Repost from Zen Traveler.

This is heartening to hear when there is so much to the contrary being spewed by MSM...

Zen Traveler is a former Green Beret who runs a PSD company, currently in Iraq looking after a major news organization. It's a blog that should go on everyone's blog roll. He's a good source for objective introspection about the country and where it is headed.

Observing Change July 9, 2008
A lone cameraman "shoots" concertina-topped blastwalls depicting hope for Iraq's future.

I’m heading home in a day or so, my short time here in Iraq has come to an end, causing me to become slightly reflective of those things that have recently changed.

Over the past months:

The security situation has vastly improved, to the point where violence is the exception and not the norm. Daily explosions and gunfire that could be heard throughout Baghdad is now a rarity. Today automatic weapons are fired less in anger and more to celebrate local weddings and soccer victories.

The streets are full of pedestrians going about their daily business; children happily walk to school, the shelves of neighborhood shops are full of goods, and kids peddle refreshments to gridlocked motorists.

The road to the airport is undergoing a face-lift; painted murals adorn concrete blastwalls, new bright and shinny guard rails, palm trees, irrigation, and new hope-filled billboards. They still haven’t fixed the heavily pot-holed road though.

Main battle tanks, Bradleys, and Strykers are a rarity on the Baghdad streets now. HMMWVs still flit around but chances are they belong to the Iraqi Army and not the Coalition.

Muqtada al-Sadr has been severely marginalized and his Madhi Army fractioned into many dysfunctional pieces.

PSDs still operate with an amazing degree of aggressive disregard for those around them. The Iraqi Government, however, is on the verge of striping their legal immunity. I’m waiting for the first PSD to get pulled over by the Iraqi Police and ticketed for speeding☺

The Baghdad airport is undergoing renovation. Operations have moved to another terminal while the old one is “improved”.

The government is reconstructing the many traffic circles in the city that were destroyed during the war. Work is progressing slowly but there is still no order to the traffic that circumvents them.

The Iraqi soccer team has enjoyed great success, acting as a unifying force for this country. Soccer is the one thing that every Iraqi can get behind and support.

All-in-all Iraq is improving greatly albeit slowly, certainly not at the pace that many U.S. politicians would like to see. Nonetheless, the average Iraqi is seeing his or her country rise up from the rubble caused by years of despotic rule, warfare, and subsequent sectarian violence. At the end of the day, that’s all that really matters.

Divorce and Deployment

When things were going really well between me and the X-husband, we used to shower one another with gifts. We have spent almost all of our time together in a long-distance sort of relationship; first he was in Korea while I was in New Mexico, then he was in Kansas when I was in Texas, finally I moved to Kansas shortly before he left for Iraq.

We bought each other things like personalized dog tags with etched colored photographs of ourselves on them so that we could always hold a picture of one another when in uniform. The best gift that I think I ever got him was the one he took to Iraq with him before all things between us went sour. I had a silk pillow embroidered with his favorite photo of me on it, and it's been the pillow he has slept on since he left. 

The next thing I was going to send him was a series of Photo Blankets; of me, of his family, of the dogs, of the house... whatever. 

You see, today I was going through the house, and I found that silk pillow. I held it to my chest, and thought about what I was missing. He and I had a lot of plans, once upon a time, before everything fell apart. I know I should burn all of these faded memories and photographs, but for some odd reason, I can't. I don't blame the Deployment for why we are divorced, I blame us. But sometimes I just can't figure out where it all just fell apart.

PTSD- keep the phone on just in case.

Some people think I'm a crackhead for always having my phone on the loudest setting no matter what the hour - whether I am sleeping, driving, working, partying, it's always on. I do that for a few reasons.

One, because that drunken phone call in the middle of the night with the inebriated voice on the other end slurring "I can't (*barf!*) drive, I'm to drunk to be driving... can you come get me? Pretty please with tequila on top?" is one I don't want to miss. There is no excuse for a DUI, and I think that endangering yourself is one thing, endangering others is unforgivable. Alternatively, they could give me the call of "I'm in jail, can you bail me out?" but those I wish I could ignore.
The other phonecall my line is always open for will be a series of sobs followed by "Elaine, I can still hear the gunfire. I can't turn off the voices".

It's an old story, one we've heard since people began funneling home from war. You have to take that call. I say again, you HAVE to take that call, because they may never feel like they can ask for help again, and they may internalize their loneliness even more. If you don't seize that opportunity to help that very second, you may never get another chance.

I say this as a warning, if you know someone that needs help, the second they ask for it, you must grab them or they may slip through your fingers like so many soldiers lost to their invisible wounds.

