Sometimes you end up right where you thought you didn’t want to be.
Tyson Trunkhill of Denver joined the Iowa National Guard largely because he didn’t want to go to college. What a surprise, then, when the Guard led him to a four-year degree, to officer training and to 16 of his 21 years in the service as a commissioned officer.
By his own account, he was a lackluster student at North Iowa High School in Buffalo Center and not interested in going to college. His dad was a contractor and carpenter at the time, and Trunkhill wanted to do that, too.
“I liked building and doing things with my hands,†he said. “I saw the National Guard as an option for something to do to better my life without jumping right into college and making a decision that I was unsure about at the time.â€
He enlisted on Jan. 25, 1999, three weeks after he turned 18, joining Bravo Battery 1-194th FA, a field artillery unit based in Algona, Iowa, about 30 miles from where he had grown up.
Trunkhill graduated high school that May and went to basic training and then field artillery training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, from June to September.
One of the appeals of the National Guard was that it was part-time, generally requiring just one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer for training, allowing soldiers to lead civilian lives for most of the time.
And that’s what Trunkhill did.
After his training at Fort Sill, he returned home and worked in construction for about six months. He decided he wanted to start at Hawkeye Community College in the fall. Once he got accepted there, he moved to Cedar Falls to get a job before school started, working for Home Depot in Waterloo.
He studied automotive collision repair at Hawkeye and, all the while, continued his periodic training with the National Guard. But a funny thing happened to the hands-on, practical, “not a great student†Trunkhill.
“During that time, I had several of my senior leaders discuss with me that they thought I should go to officer training, something I wasn’t really keen on,†he said, “because I had to go to a four-year college, which, again, I never intended to do.â€
But when his leaders kept telling him the same thing, he eventually listened, even though he wasn’t sure about it.
“I don’t know what they saw in me,†he said. “They saw potential in me of some sort and encouraged me to pursue the officer side of it to be a commissioned leader instead of an NCO non-commission officer.â€
Officer training
Trunkhill started at the University of Northern Iowa and entered the ROTC officer-training program there in fall 2002. He graduated in May 2005 as a field artillery 2nd Lieutenant.
After completing his degree and ROTC training, Trunkhill elected to continue in the National Guard rather than switch full-time to the Army or go into the Army Reserve, which were his other options. At that time he also requested his service branch for the future.
“I chose field artillery,†he said. “You choose your top three, and then the Army evaluates you based on your test scores and performance in the ROTC.â€
Because he was already assigned to a National Guard unit, he automatically got the branch he wanted, field artillery. He was now in the Iowa National Guard as an Army officer.
“At graduation, they also commission you into the Army, because you have all your requirements completed,†he said.
His training wasn’t over, though. In July 2005, he headed back to Fort Sill in Oklahoma, this time for officer training. It got cut a little short so he could deploy to Iraq.
“I completed all of my requirements and left my training a month early to be deployed with the 133rd Infantry Battalion from Waterloo, and I was ultimately assigned to Charlie Company out of Iowa Falls,†he said, “where I was a Fire Support Officer.â€
While Trunkhill had left his officer training ahead of schedule, he arrived a month late to join Charlie Company at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, where they trained another five months for their mission in Iraq.
He explained that in artillery, he was an officer in charge of a team of forward observers that was like a forward reconnaissance team but also specialized in calling in field artillery fire to protect maneuver units and engage other strategic targets.
“There are a lot of smart individuals who do a lot of hard work,†he said.
After six months of train-up in Camp Shelby, the deployment unit was scheduled for 11 months in country.
“We ended up in Iraq for 16 ½ months,†Trunkhill said. “I had already starting packing up things to go home, and we were notified that we were being extended for another five months.â€
They needed to stay on because it was during “The Surge†of 2007, when the U.S. military significantly increased the number of troops in Iraq.
After adding two to three weeks of demobilization in the U.S. after Iraq, “our total deployment time was 22 ½ months,†he said. “Interesting times.â€
In Iraq
Trunkhill’s unit in Iraq was responsible for convoy operations, taking conveys of 150 empty semi trucks from the central military hub at Al-Asad air base to Jordan, where they would pick up another 150 or so semi trucks full of goods needed at bases in Iraq, goods such as food, equipment or construction items.
“It was like a three-day round trip.â€
Once the goods arrived at Al-Asad, they would be distributed on that base and on smaller military bases in the area. While the route to and from Jordan wasn’t in an area of serious fighting, it wasn’t without dangers.
“Our biggest threats were IEDs (improvised explosive devices), roadside bombs, very seldom gunfire, just because we were kind of in the middle of nowhere.â€
Yet, two soldiers from his unit were killed in a firefight with insurgents, which was “super unusual,†Trunkhill said, “but it happens.â€
That was two out of a unit of around 125 soldiers.
“It was a close-knit group of people,†he said.
Several of his ROTC friends were in his unit, and he also crossed paths with soldiers he had known in officer training. He even ran into a drill sergeant he had had in basic training years earlier.
“The Army’s pretty small in the grand scheme of things when there’s a big war going on,†he said. “You never know who you’re going to run into.â€
Demobilization
Trunkhill had joined his deployment unit in November 2005. They had their welcome home ceremony in July 2007. He then worked in Waterloo for a short time doing the demobilization process.
After that, he worked full-time in the rear detachment in Fort Dodge for the 1-194th FA as a mobilization officer, assisting soldiers with non-emergency medical needs, supporting families, planning homecoming ceremonies and doing paperwork for demobilizations.
In 2010, Trunkhill was promoted to captain and returned to part-time Guard work, now with the 34th Infantry Division Brigade Headquarters in Boone. There he wrote orders for training exercises, planning battles against an imaginary enemy.
He returned to full-time status in 2010 when he “deployed†as the Rear Detachment Commander for the 133rd Infantry Battalion, which was sent to Afghanistan. Trunkhill remained in the Waterloo area to manage Non-deployed Soldiers, Facilities and any other needs the 1-133rd Command Staff may have needed stateside.
“The whole state pretty much deployed to Afghanistan in 2010,†he noted.
When the 1-133rd returned to Iowa, he was then transitioned to Battery Commander at Alpha Battery of the 194th Field Artillery in Estherville, again part-time. He did that from 2011 to 2013.
From then on, he “bounced around†between the 194th Field Artillery headquarters in Ford Dodge and the 34th Infantry Brigade headquarters in Boone, drilling in whichever place needed him.
The last several years Trunkhill held the Brigade Assistant Fire Support Officer – Lethal Fires position, which directed him to oversee training and evaluations of all the Brigades FIST teams as well as develop Field Artillery Battle Plans used for training scenarios. He also was privileged to attend short training exercises in Kosovo and Korea at that time.
Trunkhill was medically retired in 2020 at the age of 40. He had come a long way—in training, in distance, in rank, in experience—from when he had enlisted in high school at barely 18 years old.
“I did 21 years, four months and 17 days,†he said.
And most of it at a level he had never imagined.
