In Book Form

(This is a compilation of the Journal Entries from www.CitizenFrank.com.)

One Soldier’s Journal
– By Frank Myers


Week One - The Prep
If you ever go to the war in Iraq as a soldier or a civilian contractor, you will spend your first week processing at an Army base like Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. Having mobilized as an Armor Captain in the U.S. Army, it’s where I found myself last Sunday, having left behind tearful friends and family to do my duty.

The first thing that strikes you about Fort Bliss is its beauty. As the plane lands at dusk, you see through the window the vast dessert dotted with resilient plant life. Then you see the Army base alive with lights, nestled against El Paso, which itself is snuggled against the spectacular Franklin Mountains. Looking west, you see the State of New Mexico and looking south, you see Mexico. Here, in this vibrant colorful refuge springing from the dessert, America gathers brave men and woman to prepare them, in a week, to serve in the Middle East. After the beauty, you notice the heat.

Without any humidity you wonder whether you have stepped into an industrial-strength-clothes dryer. Even after nightfall, you feel every bit of the ninety-five degree heat. Yet, as you soon learn, the high temperatures in Iraq range from 110-140 degrees. Temperature acclimation must be part of what makes Fort Bliss attractive to military planners as a processing base.

The week itself consists of lots of paperwork and waiting. You hurry to your next station, to wait, and when you’re done there, you wait to hurry to your next station, to wait again. Monday was paperwork and medical. If you’ve never had vaccinations, you can be given as many as nine different vaccinations, some including multiple shots. The vaccinations themselves apprise you that danger is ahead in Iraq. The vaccinations include such frightening biological weapons as Anthrax and Small Pox. Everyone gets a Small Pox vaccine, even if you’ve had the vaccination before. In order to give you a stronger vaccination, prior recipients receive 15 shots for that one vaccination.

Tuesday brings more reminders of the upcoming danger when you have first-aid training and training on how to survive a chemical attack. In these training sessions the instructors do a great job of focusing your attention. They use actual photographs from the Iraqi war, for example:

“Now we’re going to teach First Aid techniques for dealing with 3rd degree burns, in this picture take a good look at the victims of an Iraqi terrorist’s shoulder mounted missile…”

Wednesday you spend the day training at a range firing with your personal weapon. All soldiers that go to Iraq are issued a firearm. Given choices, I select the 9mm Beretta, which is a heavy duty pistol. I do not mention it to anyone here, but it reminds me the most of a weapon from a video game I used to play with my brother. The firing range is a highlight of our week, punctuated by a reminder of the soldier’s humanity: we drove the hour each way to the firing range on busses with television screens showing Mel Gibson’s movie, the “Passion of the Christ.”

Thursday and Friday are spent in military briefings teaching you about the Middle East. We learn about culture and we learn about war. You learn many complicated nuances of the Middle East culture. You learn about their "different" washing customs in the rest room, as to why you never touch an Iraqi with your left hand. Some of the things you're prohibited from doing, you wouldn't do anyway. For example, you’re never to show the bottom of your feet to someone from the Middle East. Well that ruined my favorite greeting when I meet someone:

"Hi. My name is Frank. What do you think of this bunion?"

You’re taught how to avoid the enemy attacks, and how to survive if you are attacked. You’re even taught how to deal with the media if a reporter asks you a question. The Public Affairs Officer took a show of hands from the 300 soldiers and civilians as to who watched CNN more or FOX more. No hands went up for CNN.

The weekend is a time to relax with very little to do. I brought two and half duffle bags of stuff with me and they issued me two and a half duffle bags of equipment. However, we are only allowed to bring three duffel bags with us. So the weekend is actually spent trying to decide what you take with you to war for a year, and what to leave behind. How much of the issued cold weather gear should you actually take?

The best part of the week is getting to meet interesting patriots like Jim, a civilian contractor from Tennessee. He has volunteered to return to Iraq for a second tour with his company, helping rebuild the region. His son is in the military and will be going to Iraq in a few months. Jim expressed his frustration of the negative slant in the media toward what he has seen first hand as the great positives happening in Iraq. He also tells stories about ways he has seen the enemy attack, and even kill. Yet, he is brave and wants to keep helping.

The bravery and patriotism of these men and woman bolsters your faith in our country. I met one young lady with an Ivy League education who once had a fantastic civilian job working in New York City. She was in New York on 9/11. Shortly thereafter she left her civilian life and joined the Navy.

A final example of these proud Americans is Colonel Wicks from Athens, Alabama. He has returned voluntarily from retirement to serve in Iraq. A psychiatrist, he is passionate about the morale and mental health of our troops. He is the epitome of a strong American warrior serving his country faithfully and bravely without any self-interest or personal agenda. He is sixty-eight-years-old.

I’ll be writing each week, conditions permitting, with a few thoughts and observations about my year at war. I hope you enjoy reading them. Now I’ve got to go catch a plane for a twenty-two-hour flight.


Week Two - The Flight
4:00 AM. In military jargon that would be pronounced Oh-Four-Hundred, and I don’t care who you are, that’s early in the morning. Last Monday morning, it is when I found myself standing in a surprisingly cool wind, for El Paso, with a worrisome light drizzle falling. The rain was worrisome because I stood in front of three carefully packed and repacked duffle bags containing all I could think to need for a year in Iraq. It seemed like very little. A plane would soon come, and take my bags and me across the world.

Yet, the plane never seemed to come. First they had dogs sniff our luggage looking for contraband and explosives. Then they put us all in alphabetical order, which took almost an hour consider 350 of us were flying. It did, however provide us with a bit of comic relief as the airman assigned to the task could not correctly pronounce even the simplest of names. The mispronunciations were not as funny as how far out of the ball park were his efforts. One example, “Garner” was pronounced “Gambling.”

Then they waste our time with an offer of amnesty. They bring a large red box with white painted letters “Amnesty Box.” Anyone who wants to put any contraband in the box can walk up, while everyone watches, and put anything they are not allowed to have into the box without any fear of reprisals. Those minutes passed slowly as an argument rages in your head: who is more stupid: the person who would embarrass themselves in front of everyone versus the person who is wasting our time with the offer. No one takes advantage of this golden social opportunity, so the winner of your mental debate is the latter.

After that excruciating wait in the drizzle, we began to conquer the greatest challenge the Army will place in front of a soldier traveling around the world – FOOD. Perhaps they think it helps with morale to constantly be feeding us. I am sure that it does help with morale, but I am just as sure that the extraordinary amount of food we’re offered is due to poor planning and poor coordination between the different organizations that will have us for the next twenty–two hours. I call this feeding frenzy a challenge for this reason: whereas an eighteen-year-old private can eat eight meals in eighteen hours and lose weight, a thirty-one year old Captain eats the same eight meals and gains weight faster than Oprah. After the alphabetical formation, I innocently enough, not realizing the great caloric danger ahead, eat the full, hot breakfast they offer us. I was blissfully ignorant of the eight meals ahead.

After breakfast we draw out of the armory our weapons that we will keep with us for our year in Iraq. For the first time in my life, and I daresay it would be the first time for most folks, I will fly for twenty-two hours with a plane full of M-16 assault rifles and M-4 Berettas. The people in charge have the audacity to follow the weapon draw with a briefing on what to do if a terrorist tries to high jack the plane. Yea, I see that happening. I’d rather try to rob a donut shop wearing a t-shirt that says "I hate cops."

We are then whisked back to the airport to board our plane. They search our carry-on bags with the dogs and then … feed us brunch. With nothing else to do waiting for the plane you think, hey it beats the airplane food, and you eat again.

They hold special chapel services for the soldiers in the terminal. The services are packed, and the chaplain seems to be the most popular person at the airport. There is a special mass and the chaplain is lost in a crowd of Catholics crowding in on his spiritual offerings.

Our final wait occurs while we get more briefings about what to do and not to do in the Middle East. The best parts of this briefing are the Army produced music videos. These are seriously good and I wish I could buy them somewhere. They are pieces of patriotic footage, tagged to incredibly patriotic songs like “Angry American.” If Michael Moore was flying with us he would throw up both plates of his breakfast and all three helpings of his brunch. These American movies may be propaganda movies, but they are my kind of propaganda movies.

The plane ride itself, which begins eight hours after I stood in the drizzle worrying about my bags getting wet, can be described in two words: human cargo. There is no pleasant way to fly coach for twenty-two hours. Immediately after you get on the plane they feed you lunch, and you eat your third meal in seven hours because you’re not sure when the next meal will be, and some people just eat when their nervous. Then, after bringing another drink, they bring you a “snack.” Then they bring you a drink, then dinner, then a drink, then a snack, then a drink, then breakfast, etc. You can not even get comfortable in your seat for your dietary gorging. Your body starts its own little war. There’s a battle between the pain in your neck and the pain in your stomach.

The seven movies they play for you begin to blend together. Wait a minute, you think, trying to watch the sixth movie, wasn’t Julie Stiles dating Adam Sander, no it was Drew Barrymore, who herself was a princess dating Denzel Washington, who seemed very angry in Mexico. Your brain goes that mind numb and finally you turn off the sound all together and try to guess what is happening.

There’s one lay-over in Germany which consists of an hour of standing on the tarmac waiting for the plane to be cleaned and fueled. They herd you into a fenced-in area and guard you from obtaining any dangerous items while you wait to re-board. One soldier produces a football, but it is soon confiscated as being too dangerous.

Finally you sleep a little as you fly the leg into Kuwait. Your exhausted body can no longer care about the pains in your neck, head, or stomach. You eat again, and your pains lose the war to exhaustion, an enemy that will become all too familiar in the weeks ahead.

At first you think getting off the plane in Kuwait is great, but then the heat hits you. It’s a cool summer day by Kuwait standards, only 114 degrees when you arrive. It still feels like you’re in a furnace and it doesn’t go away. The heat follows you into buildings and into buses. You can’t shake the heat. There seems to be no relief from it.

The heat is made worse by the strange sense of loss you experience as they herd people into different places. You realize you made friends during your week in Texas, and if they are going somewhere else in Iraq or the Middle East there is no time to say good bye as they are herded into a different hanger for a different next leg of the journey. New friends are gone that unexpectedly.

