About Col. Michael C. Howard
Mike Howard was born in Tucson, Arizona on 29 July 1954. He grew
up on a ranch near there and outside Thousand Oaks, California,
where his father and grandfather (partner of Bing Crosby) raised
Quarter horse and Thoroughbred racing horses. It was his Great
grandfather, Charles S. Howard, who owned the legendary
Seabiscuit. Needless to say, Mike grew up surrounded with horse
racing history.
Mike graduated from high school (the Webb School in Claremont,
California), in 1973. He joined the Marine Corps in 1974 while in
college. Upon his graduation in 1977 from Saint Olaf College,
Northfield, Minnesota, he was commissioned as an officer of
Marines. He served extensively in various combat engineer units,
supporting Marine infantry both on land and sea. This service
included both US coasts, Okinawa, Japan, Thailand, the
Philippines, Korea, Hawaii, Israel, Kuwait, and Iraq. He has served
command tours as a combat engineer platoon, company, and
battalion commander, in addition to a wide range of staff billets. His
last command was the 960 man 4th Combat Engineer Battalion,
which he commanded from 2001 to 2004. He has made two
combat deployments to Iraq where he participated with 1st Marine
Expeditionary Force (MEF) in the original assault and capture of
Baghdad in March & April 2003. His second combat tour was also
with “One MEF” as senior Marine Corps engineer liaison to the US
Army & Coalition headquarters in Baghdad. Among his many
military decorations, he holds two Bronze Stars, the Combat Action
Ribbon, the Presidential Unit Citation and the Iraq Campaign Medal
(for two combat tours: 2003 and 2004-2005).
He has been married for the past 29 years to the former Lynn Marie
Zieper of Minneapolis, Minnesota. They have five children and live in
Helvetia, just north of Hillsboro, OR.
Mike officially retired from the Marine Corps on 1 March 2006, with
32 years of honorable service. His hobbies are enjoying his family,
reading & writing history, and gardening.

IRAQ The Rest Of The Story
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