McCready

Dan McCready has devoted his life to public service. He currently works as a jail sergeant at the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office and is also a reserve deputy. He spent almost two decades off and on as a 911 dispatcher. In his late teens, the military beckoned, leading him into the field of military police in the U.S. Army Reserve.

A native of Marshalltown, McCready attended Fort Frye High School in Ohio, briefly living out of state for his father’s work. He completed basic training between his junior and senior year. Upon graduating, he underwent military police training.

“I’d always been interested in law enforcement, and my buddy joined the Reserves and talked me into it,” he said. “I had a high enough ASVAB score to pretty much have whatever job I wanted, and I chose to be an MP.”

He was sent to Fort McClellan, Ala. in the summer of 1998, unprepared for how his life would change.

“It was nothing like I expected when we first got there. We’re tired, from all over the country. We flew to Atlanta then got loaded on buses for Fort McClellan in the middle of the night,” he recalled. “The drill sergeants started yelling at us right away.”

Upon completion, he was required to do one weekend a month of drills, with some time also spent in the summer. Originally assigned to Zanesville, Ohio, he was able to transfer to a unit in Rochester, Minn. to be closer to Marshalltown.

When asked how the military police compare to civilian law enforcement, McCready said there are some similarities.

“But you also learn the military laws, the Uniform Code of Military Justice and you do some combat stuff,” he explained. “They are two different ballparks. My unit kind of was a specialized unit. We were more geared towards combat support than law enforcement. We would do a lot of field exercises, a lot of convoy escort exercises. We were geared more towards combat readiness than going out and being street cops.”

In September 1999, he was shipped off to Germany for nine months to perform on-base law enforcement, working 8- and 12-hour shifts in a region of relative calm.

“We had to learn on the fly how to do the law enforcement aspect of being military police than what we were used to,” he said.

After 9/11, he went to Fort Snelling, Minn. to do base security. He knew it was a matter of when and not if he’d be deployed to the Middle East.

“After September 11, we were kind of expecting we were going to go somewhere, we just didn’t know where,” he said. “We got a call on a Wednesday evening in January 2003, to be in Rochester with all your gear by Friday morning at 8 a.m.”

After a weekend spent in Rochester, he was moved to Fort McCoy in Wisconsin for pre-mobilization. In April, he was deployed.

“We kind of scattered around Kuwait, and right off the bat, we started doing convoy escorts going up the main highway between Iraq and Kuwait,” he said. “Then we settled in Nasiriyah two weeks after they rescued Jessica Lynch — we were at a base outside of Nasiriyah. We rotated between convoy escorts and internment camp. We did a lot of prisoner movement, I’ll put it that way.”

Going from America’s Heartland to a danger zone was an eye-opening experience.

“Here I am, 20-something in the middle of the desert. We didn’t really think about what we were there for. We were just there to get a job done,” McCready said. “We were kind of in our element, being a combat support unit. We did really well. We had trained for that for years. That’s what our specialty was.”

He recalled how some of his superiors were required to stay longer through stop loss, a military program that keeps service members on active duty past their contractually agreed-upon end date.

He was in Iraq a little over a year before returning home around Easter 2004. Monthly drills resumed a short time later. He chose to leave the Army Reserve in April 2005 after a conversation with his young son gave him some perspective.

“I knew my contract was coming up. I asked them what they thought about me re-enlisting. My oldest looked at me and told me, ‘Dad, you’ve been gone helping the kids of the world long enough. I need you to stay home.’ You can’t really debate that when your five year old drops that bomb on you,” McCready said.

But like many returning soldiers, he struggled with the transition back to civilian life.

“My experience was, I went away in January 2003 and came back in April 2004, but my mindset was still in that January ’03, and everybody else had progressed a year,” he said. “It felt kind of like everybody had surpassed where I was at. I had a really hard time connecting with a lot of people and getting out of that mindset — that everything’s okay.”

Finding counseling at Veterans Affairs helped him get “unstuck.”

“The military drills into you you’re a warrior. And being a male, we don’t talk about our feelings. I took that to heart, and then it got to the point where I just couldn’t go on anymore, and made a phone call and got in right away, and started with my first therapist, and she did wonders for me,” he said. “A good couple years later, I needed to go back and did some more (counseling) with a different therapist.”

Six years ago, McCready left dispatch for a parking enforcement job for the City of Marshalltown. He’s worked at the jail the last three years.

In his free time, he enjoys hanging out with his wife and three children.

“Join for the right reasons, and it’s a wonderful experience. I’ve made lifelong friends,” he said.