The kindness of strangers

Soldier describes positive experiences with Iraqi citizens

Editor's note: Four years ago this week, U.S. forces invaded Iraq. Cathy Henderson of Naperville is sharing with Sun readers e-mails sent by her son, Jason, 23, a 2002 graduate of Naperville Central High School. In October, Jason - an Army private first class - began a year-long stint in Iraq. He is stationed in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, a town about 100 miles west of Baghdad.

Jason's letters offer a firsthand account of what conditions are like for troops in Iraq, and hopefully will give Sun readers a greater understanding of the situation facing American troops as well as Iraqis.

We continue with an e-mail Jason sent from Iraq to his mother in December.

From: hondo5321@aol.com

Sent: Tuesday, December 12, 2006

To: Henderson, Cathy

Greetings to all from the desert. It has been some time since my last letter and for that I apologize. Life here the past few weeks has been up, down and complicated, but above all, busy. To begin with we have been back on tower guard for the past few days. This unfortunately coincided with the first crop of guys leaving for their 2 weeks of vacation. On top of that one individual is down with pretty pneumonia-like symptoms, and another messed up his ankle pretty bad on a mission recently and just got back from a trip to another base for 3 days of x-rays.

Put this all together and what you get is us pulling 4 hours on, 4 hours off for the first 2 days. The problem with this of course is that its tough to operate for any length of time getting only 3 hours of sleep at a time. The answer was to transition for 6 on and 6 off. In case y'all are wondering, yes, 6 hours is a long, long time to be sitting up in a guard tower. But at least now I'm getting a decent amount of sleep, and every 36 hours or so you get 12 hours off. Thankfully my 12 off is coming up tonight, just in the nick of time I might add.

In other news, I received a whole gaggle of packages since my last letter. Just so they can rest easy, I got packages from so many family members and friends, and one from the "Support Our Soldiers" Illinois Chapter. Every day my area comes closer to resembling a dorm room. Even the size is rather similar. The walls are literally covered with pictures. On top of that I have one shelf that is straining under the weight of books and DVD's.

My food stocks are equally impressive. I have actually divided them into 2 different boxes. One of the boxes is my "private stock", containing most of the healthier selections. The other box is overflowing with candy of every shape and size. Apart from making this a free grab-box for the other soldiers in my platoon, I have been taking it out to give to the kids we encounter on missions. That is a recent discovery of mine. The kids of Iraq will break your heart 10 times over. It isn't even that they are in a particular bad way, its just that they are so damned cute.

I would like to share a few examples from our last mission that will surely touch everyone's heart. I cant go into specifics, but over the course of a week or so we searched and slept in somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 houses, and that was just our platoon. Nearly every house that we entered harbored at least a handful of smiling, giggling kids. They would instantly set about making friends with whatever soldier was nearest to them. This would start with some very bashful small talk, mostly trying to convey names and ages and other things that kids find important.

Shortly after, in almost every single case it would progress to this, "Mister, chocolate?" The other favorite being, "Mister, peonce?" Now I have no clue if that word is spelled correctly, but it means pen. For some reason these kids have an absolute obsession with writing utensils of any kind. Just to give you an idea, at any given time I carry no less than half a dozen pens and pencils on my person. Overkill you might say, but seeing as writing is a critical part of my radio job, and pens and pencils have a way of disappearing or breaking at an alarming rate in the field it is a pretty safe number. Or so I thought. By day 3, I was down to 1 pen.

Another highpoint was spending a good half hour playing soccer with 2 brothers as our LT was speaking to the father. Myself and one of our Sgt.'s made quick friends with this pair of footballers when we started kicking around the ball with boys, their ages I guess to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 and 5. Our last evening in the field was spent with a family that appeared to be rather well off. Within minutes of dropping our gear in their "sitting room" a feast was set before us. I cant even begin to name everything that was laid out, but the highlights for me were chicken and pita bread. We did our best to clear the spread, as it is rude to leave food uneaten in Arab culture, which was quite a task, even for 20 hungry soldiers.

Once the food was cleared away it was time for the traditional Arab evening drink of Chai Tea. The best description I can offer is hot tea with at least 2 cups of sugar, all served in a shot glass. It reminded me quite a bit of sweet tea that just hadn't been cooled yet. Seeing right away that I was enjoying it, I think it became my job to finish off the pot, as every time I finished mine, one of the little boys thrust a brand new one in my face.

Altogether, it was certainly an interesting mission to be a part of. There is certainly something to be said for actually getting out and seeing the people face to face. My conclusion so far is that most of these people care less about the American forces, or lack thereof, as just taking care of their family. When entering houses, we didn't receive a single political question. Rather we got questions about when their water and power would be turned back on, and concerns about their ability to get to work given our checkpoints. These are not the demands of an angry insurgency, but rather the concerns of a father and family provider.

One factor that helped tremendously was an Iraqi soldier from Baghdad who acted as our interpreter throughout the mission. He accepted all of our hardships and problems right along with us, earning him a very quick acceptance into the group. His patriotic zeal and absolute hatred for the "insurgents who are ruining" his country were both plain and inspiring. As was the story he gave to us as to his impressive beard and oversize sunglasses. "It is my mask. If the insurgents find out who I am, I am a dead man, along with my family." This my friends, is dedication to a cause. I believe that's all I've got for this letter. Once again I would like to thank all of you for your seemingly endless support and the all too generous boxes. Know that you are all in my thoughts and prayers constantly.

J