"But Cullen Tiernan, who served alongside JD Vance in Iraq as a fellow combat correspondent, told The Independent the role was not without danger.
“When we first landed, we got mortar and rockets from Baghdadi, the neighboring town. That was definitely a shock,” he said. “It’s odd to me that people would try to negate or put down what combat correspondents do. When you’re walking in patrol, or when you’re flying in a helicopter that goes into the sandstorm, or when you come upon an IED, and see people who have been blown up, you’re having the same exact experience. You just also have a camera and an obligation to document it.”
Cullen Tiernan, a former Marine Corps combat correspondent who deployed with JD Vance, pictured alongside the Ohio senator and running mate of Donald Trump.
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Cullen Tiernan, a former Marine Corps combat correspondent who deployed with JD Vance, pictured alongside the Ohio senator and running mate of Donald Trump. (Courtesy of Cullen Tiernan)
Vance enlisted in the Marine Corps after graduating from high school in 2003. He went by the name James D. Hamel at the time, having taken the last name of his stepfather.
He served for four years with the 2nd Marine Aircraft In Wing, Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina, and was deployed to Iraq for six months from August 2005 and into 2006, based at Al Asad air base in western Iraq.
Vance would occasionally go out beyond the wire of the base on missions to Al Qaim and other towns further up the Euphrates River to document the work of the Marine Corps. Tiernan said they would carry M16 rifles and 9mm pistols as they did so.
Writing in his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, Vance said he was “lucky to escape any real fighting.” But the period in which he was deployed was by no means quiet. The US invasion and occupation of Iraq had been raging for three years by the time Vance arrived in the country. In 2005, Iraqis voted in national elections and some 844 American service members were killed across the country."
When JD Vance criticized his opponent, Tim Walz, for not deploying to Iraq, some Democrats scrutinized his own military record. Richard Hall speaks to a veteran who served alongside Vance about what their time in the country entailed
www.the-independent.com