The night brings no relief from the heat as you do more waiting in line for more processing. They even issue you another duffle bag of equipment, including another set of cold weather gear. I am not making this up. More ominously, you're issued a flak jacket and try to act causal as you try on the two ton metal vest that they say can stop bullets, yet it is camouflaged green, so the places not to be shot are highlighted against the tan and yellow dessert fatigues you wear. I’m sure lesson one in the Iraqi insurgent handbook is, don’t shoot the green parts.

Probably one of the least favorite experiences of your life will be sleeping in the co-ed warehouse bunk beds. The men and woman just grab a bunk wherever to sleep over night waiting on your plane. I happen to sleep over a nice lady named Ruby, who by great coincidence I will work with in Iraq. Some people wait three days in the co-ed warehouse for a ride to Baghdad. I say a few nice words to the NCO in charge and find myself on the morning plane to Baghdad. The years I spent in law school having silver welded to my tongue finally pay off.

There are many ways to experience fear and misery; flying from Kuwait into a war zone is one of the worst. First you are roasted by the heat, and then you’re terrified by the flight. Waiting on the tarmac, you are required to stand in 130 degree heat, wearing the aforementioned metal flak jacket over long sleeve fatigues, long legged pants, a metal Kevlar helmet on your head and a pack on your back. You wait almost twenty excruciating minutes wrapped in heat waiting to board the C-130. I sweated more than a HealthSouth executive testifying to a Grand Jury proceeding.

The ride itself is hot and cramped. Forty Seven of us are sitting shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee, on facing rows of red canvas seats with a roaring engine a few feet away. On the almost two hour flight into Baghdad I get one chance to look out a small portal and see Iraq. It looks as if the land itself rejected life. Grey and yellow land patterns are rarely punctuated by blackish looking body of waters. You see nothing green, nothing but rolling dessert.

Thankfully an airman gave you a warning briefing about the decent into Baghdad. If you had not been warned you would be getting right with your Maker, sure the plane was crashing. See at 16,000 feet, the plane does not fear missile attacks, so the plane stays that high until the last possible moment. The pilot then slows the plane until it almost stops in mid air, and he lowers the nose. This causes a controlled fall and the plane rockets downward toward the landing strip. I now have been weightless like an astronaut. For the briefest of moments, you float. Then the pilot makes sharp turns and adjustments, each tearing another hole in your bloated stomach. Finally, at just 300 feet over the landing strip he sets the plane down in a normal landing and you would swear you’re never getting on a plane again, except that in the back of your mind you realize that a plane can take you away from here as fast as it brought you.

So I arrived in Baghdad International Airport. What’s next?


Week Three - Baghdad (Part One)
“What’s next,” I wondered as I deplaned at the Baghdad International Airport. It turned out that next was the NASCAR ride of your life.

For planning purposes that are over my pay-grade, the Baghdad International Airport is not located with the “Green Zone.” For the few of you that don’t watch any news, the Green Zone is the super-secure compound, about four square miles in size, which houses the majority of the International military and civilian leadership in Iraq. However it is about eleven miles from the airport. Everything in between is the “Red Zone.”

In order to get you from our secure camp at the airport to the Green Zone, you ride eleven miles in eight thrilling minutes. Your race car is called a “Rhino” – a heavily armored box with wheels that reaches speeds of 90-100 MPH. The Rhino is escorted by two armored jeeps, called Hummers. Each Humvee is armed with its own machine gun nest - the kind of vehicle I will follow my daughter around in when she gets old enough to date.

As if you hadn’t had enough heat yet, it gets worse and it is now accompanied by the danger of passing through the enemy territory. At each part of the trip the heat has increased. In El Paso, the high-nineties heat was bad. Then, the Kuwaiti heat (130s) mocked the El Paso heat as if El Paso was a cool spring day. Then, it gets worse as you stand in the Kuwait heat wearing all your body armor and equipment waiting for a plane. Then, you get the Rhino.

The Rhino is not air conditioned, and the bullet proof windows can not be opened. So even though the temperature in Baghdad is ten degrees cooler than Kuwait, (but 120 degrees is still 120 degrees) sitting in the Rhino is the actual oven part of the trip. Prior to the Rhino you’ve just been prepared and marinated; now you’re really baked. By each afternoon, when I had the pleasure of riding in the Rhino, the temperatures reach an unimaginably degree that is accentuated by your accessories: metal Kevlar helmet and flak jacket body armor. How else should you accessorize for a death defying trip through insurgent territory?

The Rhino is over-crowded. I sit with the left edge of my rear on a seat and my right leg holding my weight. That’s as comfortable as President Bush at a NAACP meeting. Yet, through the crowd of people, the heat, and the Rhino itself swerving as it dodges through Iraqi traffic, you can not help but look through the bullet scared windows and notice the poverty.

I thought I had seen poor. I hadn’t. In Baghdad, the wealthiest city in Iraq, the people live in a run down squalor that depresses your spirit. You soon discover the tragic irony of the destitution- it is so very unnecessary. Your first hint at the preventable nature of their poverty comes when you start to spot Saddam’s palaces, scattered throughout the city, rising above the tenements like temples to a false-god of opulence. Then, when you get inside a palace, you’re overwhelmed at how thoroughly Saddam oppressed his people. Saddam imprisoned, abused, tortured, and murdered his people, but he did more. He took the natural resources of the land and completely hoarded their value. His palaces would make Bill Gates blush. They are beautiful, spacious, and luxurious. The best shower I have ever had in my life has now occurred in one of Saddam’s boat houses, not even in one of his main palaces. Saddam was the opposite of a servant-leader, he was a power-leader, and the few insurgents left fighting the new democratic government are the remaining evil lieutenants of Saddam’s that lost power with the fall of the regime.

Entering the green zone, you enter one of most heavily protected military bases in the history of mankind. It starts in the air where you get used to hearing the constant buzz of attack helicopters seeking out the Insurgent attackers. You grow so accustomed to the helicopters that the only time that it makes you pause is when one carries the red cross of a medevac helicopter bringing in one of our fellow soldiers, wounded by an insurgent attack.

On the ground, you enter the green zone through a heavily guarded maze of cement barricades that prevents any suicide car bomber from getting close to the entrance. The entrance itself finally greets you with more machine gun nests, and two beautiful M1A2 Abram tanks. It’s a beautiful sight because you know you made it through the red zone, through the heat, without becoming the lead story on CNN. Inside the Green Zone are heavily armed checkpoints where you’re required to show special identification to pass.

Finally, through all of that I get to the drop-off point. Drenched in sweat, I strip my Kevlar, my flak jacket, gather my duffle bags, and say hello to my father.


Week Three - Baghdad (Part Two)
My father has been in Iraq since March working as a civilian. Our meeting in Baghdad was surreal as much for the locale as for the fact that I was the first family member he had seen in five months. Yet, the reunion was bittersweet. Our meeting had mutual affection, but also it had mutual commiserating. As much as we enjoyed seeing each other, we both missed so many more friends and family, their absence was a palpable shadow over our excitement to see each other again.

My father’s presence in Iraq is surprisingly not unusual. There are thousands of civilians working in Iraq. He works in the northern city of Mosul. Seeing him the first few days in Iraq was great, but his visits will be rare as the danger of traveling will prevent him from often visiting from Mosul - a city closer to the border with Turkey than to Baghdad.

Given two days to get settled in before starting work, I was overwhelmed with so much to see. My father was my guide to the places of the Green Zone. Everything seemed unfamiliar, even different from what I expected, but I was also affected by an unsettling sense that these strange locations would become incredibly familiar to me incredibly soon. I found the Green Zone safe, but relatively small.

I have one place to sleep. I have one place to work. I have a few choices of places to eat. I have two places to take my laundry. I have two places to exercise. Now, for a year, I will have no variety in my routine. We may move the location of our headquarters occasionally, but my job duties should vary only slightly over the year.

In effect I am living a life similar to Bill Murray’s movie, Groundhog Day, in which the protagonist relives the same day, over and over, until his character grows out of his selfishness. I came to Iraq needing a similar experience. Beginning a few months before my trip I began focusing on selfishness in my own life. Through some great relationships that I have developed this past year at Meadowbrook Baptist Church, many of the ways I exhibit selfishness were revealed. Before getting the call asking me to come out of inactive status and serve again, I had made real progress, but I was nagged by an uncertain feeling that my self-improvement venture was limited in its potential. Now I see that my potential for growth was capped while I was living with so much unnecessary privilege.

Perhaps I am looking on the proverbial bright side, but I feel that stripping away the luxury from my life and living in such an unchanging, but dangerous environment may allow me to have my own “Groundhog” experience. If I want to change something about my life this year, I have to change my heart and I have to change what’s between my ears. Perhaps in your own life you can find an opportunity for similar improvement.

I have also learned, once again, never to say never. I spent almost eight years of my childhood living in a mobile home. Part of that time we lived in a trailer on some land in Argo, Alabama, and part of that time in a trailer park in Irondale, Alabama. I swore, when I grew up, I would never live in a trailer again. I live in a trailer here, and am thankful for it. It is immeasurably better than a tent, where so many others have to sleep. I am grateful for what I have.

I settled in very quickly to Iraq. The food will make dieting easy. With nothing else to do when I am off duty, I should exercise a lot this year. I work fourteen to sixteen hours each day, without a day off. It’s hot, dusty, and different. Yet, by the second night I was feeling rather settled in. I felt like I was just out of town for a long business trip.

This quickly obtained sense of settlement was quickly shattered. On my second night in the Green Zone, the enemy attacked.

Week Four - The Iraqi Attacks
There are a number of “first-times” in your life that are easy to remember. Trust me, don’t try this at home, surviving your first rocket attack is easily remembered. I have always scoffed at the cliché “I’ll remember the sound for the rest of my life.” I scoff no more.

Dead asleep on my second night in Iraq, the insurgents launched a rocket attack into the Green Zone. I wasn’t any closer to an explosion than a kilometer, but the distinctive sound startles you. The explosion reverberates with a thumping sound like the ground being punched by a great fist. It sounds like an explosion being driven into the earth. It startled me awake, and I was unable to find anymore sleep that night, even long after the last rocket explosion.

I am surprised though by how fast you grow accustomed to rockets and mortars. The next night I was awoken by mortars, a sound that sounds more like a popping explosion than the more destructive rockets. I fell back asleep quickly.

The next night I was not even awoken by a car bomb, and now the frequent nightly attacks rarely phase me. They usually occur about 11:30 p.m. local time, when I’m awake anyway working the night shift. Few of the rockets or mortars hit inside the Green Zone. They seem to explode most often across the Tigris River from us, where the journalists live in the hotels. I don’t know why the insurgents have such bad aim. I am beginning to think they want the artillery to fall on their own people, for their own disruptive purposes.

