IRAQ:FOUR YEARS LATER Belfast man ambivalent about mission, but craves experience

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BELFAST – Staff Sgt. Matt Bixby has had an ambivalent relationship with the military dating back to his teen years.

But the 43-year-old Iraq War veteran wants one more stint in uniform, and wants to be closer to the action than before. It’s not a death wish, he insists, nor is it an expression of support for the war.

More than anything, Bixby said, describing his complicated feelings about serving in harm’s way, it’s about testing himself and proving something to himself, about being close to struggles that are almost primal in their intensity.

Thoughtful and articulate, Bixby chooses his words carefully during a recent interview when explaining his reasons for wanting to return to a war zone.

“You do things you’d never do again, and you see things you’re never going to see again,” Bixby said.

He would hardly be described as gung-ho for war, or even on board with the Bush Administration’s current stated goal of bringing democracy to Iraq. For Bixby, doing a challenging job in conditions that could turn life-threatening at the drop of a hat stirred something deep in his core.

“I really like being the news, instead of watching the news,” he said.

“It’s unfinished for me. I’ve done ‘war light,’ and I want to do ‘war heavy,”‘ Bixby said, explaining his reasons for volunteering to return to Iraq. “It has moved me. It has changed me.”

Bixby lived in various parts of Maine and Michigan as a child. He joined the U.S. Army artillery at 18, after graduating from Georges Valley High School in Thomaston.

“I got booted out after a year,” with the Army citing his “inability to adapt to military life,” he said.

“There’s a part of me that rebels against structure, and there’s a part that yearns for structure,” Bixby said. He again sought that structure in the late 1990s, joining the National Guard.

He volunteered to serve with the 133rd Engineering Battalion in Bosnia from February to October 1997 as part of the United Nations peace-keeping mission.

“It was pretty easily defined. We said, ‘Nobody’s going to do any fighting,'” and that was achieved by having troops “everywhere. The ‘bad guys,’ they didn’t have anywhere to run,” he said.

After returning to Belfast, Bixby finished a business administration degree at the University of Maine. He has worked in a variety of fields since, including for credit card lender MBNA. He now works for Bank of America, which bought MBNA in 2006.

Bixby also is known in the community for his frequent appearances in productions by the Belfast Maskers community theater group. He first began acting in Maskers’ plays at 23, and quickly earned starring roles. Just last fall, he was again on a Maskers stage in the production “Metamorphosis.”

In the fall of 2003, Bixby was called to service by his Guard unit to prepare for deployment to Iraq. He arrived there in January 2004, and returned to Maine in May 2005.

The invasion, sold to Congress and the public on the threat of Iraq possessing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons that could be used on the United States or its allies, proved false, he acknowledged.

“I became very disenfranchised with the mission. But to a degree, we have a legitimate reason to be there,” Bixby said, because Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein could have developed and sold weapons to international terrorist groups.

But the United States is not blameless in its handling of the mission, he argued.

“America is so unbelievably arrogant. We got this great idea [democracy] and we shove it down their throats,” he said.

Politics aside, he understands and accepts that he is a cog in a very large machine.

“I am a tool of my government,” Bixby said, but he notes that he would stop short of killing innocent people if ordered to do so.

His time in Iraq was marked by work – lots of it. “There are not really days off. It’s a gauntlet,” he said.

And it was largely satisfying, he said. “You throw a lot of energy into something, and knock it out. We built lots and lots of guard towers,” fire hose racks, medical clinics and roads, he said. “We built a school from scratch.”

He figures he worked on about 700 projects during his time in Iraq, often completing two in a day.

The projects made life better for Iraqis, in a tangible way, but it wasn’t always seen that way by the locals, he said.

On the school project, area residents would tear wood off the roof at night while it was under construction.

“They would tear tile off the floor,” Bixby said, incredulous at the effort it must have taken. “It’s very short-sighted.”

Still, he refrains from judging the Iraqis too harshly.

“It’s hard for us to take on their view. They come from a starvation perspective. Their priorities are: me, my family, my clan, village, region, [and finally] country,” he said.

And the fighting among factions is not likely to end soon, Bixby observed.

“They can really hold a grudge. These guys hold a grudge like nobody’s business,” he said.

Days of working on a project can suddenly be punctuated by an exploding IED or by mortar fire.

“You just ignore it. You get very blase about it,” he said.

Bixby wants to return to Iraq with his nephew’s reserve airborne unit based in Maryland. He wants to serve this time in civil affairs, acting as a liaison between the military and civil authorities. He has not yet been told whether his request to serve will be granted.

In Iraq, there is a pecking order among those serving. The regular military troops look down on the reservists and guard members, Bixby said, because they are not facing death each day. The regular troops deride those like Bixby who, while they may be in harm’s way, are not having to pull the trigger in combat.

“I’m tired of being the guy not pulling the trigger. There is a lesson here,” he said. “I really feel driven to find out what it is.”