By Carolyn Cole
Published on November 13, 2008

Family met Staff Sgt. Dillon Branham with hugs recently during his welcome home party at his parents Mustang-area home.

Branham held onto his squirming 16-month-old son Jackson, who he watched grow up in photographs while he was stationed at Camp Bucca detention center in Iraq with the Oklahoma National Guard.

Although this deployment seemed safer than previous assignments in Saudi Arabia and post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, Branham said the distance drove home to him how much his priorities had changed since he was a boy playing soldiers and dreaming of being G.I. Joe.

Since his own father deployed to South Korea with the Air Force when Branham was a boy, he said he thought he was prepared for his own deployment away from his family, but he wasn’t. He spent about three months with his son and wife Angela before leaving for training and then Iraq with about 2,500 members of the Oklahoma National Guard.

While Branham was gone, Jackson learned to walk, talk and run. Father and son got reacquainted during a two-week leave in July, and Branham got to trim off Jackson’s locks for his first haircut. By the time Jackson stopped being shy, he said it was time for him to return to Iraq.

“It’s frustrating when he is really close to other family members,” he said.

At Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, Branham worked as a compound shift leader, supervising about 20 detention guards. He said his section of the prison contained about 900 detainees, while Camp Bucca holds more than 20,000 prisoners.

“They presented a security risk at that time, and we basically hold them there until the Iraqi courts work out and decide to release them or not,” he said.

Most of the detainees in the section where Branham worked had been detained for about a year, but he said some had been there for several years, awaiting processing in the Iraqi judicial system.

Branham said he avoided finding out the charges the prisoners in his section were facing because he wanted to make certain he treated each of them fairly.

“By me not knowing exactly why they were there, it helped me do my job,” he said.

Branham’s group was attached to a military police unit connected to the Abu Ghraib prison abuse incidents, and he said it haunted them every day. They pushed for impeccable record-keeping and professionalism, he said.

Camp Bucca detainees have their own political structure, he said. In each block, a chief is chosen from among the detainees, usually a person with high social standing outside of the prison. Any problems guards have are brought to the chief, Branham said, who then settles disputes.

Each block also has its own imam, or Islamic religious leader, whose messages were scrutinized by interpreters. Detainees also watched television and played basketball, ping pong, dominoes and chess, and classes were made available to them.

“They had it really nice, and a lot of the people, they had a better life in the detention facility than they had outside, because they had everything,” Branham said. “They didn’t have to work very hard, and they were guaranteed a meal.”

His work wasn’t tough because of danger, Branham said, but monotony. He worked inside the command center and walked around patrolling periodically through his 12-hour shift.

“We never got attacked by any of the detainees,” he said. “Rarely was there any kind of show of force.”

Branham waited for the time to tick from his deployment until he could return home. He said it wasn’t the mission he wanted as an infantry soldier, but as a father and husband, it was a good feeling to tell his family he was mostly safe.

Since he early enlisted as a Mustang High School junior, Branham said his priorities have changed. At 17, he believed the military would be his life and chose infantry, he said, because he wanted to be a soldier. He loved everything about being a guardsman — he lived for camping, shooting weapons and studying tactics.

His first deployment came in January 2003 to Saudi Arabia, guarding Patriot missile sites. The soldiers were sent home in July 2003 as Operation Iraqi Freedom heated up.

“It was kind of a big adventure — I enjoyed it,” he said.

Branham returned home and finished his bachelor’s degree in biology at the University of Central Oklahoma. Then the National Guard deployed to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, which Branham said was the most “infantry-like” role and possibly the most dangerous in his military service.

“Doing the patrols and stopping traffic and walking door to door and clearing houses — it was fun,” he said. “That’s why I got into infantry.”

Now, Branham said he wants stability for his young family.

“I have got to look at everything before I decide my future,” he said. “I just can’t knowingly go in and re-enlist, and the next thing get deployed again to Afghanistan or Iraq, or whatever. That’s not fair to my family if they are having to deal with that. I know it causes a lot of problems, tension and stress that’s unnecessary if I stay here.”