around the country to help with PTSD.  The clinics are called Vet Centers.  They knew about Marshall’s work and recruited him along with his team to train their staff on impact of deployments.
 
Marshall and Darlene wanted to get out of Chicago and escape the harsh winters.  Marshall took a VA job in Palm Beach County Florida working at a Vet Center as a psychologist.  He now works for the Florida VA headquarters and travels throughout the state of Florida.
 
Marshall bumped into a former soldier at the VA.  He walked up to Marshall and said he recognized him from FOB Organ-E.  He told Marshall, “You can't imagine how helpful it was just to see two guys come at the worst time of our deployment”.
 
Speaking of his deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, “It was a great life experience. It really culminated my career in the sense that I had done all this training and made all this commitment to be prepared to go to war.  And then I got the opportunity to do that and do something that I think was worthwhile”.
 
Marshall and Darlene have been married for 54 years. They have a son and two grandchildren.
 
“It gave me a good life experience. I met a lot of good people. I was very lucky; I had a lot of good outcomes from my leadership.  I still have soldiers and friends that either worked for me or worked with me.  Every week I talk to somebody that I served with”.
 
Thank you Marshall for your service and the sacrifices you and your family made on our behalf.  At the age of 58 you volunteered to go into a combat zone twice to help the fighting men and women who really needed your help.  What could be more worthwhile?
 
“You don’t have to be facing the enemy; everybody is under stress on active duty no matter what your job is”.