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Units: 3rd Battalion, 23rd Marine Regiment; 8th Tank Battalion; 4th Tank Battalion; 1st Combat Engineer Battalion
Branch of Service: Marine Corps
War / Conflict: Iraq War, 2003-2011; Afghan War, 2001-2021
"Whatever my country would ask me to do, I would do it, just as a moral obligation I had, to my country, to the Marines, and just to the guys in my unit." (Audio Interview, 14:52)
At the time of the September 11th terrorist attacks, Stephen M. Collins, Jr., was a Marine Corps reservist and a medical student. Suddenly he had to balance the demands of his educational pursuits with his military obligations and the possibility of deployment. Though many of his colleagues and fellow students asked if he would leave the Marine Corps to focus on medical school, he says he felt a moral obligation to serve his country. He was called to active duty in 2003, and deployed to Iraq and Kuwait as a tank commander with the 8th Tank Battalion in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In an interview conducted for VHP just a few months after he returned from his deployment, Collins reflected on his experience, and shared a straightforward view of his service, saying "I did my job. I did the best that I could do, and I made it back." Collins later deployed to Afghanistan, where his company performed a dangerous route-clearance mission. His photographs from that deployment offer an intriguing glimpse of the experiences of Marines in Helmand Province in 2012.
Stephen Collins enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve in 1993 while enrolled as an undergraduate at Louisiana State University. For him, the Reserve represented a way to ease the financial strains he felt as a student, but he also remembers feeling a patriotic sense of duty, and that "at the time I just thought it was a really cool thing to do" (Audio interview, 0:28).
Collins' goal upon entering the Marine Corps was to become an infantryman, and he achieved this after completing training at the School of Infantry to become a machine gunner. He remembers training in a variety of locales, but some of his most vivid memories from this time came from desert training at the Marine Corps' facility at Twentynine Palms, California. He eventually made the transition from infantry to tanks, and joined up with the 8th Tank Battalion in Fort Knox, Kentucky while he was attending medical school in Indiana.
Collins prided himself on taking his training seriously, and even before the attacks of September 11th, 2001 he felt that "you already knew that there could be a time when you would have to go somewhere" (Audio interview, 12:30). After the attacks, this possibility became much more real, and he mentally prepared himself for war.
Company A, 8th Tank Battalion arrived in Kuwait in February 2003. After a brief period of preparation, they crossed into Iraq on the first day of the war, March 20th. A tank commander at the time, Collins was heartbroken when his platoon sergeant's tank broke down on the day of the invasion, because that meant that Collins had to switch tanks with him. While he missed out on much of the combat experience that the rest of his company gained, he took great pride in getting his platoon sergeant's tank repaired and back in the fight, and ultimately was awarded the Combat Action Ribbon.
Company A left Iraq in May 2003, and Collins' oral history interview for the Veterans History Project was conducted just four months later in September.
Like many tankers of the post-9/11 era, Collins and his colleagues had to learn to perform a variety of missions. In 2012, his company (Company E, 4th Tank Battalion) was converted to a route clearance company and attached to the 1st Combat Engineer Battalion for a deployment to Afghanistan. In this hazardous role, his company was responsible for clearing roadways in southern Helmand Province of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). They used specialized equipment, such as Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles equipped with "mine rollers," and Husky VMMD (Vehicle-Mounted Mine Detection) vehicles, which can be seen in his photographs below.
Like many service members, Collins was grateful for the care packages and letters of support he received -- from family and friends as well as perfect strangers. He was especially touched by cards he received from schoolchildren, and always took the time to write them back - examples of these cards can be seen in the correspondence preserved as part of Collins' Veterans History Project collection.
Collins' platoon was responsible for keeping 1,200 kilometers of road cleared of IEDs, as well as partnering and training with a route clearance company from the Afghan National Army (ANA). He nearly made it through this dangerous deployment unscathed, but as can be seen in the photographs above, Collins' vehicle struck a pressure plate-triggered IED about a week before he went home. Fortunately, the occupants of his vehicle avoided major injury.
