Letter from Iraq

[Carl Harrod]

UPDATE #27

12 NOV 07

Daylight savings had kicked in, so while it wasn't late, it was very dark, and my body still had not recovered from the five days of travel and waiting it took to get back from Kansas to my team.  I dozed off, waking as I felt the helicopter begin its rapid drop into the LZ.  I had no clue if this was my stop or not, several of us occupied the lead ship enroute to various remote locations.  I could make out the distinct outlines of a military installation below, and in the distance, a small town.  The bird settled in a storm of dust, the crew chief dismounting with practiced ease, slid open the troop door and pointed to me and one other.  "Numiniyah" I yelled over the din of the rotors.  A thumbs up.  Releasing my harness and grabbing my bags I jumped out.  Seconds later the birds were gone.

MAJ K moved out onto the airstrip and grabbed a bag.  We exchanged the typical welcome home from leave rituals which had now become all too familiar.  I was the last to go, so marked a milestone in the team's history.  The end was in sight.  A short ride took us to the compound where my four teams and our National Police Brigade were billeted. 

For several months we had been scheduled to take the brigade to a month long training course at the Numiniyah National Police Training Academy.  The program was established about eighteen months ago as a reaction to the rampant corruption that plagued the entire national police organization.  The idea was to bring each brigade out of the battle, get rid of the corrupt leaders, and then put them through a rigorous curriculum of ethics, police skills, and tactical training.  At the end of the training each unit would receive the new blue digital pattern national police uniform, and the brigade would then be sent back into the fight, hopefully with a renewed sense of nationalism and without the militia influences that plagued them.  The entire process came to be called "re-bluing"

My Brigade had originally been scheduled to go to Numiniyah and Re-blue back in June. A combination of good performance and success in Karkh by BG Bahaa's men and some very poor performance in other areas of the city led to a series of shifts.  Other brigades were moved forward in the timeline and we kept shifting to the right on the calendar.  Eventually there was no other brigade's to switch us with, and with all the political importance swirling around the September congressional hearings, and enemy activities down in Karbala, the 5th brigades September rotation was cancelled as well.  When I left for leave, it looked like we might be the only brigade not to go at all.   The day after I left however, orders came down, and my team packed the brigade up and moved them south.

It is both satisfying and humbling to return to your unit and find that everything is running full steam ahead without you.  I got a quick tour of the facilities, an introduction to the Australian cadre, warm greetings from the team and then a much needed cup of Chai and a happy reunion with the General.  The training had been going very well, and over the next few days it was increasingly obvious that the brigade had benefited enormously.  We still shake our collective heads at much of what we see, and have all but given up in making headway in some areas that western forces deem important.  But by and large they were looking more and more like soldiers.

I returned in time to see the last few days of the standard curriculum, and just in time to partake in the end of course culmination tactical exercise, and the all important graduation parade practice.  Apparently Bahaa had been drilling his eighteen hundred shurta for a few hours every afternoon.  The familiar art of the parade field connects armies of every culture and every generation in a way that probably no other activity can.  The specifics of arm swing, pace count, or angle of the hand salute may vary, but the focus on attention to detail, precision and perfection persists. 

"If you are taller than the man in front of you, move up!"

"Your out of step Mohammed!"

"Swing your arms Mustafa, all the way up to the shoulder of the man in front"

Lines are painted on the parade ground, marking precisely where commanders and guidon bearers and musicians will stand.  Officers and a precious few NCOs swarm around each formation making corrections. 

Several days before graduation the shurta are issued two sets of the new blue uniforms.  They are the last brigade to get them, and they are anxious.  They discard a wild menagerie of old army green and desert uniforms, issued from various American programs over the last few years or purchased from markets.  Camouflage patterns from Jordan, Egypt, Russian, England, the US, or the former Iraqi army, all discarded in a heap and replaced by one standard.  There is something remarkably transforming about issuing a young man a uniform and lining him up with thousands of his countryman all dedicated to the same purpose.  The exact same energy generals like Napoleon harnessed to draft class after class of French to perform his will.  The next day's parade was an entirely transformed affair.  Shurta stood taller, paid more attention, marched straighter.  An organization which a week earlier looked like a militia, now looked like an Army.