Take it from me, don't live with the regret that you could have done something. It's something you will never forgive yourself for. If you have the slightest suspicion they are turning to you, take it.
(RIP, old friend. Sorry I didn't realize what you were trying to tell me)

SGT Mayor's fight with cancer

SGT Mayor (pseudonym) is a soldier in the Army Reserves. Late last year he was diagnosed with cancer.

With a wife and two year old baby to feed, the procedures, chemo, and whatever else it is that they do to treat cancer began to take a toll on him financially. In February he had to have a bone marrow transplant which left him unable to work. Through kind donations from some blog readers and the help soldiers and national guardsmen, they managed to pull through and we saw marked in him physically, and emotionally. 

SGT Mayor is now in need of another transplant, and his platoon sergeant (my co-worker and close friend, Cowboy) is the donor, and his platoon are helping off-set the costs of the procedure.

Had SGT Mayor been just another civilian, I doubt the would have the rallying support of all these people around him. Had he not been a soldier, he would not have had such a willing donor. 

We talk about sacrifice in the services a lot. We talk about what we give up, what we lose, how many liberties we must forsake for the sake of donning the uniform. Rarely do we talk about the benefits. 

It is with distinct pride that I say that I am a part of an organization that would look out for their own like this. 

(Learn more about Cowboy at Toughgirl101)

Airman Deploys After Losing Son in Iraq

Airman Deploys After Losing Son in Iraq
July 17, 2008
Fort Worth Star-Telegram

FORT WORTH, Texas - In a few days, Francisco Martinez will land in Iraq.

He is one of tens of thousands of men and women who, for different reasons and motivations, enlisted in the armed forces, knowing that they'd someday end up there.

For Martinez, Iraq is a kind of perdition, a receptacle for all the dark emotions, anguish and guilt that have buffeted him for the last three years.

When Martinez steps off the airplane, he will be in the country that took his only son, a 20-year-old skateboarder and budding graphic artist whose loss is felt every single day of his father's life.

This deployment - in fact, his entire enlistment - is completely his doing. Nobody forced this on Martinez, except maybe the sniper who put one well-placed bullet in Spc. Francisco G. Martinez on March 20, 2005, in Ramadi.


Joining the Air Force Reserve, after a 17-year break in his military service, was Martinez's way of making sense of and coping with his son's death, a way to remember him by being around young men his age serving their nation.

As a condition for her support, he had promised his wife, Maria, that he wouldn't volunteer for a tour in Iraq, that he would only go if ordered. But Martinez broke his promise this year and raised his hand, hating that he broke his word but feeling that he could not honorably serve with people doing more than him.

"He was such a part of me," he said, "and a part of me died that day. But it is so important to keep him alive in some way. I can't let such an important piece of me die."

Martinez leaves for Iraq with all the usuals - rifle, night-vision goggles, cold-weather gear, a sleeping bag; in all hundreds of pounds of gear issued by the U.S. government.

Packed tightly in one of his trunks is his son's camping chair, used by "Paquito" during his tour in Iraq. Big Francisco has always been known as Paco; by extension, his son was Paquito, a 2002 Eastern Hills High School graduate.

"My son sat in this chair," Martinez said. "I've taken it on every exercise we've had, and now it's going to Iraq with me."

Martinez is old enough - 44 years - to be the father of many of the men he will share a trailer with in northern Iraq.

A computer programmer and systems analyst accustomed to a six-figure salary, Martinez now wears the stripes of a staff sergeant, the equivalent of a buck sergeant in the Army, pulling down half (about $4,400 a month) of what he used to earn.

As a member of the security forces responsible for protecting the combined Army and air base, he will work in a guard tower, perform searches, work the gates or patrol the fence lines, possibly all of them. He doesn't know yet.

He will be deployed for six months, a long time by Air Force standards but only half the deployment of soldiers.

Martinez's unit, the 610th Security Forces Squadron at Naval Air Station Fort Worth, is responsible for providing airmen for just such missions and has for several years. About 25 airmen from the Fort Worth unit will leave on this deployment.

The 610th has not sustained a casualty in Iraq.

He watched other men and women volunteer during his time in the unit, and he saw some get tagged for an involuntary deployment when there weren't enough volunteers.

Increasingly he felt conspicuous because he had not deployed, while others had already been more than once. He felt the time had come for him to step up and fulfill his duty, promises to his wife or not.

"It just felt wrong to be the one guy who hadn't deployed even once," he said. "I could have always waited until they exhausted all the other people and called me up. But I wasn't going to wait until all that happened. These are my friends and my co-workers."

