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BACK FROM IRAQ
"One of the best parts of deploying is the welcome home." -- Sgt. Brandy Moreland, transportation specialist, served in Iraq March-September 2003 after landing at Biggs Army Airfield at Fort Bliss, Tex., in 2003
(By Vladimir Chaloupka -- Las Cruces Sun-news)
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They came home bent on making good on the promises they had made while fearing death. Army medic Ernesto Haibi, in the thick of the battle of Fallujah, vowed that after he got home he was going to fulfill a childhood dream:
"I told myself, if I get back without any more holes in me, I'm buying myself a piano and learning to play," he said. "You learn what you can live with and what you can live without. And you learn to appreciate the things that are necessary."
What was necessary, he decided, was being able to play "Isn't It Romantic?" -- the first song he learned on his new piano.
They came home haunted, carrying heavy memories that will take years to sort out. "I was taken out of my normal habitat and put in a crazy dream -- a nightmare, really," said Army Spec. Cheyenne Cannaday. "I think about it every day still, and I'm not sure if it's gonna go away."
Jon Powers came home and "swore I would never go back to Iraq until they build a Disney World in Baghdad." But then he thought about how he and his soldiers used to deliver toys and clothing to the orphanage. He thought about how the children had given them something back: a respite from the war. The soldiers would take off their gear, put down their weapons and join the children's soccer matches.
Not long after coming home, the former Army captain knew his work in Iraq was not finished. So he helped start a nonprofit, War Kids Relief, that helps Iraqi children. That's his new career.
Thousands came home wounded, scars fresh; some even with shrapnel in them. Kevin Whelan, who was wounded when a roadside bomb exploded next to his Humvee, has so much metal embedded under his skin that it set off a security detector at the airport. "In case it goes off," he warned the guard, "I do have shrapnel in me." The wand beeped as it passed over his shoulder.
Nearly 400 of them returned as amputees and had to learn to open doors with metal fingers, walk on prosthetic legs. Senior Airman Brian Kolfage came home to sad, strange stares and spontaneous charity. As he sat in a wheelchair after having lost both legs and his right arm when a mortar exploded outside his tent, a stranger handed him $250 in cash.
Another just stared at him and then "just started crying right in front of me."
* * *
The questions people ask about the war usually don't probe too far, the sort that can be satisfied with rote responses that keep the truth at a safe distance.
But sometimes, people push. What was it like?