The soldiers I work with are cheerfully blasé about the attacks. The enemy only fires a few shots each night. If the insurgents fire more, our anti-artillery units find their positions for our attack helicopters and for our cavalry patrols. The insurgents have learned to fire a few rounds and wait till the next night to do it again. You learn to ignore it, and even joke. We make friendly wagers about who can guess the time of the night’s rounds. Some nights there aren’t any attacks.

On my 12th night in Iraq I felt the explosion of the closest round to which I’ve been. It was a mortar round that exploded within 200 meters of me. I was outside, clearing ammunition out of my Berretta so that I could go in a mess hall to pick up a midnight meal. The mortar round made my ears ring and I almost hit the ground. I think my knees buckled because I was startled much more than from actually feeling the explosion.

Yet, it is easy to become jovial about the attacks. They are random and the chance of being hurt by one is extremely small. Each round is a hand of death that reaches down at a single small place. Most find nothing. It is more like the silly arcade game where you try to drop a metal hand into a pile of teddy bears and trinkets. As many trinkets as there are in the glass box, you never seem to grab a prize.

The enemy can not fight us directly. They resign themselves to picking at us with their terrorist attacks. Recently they did finally attack us directly in a suburb of Baghdad called Sadr City. The media reported we killed about 300 of the insurgents with very few injuries on our part. No wonder they hide and fire artillery at us.

It is sad, however, that the insurgents are trying to prevent great prosperity for themselves, their family, and their country. I work in the Division Headquarters for the Corp of Engineers in Iraq. There are nine of us directing all the operations for all the Army Engineers working to build Iraq. My job is much more like being a senior executive of a 20 billion dollar company than a soldier fighting a battle. My weapons include Power-Point and e-mail. I am in charge of the night shift, so for a few hours I am responsible for quite a bit.

The Engineers are overseeing nineteen billion dollars building schools, infrastructure, and roads. We’re restoring electricity and water services. It’s giving me a chance to see a county being built from almost scratch. Yet, the insurgents are trying to stop the progress of freedom and independence. Once, long ago, Americans faced a similar choice and we chose correctly.

In 1865, the American Civil War wound down to General Lee’s surrender on April 9 to General Grant at Appomattox. The American Southern states entered the reconstruction period in which the Northern victors helped rebuild the South. Leading up to General Lee’s surrender, President Lincoln feared that there would not be a true surrender.

See, General Lee faced a choice advocated by many in the South. He didn’t have to surrender his troops. Instead, General Lee could have released his remaining thousands to blend into the Southern landscape and begin waging a guerilla war. It was the worst fear of the North. Considering the great agricultural resources of the South, thousands of guerrilla warriors could have created a disruptive insurgency that would have lasted for generations. General Lee chose to surrender completely to Grant. By so doing, Lee staved off what would have been decades of violence that seems to be beginning here in Iraq.

Perhaps the great work of the coalition to build this country on behalf of the free people of Iraq will overcome a lengthy insurgency. The year I am here I will see first hand the reconstruction efforts. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Week Five - The Iraqi People
Last Thursday night the city of Baghdad erupted in gun fire. Standing behind the sand bags of a bunker behind our building, looking out over the Tigris River into the Red Zone, the hail of bullets was startling in its volume. Red tracers raced upward like burning flares. Shots were fired from all parts of the city, and later we would learn the shots rang out across Iraq. It was by far the largest orchestrated firing of weapons by the Iraqi people since the Multi-National Forces entered Iraq seventeen months ago.

No one was hurt by the gun fire. No damage was done. I was safe on the riverbank watching and listening to the gun fire. The Iraqi people were far from hostile, they were happy. The Iraqis celebrate by shooting their weapons into the air.

Thursday night, Iraqi beat Portugal 4-2 in the opening round of the 2004 Olympic Soccer matches. There were no mortars round fired that night. Iraq celebrated.

http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/summer04/soccer/news/story?id=1858017

In a display of joy that would make a Detroit Redwing fan blush, Iraq's citizen rose with a unified voice to celebrate the stunning upset by their team. Young men forced to practice in dirt and in fear, and whose German coach quit weeks before the games, left the shadow of Saddam to display the true spirit of the Iraqi soul.

The game itself was an analogy for the struggle of the Iraqi people. They fell behind 1-0 in the game when their own player accidentally kicked the ball into his own goal. Iraq then came from behind to win. The signs abound of a culture awakening to freedom. The day following the historic soccer match, as Coalition forces fought alongside Iraqi National Guard units against the insurgents and the terrorists in Najaf, the Baghdad insurgent sympathizers attacked here also, but not with a weapon of war. The Baghdad sympathizers attacked with a weapon of democracy.

Upwards of 12,000 sympathizers protested peacefully on the bridge leading into the Green Zone. No one was hurt, no shots were fired. A small but vocal minority of Baghdad citizens, who support the insurgents, led a peaceful demonstration that demonstrated more than their opinion. They demonstrated their freedom. Seventeen months ago, no such peaceful demonstration would have been possible. The Iraqi people had no voice, they had a despot. Such a democratic expression would have been violently oppressed. Instead the protestors were allowed to demonstrate just as they will be allowed to participate in this week's conference to select governing delegates. In July, Iraq became free when the Iraq people resumed control of their government and their country. In January, under their new constitution, the Iraqi people will be governed by civil servants elected in free elections.

Let freedom ring.

Delegates gathered today to elect the 100-person interim legislature. There are 1,000 conference delegates: 500 chosen in local caucuses and 500 members of non-governmental organizations, political parties and other groups. These Iraqi patriots, representing all facets of Iraqi life, bravely lead the way towards full and free democratic elections in Iraq. These delegates are opening new avenues for social advocacy and social empowerment. All because of a war unpopular in Europe, and controversial at home, but a war with undeniable positive effects.

In Iraq, as in Afghanistan, America's War on Terror reverberates with global positive side-effects. The best example is in the plight of these country's women. Renowned for their suffering as repressed second-class citizens, Iraqi and Afghani women are now discovering a new way to live: free.

In Gerda Lerner's 1993 "The Creation of Feminist Consciousness," the noted scholar of woman studies included in her definition of the feminist consciousness as women's awareness "that they belong to a subordinate group; that they have suffered wrongs as a group; that their condition is not natural, but societal determined." The Iraqi and Afghani women fit the definition perfectly. The repressed feminist consciousness of Iraqi and Afghani women has blossomed into something that would never have been existed without George W. Bush's War:

Hope.

While still suffering from religious constraints, the political constraints have been eased. These women are gaining new access to education, careers, and opportunities. Most importantly they are finding their voice.

In next week's update I will submit for your consideration the story of Fatima, one such voice.

Week Six - The Story of Fatima
For Fatima, a coincidence of happy circumstances allowed her strict Muslim father to enroll her in one of Iraq's few private Christian schools. He valued the better education of the private school, and he happened to have a close friendship with the school mistress. Therefore, he was able to look past his steeped Islamic faith and put his only two children, both girls, into a private Christian school. This happy coincidence introduced Fatima to her life-long love, the English language. A language she would not have been exposed to as much or as positively in the Muslim school.

Besides a better education, the Christian school taught Fatima, who still today in her fifties is a practicing Muslim, to believe in herself and not to get trapped in a repressive Islamic world-view of being a second class citizen. So she fought. She fought the stereotypes, and she fought her father. He wanted his two daughters to be well educated, but to live in roles well-steeped in Islamic tradition. Through her teenage years the fights with her father lessened in severity as he lost every battle with his daughter. She would not conform to his wishes for a traditional life-style, but he would burst with pride at her academic achievements. Achievements which led her to Baghdad University, where she pursued deeply her life love: English Literature.

Fatima absorbed our Western culture, but from afar. Her family, while rather well off, was not wealthy enough or politically connected enough to allow Fatima to travel from the Middle East. She only ever managed one brief vacation trip to Turkey. Yet she dreamed of seeing America, or any part of the Western world. A fantasy realm that tantalized her more by the nearness her work brought her to it.

Working as an English translator for one of the Iraqi ministers, she was exposed daily to business foreigners. She would catch fleeting, sparse glimpses of Western culture. She read so much of America that it became more than anything else a fantastic mirage flirting with her dreams as unattainable as her freedom. The tantalizing exposure to the Westerners cemented in her mind the depressive thought that she would never see the places of her dreams.

Then the Americans came. President Bush's popularity soared as America was victorious in the Gulf War. The first Gulf War. Fatima wept bitterly when the Americans stopped short in 1991 of toppling Saddam. America was so close, but for Fatima they might as well have never come at all. America left and Fatima's brief flirtation with happiness was gone. Her hope wilted away as the International Coalition withdrew.

It could well be argued that George Bush the First would have been re-elected had he gone on to topple Saddam in 1991. There is no doubt the Coalition would have faced a similar lengthy post-Saddam occupation as we have now, but it is an occupation that would have included a united world, as countries such as France and Germany would have actively assisted in the reconstruction of Iraq. The year long struggle to pacify the Iraqi insurgents would have allowed George Bush the First to stand for election as a successful and ongoing war president, instead of the listless, unfocused domestic president.

Very likely, there would have been no Perot candidacy if America and the International Coalition were fighting to end the Iraqi insurgency while the world coalition worked to rebuild Iraq. For Clinton it wouldn’t have been “It’s the economy stupid.” Clinton would not have been elected in 1992.

It was Bush the First’s politically fatal mistake, and may cost his son’s re-election. For if George W. Bush had been running for President now as a successful Commander-in-Chief of only the popular Afghanistan invasion, Senator Kerry’s inability to make the election about any domestic issue would have made Kerry’s election difficult to imagine.

Bush the First’s mistake also almost cost Fatima her only chance of seeing any of the places of her dreams. She relapsed into the void of her personal shell, resigned to her place in the world and in history. Then the terrorists flew.

Seventeen months ago, American forces swiftly captured Baghdad and the world watched as Iraqis tore down Saddam’s statue. The day Baghdad fell to the coalition; almost every Iraqi was frightened of the American forces. Most stayed far from the invaders. Fatima carefully made her way down to Saddam’s main palace where the invaders had established a head quarters. Unsure of her safety or her future, each frightened step toward the American forces was fueled by life-long dreams.

