By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

CINCINNATI, Ohio — Navy Reservist Glenn Welling, OSU Extension educator, Hamilton County, received a Bronze Star for his June 2008 through June 2009 service in Iraq.

Welling was the command master chief for a Navy Provisional Detainee Battalion. The 453 Sailors under his command were gathered from different commands all around the world, Welling said.

“I was blessed to work with some very gifted leaders and we were able to accomplish what is described as the most strategically important and difficult mission in Iraq and that is the detainee operations mission and we did that without incident,” he said.
The battalion was first stationed at Camp Bucca, the world’s largest detention facility, located in South Iraq.

It held 27,000 detainees when they arrived.

Their mission was the care, custody and control of the detainees and in that order, Welling said. After the horrible events of Abu Ghraib, which Welling called a black mark on America and the military, emphasis was placed on dignity and respect of how the detainees were treated.

“Those pictures and videos we all saw from Abu Ghraib were Al Qaeda and the insurgent’s most effective recruiting tool throughout the Muslim world,” Welling said. “All they had to do was show potential insurgents, people that wanted to do harm to Americans, show them that picture and they were motivated to come to Iraq and try to kill Americans. We were so determined not to repeat that mistake.”

As a leader Welling emphasized treating the detainees with dignity and respect while still being very much on guard.

“We never doubted for a second that these were people that intended us harm but the only way that we were going to be able to win that psychological battle was through what we called the counter insurgency principles which is the winning of the hearts and minds,” Welling said.

They did that by providing medical care, education, nutrition. Detainees were taught marketable skills such as horticulture or woodworking.

While few detainees expressed appreciation “where we really saw that appreciation was when the families of the detainees would come to visit, to see the joy on their face that their loved one was not being tortured, not being harmed, was being cared for,” Welling said.

“I don’t want to make it sound like it was some Shangri-La, it was not,” he said. “They were being detained and human beings never like that but under those circumstances we wanted to make sure they were far from being mistreated.”

Welling is glad to be home, but he enjoyed the challenge of his time in Iraq.

“When you’re responsible for 450 people in a combat zone if that doesn’t motivate you, you need to rethink your life,” he said. “I benefitted from that awesome responsibility and sense of service everyday and I miss that.

“I wanted it to be hard,” he said. “I didn’t want to be separated from my family for a year and go through all of that ... and not have it test me. When you meet situations like that and if you take away from that a degree of success and I’m measuring my success on the success that our sailors had, not a single incident of mistreatment or abuse of detainees, that was their success, and that consequently my success.”

Welling’s Bronze Star recognizes that fact. He received the award at a pre-game ceremony before the OSU-Navy football game.

Welling and Marie, his wife of 24 years, have four children ranging in age from nine to 24. He has been in the U.S. Navy just over 30 years, 26 of which have been as a Selected Reservist.

Published on Sept. 30, 2009