There is something about parades and ceremonies that make General officers minds race.  They all seem to have a good idea fairy land on their shoulder and whisper in their ears.  Bahaa decided they needed white gloves, sending his commanders out to find some.  1800 white gloves in a land without power, I shook my head...and that was before I heard the solution.  Medical gloves.  One of the shurta suggested they use the white latex medical gloves that our medics used while treating them and training them in first aid skills.  I don't tell the general "no" often, but drew the line here.  Sir " I don't have them, and am not going to go find them."  Somehow, the second battalion all showed up on parade day in latex gloves.  If only they had kept them for the following day when it came time to clean out their nasty barracks.

The month had been good for the brigade, and for my four teams.  Life in Baghdad had become routine, and many of the guys had become frustrated by a lack of progress.  The opportunity to train, and more importantly to show the Iraqis the value of training was invaluable.  It was also good to get the Iraqis off the street corners and out of harms way for awhile.  The compound we lived in was pretty spartan.  Eight three story buildings surrounding a central courtyard and a motor pool, all enclosed in barbed wired.  While the Americans and Australian cadre had free reign, the Iraqis, had been unarmed, had their cell phones removed, and were pretty strictly controlled.  An untrained observer could have easily concluded he was looking at a prison camp.  But the atmosphere was remarkably festive in the evenings with Iraqis huddling in small groups, smoking and singing and dancing.  A series of unit vs. unit soccer games and other competitions providing entertainment.  The final match saw the defeat of the joint American-Aussie team by a composite team of the Iraqis, ending the season in good form.  I think the final score was 4-2.  We were pretty happy with that, having expected to get routed.

Graduation came and went, the usual delegation of dignitaries arriving to observe.  Followed immediately by the race to clear the barrack, and line up the convoys for the trip home.  The brigade had earned a weeks leave, so many of them departed directly from the academy for homes across Iraq.  Those that lived in Baghdad mounted trucks to get the brigades equipment home.  We approached the outskirts of Baghdad as the sun set.  As we wound through the eastern part of the city it became common for one truck or another to pull over to the side of the road and kick a grinning shurta out of the car.  His buddies waving and singing as he wandered off into his neighborhood.  We crossed the bridge over the Tigirs and back into Karkh at the south end of Haifa Street.  It had been almost a month since I had left...it was good to be home.

Over the next few days we reintegrated with our Coalition Headquarters and caught up on all that we had missed and the various plans being staffed that would effect or immediate future.  Our district had continued to make progress while we had been gone.  The main criminal on Haifa Street, who had eluded capture for months, had finally been captured by US forces several days prior.  Arresting Hussein Hani provided a bit of closure for all of us that had worked so hard to end his intimidation and thugary.  With both the Sunni and Shia threats largely defeated in our sector, I feel pretty good about the future of the district.  Other bad actors will inevitably move in to try and start trouble, but their task will be much harder now that the old established gangs have been broken.

It became increasingly clear over the next few days that we would not be staying in Karkh.  BG Bahaa and his brigade's reputation had gotten them noticed, and fresh out of training he was essentially unemployed.  The minister of Defense and Minister of interior both had competing demands, and the political struggle to determine where Bahaa would be committed next began in earnest. 

In what is becoming a disturbing pattern, I seem to spend all my American holidays with senior Iraqi leaders.  I spent the fourth of July with BG Bahaa and MG Hussien discussing poetry and trying to keep Bahaa from being arrested.  Four months later, I spent Veterans Day with Bahaa and MG Hussien cooling our heals discussing passport reform with a deputy minister of the interior while we waited to go see the minister about our next mission.  MOD and MOI had issued conflicting guidance and we needed answers.  After several hours Bahaa and Hussein were ushered into the minister's office.  A phone calls to the Prime minister sealed the deal.  Orders were issued.  Bahaa apparently mentioned that I was outside, so the minister invited me in.  Every other time we had met the Minister had been in a huge hurry and completely uninterested in an American Lieutenant Colonel.  He apparently had a light schedule that night, and sat us all down for Chai. He was filled with a whole string of questions about our training at Numiniyah and the performance of the national police and my impressions of Baghdad.  I have lots of impressions...more than he had Chai.  As we left, he wished me a happy veterans day, and thanked me for my service to his country - needless to say I was impressed.  On the way out he reiterated our new orders to the generals.  Our final month may be interesting.



Once more into the breach.