With weapons of war pointed at her, she waited hours, huddled with a few other brave Iraqis, waiting to be interviewed for a job as a translator. She was paid five dollars for her first day of work. Her income, responsibilities, and opportunities grew as she excelled as the best of the Iraqi translators. She moved out of her tiny cramped apartment and moved into a spacious flat, and she finally, after a year of hard work, got on a plane bound for America. Enjoying every anticipatory moment of her 22 hour flight in coach.

For two weeks in Washington, D.C., Fatima visited the monuments of our democratic success. She visited friends she had made while working for the Americans, and she saw our land with eyes through which we could never look. She wept when her visit ended. Ask Fatima now and she says she is alive for the first time.

“Before the invasion, I was not Fatima. Now I am Fatima.” She says with a voice raspy with happiness and an infectious twinkle in her eye. This month, she celebrated her first birthday of real freedom. She now lives in a country free of Saddam and in a country ruled not by foreigners but by Iraqis building a democracy. At her party, surrounded by her few family members and her dozens of friends she said:

“The cake is in a shape of a heart. A heart represents love, kindness, trust, warmth, and lots of feelings. All of these are given to me by my big family, most of them are Americans, there are some Ukrainians, Italians, Spanish, and South Africans too.

“Why do I call them my family? They gave me a good and respectful job, they gave me home, I don’t mean that I didn’t have home before, but it was a very small uncomfortable apartment. They trusted me, loved me, protected me, treated me delicately, sent me on to wonderful trips, then recommended me to get another excellent respectful job in the Embassy, which was one of my dreams.

“So they made my dreams come true. Since I didn’t have children, I took the youngsters as my children, and the elders as brothers and sisters. The rest of my big family is not here today, many of them are back home in the United States , Italy, Ukraine, Spain, and some Americans in Germany. Last year, they were here and celebrated with me. The present they gave me was a small bell of liberty, the main symbol of the mission my big family came for.”

She also has a new dream, one day she wants to live in America. In my opinion she may have survived Saddam, war, and reconstruction, but now she faces her most formidable enemy: the INS.

Yet, her story encourages me. Encourages me that the evil insurgents trying to kill us and stop us from building schools and power plants may not in the end win. Freeing Iraq has been difficult, but the people of Iraq, like Fatima, are worth freeing. For the story of Fatima, is the story of Iraq, and it’s the story of our shared humanity.

Week Seven - Ibn Sina Hospital (Rated M for Mature)
Medivac helicopters fly into the Green Zone too frequently. Their contents are always a mystery, but you know their not empty. Their destination is Ibn Sina Medical Hospital on Palace Road. It’s a triage hospital where the soldiers that can be saved are stabilized and sent on to better hospitals out of Iraq. The operation is familiar to you if you ever saw any television episodes of MASH 4077.

At the battle, medics do as much as possible to keep wounded soldiers alive while their airlifted to Ibn Sina. Then, the wounded are treated by lifesaving nurses and doctors, all being paid far less than their civilian counterparts. The extremely professional medical staff is jovial and they each appear in good spirits. Meeting them, you would think your meeting any professional medical staff any where in the States, except these are working with too few resources in a dusty cobbled building that would not meet any American health standards. The staff is also welcoming to visitors, such as the three of us from my unit, who want to meet the wounded soldiers and thank them personally for their sacrifice.

There are many phrases we use in our everyday speech that if we were to stop and examine closely, we would realize we are overusing the language. The word love is an example. “I love watching Alabama Football.” Or, “I love my new car.” Well, to be perfectly honest, better language for those sentiments would be: “I am fanatical about Alabama Football.” Or, “Look at me in my new car.” I am now sure we overuse the word hero.

The human damage you see in a triage hospital is deeply disturbing. It has not changed my opinion that we are fighting a just war for a just cause. If anything, the isolation I feel and the shocking exposure I’ve now had to the consequences of war has steeled my resolve that the American principles we cherish are worthy of such great struggles. In our country there are domestic heroes everywhere you look. Teachers, police, and firemen do as much to protect and serve our country as any soldier that comes home from war unscathed. Domestic heroes are on par with uninjured soldiers, but injured soldiers have no equal.

Sergeant "Portland" is one such hero. The recent fighting in Najaf produced many American casualties. Portland's squad cleared a house of insurgents that were using the roof to snipe the Americans. At the bottom of a staircase, Portland’s battle-buddy covered him while Portland kicked in a small door. Cowering in the storage room was an insurgent who started shooting. Portland started shooting. Both were wounded. Both were medivaced to Ibn Sina Hospital.

The Americans have an amazingly compassionate medical policy. If we wound you, we heal you. In the intensive care section, the Iraqis and Americans lay side by side emotionally past any hatred, only wanting to live.

Meeting Portland was a real privilege. His exposed upper body showed a muscular man in his mid-twenties, well painted. For the un-hip, paint is a slang word for tattoos. Besides the obvious bruising and cuts, the only clear sign of his injury was a giant cast on his left hand. The cast was so large that only four of his fingers stuck out the plaster. The index finger must have been tucked inside the cast.

After we talked about how he was hurt, we asked him about home. His home is south of Portland, in Oregon. He tells us how he loves to ride his motorcycle. He jokes about needing to learn how to work the clutch without his left index finger. Oh. I was wrong thinking the cast was covering his finger. I try not to show any emotion. He’ll be leaving more than his blood and sweat in Iraq.

We meet more soldiers who were wounded in the Najaf fighting. They made great sacrifices, but too often we don’t thank the families enough when a family gives up a child for our country. Families make great sacrifices as well.

In a patient lounge we meet two teenage marines that each took over a dozen pieces of shrapnel from mortar rounds. Within a day these heroes are sitting up, watching television, seemingly in great spirits. However, their attitudes are very somber, but it has to be if you see what they see, and know what they know. They were in the same platoon as Lance Corporal Alexander Arredondo.

The day before our visit to the hospital, Arredondo’s father looked out his front window to see three Marine officers in dress uniform step out of a van and walk toward his door. They are known as the casualty squad, and they are used to inform parents when sons have been killed in combat. His weeping was loud and inconsolable. Overwhelmed by a degree of grief a parent is not ever supposed to know, Arredondo’s father fetched a propane tank from his garage, broke into the Marine van, and set himself on fire.

Read the story by clicking here.

There should be no covering this dark side of the war. War must be entered into carefully, and justified thoroughly. You must consider the pain of war before you can decide whether to support a war. There are many things I will refrain from reporting for the sake of decency, but at least a little must be told so that you can appreciate the suffering of the survivors.

Walking the hospital hallway, my eye was first drawn to a tattered green bed sheet pulled across a dusty white door frame. It is what passes for privacy in the inadequate hospital building. A handwritten note asking for privacy is taped to the bed sheet. A passing nurse tells us that a soldier with 100% third degree burns is in their suffering. The sounds are awful and while I am there a chaplain is called in to administer last rites.

From the room next door, a hardened veteran nurse comes skulking out. Talking to her later she is a gritty, sassy New Jersey lady who has developed a tolerance to the disgusting painful things she sees. But on this day she saw too much. Coming from this room, she grabs Colonel Jim, a co-worker, and cries softly while he holds her. A few minutes pass, she thanks us for the support and she goes back to her duties.

Inside the room we find a soldier who suffered a mortar blast to his head. We take turns in the room praying for him and placing a comforting hand on his leg. I wish I could describe what he looks like, but his head was completely wrapped in what appeared to be six to eight layers of bandages and gauzes. A multitude of IVs lines and an oxygen tank surround him in his stark room.

While I watch, a thick red line of blood starts to creep from under his mummy like bandages down his chest. The nurse leaves the room for a minute to get something else to attach to his body to catch the blood and keep him as clean as possible. They think he may be paralyzed, and all you hear from him is soft grunting, muffled by the bandages.

“Is he trying to talk?” I ask, and the nurse just shakes her head no. She places her hand on his, and increases his morphine.

“But he is grunting.” I argue back.

“He doesn't think he's grunting.” She says, giving me a compassionate look I don’t deserve.

"He thinks he's screaming.”

Week Eight - Of Courage and Cowardice: Journalism in Iraq
(I submitted this article to Rolling Stone as a response to an article in their magazine.)

Courage and Cowardice: Journalism in Iraq

I am neither a writer nor a journalist. Yet, I feel compelled to criticize one. Perhaps it is akin to a fan second guessing the manager of the Yankees, but this is the only way I know to express my disappointment. Except for one journalist, which I’ll discuss below, the journalists I’ve met in Iraq have been serious, dedicated, and brave. In the past thirteen years, Iraq has become a proving ground for journalists to demonstrate their conviction to write stories and file reports that inform the rest of the world what is happening in this moment of history.

Perhaps the single greatest night in journalistic history occurred in the Al Rashid-hotel, a place I ate dinner tonight. In 1991, Bernard Shaw, Peter Arnett and John Holliman huddled around a satellite telephone and described for a fascinated worldwide audience the utter chaos and destruction they were witnessing outside their window in the Al-Rashid Hotel as the first Persian Gulf War began. Downtown Baghdad was aglow with war.

Red tracer fire arced upward as invisible American bombers approached the city carrying pent-up destruction. Then the explosions began. The strategic bombing of Baghdad initiated a month-long air war that decimated the military prowess of the Middle-East’s strongest dictator. With excitement, amazement and fear twanging their voices, Shaw and Arnett, gave a world audience such a vivid description of the judgment day before them, that still today there are people who remembering seeing the bombs dropping on Baghdad the opening night of the Persian Gulf War. Of course, there were no images. CNN simply showed a picture of the journalists and a map of Iraq, but it did carry the vivid words of these brave journalists.

Shaw, Arnett, and Holliman’s brave journalistic tradition has been carried forward to this war in Iraq. Journalists are in danger here. The insurgents seem to be particularly attracted to journalists as ripe targets of kidnapping. As Iraq prepared to take the Olympic field against Italy to play for the 2004 bronze medal, the world learned of the brutal murder by Iraqi insurgents of Enzo Baldoni. He was a popular Italian journalist who gave his life to bring Italians a clear image of the world events transpiring in this chapter of history. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini described Baldoni as a man of peace who was in Iraq "to tell the tale of the suffering of the Iraqi people."

Italy won 1-0, denying the Iraqis their only shot at an Olympic medal.

