Two decades ago, while the insurgency was raging in Iraq, an Army commander of Charlie Company, 3rd Battalion of the 187th Infantry Regiment, which was gearing up for a deployment, got an unusual request.
Pete Hegseth, a National Guard officer at the time, was seeking to go on their mission.
“I had never heard of anybody — before or since then — volunteering to serve as an infantryman, especially as a platoon leader, going to Iraq in like 2005,” Sgt. Maj. Eric Geressy, who served on that team, recounted in an exclusive interview with The Post on Wednesday.
Upon first glance, Geressy was also skeptical. Hegseth had shown up just three weeks prior to heading overseas. His Princeton grad’s pedigree and work as an equity capital markets analyst at Bear Stearns also gave Geressy pause.
They were heading into a very dangerous mission where bullets would be flying — a far cry from his investment background.
“I was rough on him,” Geressy recalled. “He was very good. He took everybody’s input immediately … very eager to learn, listen, open-minded and a very critical thinker.”
He would go on to win the Bronze Star Medal, second Army Commendation Medal and Combat Infantryman Badge for his service in Iraq.
Geressy said how Hegseth put “the troops first” and would usually be the “first one through the door” during key missions.
Now Hegseth, 44, is gearing up for an even bolder move, potentially leading every military service branch as head of the Pentagon.
Geressy was “fully surprised” to learn that President-elect Donald Trump had tapped his former foxhole buddy to helm the Defense Department — an unorthodox pick that had caught most observers off-guard — but hailed him as a “great selection.”
“He breathes the military. That’s all he talks about,” Geressy reflected. “Pete’s extremely smart. He’s very articulate, he’s a critical thinker, and he’s going to learn from the experts and get a lot of good information from folks.”
“100% he’s going to get confirmed,” he added.
Army Col. Chip Rankin, who fought alongside Hegseth in Afghanistan, recounted meeting Hegseth in 2011 after the decorated warrior reached out via a mutual friend about serving with his unit, which was slated to head over to the war-torn country at the time.
Rankin described Hegseth as clearly “well-educated” and a “lifelong learner” at the time who was constantly reading books and doing research.
He harked back to how Hegseth volunteered for a very risky situation outside the security of the base where an IED went off.
“He was going through a vehicle that got blown up, and there were dead people, people that were fighting through our lives. And Pete went right into that situation, and performed admirably in a very, very challenging situation,” Rankin said. “He could have been killed, and he never hesitated.”
The selection of Hegseth is generally seen as an effort by Trump to take something of a wrecking ball to the Pentagon, which is notorious for its entrenched bureaucracy.
During his time as an anchor on Fox News, Hegseth railed against diversity, equity and inclusion policies at the Department of Defense, which he viewed as a distraction from the military’s core mission of warfighting.
At one point, Hegseth openly suggested “We should not have women in combat roles,” however, he has since walked that back, telling Fox News that “some of our greatest warriors, our best warriors out there are women.”
Rankin interprets Hegseth’s comments as a push towards revitalizing the military’s lethality.
“Even in the last 18 months, all my units are prepared to receive females into combat roles. And I’ve sent very strong female soldiers to become leaders,” Rankin, a father of three daughters said. “They perform extremely well.”
“If I have somebody who’s qualified can do the job, just because they don’t look or talk like me doesn’t mean they’re not qualified … I don’t care your skin color, who you pray to,” he added. “We want the best-qualified person, and if that happens to be if they’re white, fine. If it means that they’re Hispanic or black, that’s fine too.”
Rankin believes Hegseth feels that way too.
Hegseth’s forthcoming nomination has been dogged by various controversies. However, the Army veteran has seemingly managed to cool down concerns during his one-on-one sessions with senators.
Revelations had emerged of an accusation that he sexually assaulted a woman after a booze-filled afterparty back in 2017. Hegseth has strenuously denied those allegations.
There have also been reports based on anonymous sources claiming that he had been a binge drinker during his time at Fox News and while leading two veterans advocacy groups, something he has denied and his former colleagues have publicly denied on the record as well.
Both Rankin and Geressy stressed that they never saw him the way those annonymous reports portrayed him.
“In my experience, Pete’s never been overly intoxicated,” Rankin said. “I think for certain people that are scared, because that might represent some kind of change in policy or change in viewpoint, maybe people are fearful of that, and so then they sometimes throw mud.”
“I’ve known this guy since 2005,” Geressy said, before pivoting to the portraly of him in those reports “That’s not the guy that we know. So I think it’s just stuff that’s being thrown out there.”
Hegseth continued to make the rounds with senators this week as he seeks to shore up support. Ultimately, he will need to get confirmed by the Senate to become the Pentagon chief.
