Frederick J. Coughlan

Frederick J. Coughlan was born in July 1965 in Morristown, New Jersey. Some of his relatives had served in the military, and his uncle retired from an active duty career. His brother, who was in the New Jersey Army National Guard, recruited him into the Guard when he was only seventeen. Coughlan enlisted in Morristown, New Jersey, and was trained as a cannon crew member at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. He described Oklahoma as “hot, dry, and if it was flatter, it would be just like Iraq.”
During his basic and advanced training, Coughlan learned a lot, and said he developed “a lot of respect for soldiers that were in Vietnam that I met over the years.” Every drill day in his National Guard unit, A Company, 3rd Battalion, 112th Field Artillery, was crew-level training. He joined the special weapons team for howitzers. Coughlan did his first tour in Morristown from 1983 to 1991. Between 1991 and 2002, he opened a trucking and transportation business, but he missed being in the Army.

The September 11, 2001 attacks inspired Coughlan to reenter the military. He did not know anyone killed or injured in those attacks, but stated that, “as an American, we all felt a slap in the face” when the incident occurred. Coughlan rejoined the New Jersey Army National Guard in 2002; he was assigned to the 253rd Transportation Company, considering his civilian trade. He returned as an E-4, having dropped a rank from his last time in service.

On February 7, 2003, Coughlan reported to Sea Girt, then to the Cape May Armory, then to Fort Dix and to McGuire Air Force Base, from where he took an 18-hour flight to Kuwait, and got to ride first class. On the flight, he recalled, “the mood was good…but people were nervous.” His first impression of Kuwait on arrival was that “it was like walking into a sauna” because of the heat. After arriving, he and his fellow soldiers were loaded on buses and traveled to Camp New York. Coughlan was then selected with others to go to the port and unload the unit’s vehicles off a ship. The next morning, they had created a motor pool divided in sections. Every soldier slept in a sleeping bag on a cot, and did whatever they could to avoid sleeping on the ground.

Coughlan was one of the top five soldiers of his unit in mission participation; because, according to him, “boredom was the worst thing.” He was active and spent much of his time working on adapting vehicles for convoy security. Coughlan’s first sergeant, a Vietnam veteran, had the initial idea to create such a vehicle. They evaluated surplus Russian ballistic armor at first; it would stop an M-16 and AK-47 rifle fired from thirty meters, but the Russian Army Dragunov sniper rifle penetrated it.

This war was also the birth of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) commonly deployed along roadways. Coughlan described the initial impact when IEDs exploded as soldiers being “dazed and confused.” When they first arrived in Iraq, Coughlan’s 1st Sergeant and Warrant Officer, both of whom were Vietnam veterans, said that “this is Vietnam all over again” because you could not trust anyone. According to Coughlan, “you didn’t know what was around the next corner.”

Coughlan’s unit left Camp New York to move to Iraq, driving until 2:30 AM and stopping at a small base. From there, they went to Camp Anaconda, at Balad, north of Baghdad, where the unit was detailed to support the 10th Mountain Division. They did not have any high-tech equipment at this point, and officers were a bit nervous. There were checkpoints along the way; at certain points, the company commander would report on his location by radio. A lot of convoys had soldiers who were not mentally ready to leave the gate, regrettably making them easy targets.

Due to the heat in Iraq, water was essential to prevent dehydration, so Coughlan drank a lot of it daily. Of the food, he said, “the dining facilities were actually pretty good, but a lot of times, it was MRE (Meals Ready to Eat rations) city.” At one point, Coughlan flew to Baghdad, where he took a week-long class on using computers, and saw a computer mounted on a civilian Chevrolet Suburban. There was no real defense against IEDs. They tried things, but they did not work. When they started armoring the “923s” (five-ton trucks), direct support said there was no safe way to up-armor a Humvee, because it was all aluminum. Coughlan preferred the 923 because you sat higher, while in a Humvee, people could run right up to you.

Soldiers were hurt quite frequently with IED incidents; one specialist had glass permanently lodged in her eye and received a Purple Heart. One night, a convoy had an IED explosion that blew a Humvee up, flipping it over and throwing soldiers across the road. Coughlan recalled that “PFC Smith pulled a captain out of the Humvee, and did a hell of a job that night.”

Every morning, Coughlan’s unit had platoon-sized briefings on current events. There was an occasional USO show as well; one time, Toby Keith came when Coughlan was escorting a convoy to Kuwait. A celebrity appearance he missed was when Arnold Schwarzenegger came to Anaconda. Coughlan described his week on leave in Kuwait as “like being at Club Med.”

Coughlan was due to come home in April 2003, but due to an underlying injury that caused a problem with his foot, the doctor in Anaconda said he needed surgery done in Germany. Coughlan recalled that “the army hospitals at Anaconda were amazing.” After he went to Germany, he was taken to Walter Reed for about a week, the went back to Fort Dix, New Jersey and was sent home.

Coughlan described Walter Reed as “a very bad place to be” mentally. One sight there that he never forgot was of a young kid in a wheelchair with no legs. This reminded him of another incident at Anaconda where a 22-year-old lost his arms in a truck tire accident. Coughlan was given a proper welcome home, but until he reported back to Fort Dix, was on his own. When he was first mobile, he went to his daughter’s middle school and talked to the children, along with a few other soldiers. Coughlan also talked to his younger daughter’s school, and felt the younger children asked better questions than the older ones. 

At the time of this interview, he was a staff sergeant, and saw the men in his unit once a month and became good friends with some of them. Coughlan was working at an arsenal where ammunition was evaluated, and when a gun went off, “it’s just like being mortared all over again.” Of his service, he reflected, “I’m proud of what I did over there, but I don’t really feel any different; it’s just something I did, and something I wanted to do.”