As I write, French authorities negotiate vigorously with the Iraqi insurgents holding two French journalists. France is a country that supported Saddam Hussein prior to the Coalition invasion, and has refused to help in building a safe and democratic Iraq. Even as France acts as an implicit ally of the terrorists, the terrorist demonstrate their inability to make intelligent, civilized choices. Unfortunately their have been far too many examples of the danger journalists face in Iraq.

“The numbers of foreign journalists missing is rising and we fear that journalists are now becoming the number one target of armed militants,” said Aidan White, International Federation of Journalists General Secretary. “This is a troubling development. Killing and threatening to murder unarmed civilians are acts of inhumanity that provide shocking evidence of the continuing security crisis in Iraq.”

More than one hundred people have been kidnapped in Iraq by insurgents. The number of journalists killed in Iraq is approaching thirty. The work of these brave journalists is critical. The first drafts of history’s chapters are written by the journalists risking life and limb to uncover what is happening.

No part of that developing history will be written by Rolling Stone’s Janet Reitman, who has embarrassed herself and her proud professions with the story she filed on August 11th entitled “Fortress of Fear.” I met Ms. Reitman as she flirtatiously pranced half-dressed around the International Zone. Of the dozens of Soldiers and civilians she interviewed in her week-long jaunt, she was only able to find one to give her on-the-record quotes that she could twist to the purpose of her story: to make the mistaken case that the American Soldiers and civilians living and working in the International Zone hide in fear of a phantom danger.

The story itself is journalistically weak; especially considering its lack of sourcing and rambling commentary. As difficult as it is to ascertain the point of her article, it is clearly negative in a number of ways toward the people living and working here. In a war with 160,000 American Soldiers, she found but one civilian to make inappropriate and regretted comments.

Her story of excessive drinking fails to mention that none of the drinking is done by American Soldiers or American civilians working for the Department of Defense. For we are bound by General Order Number One: Absolutely no alcohol will be consumed by any American Soldier or DOD civilian in Iraq. General Order Number One is taken seriously, and Soldiers who violate it are sent home with a court martial. The drinking pool parties she refers to occur with non-Americans and American civilians who do not work for the Department of Defense. What is more misleading is the accompanying photograph showing two American soldiers with an Iraqi man. The caption and juxtaposition implies that these Soldiers are partaking in a “frat” party. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Worse, she implies that International Zone residents have an irrational fear of Iraq. She cites the fact that we take up to three days to plan safe movement in Iraq. Considering the hundreds of Americans killed and injured by ambushes and planted explosive devices, why choose to travel with less security and safety? She mocks a Soldier who expresses concern for her safety in Iraq. Considering the dozens of journalists kidnapped and murdered in Iraq, why not be safety conscious?

She downplays the daily danger of rocket and mortar attacks we are exposed to as we go about spending almost $19 Billion dollars to build Iraqi hospitals, schools, roads, power plants, water plants and infrastructure. For all her haughtiness there is no indication that she visited even one injured person in the hospital she passed daily on her trips around the International Zone. If she had visited the Ibn Sina hospital, as I have, she would have met the fatal results of mortar and rocket attacks. I saw one Marine whose head was completely covered in bandages because he caught the brunt of a mortar to his face. He died twenty minutes after I prayed at his bedside, and his family will not be having an open casket at his deserving memorial service.

There is good reason we build such strict security around the International Zone. The International Zone houses supply centers, hospitals and headquarters. Through the twentieth century, as technological advancements in warfare have been made, military leaders have had to stay further away from the front lines of the battle. To put her ridiculous story in perspective, imagine a journalist June 7, 1944 writing a story criticizing Gen. Eisenhower for not being on a boat landing with the wave of brave, but doomed, Marines on D-Day. Imagine a journalist writing a story criticizing Norman Schwarzkopf’s command center for following along behind the front line troops during Operation Dessert Storm, instead of being exposed to the battle.

The only apology she owes is to the family and friends of the dozens of dead journalists that have been brutally kidnapped and killed trying to tell to the world stories from Iraq. The tone and message of her entire article disrespects those journalists who have made the ultimate sacrifice for their craft.

Update Nine - Morale & College Football
Sep 9. 2004

Dear Coach Shula,

Hello from Baghdad, Iraq! Congratulations on your team’s impressive win over Utah State to open the 2004 football campaign. I am writing to share a word of encouragement with your players and to give them a sense of appreciation of why they work so hard.

I’ve been stationed here in Baghdad doing a one-year tour working with the Army Corp of Engineers as we go about spending $19 Billion dollars to build schools, power plants, pipelines, roads, and hospitals for the people of Iraq. The American soldiers here work and live under a constant threat of mortars, rockets, car bombs, and gunfire. With the many difficulties and obstacles we face, it understandable that we don’t smile much. Don’t get me wrong. The soldiers here are steeled in their resolve to help rebuild this country, despite the insurgents’ efforts to kill us. Iraq is an emerging democracy of freedom and hope, and we are proud to be helping in this critical effort.

Yet, with our struggles it is safe to characterize our morale as steady, but muted. The time I have spent here would not be characterized as delightful or even fun. This past weekend, however, I saw a remarkable and positive change in the spirits and attitudes of the American soldiers here. College football started again!

Suddenly, in just one night, almost every soldier was talking, bragging, discussing, debating, and reveling in the exploits of their favorite college team. The enthusiastic discussion of college football so engaged our time and energies that our Colonel had to actually order us to chill out, to take it down a notch! Unaccustomed to talking about anything but SEC football, I have found that there are rabid college football fans from all parts of the country. I even had to endure the rantings of a higher ranked officer as he argued that Boise State is soon to be a college football powerhouse.

College football can even be a uniter. As personally repulsive as it may sound, I found myself arguing alongside a Florida, Auburn, and yes, even a Tennessee fan, as we defended the correct notion that the SEC is America’s superior football conference.

Growing up an Alabama fan, and being an Alumni, I know that not seeing my beloved team play this year is one of the real struggles of being away from home. It probably ranks right behind missing my family, friends, and church. You can imagine then the utter joy I experienced in this forsaken dessert when I was able to get the radio telecast through the internet!

Yes, it came on at 3:00 am Baghdad time. However, once the bellowing vocals of Eli Gold came emitting through the speakers, I escaped from this war, closed my eyes, and remembered so clearly being a teenager taking a break from fishing with my grandfather as we sat in the back of his pick-up truck while eating homemade sandwiches packed in a cooler listening to another Alabama victory. Good times.

The team’s performance last Saturday made me very proud. The team shared the ball, and what I heard described was not the play of egotistical teenage Prima Donnas, but young men of character that have put sportsmanship and the team ahead of personal glory. Great job guys!

What we are doing here is very serious and important, but what you are doing there is important also. For we do not only fight to free other people from oppression, we fight to protect what we love about America. College football is part of what we love. That’s why the soldiers seem so happy now that their beloved teams are playing. It reminds us of the good, fun things about our country we love so much.

I’m not saying college football is as important as fighting a war. After all, while a 19 year-old kid in Bryant-Deny stadium was returning an interception for a touchdown, a 19-year-old kid in Baghdad was returning small arms fire. I’m simply writing to make sure you know that what you’re doing really lifts our spirits. You have definitely lifted mine.

Roll Tide,

Captain Frank Myers
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Baghdad, Iraq
Originally from Birmingham, Alabama
frankmyers@gmail.com
www.frankmyers.blogspot.com
P.S. My mouth is writing checks you had better cash for me. :>


Update 10 - It was going to be my best day...

I had already been planning to write about September 11, 2004. With every day being the same here, I finally had something different to write about. We had a memorial service for the third anniversary of the terrorist attacks. The tone and the point of this update changed dramatically when the terrorist decided to mark the occasion as well.

15:00 (3p.m.) Sept. 11, 2004

There’s a beeping noise.

Go away.

More beeping.

I opened my bleary eyes and turned off the alarm on my Iraqi cell phone. The alarm must be broken. As soon as I close my eyes - it wakes me up again. I used to dream when I slept. Heck, I used to sleep. This time I got five hours of sleep and was grateful for it. I’ve been averaging four hours, with the occasional all-nighter tossed in with a few twenty hour work days on occasion. My actual schedule is a 17 hour night shift, no days off, no holidays. Fridays, the Iraqi day off, I sometimes only work a fifteen hour shift.

Everything aches, and the cold shower, while powerful, is not restorative. It so hot outside that I choose to only take cold showers. It helps in a lot of ways.

Let’s see, what should I wear today?…ummm…oh! I know, desert camouflage! I think to myself and smile as I stare into my wall locker. The little humor I get around here appears between my ears. Unless you count the forced laughing I do when I pretend my boss’s jokes are funny. If you know me well, you know my abundant sense of humor, and you would be surprised at the restraint I exhibit at work. I’ve learned long ago not to be funnier than the boss. I do get to pick between wearing the desert uniform baseball type-cap or the floppy “jungle” hat. So many choices.

Over my uniform go the flak jacket and the Kevlar helmet. These boots are made for walking, and off I go trekking the kilometer from my trailer to our division headquarters. The sidewalks are broken up in places from combat damage and neglect. You have to walk around and over cement barricades. The dirty white color has been bleached in the raw dessert sun. As you walk you feel bleached as well, you move deftly into any shade you can find from the red sun. There are deceptive palm trees, growing in this strip of green hugging the life-giving Tigris River. It’s a trip I make every day, but doing the same thing every day dulls your senses.

Along the way I notice very few Iraqis in the Green Zone. There’s very little traffic. In retrospect that should have been my first warning that something was wrong.

The headquarters building is a new location for us. Until recently we were on the river and we moved deeper into the Green Zone because the Iraqis wanted us to move. It’s their country, so we do what we’re told and give up the building. How can anyone say the Iraqi government is our puppet? It’s more the other way around. They tell us what to do, and we do it. Having just moved in, we haven’t fortified it. No sandbags yet, no machine gun nests - just a walled in compound and some guards. Following these events, within a matter of days, we would have massive blast walls installed with a gigantic crane.

First up this day is checking the status of the memorial service for the September 11 victims. The night before I had been tasked with preparing part of the service. I allowed myself a few extra hours on the internet scavenging photos, music, and content. I put together a tribute video to the victims. In places I use actual audio from the tragic day. It’s hard to even listen to it with a flood of three-year-old memories coming back. We had two viewings of the video so that everyone could fit inside the conference and watch it. People who came in chatting and lighthearted, left without speaking.

