A man stands beside the road at the last checkpost heading south out of Iraq, an small Iraqi police installation on the Iraqi side of the border as the final vehicles of the final convoy approach. As those six vehicles crossed into Kuwait, Operation New Dawn came to a quiet end. In a fitting end to Operation New Dawn, taking place in the morning hours of Dec. 18, 2011, the final crossing of U.S. forces from Iraq took place just after dawn and provided a visible end to one of the longest chapters in U.S. military history. During the 8 years and 9 months spent in Iraq, more than one million U.S. service members took part in myriad missions across Iraq.