 My name is Adam Ilya and I'm the Command Historian of the 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks Boy. I started with the 25th Infantry Division back in August 2000. I was actually working for a few years as the museum technician over at the division museum. That's how I got into the government system. That's how I started working for the division. I worked there for about five years and in April 2005, when the division headquarters first came back from Afghanistan on its first GWAT deployment, they had a position for a historian come up and so I applied for it. I got accepted and I came up to the division in April 2005 and have been a historian ever since. During the global war on terrorism, I deployed three times with the division headquarters, all times to Iraq. That was in 2007, 2008 and 2009, and 2010 to 2011. I was in the staff in the headquarters. I went out on a lot of what I called embed missions. I went out and actually stayed with an organization for a few days to kind of observe what they did and conduct some interviews. The organizations that I stayed with ranged from a small military transition team that was stationed just outside of Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, to working with the brigade headquarters, staying with them for a week and see how they conduct operations. I often went on battlefield circulation missions with the commanding general when he met high-ranking officials. The role of civilians in the global war on terrorism, I don't think there was a lot said about them, but there's a lot of civilians, DA civilians and contractors that went out and served the US military during the global war on terrorism. The role of civilians I think is a very important aspect of how the army operates. Our role is really to support the warfighter and to ensure that they get their mission done as best as they possibly can and get the mission done, period. And that's what we do, and that's what I try and do in the 25th Infantry Division as a historian.