and tonight we honor major arron bert, a proud member of our national guard. five years ago he was given the remarkable task of training hundreds of iraqi soldiers. bill tucker has his story. >> i want to get that decision made up today. >> reporter: arron bert has an innate desire to make a difference. as a citizen he manages capital projects in the seattle parks department. as a soldier, he was in baghdad in 2004. he was one of only four national guard captains charged with training some 700 iraqi security forces. >> we fought in an urban environment that was chaotic. and it was trying to adapt our thinking to a new fight, where reaching out, making connections with the populace, you know, the old adage of winning the hearts and minds, was coming into play, but it wasn't in vogue yet. the job that we were doing was a job that normally special forces, you know, green berets, do. and yet here we're a bunch of national guardsmen. i was a finance analyst at the time with the city of seattle. we had a schoolteacher with us. we had a mechanic who worked on high-en