PROMISING DEVELOPMENTS: (Left to right) Colonel R.L. Fischer, Colorado Legion Adjutant Charles "Pat" Smith and 2012 American Legion National Commander, Fang A. Wong. The meeting was arranged to gain a deeper understanding of a treatment that was proving to be effective in healing concussive blast injuries suffered by combat veterans.

JOINING THE ARMY

Margaux began her basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, in 2003 and was assigned the military occupational specialty (MOS) of Military Policeman. After completing basic and military police schooling, she was ordered to Kitzingen, Germany, her first duty station. Her soon-to-be Platoon Sergeant picked her up at the train station upon arriving in Germany. He immediately leveled with her in no uncertain terms and, in effect, told her, “I know you joined the Army to play soccer, but that is not going to happen. The Army has other plans for you, and you will soon be going to Baghdad.”

She did get to play a few months of soccer while going through her military training at Hohensfels, Germany, in Bavaria for FTX and picked up the honors of the most valuable player on the base team. “By the following April 2004, I was in Iraq with the 630th Military Police Company, and we started going on patrols immediately. At first, we patrolled all over Iraq and trained many Iraqi police. There were many missions in and out of Sadr City, Iraq, and it was an incredibly dangerous area with so many ambushes and improvised explosive devices.”

"We patrolled all over Iraq. Sadr City was an incredibly dangerous area with so many ambushes and improvised explosive devices."

Her MP Company also set up protective concrete barriers around the Iraqi police stations so that insurgents could not shoot into or run speeding cars with car bombs into those facilities. They were also assigned to escort senior commanders in and out of the Green Zone, the Army’s Supreme Command Headquarters in Baghdad. “I remember some of the firefights, the mortar attacks, and some of the deadly IED concussions we experienced. I survived that first year of my deployment because the explosive devices were poorly made, and we could recognize a wire or dead dog [wired with explosives], tipping us off that there was an explosive device nearby.”

When her tour of duty came to an end in April 2005, she returned to Germany and resumed her regular MP duties. Margaux reveals that she "hated my job since it involved writing and issuing tickets. I confess; I only gave out a couple of them in my military police career."

After being in Germany for a while, Margaux hoped that she could again try out for the soccer team. She was disappointed when she was sent to a school to train as a gunner instead of a driver for her next OIF tour.