[Carl Harrod]

UPDATE #27
22 NOV 07


"Gunner, Sabot, two Hinds, left hind first, driver move up"
"where?'
"200 mils left of TRP#2, just over the barn...driver stop"
"Identified"
"Fire"
"On the way"
KABOOM

"target, right Hind"
"Identified"
"flashing zeros – relaze....Fire!
"on the way..."
KARACK

"Target, Cease fire, driver back up"



The sound track of my youth played over in my head.  As a young Lieutenant we practiced tank engagements against soviet tank and helicopters over and over again.  I spent countless hours in the Unit Conduct of Fire Trainer (UCOFT), a huge over grown tank gunnery computer game.  My crews killed thousands of computer generated soviet HIND-D attack helicopters.

Fifteen years later I followed BG Bahaa on a foot patrol in the northwest suburbs of Ad Diwaniyah, a mid-sized town in southern Iraq.  My HMMWVs shadowed us several hundred meters behind providing overwatch.  The  Apache gunships that had been circling overhead all morning had broken station for fuel several minutes before.  I heard the new birds long before I saw them, the low buildings on either side of the street masking the horizon.  And then the beast appeared.  The HIND-D is an ugly brutish bird, far larger than our own more agile craft.  Designed to carry both a huge weapons payload and troops in the lead of a soviet armored column, it is quite literally a flying tank.  It cleared the rooftops and came straight at us, its twin following shortly after in its trail.                 My heart beat faster in spite of myself.  This Polish aircraft was on my side now, and it's near constant presence in the sky above the city served as a significant deterrent to enemy rocket and mortar activity during daylight hours.  I couldn't help but feel several decades out of place.  On foot, patrolling with Iraqi light infantry, calling in close air support from Polish attack helicopters...I would not have dreamed it in a thousand years.

After just a few days back in Baghdad from our training, we were once again ordered south.  The town of Ad Diwaniyah is the provincial capital of one of Iraq's southern districts and lies in the heart of the Multi-National Division's area.  The region is largely Shia, and while it has not felt much of the Sunni-Shia violence, it has recently become more volatile as the Shia factions increasingly fight amongst themselves for political gain.  My 5th Brigade of National Police got tossed into that mix, to both BG and my dissatisfaction.  "Ours is not to wonder why..." goes the famous poem.

The trip south was remarkably easy.  Bahaa's battalions settled into various governmental compounds around the city and my team carved out a spot in FOB Echo.  The Multi-national division is currently commanded by a no-nonsense Polish Major General.  A battalion of Poles, a battalion of Romanians, and a battalion from Mongolia make up the bulk of the force in the city with a smattering of five other nations represented in varying degrees.  American officers augment the staff.  African guards man the private security company that runs much of the base security.  The Green Bean Coffee shop is staffed by a few young Asian girls from Kyrgikistan.  The sister of one of them lives in the trailer next to me up in FOB Prosperity – small world.  Iraqi nationals work the laundry.  Pakistanis work the Mess hall.  British and Australian contractors work various repair facilities.  The motor pools are an armored vehicle enthusiast's playground.

BG Bahaa is eager to get to work.  The national police have a long term agenda to move out of Baghdad to take on the roll it was created for and work the outlying districts.  Several brigades have been sent out before with some mixed results.  Bahaa is anxious to prove that his Brigade, fresh out of training is up to the task.  The local Army commanders are wary.  They did not ask for more forces and the Fifth Brigade has been forced upon them by the minister of interior.  After two days they grudgingly give Bahaa a task.

He executes with characteristic vigor.  His shurta are impressive.  His officers and NCOs have rid the ranks of all the old uniforms, and for a change, every man has a helmet and body armor.  The new uniforms have done wonders for the formation.  They look impressive and disciplined.  A local unit of emergency police is married up with them for the operation.  The locals wear the rag tag smattering of mixed uniforms and face masks that was our lot a few short weeks ago.  They look like ill-disciplined thugs, and act like it.  The Brigade notices it themselves, and stands a bit taller.

The first day's operation goes very well.  Eighteen detainees and eighty assorted weapons are pulled from a neighborhood that was supposedly "safe".  We spend the afternoon doing foot patrols around areas coalition forces don't normally go.  We are greeted warmly wherever we go.  We have packed 1600 troops into a very small area, it is pretty impressive.  The locals take note.  So do the local politicians.  Fifteen of the eighteen detainees work for one of the local big wigs.  They were not supposed to get captured nor are they supposed to be armed.  Bahaa couldn't give a damn about local politics and detains them anyway.  That night we get orders that would put us in a small town about an hour to the east early the next morning.  We are told it is where "all the enemy fled" when the operation started.