Talking to the Command Sergeant Major in charge of the ceremony, I also discover that I am giving the invocation for the service. I had volunteered the day before, but expected them to be able to obtain a chaplain. No chaplain, so I have about ten minutes to come up with a prayer for the service. As I am sure you would expect, it is actually easy to pray about September 11, there are plenty of hurt feelings to address – unfortunately a wealth of spiritual material.

The video, and prayer is well received, and our General gives a fine keynote address to the ceremony. We had a trumpet player do taps, and we unfurl a flag right at the same moment three years ago that the terrorist attack began. As nice as the ceremony went, and even with the many nice comments I received from a few of the over 200 people in attendance, I wish I has not been involved.

I never got a chance to just sit back and experience the tribute. I was working on the video. I was showing the video. I was working on giving the prayer. I gave the prayer. I assisted with preparing the programs. I handed out programs. When the tribute ended I showed the tribute video again. All told, I spent very little time actually peacefully reflecting on the day. What time I did spend reflecting occurred while I watched from the front the soldiers and civilians standing before me in the ceremony. Their faces told stories that could never be captured on paper.

The shortage of soldiers over here causes us to wear many hats. My main duty is being the Division’s Night Battle Captain. After the ceremony, I briefed the General in my capacity as the Division’s Information Officer. A daily part of my job is to review everything the Engineers are doing in Iraq and find potential media stories for our Public Affairs Office to make into press release. In a lot of ways I am applying the marketing skills I learned getting my MBA at the University of Alabama. Perhaps when I’m finished here, I may look into Corporate Communications. A benefit of the job is that I get to see all the positive progress we’re making in Iraq. The press releases are rarely published.

Unusual for my day was a trip to eat dinner. My usual schedule has me coming to work around 16:00 and then eating midnight chow while working at my desk until I leave to exercise and sleep around 9:00. Even dinner on this day is special because the Command Sergeant Major asks me to go with him to eat.

The Command Sergeant Major looks like a human pit bull. No taller than me he is deceptively stocky. I say deceptively, not because he isn’t strong, he is, but because he is fast. Just today, as I write this, he ran a two mile run as part of PT test. He ran it in thirteen minutes. Not bad for someone in their fifties.

He has obtained the highest rank a non-commissioned officer can achieve in the American military. Whereas technically I am his superior officer, in truth, officers at least up to the rank of Lt. Colonel respect the Command Sergeant Major so much that usually what he says goes. While he peppers his speech to me with a respectful tone and the occasional “sir,” every time he asks a favor or makes a suggestion, I jump to do it. Senior NCOs in the military are treated by officers with the respect they deserve. It is a misnomer that officers and NCOs have different education levels. Most senior level NCOs, like our Command Sergeant Major have a college degree, and also like our CSM, even a master’s degree. He is intelligent, tough, and respected. I have a lot to learn from him.

So eating dinner with him is a special time, we talk and get to know each other. I hang on every word. After dinner, I fall back into my schedule. I work on the reports that I have due. I analyze a ton of data for relevant information and whereas I am used to analyzing case law and legal materials, I’m honing my business analytical skills. Running an Engineer Division, executing a $19 Billion mission, is like running a Fortune 500 company - with people trying to kill you.

Every night a different civilian or junior enlisted soldier serves as my assistant. We call them Staff Duty Officers, and they basically sit in our Tactical Operations Center with me, so that when I go out to the perimeter for security checks, or I have errands to run, our TOC stays operating 24-hours a day. They usually get to sleep a few hours while I am in the TOC working. This night my SDO is a civilian named Michael. It was a quiet night until about 05:00, when the Iraqi Insurgents conducted their largest and most coordinated attack since we occupied Baghdad 19 months ago. We found out about the attack the hard way – when the first rocket exploded near us.


Update 11 - The Sep. 12th Attack

The first explosion occurred 160 meters east of our headquarters building. It threw up a smoky white cloud of smoke, dust, and even some debris. Sitting at my desk in our Tactical Operations Center, working on a report, the walls and windows violently shook as I fell from my chair and grabbed my “battle rattle.” That is our slang for the Kevlar helmet and flak jacket we wear during attacks. When you’re wearing it, the weight and bulk makes you feel like you’re rattling around inside it. This time I was rattled before I even put on the vest. A second explosion, not so close, happened on the heels of the first while I donned my battle rattle.

Michael, the civilian on duty with me, took longer to get into his gear, but he too was down and crouching as the explosions continued. We talked back and forth, not really listening to each other as we verbalized our surprise with a few angry words. It wasn’t Sunday school talk either. Honestly, there was no fear, only anger that the insurgents would be so annoying. The insurgents are nothing but a nuisance.

I ducked beside my desk for the next explosion, by far the largest explosion I’ve felt while being in Iraq. 600 meters south of us, the insurgent rocket happened to actually hit something meaningful. An Iraqi worker and a few bystanders died when the rocket struck his fuel truck causing a massive explosion as the fuel exploded. The ensuing blast damaged a building causing it to catch fire. It created a massive thick black smoke that was visible from outside our location.

I didn’t know any of this crouching by my desk. All I could do was watch the walls as they shook. At this peculiar time, I started wondering how much I would actually see if a rocket struck directly on my location. I imagined the walls imploding, but I debated whether it would happen so fast as to even know it was happening.

After this third blast, one of telephones started ringing and without considering whether I should stay put hiding behind the desk I crossed the room and answered it in a voice that sounded more level than I felt.

The caller identified himself as a Colonel from our subordinate unit stationed at the Baghdad Airport eight miles away. He said that they were under attack from indirect fire and that he needed to talk to whoever was in charge of the Division.

It seems funny to me now, but I actually looked around the room as if there was anyone there other than my civilian assistant. Nope.

“Sir, this is Captain Myers, the Night Battle Captain. Can you give me a SITREP?” I asked for a situational report. He described damage by mortars that struck the building they were headquartered in. There had been some damage to their building and a vehicle in their parking lot had been destroyed. Good thing it wasn’t a fuel truck. I was satisfied that he didn’t have anyone hurt. I explained our situation, as another explosion could be heard, and promised we would call him back once things settled down. How annoying.

Hanging up, the phone, I heard a new sound. It sounded like a feint crackling noise. Maybe like a string of firecrackers, or someone throwing pebbles against a wall. I told Michael to answer any calls and I went outside to check on our guards and investigate the sounds. Once outside I didn’t need anyone telling me what the sound was. I loaded a magazine into my 9mm as I recognized sporadic gunfire.

Our guards were understandable anxious as they watched the walled entrance to our compound. The gunfire had to be at least 500 meters away. It sounded like a gun battle occurring at one of the guarded checkpoints leading into the Green Zone. As we listened, louder gunfire, like that of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, entered the fray, and overhead an Apache attack helicopter raced toward the fighting. Within a few moments the gunfire went silent.

The large white cloud from the first explosion was dispersing as the guards told me the first mortar, like almost every enemy mortar they ever fire, hadn’t hit anything. They pointed me toward the fuel truck explosion, and I was sure that one rocket had hit something. The black rising smoke was ominous. I gave them instructions, and went back to check on Michael. I told him I was going to the roof to complete my assessment of the situation and I told him to get out the emergency phone numbers while I was gone.

Civilians and soldiers started showing up as I headed for the roof. I checked to make sure they were uninjured as I made my way up. From the roof, it was clear that the palace had been hit, but it wouldn’t be for another hour before I found out about the fuel truck.

The indirect fire continued and a strange feeling descended upon me. Usually there were two or three mortars and the attack ended. This was much more than that. I then considered that across Baghdad at the airport, there was an attack occurring there also. Add to all of that the small arms fire at the checkpoint. This was not some random occurrence of insurgency that happened to correspond with the States remembrance of September 11th. This was a carefully planned and orchestrated insurgent attack that later I would come to find out included a car bomb at Abu Grab prison. I would also come to find out how pathetic the insurgent attacks are. Clearly this was the best they could do. This attack involved the most planning and orchestration of any of their attacks. Yet, it did almost no damage and we killed plenty of bad guys this day.

I descended from the roof and carried out our procedures for actions upon contact. I called each section head on their Iraqi cell phone and told them I needed them to check on their people and call me back. When I couldn’t get a section head, I called their deputy. By the time my first superiors started arriving from being asleep in their bunks, I had talked to about sixteen key people and had the bulk of the accountability completed. As soon as my Colonel came in and took over, I felt immensely better. I continued making calls, including getting specific intelligence from our secured land line. It turned out that all of our people were uninjured, just slightly emotionally shaken by the extended attack. Michael did a great job as he never got flustered and performed admirably.

In Iraq, while it was September 12th, because of the time difference, it was still September 11th back home. After my Colonel took over, and I had a brief moment between duties, I called my wife Renee and told her that whatever she heard on the news, that I was of course o.k., and I hung up. All told, the pre-dawn attack lasted about forty minutes - considerable longer than the typical four minute insurgent attack, yet just as futile.

It turned out that it was a bloody day for the Iraqis. Whereas we suffered a few injuries from the fourteen indirect fire rounds that landed in the Green Zone, and we lost a single Bradley Fighting Vehicle in the ensuing battles, we suffered very few if any American casualties. News reports have the Iraqi losses at around 70.

More frustrating, than the injuries, is that the only real affect of an insurgent attack is that it temporarily distracts us from the good work we are doing on behalf of the Iraqi people. Money we spend repairing insurgent damage is money that will never be spent building the Iraqis a school, a hospital, or a power plant. The insurgents only succeed in delaying and preventing construction of the country. I can’t say construction of their country because the bulk of the terrorists are not Iraqis but terrorists migrating here to attack Americans. They don’t care about the Iraqis and neither does the part of the international community, like Germany and France, which refuses to help here. Good thing we didn’t have that attitude when Hitler unleashed his hell.

Following the thousands of American lives we sacrificed freeing France and Germany from an evil tyrant, interim aid programs were not working, and by the middle of 1947 it was clear that a new course was needed. America could either pull out of Europe, and let it fend for itself in the post war chaos, or America could rise to yet another world challenge. On June 5, 1947, Secretary of State George Marshall in a speech at Harvard University described an amazing commitment of American resources to help war ravaged Europe. America launched the Marshall plan. Between 1948 and 1952 America spent thirteen billion dollars rebuilding Europe. Today, America faces a similar challenge as we become safer by bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East.

