![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-939636246.jpg.jpg\")
The brigade\u2019s fate and that of the Thunder Run, named for the Vietnam-era armored reconnaissance missions that cleared mines and tripped ambushes, hung in the balance as the flames spread. In the weeks since the ground invasion began on March 20, the unit fought its way from the Kuwait border to the city\u2019s outskirts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the Thunder Run, if the brigade could hold the city center, offered an irresistible opportunity to end the war and oust the Hussein government. Failure couldn\u2019t happen this deep inside a hostile city of nearly 5 million people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ahead of the invasion\u2019s twentieth anniversary, Army Times interviewed the brigade\u2019s seven future generals and asked them to reflect on the Thunder Run and the role it played in their development as leaders. The candid conversations offer new insight into a tight-knit talent network that went on to reshape the service\u2019s guiding concepts and doctrine, drawing on their experiences along Highway 8.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wesley walked away from his Humvee shortly before impact, thanks to his nervous habit of pacing around while on the phone with his boss, brigade commander Col. David Perkins. The colonel was downtown with the tank battalions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re achieving all of our objectives\u2026I said, \u2018Congratulations, it\u2019s everything we dreamed,\u2019\u201d Wesley, who retired in 2020 as a lieutenant general, recounted in a phone interview. Then the missile \u201crocked our world,\u201d knocking him to the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perkins recalled hearing \u201can explosion or static\u201d through the phone when the missile struck near the hood of Wesley\u2019s vehicle, he told Army Times in a phone interview. Then a dazed Wesley told him the operations center was out of action and quickly hung up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another future general, Capt. Michelle Letcher, remained in the dark. For the entire invasion, her maintenance company rode with Task Force 1-64, keeping its tracks rolling with only the parts they carried. All of the battalion\u2019s Abrams tanks entered Baghdad under their own power, despite running harder, faster and longer than any American armor unit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Perkins ordered most non-armored vehicles left behind at the city\u2019s outskirts, fearing ambushes \u2014 leaving Letcher, later the service\u2019s ordnance chief, wondering if the missile had killed the soldiers in her forward maintenance teams at the operations center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Glaser, Wesley, Letcher and Perkins, who retired as a four-star general and head of Army Training and Doctrine Command in 2018, worried about the missile strike, three other future general officers from the brigade fended off counter-attacks from dictator Saddam Hussein\u2019s fanatical troops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Captains Andrew Hilmes and Larry Burris served as company commanders in Task Force 1-64, built from 1st Battalion, 64th Armor and attached elements such as Burris\u2019 infantry company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before the invasion, the two recalled over coffee in Burris\u2019 Fort Benning, Georgia office, they made a trade: Hilmes took one of Burris\u2019 infantry platoons, and Burris received four of Hilmes\u2019 tanks. On April 7, they led the attack into Baghdad together \u2014 Hilmes\u2019 company at the brigade\u2019s vanguard, Burris\u2019 soldiers immediately behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lt. Col. Stephen Twitty, commander of a task force built on the 3rd Battalion, 15th Infantry, directed the defense of Highway 8 \u2014 the critical north-south supply route that, if recaptured, would have allowed Iraqi forces to cut off the two tank battalions downtown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The now-retired lieutenant general\u2019s Bradley fended off suicide bombers with its 25mm auto-cannon, but his ammunition supply dwindled as his troops held three key interchanges. An improvised unit of headquarters troops down the road at Objective Curly, led by 1993 Battle of Mogadishu veteran Command Sgt. Maj. Robert Gallagher and a young staff captain, faced the longest odds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But they prevailed. The resupply convoy got through, and the downtown units survived nighttime counterattacks. And when the fighting slackened on the afternoon of April 8, the Spartan Brigade\u2019s leaders quickly realized their victory sealed the Hussein government\u2019s fate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It also changed their lives and launched their careers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHistory kinda thrust [the Thunder Run] upon us,\u201d Perkins reflected. \u201cAnd everyone rose to the occasion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The 2nd Brigade, a conventional armor brigade, epitomized the Army the United States had in 2003. The service picked the unit\u2019s leaders through traditional assignment processes. They were ordinary officers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But when they crashed through the border berm on March 20, the brigade\u2019s soldiers found themselves on the invasion\u2019s leading edge \u2014 an extraordinary opportunity on an unprecedented stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis was not a hand-picked unit,\u201d explained Hilmes, the lead company commander. \u201cThis is just the talent that the Army had and had brought together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perkins laughed as he said the brigade was \u201can average Army unit.\u201d He explained his leaders \u201cwere not, like, an all-star team. Who would have picked some colonel who had never been in combat before to be the brigade commander?