Staff Sgt. Aaron Futrell did not anticipate a difficult deployment to Al Asad Air Base in Iraq in January 2020. The Islamic State terror group was on the run in the region, and his National Guard job in aviation operations made it very unlikely he'd ever be in harm's way.
Al Asad, which sits northwest of Baghdad, was not the type of smaller forward operating base typical of the earlier Iraq war where troops made due with spartan conditions and were regularly exposed to combat and danger. As a longtime hub of U.S. operations, the sprawling facility had a Green Beans coffee shop, a nice exchange store and gym, and many troops had personal amenities like video game systems.
“Normally, the base would need to be overrun for me to get shot at. I'm the definition of a ‘fobbit,'” Futrell told Military.com, using a slang term to describe troops who usually don't leave base. “I sit in the [tactical operations center] all day on the radio and fill out reports.”
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Then, Iran unexpectedly launched 15 ballistic missiles in an unprecedented attack on the base on Jan. 8, 2020. The strike narrowly avoided killing scores of U.S. troops, including Futrell and other Guard members, and brought tensions between Washington and Tehran to the boiling point.
Eventually, weeks later, it was revealed that at least 100 soldiers suffered traumatic brain injuries from…