As easy as it is to sit and calmly reflect on these broader issues, now. A week ago, I had no such time. I ended up pulling a 20 hour shift that day and followed it up the next day with an “all-dayer” what night shift people affectionately call an “all-nighter.” I did get an amazingly long seven hours of sleep the next night, but by the third day from the attack I was emotionally drained and tired when the news reports started coming in about another tropical storm becoming a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico.

I followed the projections and my heart sank the first time I saw a map of the hurricane. It was one of those projections which showed a dot for where the eye was supposed to be every 12 hours along its future path. One of the dots was exactly on my mother’s home in Gulf Shores, Alabama. The next dot was exactly on my house in Birmingham. The storm even had an ominous Cold-War name: Hurricane Ivan.

Update 12 - Damage Here, Damage at Home

For my parents, Hurricane Ivan did turn out to be a significant event. After the hurricane, they no longer have a beach front condominium as their main address. The damage, while not overly severe, condemned their condominium. The good news though is that insurance and the real estate market will mitigate the damage quite nicely.

For my wife and kids in Birmingham, Ivan turned out to be anti-climatic. A new experience for me was feeling helpless as I watched internet images of the Hurricane approaching Alabama. My frustration was alleviated somewhat by the fact that the US Army Corps of Engineers has great hurricane tracking data and damage assessments because the Corps of Engineers does a lot of reconstruction after hurricanes. I was able, from thousands of miles away, to follow Ivan closely as it approached Birmingham. Yet, there was still much to worry about, the projections thought Ivan could still be a level one hurricane when it passed over my house.

I probably overreacted, but I sent my family to my in-laws house in Nashville, Tennessee. I wasn’t taking any chances. It turned out that the worst my wife and kids would have experienced was a few hours of power loss, but that doesn’t matter. The worst part of being in Iraq is the inability to do anything to protect my family while I am over here. Soldiers and civilians are sent home too frequently for either compassion leave or duty termination when something tragic happens back home. One nice lady here was sent home when her husband was arrested. Granted that’s not an issue I worry about with Renee, whose idea of being wild is reading a book on the sofa instead of putting the next load of laundry in. She is crazy that girl, you got to watch her. Yet, her safety and my kid’s safety cause me far more sleeplessness than any rocket or mortar here.

I missed a night of sleep when Ivan hit the gulf coast. With the eye crossing at Gulf Shores, where my mother had long evacuated up to my house before Ivan arrived, I laid awake transfixed by news coverage of the pending natural disaster. But I found solace in my imagination. I simply envisioned the future next year with everything being all right. No one was hurt, and I was arriving home from my year here. I could see the family and friends meeting me on that great day. I just replayed the scene over and over again in my head and the worry and anxiety about the hurricane went away. Along with time spent praying about it, I found a peace in imagining a better day ahead.

Hope requires vision. If you can't see the cure for what ills you, you can't feel hope. Christopher Reeves, who tragically passed away this week, would say that he maintained a massive physical therapy routine because he could see himself walking again. Dr. Jerome Groopman of Harvard University writes in his book, The Anatomy of Hope, that hope is the prerequisite of any cure. Be it psychosomatic, I don't know.

Envisioning a better future, the future you want, can't help but make you feel better. What do you envision? What spiraling thoughts of happiness sway your moods to elated highs of hope. Instilled highs of hope for which you can not duplicate with a drug, you can not duplicate by depending on another. A high of hope that shrugs off a rocket attack and embraces the better day coming. What would your better day look like?

The experience led me to wonder about what the soldiers worry about here. For the most part they worry like I do about family back home. The soldiers in the hospital worry about getting better and the soldiers conducting the few combat mission worry about being injured, but the rest of us worry about the same things you would worry about if you were away from home on an extended business trip. Yet,worrying about home, when it seems more obvious to worry about dying, is not the only enigma of serving as a soldier.

In the quiet of pending danger, I've come to reflect on many parts of my life. I find so many inadequacies that need remedying when I return home. The mistakes of my past pile up in front of me and scream at me like an ethereal Drill Sergeant seeing parts of my soul I'ld rather keep buried. Yet facing my meager morbidity does not invoke depression as much as it invokes resolve. Resolve that the forgiveness I have from my mistakes does not hold me down but strengthens me to be a better man than I have been.

The strength to grow from my mistakes is fueled by a new peace I have about the value of what I am doing with my life. What I am doing here is important and it may be the first important thing I have done with myself. I no longer seem capable of being satisfied with a moderate confidence in my capacity to do good. Whether it stems from a stronger, uncompromising faith in God, or the pride I feel being associated with the American Army fighting a war to spread freedom, I know that my new passion for life is extreme and overbearing. I see it in others here as well.

Many soldiers are finding such inner strength. In America we are born not as individuals to fend for ourselves in this harsh world but we are born into a continuous and protective whole in which we share so many common experience as Americans of family and friends and we are safe to grow moderately as individuals as part of that collective.

However, here soldiers are finding that the safety of that collective environment is stripped away and we must face our mortality again as individuals. This creates isolation and loneliness as we are pulled out of the safe harbor of our friends and family. Grappling with such pain leaves but one impression: life is not meant to be lived moderately.

Most people back home live lives of quiet desperation in a landscape littered with mediocrity - sometimes lured and stirred by breath-taking visions of something greater. Most people, and I was as guilty as any, finds themselves mired in a stagnant meager life surounded by a plentiful, abundant, and safe land of freedom taken for granted. I am no longer in such a place and it is like flying as a bird over a place and realizing how small a place it is.

It is with such overt awakening that I decry ever returning to living a barren, useless life - a life without self-confidence or self-respect. As I embrace my many faults, limitations, and cowardices, I choose to shake off the fictitious bonds of safety to which I have grown so accustomed. I no longer will exchange inaction for safety; meekness for protection.

If I return from this foreign land it will be to embrace the shepherding of my family and to finally cast of the yolk of selfishness that prevents me from working for a grand dream so that I can watch the next Seinfeld rerun. I will have a vision of a bold, strong family and then I will dream even grander thoughts that will find action regardless of risk and without regard for comfort.

I can see in the embolden growth of so many around me that this resolve to embrace life is a common experience of soldiers. Following World War II the fruit of such resolve manifested itself in the explosion known as the Baby-Boom generation. Opera Wynfrey recently had "the World's Largest Baby Shower" for the 640 pregnant soldiers and soldiers' wives at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. All 640 were in the late stages of their pregnancies, of course corresponding when the first American soldiers rotated home from Iraq. After smiling at such a thought, consider the deeper implication with me.

It was true after World War II, and it is even more true in this modern age of contraception, very few pregnancies, if any, would result if the families didn't want them. Soldiers return from facing their mortality and growing their world vision not just motivated to spend time again with their spouse but to live a bolder explosive life. A life engaged in the creation and furthermost of greater hope and consequence than the falsely justified meager mundanity in which they lived before they went to war. There are 640 families choosing to find more meaning in life than the temporal thrills designed to get us to the next weekend.
Whether these brave soldiers are able to so succinctly articulate these transformal affects I am not able to say. I do know that my experience here is similar to every soldier to which I discuss this. In just months of being at war changes occur whether they are overt or more subtle. Soldiers do worry about home, but our thoughts linger longer on the great possibilities that await in living with a renewed zest for life.

Our thoughts can be quickly refocused on the war. Earlier this week I was very fortunate to be in my trailer asleep, a kilometer away, when a rocket finally landed at our Headquarters. I awoke to the sound of the blast as the rocket struck besides our building where we are constructing new trailers so that we can sleep next to where we work.

Two Egyptian workers and an Indian, sitting during a lunch break, died when the rocket struck. An Indian woman at the work site was injured and rushed to the hospital. She survived, even as the other three did not. A single American MP was slightly injured who was already living in one of the trailers.

I am very thankful I was not there to see the carnage. Others I work with, including one of my best friends, Mitch from St. Louis, were not so lucky. Mitch was one of the first responders and worked on keeping the girl alive. The scene of three dead bodies, one of which still held a Pepsi can, is seared into his mind.

See why I count myself lucky to have been off duty?

Update 13 - His Family Doesn't Know He is at War

Have you ever been in a sand storm? Since coming to Iraq I’ve been in two. I don’t know what other sand storms are like, but the two I’ve experienced haven’t been like the movies where the sand attacks you and slaps you around. There were no biting particles tearing at my face. I wasn’t swept off my feet by the wind.

Here the sand storms are much more subtle. Walking through one is like watching something from a movie projector and then pulling a brown screen down to filter what you’re seeing. You lose visibility and have a real brown out. The edges of your world shrink to just a few dozen meters and the rest of what is out there disappears into that strange brown cloud. It is much more like a fog, but instead of clouds of vaporous water descending to cling to the ground, you are enveloped in floating sand that makes breathing impossible and presses down on you like the world is draining away - very unpleasant.

In a way my world here is similarly draining away. I have lots of friends here but only four close confidants. Three of them are leaving in the next two week to return to the States.

Of course Major Bill will still be here. Thank God for small miracles. He has accomplished Herculean work to improve the security here. He has implemented so many common sense security improvements that a suicide bomber or even a covert attack will have to be extremely lucky not to be foiled at our headquarters. He is serving a year like I am, but my other three confidants are civilians, and civilians generally only do about four months here. As I am in my fourth month of my year, it’s a natural time for the civilians that arrived just before me to leave.

You may remember me mentioning each of them to you. Ms. Ruby is the widowed grandmother I slept with when we arrived in Kuwait - on bunk beds, silly. I had the top bunk and she was down below the one night I had to stay in the co-ed warehouse. As luck would have it, she had a desk next to mine the first few months we were here, so we got to know each really well. She is dating a neat guy back in the States, and I hope to hear she is getting remarried soon. That’s love actually.

A small example of Ruby - in the mornings she was bringing me pastries, until I mentioned I am trying to eat healthy. Every day since then, I’ve gotten fruit. But now she is leaving, and it has only recently sunk into my thick skull that she really is heading home. It dawned on me when she recruited two others to bring me fruit in the morning.

Like Major Bill, Mitch has been a guy I’ve confided in. I’ve shared with Mitch many of the disappointments and the struggles I’ve had here. There have been things hard about my job here that I haven’t shared publicly. Maybe when I’ve left here, and I’m out of uniform for good, I can talk about some of the frustrations I’ve had here. Right now, this is too public a forum for that.

