Photo by Gwendolyn Z. Photography
Even at a young age, Peter Mansoor had a passion for studying the past.
“People ask me how I got into military history, and I tell them, ‘Too many John Wayne movies when I was growing up,’” says Mansoor.
Mansoor, 57, is a retired U.S. Army colonel and the General Raymond E. Mason, Jr. Chair of Military History at The Ohio State University.
“My mom would take me to the library … and I would naturally drift over to the history books, and then to the military history books,” Mansoor says. “Then I joined the military history book club in eighth grade.”
Mansoor continued to pursue this interest as a student at the U.S. Military Academy, though he entered school planning to be a civil engineer, a background that is evident in his detailed analysis of Columbus’ traffic patterns.
“I was really good in math, so I thought engineering would come naturally,” Mansoor says. “I am probably the only person who had a concentration in modern history who also took the honors course in civil engineering.”
After receiving his bachelor’s degree and graduating first in his class at West Point in 1982, Mansoor served in the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Fort Bliss, Texas, and the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in Bad Hersfeld, Germany.
Following these two tours, he returned to the U.S. with the desire to teach at his alma mater, and decided to attend graduate school at OSU, where his brother, captain of the university’s varsity cross country team, had studied from 1973 to 1978.
“When it was time to choose a graduate school, West Point offered me Temple (University), and my wife said, ‘I don’t want to go to Philadelphia, it’s too big of a city.’ And then they said, ‘Well, how about the University of Southern California?’ and she goes, ‘Too big of a city,’” Mansoor says. “And then they said, ‘How about Ohio State?’ and she goes, ‘Well, that seems OK.’ And I said, ‘Well, my brother went there.’ And that was the decision.”
In 1995, with a master’s degree in military history in hand and a Ph.D. dissertation successfully defended, Mansoor and his family left Columbus with no foreseeable plans to return.
“I celebrated by going to the bookstore and buying a coffee mug or something, and I never thought I’d be back,” he says.
In 2003, Mansoor once again traveled overseas, this time in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom as commander of the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division. He reflected on his experiences during these 13 months in combat in his book, Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander’s War in Iraq. It was published in 2008, the year he retired with the rank of colonel.
“Baghdad at Sunrise really was a learning experience for me because it originally was written in ‘Armish,’ a mixture of Army-speak and English,” Mansoor says. “I had some good friends (and editors) turn it into something the public could understand.”
The research and writing process, though lengthy, allowed Mansoor to see his own work on the shelf next to the books he had enthusiastically pored over as a child.
“I was thinking, growing up, ‘Could I ever write one of these?’ It seemed like a daunting process,” he says. “Then you write the first one and … then you go, ‘Ah, well, should I write another?’”
Mansoor did write another.
In 2013, he published Surge: My Journey with General David Petraeus and the Remaking of the Iraq War. The book reflects on Mansoor’s tenure as the executive officer to General David Petraeus, who served as Commanding General of Multi-National Force-Iraq during the 2007-08 surge of additional U.S. troops into the region.
Photo courtesy of Peter Mansoor
Mansoor (left) with Gen. David Petraeus in 2007
In his preface, Mansoor urges readers to view Surge as the “second draft of history.” He says he chose this phrase to emphasize the use of primary sources, including declassified versions of Petraeus’ records, which he consulted while working on the book over the course of three years.
“It is not the final draft of history. For sure, there will be things that emerge in the next few decades that will eventually supersede what I have written,” Mansoor says of Surge. “But I think it’ll stand up to the test of time.”
Prior to retiring from his 26-year career in the military, Mansoor took a position as a senior military fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York, and later served as the founding director of the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. But the opportunity to join OSU’s Mershon Center for International Security Studies as the Mason Chair and a professor of military history brought Mansoor back to central Ohio in fall 2008.
Because his son, J.T., was entering high school at the time, Mansoor says the family’s top priority was to find a house in a high-performing school district.
“Beyond that, we wanted a nice, suburban feel,” he says. “Dublin had everything we were looking for.”
Now that his two children – daughter Kyle, 28, and J.T., 23 – have graduated from college, Mansoor and his wife, Jana, dote on the other residents of their Tartan Fields home: two Siberian huskies named Mysha and Nikki.
Mansoor says his family enjoys life in Dublin, adding that Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams and the Dublin Barber Shoppe in Historic Dublin are two of his most frequent haunts.
“To go to our first Dublin Irish Festival was just a very unique experience, and we have been almost every year to watch the parades in old Dublin,” he says. “It is a great community.”
As he looks ahead to future projects, Mansoor says he is pleased to be back in the Buckeye State studying the subject he loves.
“I chose to make the move into academia and pursue my childhood dreams of being a military historian,” he says. “It has been a great ride.”
Amanda Etchison is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.
