I had never seen an entire Army brigade called to a single place at a single moment in time. That is, until last Wednesday when I traveled to Fort McCoy, Wis., with Lt. Gov. John Bohlinger and Maj. Gen. John Walsh, to visit a group of Montana soldiers heading off to war.

In case you missed the story, 11 Montana men volunteered to go to Iraq, even though their regular outfit with the Montana National Guard is still years away from redeploying to the place it left in 2005.

With Montana’s boys standing among them, the soldiers of the 81st Combat Brigade stretched across the parade grounds, 3,000 men and women staged in formation, their banners waving in the cold Wisconsin wind.

Imagine every resident of Deer Lodge called out of their homes and placed shoulder to shoulder. Imagine that and you’ll come close to creating an Army brigade. It’s a lot of people and a whole lot of power.

The brigade commander, Col. Ronald Kapral, stepped to the microphone to address his soldiers. In the process, he recounted a story about his first tour in Iraq.

As in most battles, he began, commanders need good intelligence, which often turns up in the strangest places.

Kapral found this information in a man who served in the Badr Corps, which he later described to me as an Iranian-backed terrorist group working in Iraq. Kapral said he used this man to gain needed information on enemy strongholds and the whereabouts of insurgents.

From the start and for obvious reasons, there was a sense of distrust between the colonel and this man. But over time, they developed a professional relationship. They became friends, speaking of family and other amicable matters.

But one day, as their friendship grew, Kapral asked the man if he’d ever killed a member of the coalition forces at any point in the war. The man answered yes, he had. The colonel asked him, if he was ordered to do so, would he kill him?

Again, the man answered yes.

The lesson, the colonel told his troops, speaking over the sound of distant machine-gun fire and the drone of a helicopter engine, was simple: Be careful who you trust. Be careful who you turn to for information and who you ask to watch your back.

Sitting in the mess hall with the Montana troops, several battle-tested soldiers from Billings shared their own stories of trust. By its very nature, it seems that war, born from misunderstanding and poor communication, actually requires a level of trust and a set of rules to advance.

Is the guy on the perimeter at night doing his job while you sleep? Is Intel getting information from reliable sources? Is the interpreter telling you the whole story? Does the guy feeding you information have a secret agenda?

Working with Iraqi interpreters, that mistrust was always there, the soldiers said over a meal of fried fish and Hamburger Helper. Imagine being at the mercy of a man you don’t know, who’s communicating with people who don’t trust you, in a language you can’t understand.

There’s plenty of room for something to go wrong.

Back on his first tour, one soldier remembered his interpreter — a veteran of the Iraq-Iran war. Another interpreter had fought coalition forces in the Persian Gulf War. Both interpreters, the soldier told me, had that 1,000-yard-stare; Middle Eastern men glaring off at nothing in particular.

The soldier said it was strange, and I agreed, how things can change with time. Perspectives change just as enemies become allies and the political tides roll on. But even on a rising tide, you might find yourself looking at the water, wondering if you should stand your ground or turn and run beyond the reach of the waves.

Reporter Martin J. Kidston:

mkidston@helenair.com or 447-4086