DAVID MARK BENNETT
"Dave"

Biographical Information

Dave Bennett is an active duty Army Major and native of Moses Lake, Washington. He enlisted in the US Army in 1982 to become a Russian interrogator/voice interceptor. Following advanced individual training (AIT) at the Defense Language Institute, he attended the U.S. Military Academy Preparatory School (USMA) and graduated from USMA at West Point, NY in 1988. His traveling in the military has included visits and tours of duty to Afghanistan, Alaska, Belarus, Germany Hawaii, Kazakhsta, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, South Korea, Russia, Texas the Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.

He was deployed to Southwest Asia under Operation Desert Storm with the 5th Battalion, 7th Air Defense Artillery (PATRIOT) from 1991-1992, to Central Asia as a Russian-speaking Foreign Area Officer (FAO) under Operation Enduring Freedom from 2002-2003, and to Iraq for Operation Iraqi Freedom 2005-2006. Holding a Master's degree from the University of Washington in Slavic Linguistics, Dave speaks German, Russian, and some Spanish.

Dave and his sons, Christopher, Eric, Alex, and Ryan

Dave is the divorced and remarried father of four boys – Christopher (born in 1990), Eric (1991), Alex (1994), and Ryan (1996). In October of 2005, Evgenia Aleksandrovna Ilyushenko and Dave married in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. They look forward to being together once Dave redeploys from Iraq in the summer of 2006.