We swarm the small village of Afak the next morning.  By noon it is clear we have been sent chasing wild geese –we think deliberately.  The locals greet us enthusiastically.  The day is bright and clear and we spend mid-morning eating Falafal at a local stand and drinking Chai with the village elders in the city square.  We walk off our lunch with a patrol.  A small stream divides the town, with palms lining parks on either side.  We cross a foot bridge and into a covered market.  Life in Afak is quiet and largely untouched by the violence of the north.  The shops are well stocked, and the people are happy.  One of my team's terps has family from Afak.  They call him later to tell them how the locals were impressed by the professionalism and behavior of the brigade.  A year ago, the arrival of a national police brigade would have spread terror. 

For several more days we conduct operations on the periphery of the main operations going on in town.  Bahaa is understandably frustrated.  I take a slightly different view – maybe because I am getting short, and am ready to hand off my baton.  This series of relatively easy missions was good for the brigade.  It built confidence, allowed them to practice what they learned, and left them with a good reputation.  Eventually, the political charade ended and the brigade was ordered back to Baghdad.  They have a new mission - a new part of the city to occupy.  The scrimmages are over and a new season is about to begin.

We make it back to Baghdad in time for Thanksgiving. I find myself spending the morning drinking chai with MG Hussien, the National Police Commander.  We talk about the new mission, and his favorite singer whose song plays on the TV.  We talk about the Christian church service in Dora he attended at ST Josephs yesterday...the first time a service has been held there in ages.  He had not been there in years, but reminisced about various Iraqi Christian friends that had been buried there.  We talk about Thanksgiving.  I joke with him that I spend all the American holidays with him, and ask him for a photo I can take with me so he can be with me at Christmas.  He chuckled, then looks at his watch.  "LTC Green, come with me, I have a meeting".  I look at my own watch.  Bahaa is now forty minutes late and I am about to get drug into a meeting that isn't the one I came for.  Hussien has my hand now and drags me along out of his office.  I find Bahaa waiting in the hall. 

"Saydee, what are you doing out here?" 

"Lieutenant Colonel Green, what were you doing in there with my boss?"

I laugh. "Telling stories about you!" 

MG Hussien shuffles us both into a conference room.  He sits at the head of the table.  All the other seats at the main table are filled by a smattering of National police Sergeants.  I find a seat in the back row, as does BG Bahaa and his deputy COL Mohammad.  This is very odd - the Iraqi National Police has an almost non-existent Non-Commissioned Officer corps – and they damn sure don't sit at the big boy table while officers sit in the back row.  My curiosity is peaked.  I count heads.  Thirteen. One for each of the National Police Divisions and Brigades.  It becomes quickly apparent that each Sergeant represents one of those commands.  I recognized Arif Awol Amir from my own Brigade.  We have been working with limited success to build up his authority as a sergeant for months.

MG Hussien begins to speak.  I love listening to him, in the way that a kid listens to a grandfather.  He speaks very softly, and slowly.  His thoughts often trail off.  He repeats himself often.  But he peppers his thoughts with anecdotes and stories and quotes, so I am naturally drawn to him.  He begins by telling the assembly about the very first Battalion Command Sergeant Major he met when he was a Lieutenant in the old Iraqi Army.  He recalled every detail of the man.  And then he told of his first Platoon sergeant, a man who became a close friend and was killed many years later in a car accident.  He talked of old military traditions: changing of the guard, raising the colors in the morning, and lowering them at night.  He talked of inspections, and standards, and NCOs that new every man by name.  He lamented the death of those traditions as his country suffered through the era of Sadaam, and the Iran-Iraq war, and Desert Storm and the following embargo.  Over the next hour he challenged those thirteen Non-Commissioned officers to go back to their brigades and give a new birth to those old tradition.  Time will tell if that spark will ignite the fire of change.  If it does it will have been an historic moment for the Iraqi National Police.  I was a bit humbled to have stumbled into the event.