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wesley, who later supervised the development of the Army\u2019s multi-domain operations concept, emphasized how few units experienced the sweeping maneuver warfare that characterized the rapid destruction of Hussein\u2019s army.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA relatively small element of the ground armed forces \u2014 including the Marine Corps \u2014 experienced that two-week [period],\u201d he said. \u201cNot a lot of people experienced that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The brigade led the attack by chance. They deployed to Kuwait in September 2002 for Operation Desert Spring, a rotational desert warfare training mission dating back to 1998. The period acclimated and sharpened the brigade for when the order arrived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perkins did not expect to invade Iraq when he took command before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, he said. But circumstance \u2014 and the Bush administration \u2014 demanded differently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And thanks to Perkins, the world followed them into Baghdad and witnessed the brigade\u2019s triumph on their television screens and the front pages of newspapers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the 2nd Brigade crossed the Kuwait-Iraq border, around two dozen journalists rode with them, Perkins said. They shared the soldiers\u2019 hardships and dangers \u2014 three died alongside the brigade, one from a blood clot and two in the April 7 missile attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wesley explained how his former brigade commander was ahead of his time in embracing the strategic opportunity that media coverage offered. Even after the April 5 attack up Highway 8, when Task Force 1-64 fought their way to the airport and set the stage for the larger Thunder Run, local Iraqis believed their government\u2019s propaganda \u2014 they believed Americans were dying in droves at the city\u2019s gates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Glaser agreed, linking Perkins\u2019 information savvy to the multi-domain operating concept now driving the Army\u2019s new approach to war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[Perkins] clearly knew that\u2026the Iraqis needed to understand that their army had been defeated \u2014 and killing more people wouldn\u2019t do that,\u201d the former headquarters company commander said. \u201cBut putting a tank brigade on the parade grounds in the center of Baghdad\u2026and, more importantly, putting that on Fox News, the Iraqi people and specifically the army would understand they have been defeated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The colonel\u2019s only ground rule for the media was \u201cyou can\u2019t do anything that is going to put people in danger,\u201d such as revealing battle plans or unit locations during live shots. In return, they received full access to any space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perkins described the relationship as one of \u201ctrust and empowerment\u201d that relied on faith in the media to tell the full story. Even if disaster struck and soldiers killed civilians or others, he asked reporters to cover what his troops did in an effort to prevent it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf something bad happens, fine, report it happened. We\u2019re not going to cover it up,\u201d Perkins recalled saying. \u201cBut you need to contextualize \u2014 they\u2019ve gone to great lengths to try to prevent this. I want you to tell the full story.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n All seven generals agreed the brigade\u2019s success \u2014 or as Hilmes chuckled and said, \u201cour secret sauce\u201d \u2014 stemmed from that culture of trust, and their desert training experience strengthened it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf you get the command climate right\u2026any Army unit can do this,\u201d Perkins insisted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The division\u2019s deputy commander, now-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin trusted Perkins after the training exercise helped them build a \u201cmental playbook\u201d together. As did his division and corps commanders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On April 7, when Perkins and his superiors had to decide whether the tank battalions would stay in downtown Baghdad overnight, it wasn\u2019t a \u201crash decision,\u201d the brigade commander explained. \u201cIt was the culmination of\u2026a year and a half of training and team building.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wesley said that Perkins\u2019 trust-based approach, which extended down to subordinates, \u201cgave a framework for people to operate within their own spheres of expertise and influence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It showed at the lowest levels, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEvery soldier \u2014 I don\u2019t care how senior or junior \u2014 had this \u2018send me\u2019 attitude,\u201d Letcher recalled. \u201cI don\u2019t want to call war special, but being part of something like that, you know, it is special.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Glaser, the headquarters company commander, said trust and teamwork inspired \u201ca huge wave of tan uniforms coming to the [operations center]\u201d in the wake of the missile attack to help the wounded and salvage communications equipment. Barely an hour later, he and Wesley reestablished the brigade operations center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Burris emphasized how their months spent training for Desert Spring cemented the trust and familiarity underlying their success. \u201cWe all recognized each other\u2019s voices on the radio\u2026I could tell what Andy [Hilmes] was dealing with, or he could hear what I was dealing with, just by the nature of the tone of our voices.