About the Commandant

Colonel Tucker B. Mansager olonel Tucker B. Mansager was commissioned in the Infantry upon graduation from the United States Military Academy in 1985. After initial schooling, he was assigned to the 4th Battalion, 502nd Infantry in the Berlin Brigade from 1986 to 1989, where he served as a rifle platoon leader, mortar platoon leader, company executive officer, assistant battalion operations officer and battalion personnel officer.

COL Mansager returned to the United States for further schooling and was then assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, from 1989 to 1992, where he served as battalion personnel officer and commanded B Company. During his time in the 82nd Airborne Division, he deployed to Saudi Arabia and Iraq for nine months in support of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

COL Mansager studied Polish and Russian at the Defense Language Institute at Monterey, California in 1993, and was assigned as the first U.S. Army officer to attend the Polish Command and Staff College in Rembert, Poland in 1994, under the auspices of the Army's Foreign Area Officer In-Country Training Program. Returning to the U.S. in 1995, he received his master's degree in Russian and East European Studies at Stanford University in 1996, and graduated from the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College in 1997.

Next assigned to the U.S. Army's Southern European Task Force in Vicenza, Italy, COL Mansager first served as an Operations Division (G-3) Plans Officer and then as the operations officer (S-3) for the 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment Airborne Combat Team.

In 1999 he attended the Joint Military Attaché School, and was assigned as the first Assistant Army Attaché in the Defense Attaché Office, Warsaw Poland, where he served for more than three years. Selected to attend the U.S. Army War College in 2002, COL Mansager deferred attendance to serve first as the Political-Military Officer for the Office of Military Cooperation-Afghanistan and then as the Political-Military Division Chief for the new Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan from July of 2003 to July of 2004.

He has just completed a year as the Army's National Security Affairs Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

COL Mansager's significant awards and decorations include two awards each of the Bronze Star Medal, the Army Meritorious Service Medal, the Army Commendation Medal and the Army Achievement Medal, as well as a single award of the Defense Meritorious Service Medal. He has earned the Combat and Expert Infantryman Badges, as well as the Ranger Tab, is a senior parachutist and a qualified Polish parachutist.