Martinez is one of the unit's most respected and well-liked troops, and not because of his son's death in uniform, said Senior Master Sgt. Herlinda Carreon. A lot of it has to do with his willingness to step up, she said.

"There are still a lot of people who don't know about his son," Carreon said. "They like him and respect him because of the sort of person he is. A lot of times troops respect rank, but when you get both, an airman will really listen to you."

Monica, the 7-year-old daughter of Paco and Maria and the spoiled little sister of Paquito, moved her bed into her parents' room a few weeks ago.

When her father leaves, she will move the bed out again and just start sleeping with her mother. Her father already carries a drawing by Monica of a little pond and a parent duck and two baby ducks and a big purple heart.

"I'm goin to miss you," it says.

For all the difficulties and adjustments of this deployment, they seem to have fallen hardest on Monica, whose fears have reared up in drawings and nightmares.

"Going to Iraq, for her, means you don't come back," Martinez said. "She has had a very hard time with this."

Martinez landed on an idea some months ago - to show his daughter that there are happy homecomings, that deployments don't all end in funerals.

Three times, he took her to Dallas/Fort Worth Airport to see troops return home, some of them Martinez's friends from the Air Force Reserve.

"We never received her brother, except in a casket," he said. "I went with her for one motive, to see this is what it's like when people come home. All these embraces and the happiness with these families. It was fantastic. We all needed to experience that."

Unexpectedly, it steeled Martinez's resolve to go to Iraq. The only way those embraces and tearful reunions happen, he reasoned, is because someone else stepped up and took their place overseas.

"I will have a direct impact on that happy reunion, that moment of pure joy," he said. "I won't actually get to see it, but I know what it will look like, and that's a big deal to me. These are not strangers, either. I know them. I've gone to the family picnic with them, and their kids have played with my kid.

"Who knows? My altruism might fly out the window after I've been there three months and I'm sick of it, but for now, it helps me."

It has always shocked people, especially people who know Martinez well, that he signed up for the military after Paquito's death and volunteered for Iraq. He has always opposed the Iraq invasion, even before Paquito was killed, and nothing has shaken him from his belief that the war is wrong.

In that, he and his ex-wife, Paquito's mother, Carmen Hernandez, are alike. Hernandez is a leader in a Puerto Rican organization, "Madres Contra La Guerra," or Mothers Against War.

But his path is, of course, much different. The whole reason he joined the military was out of his conviction that - wrong war or not - he could do something to keep another young man alive.

"We are responsible for everybody's security on that base," he said. "For me, it's very clear. It's not at all abstract. If the Kurds and the Sunnis and Shia get along better and everyone's lives are improved and they have fair elections, great. But my job is to make sure that everyone who is on that little clump of land comes back alive and well for their airport reunion. That transcends politics."

Twice a month, Martinez drives to the Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery so he can talk to his son. He went on Thursday evening, for the last time this year.

He, the father, is now in the unenviable position of seeking his son's approval.

"I have to live up to him," he said, staring at the photo of Paquito given to him by his son's old unit.

Now that it has been more than three years, he is increasingly aware that his son is forever stuck at 20 and everyone else is getting older. Every year, Paquito's baby sister gets a year closer to his age.

"He doesn't grow up," he said. "I wanted him to grow up with me. There are times when I just want to immediately turn to him and share something. My fear is not that I'll forget his voice. I have many digital recordings of that. The hardest part is that he is frozen in time, and that's when I know he's really gone."

He wonders how he'll react when he lands in Iraq. In the months after Paquito's death, he wanted nothing more than to go to Ramadi and see what his son saw when he was shot, to learn more about his final days, to exact revenge on someone.

But grieving and learning to cope with a loss isn't a static thing, and those thoughts aren't the same as they once were.

"I get emotional about a lot of things, but I don't think I will about that," he said of finally setting foot in Iraq. "Honestly, I don't know what I will feel like. Maybe it will be transformational, but right now it's not like that. Right now I'm thinking about the job and what I have to do. It's all work. It's all mission."

He points upstairs, where his wife and daughter are, by way of explanation.

"You don't know how important it is that I make it back," he said, and it is then that his voice catches and he pauses.

"They couldn't take it again," he said. "They are my motivation to remain focused on my job."

Please remember...

I should have posted earlier, but I just wasn't up to it.
As some of you may know by now, I run a military project which sends items overseas to our service members in Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa and out on float.