I mentioned Mitch from St. Louis last week. He is almost my age and has my energy and enthusiasm. He is the kind of guy that would be one of my best friends if we lived in the same town. We are strangely alike, and it’s rare I say that because I know I’m a pretty unique character. Some would say “different.” Some would say “special” in a tone that implied I rode the short bus to school.

Mitch was the one who responded first to the rocket attack that killed the three people here at our compound. We’ve talked a lot about that but I’ve never asked him to describe the gruesome scene to me. I am thankful for being on night duty when that happened during the day. My trips to the hospital gross me out bad enough and even there the injuries are generally cleaned up and bandaged. Not fresh, raw, and exposed.

Since last week’s attack, Mitch hasn’t quite been the same. I can only tell because I’ve gotten to know him so well. There is sadness in his eyes. He hasn’t been bounding with zest. He started keeping a daily note pad pulling off a page a day counting down till he goes home. He has a lot to look forward to when he goes home. A new home he’s never been in and a beautiful wife anxious to see him.

As much as I have tried to talk him in to coming back after a few weeks break at home;

As much as I'm going to miss him;

As much as I’ve needed him around this last week;

I’d volunteer to stay an extra year if Mitch could have left two weeks ago and missed the rocket attack.

But he is strong. Mitch’s contribution here has been so important to our mission of rebuilding Iraq that at his farewell party today he is receiving the 2nd highest Civilian Award a person can receive from the United States Government. I’m proud to say I know him. I am grateful to say we’re friends.

Finally, and hardest of all, Mr. Renee is leaving. I’ll be honest. At first, I couldn’t stand the guy. It’s not his fault. My wife’s name is Renee. In our office when you need to talk to someone or give them something, you just yell out their name. Its part of being in a tactical operations center. Things are hectic, sometimes confusing, and always fast paced. So every day, for the eight hours my sixteen hour shifts overlaps with everyone else, I hear my wife’s name constantly being shouted out. (Its gotten worse, the new sergeant’s first name is Chris. My best friend and younger brother’s name is Chris.) So, at first I didn’t like him being here at all. It was like some sick cosmic joke – here Frank leave your wife for a year and let’s constantly remind you of her… But, like everything else here, you change and grow accustomed to what’s difficult and make the brave seem common place.

Mr. Renee acts every bit like a gruff, old, Hispanic grandfather. Born and raised in Texas, he spends half the day cursing me in Spanish and the other half of his day teaching me to be a better man. He has been a fantastic mentor. If it were not for Major Bill and Mr. Renee, I’m sure I would have been sent home in disgrace by now.

I’ve never been on active duty. When I chose a legal career over a military career, I started drilling with the Alabama National Guard and then the Army Reserves without going on Active duty except for training purposes. You just can’t walk onto Active Duty as a Captain and succeed. The active duty military has its own atmosphere and culture that is supposed to be instilled in officers from the time of their first assignment as a “butter bar” Second Lieutenant. I’ve needed a crash course in it. Major Bill and Mr. Renee have been my instructors.

Mr. Renee is aptly qualified for such schooling. He retired from the Air Force with the highest rank a noncommissioned officer can have. He doesn’t take grief from anyone, even our bosses who deal out plenty of grief. He is a Vietnam veteran and reminds me often how much worse war was back in the ‘Nam. Yet, without his perspective, I wouldn’t know half of what I know now.

For example, our war here in Iraq is missing the hate so many soldiers had for the Vietnamese people. Without a draft what we have here are volunteers that are here to serve America with pride. Also different from Vietnam, at least until the last few weeks of this election, we felt that we’ve been completely supported by our country back home. These factors, Mr. Renee tells me, makes this war quite different from the war in ‘Nam.

Especially since we see the daily success America is having here we know this war is winnable. He doesn’t think the soldiers in ‘Nam felt like the war was winnable.

My negative first impression of Mr. Renee, not his fault simply bad fate for him to share a name with my wife, started changing when we started to talk in private. If I was to isolate the one moment my opinion of him leapt in a positive direction, it would be when we started to talk about his family. He has a great big loving family, and he has lied to them every day he has been here.

They don't know he is Iraq. They think he is in Bosnia – a safe country where there is no fighting and very little risk.

His wife and children would be worried sick for him if they knew the daily danger he faced to serve his country. Mr. Renee has spared them the sleepless nights of so many soldiers’ families. His family doesn’t cringe at news reports of International Zone suicide bombers. His family isn’t putting a brave face on the natural fear felt when a loved one is in harms way. So he sacrifices for his country to be here, and he sacrifices for his family to keep them oblivious.

For it is a personal sacrifice for him to be here without his family knowing it. He can’t share with them his own fears and concerns. No one there is praying for his safety in a war zone. He doesn’t get care packages and love letters. What he gets is a swelling pride in being an American and a swelling heart in knowing he has a lot to confess next week when he returns home. I don’t know his wife. I look forward with great anticipation to meeting her next year, but I know one thing. My Renee would absolutely kill me if I pulled a stunt like that.

I don’t know that I’ve been here a day without Mr. Renee teaching me something new about how I should handle a situation here. His hard work, hard experiences, and thoughtful insights have led him to possess that elusive trait that can’t be bought: wisdom. With a heart of love, driven by his own Christian love for others, he has taken me under his wing and helped me survive here.

He leaves this week, about the same time as Mitch, and then Ruby leaves shortly thereafter. Outside as I write this I see that the sand storm has lifted. However, I also see a personal sand storm descending. Three of my four friends here are leaving. Like in the sand storm, the edges of my world are draining away, but already I know I will be better for having been in it.


Update 14 - From the Home Front

By Renee Myers, PhD.

Now that my husband has deployed to war, I wish I had spent time talking with my maternal grandparents about what they went through when he left for World War II. I don't have that chance now, but I am resolved not to let this experience go by without sharing it.

Frank has been asking me to write one of these weekly updates. I think I have been avoiding it because it is hard to put into words what this has been like.

When Frank was first asked to volunteer, it was a big shock. It seems hard in many ways, but in a strange way it makes sense. Frank had been thinking about making a
job change. To facilitate that, he had even completed a Masters in Business Administration in his “spare” time. Yet, neither of us felt a peace about what to do. After a five year hiatus working as a stay home mom, I returned to work full time as a psychologist. I really enjoy my job and the flexibility of being in a private practice allows me to keep my children as my first priority.

When Frank was deployed, we were very grateful that we had my additional income as we could not have made it financially otherwise. Also, work has helped me keep some
semblance of sanity through this difficult time. My heart goes out to the women who stay home full time and their husbands go off to war. I couldn’t imagine the solitude of being home all day and then alone all night. At least I have a career during the day to focus on. Yet there are woman who move across country from their families and friends when their husbands are stationed in remote parts of the country. Then, these woman find themselves alone there. Especially if they don't work, the loneliness must be unbearable. So the fact that I had just started working again is a blessing and a good thing.

Another good thing about the timing of Frank's deployment was that it has allowed him to close down his law practice, which he had been considering doing for some time. However, an added stressor for me has been fielding the lingering phone calls from past clients and answering mail that comes in. I am doing this is addition to working full time and taking care of our two-year-old and our five-year-old.

Most of the time, feelings of loneliness compete with feelings of being overwhelmed. I am a person who does not like things to be half done and about everything in my life is half done these days. Whatever is bugging me most at the time gets finished, but everything else has to wait.

Going through this experience has made me really emphathize with the plight of a single mom. I never appreciated the value of an extra set of hands to help with daily tasks. The value of having another opinion on daily decisions. Someone to talk to about daily life. Just having someone there. Now, I appreciate more than ever how much time Frank spent with us.

Fortunately, we have been so blessed to be a part of a wonderful church. Meadowbrook Baptist has been providing assistance above and beyond anything I would have ever anticipated. Our Sunday school class has marshaled its forces and brought us meals, mowed our yard, fixed things around the house, provided babysitting, and even given gift cards. One family has sent their cleaning lady over to my house every other week since Frank has been gone! [Editors note: Doesn’t sound like she wants me back…]

These efforts have been an incredible help.

Probably the single greatest thing that has made things easier since Frank has been gone is that he has been able to make brief phone calls to us almost every day. It is wonderful to be able to hear his voice and know he is ok. Also, at the age our kids are, they really need to be able to talk to Daddy as they can't read his emails.

Both kids have missed Frank greatly, but Josh, our five-year-old, in particular expresses the most sadness about Frank being gone. A couple of weeks ago, we got a package from Frank where he sent Josh birthday presents, including Arabic fishing hats and a camouflage wallet.

That night if you had walked into Josh’s room you would have discovered him sitting on his bed staring at his daddy’s wallet. If you had asked him what he was doing you would have heard him say, “I miss my daddy.” What can you do? What can you say? Ask him what his daddy is doing and he tells you. His daddy is fighting bad guys and keeping us safe.

Halloween was two days later and Josh had been planning on wearing either his Batman or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costume. After getting the package, remembering his daddy so passionately, he chose to wear his desert camouflage uniform that matches Frank's uniform. I can't tell you how that touched my heart.

I know Frank has shared about what he has been learning this year. The two things that I am not very good at are the two things I have to learn to be better at this year. One is to be more patient. I have a tendency to be quick tempered and there are numerous situations every day where it is easy to lose my cool. I have to practice patience with my kids and with daily hassles that come my way, because now I can’t take a break from parenting. I don’t have a husband home to dump the kids on and take a hot bath or lay and read a book. This is my burden, my sacrifice, and I soldier on.

The other thing I am not good at is asking for and receiving help. I could not be keeping my head above water if not for all the supportive friends that we have. It is still hard though to call and ask for assistance when you know that everyone else is busy too. I am getting a little better at that though.

As hard as this year is, I know that God is using it to make both Frank and I more
dependent on Him and to refine our characters in ways that they would not be refined otherwise.

In closing, as I have been thinking about writing this update for several weeks now, I have been thinking of tips to give to those who read this about how to best help families of soldiers that you know. We have been so grateful for all the assistance we have received and will want to help others in the way we have been helped when Frank comes home. It is hard to narrow down to the top three things that have been most helpful to me, but here they are:

1) having someone help clean the house
2) gift cards
3) offering to take the children for a few hours

Finally, I want to thank all of you who have been emailing and encouraging Frank as he has been gone. I know it has meant a lot to him and it certainly means a lot to me too. Maybe when then is over I'll have some insights to share.