In My Own Words

Lt. Holly Harrison, Executive Officer
Coast Guard Maritime Law Enforcement Academy

The assignment to Iraq completely caught my crew and me out of the blue.

We were on a patrol up near Philadelphia to escort a cruise ship that was picking up passengers there when we got a call saying stand down and go back to homeport. It never works that way. It’s always, get out of homeport, do a mission — not the other way around. I [had not] heard the words “Iraq,” “Bahrain” or “Kuwait” for many months, but everyone knew where we were going.

Iraq was kind of a “Twilight Zone” version of what we normally did. It’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t been to Iraq what it’s like. It was totally different from anything I’d ever done in the Coast Guard. I had some of my highest highs but also some of my lowest lows in Iraq.

The day the war started for us, we were out in the Gulf watching the USS Higgins launching Tomahawk missiles at Iraq. We were all out on deck knowing we were part of history; there was a real sense of camaraderie and teamwork and patriotism. That was a neat moment standing there with the crew watching that.

Twelve hours later, I was told that they’d just witnessed a huge fireball in the sky right off the bow. It turns out that two British helicopters had collided in mid-air, and everyone on board was killed. We were right there when it happened. The sea was on fire and there was wreckage everywhere.

That really hit home for all of us. It may have seemed great to watch those missiles flying a few hours earlier, but there’s a real heavy price to pay for what we’re doing in Iraq. We are the right ones to do the job. We were the right ones to be there.

It gives you a real sense of achievement and confidence to be thrown into a situation like that. The key thing is, for anyone, that you cannot do it alone. Anyone who tried to handle that deployment by him or herself had an intense stress level. Not only were we working together, we were living together.

I was then assigned at our Maritime Law Enforcement School in Yorktown, Va. In everything we do, one has to keep in mind the legal impact. Here in America, we have rights, we have liberties and we have freedoms. So as law enforcement professionals, if we’re going to go on board in a law-enforcement role, we need to be aware that the people we’re boarding have rights and freedoms as well.

I live life doing what I love to do. I’ll stay in the Coast Guard until they throw me out due to old age, or I stop having fun. I enjoy the Coast Guard — all the long hours underway, being seasick, all the stuff that comes with it. I get a real sense of satisfaction out of what I do and I would not give it up. If they told me I had to turn in my uniform today, it would absolutely break my heart.