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The seven generals also acknowledged the Thunder Run propelled their careers. To an extent, the recognition \u2014 awards, media coverage, and more \u2014 they received provided a boost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Four of the future generals received the Silver Star Medal \u2014 Perkins, Twitty, Burris and Hilmes. And Wesley received a Bronze Star Medal for valor. Subsequent promotion boards and peers valued such awards, and the combat experience they represent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gesturing towards Burris while refilling his coffee, Hilmes explained how the awards potentially helped them receive early promotions to major alongside the engineer company commander, David Hibner, who is today a senior civilian official leading the Army Geospatial Center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe were probably three of a handful of captains on that board who had Silver Stars,\u201d Hilmes remarked. \u201cThe board probably did look at that and was like, \u2018Wow.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The infantry school commandant, Burris, chimed in to agree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hilmes continued, arguing that their combat credentials alone couldn\u2019t carry the captains past their initial promotion to major. But they helped him earn a role as the division commander\u2019s aide-de-camp, a prestigious role that often expedites career progression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The retired one-star acknowledged he had \u201csome name recognition\u201d after public speaking opportunities. His name also appears at least 16 times in the first four chapters of Thunder Run, a 2004 book by L.A. Times journalist David Zucchino, who embedded with the brigade during the invasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Twitty and Wesley, both lieutenant colonels in April 2003, their exploits directly boosted their careers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Twitty, the infantry battalion commander who attained three stars, recalled when fellow generals requested him by-name for deployments later in his career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He was a one-star general assigned to Northern Command in 2009 when he received a call from Lt. Gen. William \u201cFuzzy\u201d Webster, the new commander of the 3rd Army and U.S. Army Central. Webster wanted Twitty as his chief of staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[Webster] remembered Moe, Larry and Curly well,\u201d alluding to the three objectives that Twitty\u2019s battalion defended, \u201cand so he asked me to come to 3rd Army,\u201d he recalled. A few years later, Gen. Ray Odierno also referenced the Thunder Run when selecting Twitty for a job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWithout a doubt,\u201d Twitty said when asked if April 2003 opened doors for him. \u201cI heard it from their mouths.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wesley credited some of his success to his reputation from the Thunder Run and his battle-tested relationship with Perkins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI later worked for [now-Gen. and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] Mark Milley\u2026[when] I was a one-star in Afghanistan,\u201d Wesley said, explaining that Milley didn\u2019t know him personally before then. \u201cBut he knew me by reputation, as Perkins\u2019 [executive officer] during the Thunder Run. And he voiced that to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Others among the seven, like Glaser, said they didn\u2019t notice a direct career impact. After his promotion to major, the now one-star general recalled, the Army reassigned him to a small simulations technology career field. That meant his relationships in the combat arms community and his Thunder Run experience somewhat diminished in relevance to his career progression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perkins, who rose the highest among the Spartan Brigade\u2019s leaders, distinguished between the handful of opportunities the attack directly provided and those that stemmed from the potential for greater responsibility that his officers displayed in April 2003.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although general officer promotion boards may consider their members\u2019 personal knowledge of eligible officers, he said, becoming a general comes down to potential rather than performance because \u201cthey wouldn\u2019t even be before this promotion board if they didn\u2019t perform well\u2026so I tried to differentiate between knowing somebody and somebody having the attributes that we need for potential.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And yet, Perkins conceded, the Thunder Run presented a unique opportunity for his subordinates to prove their capability and potential to someone who himself had great potential. He discussed Hilmes, the lead company commander, as an example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAndy was in a tough spot at a tough time, and somebody that had maybe less foresight and [didn\u2019t understand] the strategic implications of things, they may not have done well,\u201d he said. \u201cHad it been somebody else, they may not have made one-star. You can\u2019t take away the fact that he rose to the occasion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But more importantly, all said, the Thunder Run\u2019s success provided subtle confidence, which buoyed their subsequent trajectory through the tribulations of two decades of war to come. They\u2019d demonstrated their potential under fire, on the biggest stage imaginable, and learned from it. They\u2019d learned about life, combat and leadership and to instill trust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But even for the advantages that the Thunder Run\u2019s heroes enjoyed, they realized that the Army quickly moved on from the tactics and concepts that led to their success as the war devolved into one of bloody insurgency and