Most of the last few days I have been pulling my hair out waiting to see if any of the 9 dead in the remote Kunar Province of Afghanistan are of the 10 forward air observers attached to outposts in that remote area I deal with directly. These men, mine are in 2/503rd Battle and Chosen companies, have put in a long and deadly tour which is due to end in the next two weeks. Sadly, nine men from Chosen company died and fourteen were wounded. Please offer a prayer or light a candle to all those who are awaiting the return of their loved ones both alive and dead. I cannot begin to fathom what their families are going through right now. For an idea of where these sky soldiers are and what they see, hit it here.

More info you can find over at Tankerbabe's blog. She has links to the news stories just under these first two posts...

My new place to get tactical gear!

I have been getting my new tactical gear! Finally, I think I might have an alternative to Ranger Joes. They have weapons, ballistic sunglasses, boots/foot wear, and well known brands like black hawk (my personal favorite) and under armor. 

Under armor, of course, is the growing in popularity in both the military and the civilian sectors! 

Dedicated to all the Women Warriors

Someone was kind enough to pass me a poem they had written and dedicated to all the female warriors out there! Thanks A.R.!

Paleontologie

A beast from our mythologie, the Lovosaurus Rex,
Became, says anthropologie, the Prontoborus next.

I heard the archaeologist, relating what he’d found.
A Lovosaurus Rex, it seems, too well had stood its ground.
Feet unearthed were stuck in stone,
Flesh was withered to the bone.

Sloping back and hanging head, is how I hear they found one dead.

How could such a thing have happened? How so still when once impassioned?
What could slow and cease to beat, that fired a forge of such great heat.

I sit and ponder what I know, but fear to reap what knowledge sows:
That love would fight if it was war, that what love ceased,
Was to implore.

But what could Prontoborus win, that Lovo was denied?
In what peculiar circumstance, did Pronto come to thrive?

The Prontoborus of this time is seen the same in any clime.
He looks astute, although he’s mute,
A source of fame, this pantomime?

Another clue I put in place: brace of comets fell from space.
They shook the earth and all its ways, undid in one,
God’s seven days.

Oh what a dread and darksome day. The more I see I turn away,
That love had grown in openness, till comets rained their mindlessness,
And all that once was shared was lost, the face one knew amongst the cost.

Appearances became the judge. He was strong who wouldn’t budge.
When Lovosaurus’ heart would lift, when Lovo made his heart a gift,
The maid had learned by rule of thumb, that what was offered she should shun,
That each would win the best one could, that who was eager,
Lower stood.

So Eve would dream of Prontoborus, grand and fine above the chorus.
Didn’t lovo prove her quest? If she’s so good, she’ll win the best.

Another Lovo was no fool. He knew of females to be cruel.
He hurt and scorned his own true Eve.
He taught the lessons she’d believe.

I see how now to make good sense, of one last myth that lost me hence.
I think in fact I’ll make it me, and cast my love not to the sea,
But take this gold that I called mine,
Return the Rhinegold to the Rhine,
Throw the chains of love aside,
And love unchained,
My own true bride.

-"A.R."

My friend Guile

My oldest friend Guile just touched down in the Desert.

For those of you who are religious... send a prayer his way to keep him safe. 

Over There - the TV Series

About a week ago, a fellow weekend warrior (reservist) lent me all of his "Over There" DVD's. I know I'm sinfully late on this, but the year this came out, 2005, I was in a military school. I really didn't have the time or energy to watch some TV show. 

But now I realize that maybe I should have. I was hooked to the screen the entire time. 

I was riveted by the story and I "knew" the people they portrayed. Of course there were some things that needed to be forgiven: the soldiers seemed wholly untrained for what they were about to do and were naive of what culture they were stepping into (since this was supposedly during the beginning of the war, maybe it was the case... I wouldn't know). 

Did they get everything write? No way. At one point, I think I even spied a Huey in there! The Military Gaffe police would probably have a field day with all the technical faults, the exaggerated (or underplayed) circumstances and things that are against protocol but it's a more accurate portrayal of soldiers than other military dramas (*cough cough* "Army Wives" Sucks *cough*... don't kill me for that opinion please).

I think what I appreciate most about this TV series is that they show the dynamic between soldiers. The Army is a cooperation between all kinds of people! The educated, the not-so educated, the urban, the rural, the maternal female and the Mrs. B's (B is for B!tch). The Army is incredibly diverse and the media rarely ever portrays us as such.

Another soldier down

Today, I read the unfortunate news of SPC Dwyer's (pictured above) death. This hero died from problems related to Post Traumatic Stress.

I am unbelievably angry and hurt-probably more so than I should be. Many a nights has my phone rung in the middle of the night, and many a times have I had to sit down and say "Soldier, you have a problem. We need to get you help."

And it sucks when they slip from our fingers.

Happy Birthday!

WTF TUESDAY