MG Hussien made one other comment that stuck with me.  He told the NCOs that he was going to deliberately send them outside the country for training....any training...any foreign military school he could find regardless of subject.  Not for the trainings sake, but to get them to see the rest of the world.  "As a child" he said "I was always told that Iraq was the most advanced and cultured of the Arab countries and that all the others were mere Bedouins". He went on to describe a trip two years ago to Oman, where he expected to find nothing but Bedouins, and instead found a thriving modern nation which blended east and west, and had far surpassed Iraq.  For thirty five years Sadaam had kept the Iraq people isolated, and while they had stagnated, the rest of the world flourished.  "I had become the Bedouin" He lamented.  "I am going to send you out into the world so that you can take your culture to it, and you can find culture to bring back to Iraq." 

Compare that vision with the alternatives offered by Osama Bin Laden.  Progress in Iraq is not fast, but leaders of character are slowly emerging and leading change.



*****



I sat in an internet café down at FOB Echo last week.  The free MWR café was packed and the connection far too slow.  I had escaped over to the Iraqi run shop and paid a small fee.  It was thick with cigarette smoke, and filled with the noise of a soccer match.  The local terp crowd and international soldiers frequented it far more than the US troopers.  A thirty-something female terp sat at the terminal next to me.  Western clothes and a head scarf put her in the moderately conservative camp.  Some female terps abandon their western ways all together, and a precious few cling to them completely.  Age appears to be the most prevalent determining factor in which they style they choose.  The young woman clicked away for several minutes, and then all of a sudden, yelled in triumph "THEY HAVE ROOM FOR ME!"  She shrieked and giggled, and cried and spun around and danced all at once...then ran out of the room into the night yelling in a mix of Arabic and English, I must go tell them at once! 

I couldn't help myself, and glanced at her screen, left untouched in her euphoric exit.  An official memorandum from the US Department of Immigration informed her that her visa application had been approved! She returned several minutes later, followed by a steady stream of other young Iraqis and a few of the Americans she worked with.  Each took a moment to read the document and share in her joy.  Lady Liberty's light could not have shown brighter than the glow from the computer monitor that night.

As I sit in my hooch this Thanksgiving, I cant help but feel thankful to come from a nation whose promise is so wonderful after all these years that people from vastly different cultures still look to it, and decide that sight unseen  they will make a leap of faith and risk everything to move there.  No other nation has ever held that power over others. 

"They have room for me!"



Happy Thanksgiving Everyone.

[Janet Harrington]

Carl,

That last letter from LTC Green was very moving.  I hope he is able to keep the letters coming.  It sounds like he will be home for Christmas or am I just reading that into something?

[Carl Harrod]

I haven't asked him when he is going to be coming home, but the previous letter did mention something about a final month and this one talked about being away from them for Christmas. So, maybe he will be coming home soon.

[Diane Amberg]

I wish him well. I have found all his letters facinating and very informative.

[Carl Harrod]

I asked LTC Green and he told me that he has less than two more weeks over there.  He will be stationed at Fort Leavenworth upon his return to the U.S.

[Teresa]

That is wonderful news! And how fortunate for all of us that he has taken his time to write detailed letters so we really have been able to get a feel for what he and the troops have been doing. Thanks also to you Carl for passing those on to us.
I have so enjoyed the letters and read each one several times in detail.
I send a prayer out to him that he will continue to stay safe until his return to the United States.

And for all of our troops who don't have their feet on United States soil.. ...
May God and his host of angels continue to hold them and protect them, until they return home to their families.

[Carl Harrod]

UPDATE # 29

7 DEC 07

It gets dark early these days - like the end of a movie when everything fades to black.  Driving the dimly lit stretch of Route Jackson back north to the International Zone, I half expect to see the credits start rolling up my windshield, and the orchestra striking up for the grand finale.

I hate endings.  Always have.  I hate the end of a really good book - one whose characters I have come to know.  I hate the ending of a song, - I can never remember how they go.  I hate graduations, and funerals, retirements, and goodbyes.  I hate knowing that something that I invested my heart into is no longer there for me to fuss over.  I hate feeling irrelevant.