occupation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, as the Global War on Terror draws to a close for the service\u2019s conventional troops, the seven generals report their experience and expertise are again hot commodities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re finding 20 years on that a lot of people are interested in that very small population that experienced that in 2003,\u201d said Wesley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wesley is assisting Perkins to redevelop a capstone course at West Point about mission command doctrine, which emphasizes trust in subordinate leaders and gives them space to exercise initiative to exploit fleeting opportunities on the battlefield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe are continually amazed at what we learned that soldiers did [during the Thunder Run] that we never knew, because they were empowered to do them,\u201d Wesley explained, recalling \u201ccountless stories of people taking initiative to make shit happen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Burris, now the infantry school\u2019s commandant, is responsible for updating doctrine and tactical manuals for the branch. The process occurs every few years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat I found is I rely on my experience back then as we update our doctrine or the tasks that we expect soldiers to be proficient in executing,\u201d Burris said as he described the struggle to find others with his large-scale combat experience. \u201cIt\u2019s [about] ensuring that the future generation has the doctrinal knowledge, the basis to make sure that they can do what a group of ordinary people like we did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Letcher served as a proponent of the service\u2019s ordnance, or maintenance, career field before her current role as the Army Futures Command chief of staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was\u2026the Army lead for the joint concept of contested logistics,\u201d she said, describing the Thunder Run\u2019s resupply operation as embodying the doctrinal idea \u201cat a micro level.\u201d Letcher said her experience successfully directing hasty, on-the-fly maintenance during the initial invasion without a guaranteed supply chain offers key lessons \u2014 such as systematically stripping parts from destroyed vehicles \u2014 for maintainers in future large-scale conflicts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the end of the wars and the invasion\u2019s 20th anniversary has some among the seven thinking about everything that followed the Thunder Run, and the six soldiers lost in Baghdad. The brigade had dozens more troops wounded \u2014 nearly 90 Spartans in total received Purple Hearts before the brigade returned home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Staff Sgt. Stevon Booker, one of Hilmes\u2019 tank commanders, was killed by enemy machine gun fire on April 5 during the first Thunder Run up Highway 8 to the airport. He received the Distinguished Service Cross posthumously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The April 7 missile attack on the operations center instantly killed Spc. George Mitchell in the driver\u2019s seat of his Humvee, and shrapnel killed 19-year-old Pfc. Anthony Miller. Perkins\u2019 driver, Cpl. Henry Brown received serious burns and later died despite remaining conscious through his evacuation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two resupply convoy members, Sgt. 1st. Class John Marshall and Staff Sgt. John Stever, were killed in action on April 7 while fighting their way through an ambush to reach the units downtown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some see April 2003 as a turning point that defined their lives \u2014 but one that they\u2019re still trying to wrap their minds around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSince that point in time, I feel like my life and my career have been on fast forward,\u201d Hilmes, the service\u2019s former top safety officer, said, mere weeks removed from his retirement ceremony. \u201cIn a lot of ways, I almost felt like I didn\u2019t have time to properly process everything that happened in the first half of 2003\u2026because the tempo and the pace of operations to go back to Iraq and Afghanistan was just unlike anything I\u2019d ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking back, he said, \u201cthis is an Army that\u2019s never had a break.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Burris, who fought side-by-side with Hilmes, nodded in agreement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don\u2019t know that I\u2019ve processed what happened in 2003 yet,\u201d the infantry commandant said. \u201cI haven\u2019t had the time to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Seven officers found themselves on an extraordinary stage in April 2003 as the 3rd Infantry Division\u2019s 2nd Brigade brought the Saddam regime to its knees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":87175,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"single-post-featured-layout","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":16,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[101,24,89,16,26],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3378],"class_list":["post-47439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-home","category-middle-column","category-news","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"HQ5OUY6JURGS7PNVHQPCJD3NSI","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-army\/2023\/03\/17\/the-stars-born-on-highway-8\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"featured-layout","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/IraqiShortRange-3.jpeg.jpg\")
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The World Watching<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Stars Born<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Lessons Learned<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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