1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division Public Affairs

Story by Spc. Mike MacLeod

CAMP RAMADI, Iraq – One of Maj. Steve Berlin's attorney friends saw a picture that Berlin posted of himself and some of his paralegals in the jump shed at Fort Bragg. He said, "You get your paralegals to jump out of airplanes? I can't even get mine to stay past five."

A CALLING

The judge advocate for 1st Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division (Advise and Assist Brigade), Berlin recalled, as a boy, watching a documentary about West Point with his father, and their conversation:

"Daddy what are you watching?"

"That's where the generals go to school."

"Oh, is that where you went to school?"

"No, that's not for people like us."

"For some reason, I always remembered that," said Berlin.

Berlin's father served as an Army officer in Vietnam and later returned as part of the civil service, during which he met Berlin's mother, a Vietnamese national. His father died when Berlin was 13.

A few years later, the young man felt the call to serve.

"I haven't met anyone on the maternal side of my family because they're all living under the – until recently – oppressive North Vietnamese regime. As I looked around at life, I saw so much the country had given us."

Berlin applied and was accepted to West Point.

"When my father was growing up, only people who had political connections could go to West Point. Now it's a standard selection process where you have to go through a board procedure and get a nomination," he said.

Upon graduation, he was commissioned as an artillery officer and sent to Germany.

JAG CORPS

In that epoch between the Cold War and the Global War on Terror, Berlin found field artillery unfulfilling. He was talking to a judge advocate one day, and she asked him if he'd ever considered JAG. He was from a working-class family. He'd never known any lawyers.

"I called my wife that day, and I asked her, 'What do you think about me becoming a lawyer?' She said, 'Stop wasting our air time. When are you going to be home for dinner?'"

In only two months, he would take and pass the Law School Admission Test.

LAW OF WAR

During law-of-war classes, Berlin always shares this advice:

"My mom grew up in a village north of Saigon. The Viet Cong would come at night, and they would put supplies in the village and say, 'You're going to store this cache here, and you're going to tell people it is yours, and if you don't, were going to kill you.' During the day, the Americans would come and ask, 'What is this? Are you a VC sympathizer?' One day, American jets came over. She ran to bunker. When she came out, there was a massive crater where her house had been. The bunker had walls 24 inches thick, and the bullets had gone 18 inches into it."

Berlin uses the story as a teaching point for Americans going outside the wire in Iraq.

"There are honest people living in these cities who have to face these types of circumstances. This is their home. They're doing their best to make it every day."

MISSION ORIENTED

Berlin's choice to become a judge advocate was one of the best decisions he and his wife have ever made, he said.

"My wife can tell that I feel very fulfilled, because every day, I get to help commanders work through difficult decisions.

"Here, the purpose seems to be much greater than the job," said Berlin. "Every staff entity works together to help empower the commanders to help them do their job for the successful mission of the guys outside the wire. That to me is priceless."

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