But that is exactly how the days since our return from Diwaniyah have felt.  The brigade has been assigned to a new sector, one that is both much bigger and will have many more forces for BG Bahaa to control, and new Coalition forces to build relationships with.  New council members and sheik's and Imams.  New streets and shops and parks.  New children.  New criminals.  I sit next to Bahaa and admire his new carpets, adorning a much larger office.  The map on the wall is of an area of responsibility that is not mine, and won't be.  I take no interest in it.  Officers from new Iraqi and American Units sit across from me in familiar couches.  I take no interest in them either.  All of it belongs to a story that is not mine to tell.  And in an odd way I am jealous, because the new author will be borrowing many of my characters.     Characters who I have grown to care for, far more than I would have thought, and far too much to entrust to anyone else.

So with the jealousy goes a tinge of guilt. I get to escape; free, safe, unharmed, with nothing left to risk.  While Bahaa, Mohammad, Hamid, Hassan, Ali, Nabil, Safah, Faras, Husein, Mundar, Mahmoud and countless others are left to carry on the struggle.  Never mind that it is their homeland and not mine.  Never mind that the root causes of much of the struggle grow from a religion that I can not give any credence to, and political rivalries about which I have no vested interest.  Somehow, the task had become ours, and to leave without a final outcome assured leaves a void.

Not all on my team feels that way. Some convince themselves the time was wasted - a year of their lives they will never get back. While they have served both honorably and well, they failed to internalize any of it.  They will laugh at me for using the word"failed."  For them, the ability to leave it all behind will be a victory of its own.  And who knows, maybe they are far saner than I.  It is hard to measure what it is exactly that we accomplished.  We went to war, and never fired a shot.  We were in the vicinity of danger, but never really attacked.  We have been in attendance at some significant meetings, but were not the key players.  We have coached but not played.  It has been a strange war.

I hope that in the days to come, when their own children's laughter once again fills their ears, when the smell of a lovers hair delights their senses, when they sit on family farms, or in a hometown park, or eating quietly at a favorite restaurant...when all of the frustration and fatigue, and stress, and fear have finally faded...I hope that they can look back and see that their efforts really did make a tangible difference in the lives of a nation.

            I am proud of our brigade - my brigade.  A year ago, when we fought our way into the slums of Haifa Street, down unlit and neglected roads, we were an armed rabble, with a dubious reputation.  In many cases only the presence of my team served to convince the much abused people that the 5th Brigade was anything other than an extension of the nightmare the sectarian militias had unleashed upon the city.  Today, the Sword Brigade's reputation precedes it.  Neighborhoods are welcoming them, confident and hopeful –expecting that good things will come to them as well.

            I am proud of my friend BG Bahaa.  It has been a privilege to watch him take command and so dramatically change his unit.  I was sent here with the specified task of providing him training, coaching and mentoring.  I leave with very little doubt that I received far more than I gave.  I have watched him make some of the hardest moral and ethical choices I have seen anyone confronted with.  I have seen him stand up to political pressure which would bend all but the most principled men.  I have seen him make mistakes and learn from them.  I have seen him say I told you so, and I am sorry. We have taken some incredibly stupid risks together.  We have witnessed things I don't care to see again.  We have celebrated, and laughed and cried.  I had always wanted a big brother, and never dreamed I might find one here in Iraq.

            Our replacements have arrived.  Full of all the cocky youthful vigor one would expect.  I am certain we were just the same.  They are anxious to take over, and we are having a hard time letting go.  The first of my guys were dropped off at the airport today, waiting to start the journey home.  The rest will filter out over the next few days.  The terps are shaken up.  So are we.  Victor, Frank, Rafid, and Al have been through much with us. They must start making the connections with the new team, but are all eagerly awaiting the VISA applications that will let them catch up to us.  The team is slowly dying, and within a few short weeks will have made the long journey home and scatter to the winds.  The final verse of the famous WWI poem "In Flanders Fields" echoes in my head.



Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.



            It is time for me to come home.  I look forward to winter's chill, and the promise of spring and new beginnings.     

[Diane Amberg]

Safe passage from all of us who have learned so much from you and about you. ( These letters could be published.) I hope we'll hear from you again as you make the transition home. You have touched my heart and opened my mind.

[Teresa]

Why am I wiping the tears away...................................?

Sadness, & Pride..... for him.
For all the young men who have dealt with and are still dealing with things that we here, safe within the cocoons of our warm environment, don't have a clue of.

May they all return safe. With hearts full of the knowing that they DID succeed, They mattered in areas where they will most likely never know. But the people there know...and God knows.