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Saturday, January 21, 2006
Georgia soldier writes tender letters his daughter, 3, can read when she is a teen
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Curtis Compton/AJC
Sgt. 1st Class Patrick Eaton puts his thoughts on paper for his daughter.• MORE PHOTOS
Baghdad, Iraq — On his 40th birthday, Sgt. 1st Class Patrick Eaton pulled out a pad of white, lined paper, as he does every few weeks, and began writing:
Miss Zoë, What would you want to know about me? I always wanted to know silly things about my mother. Favorite food. Color. Music. And the intangibles, like how she felt. What her voice was like. Ah, how I hate war and this place. It is a sad place. So unlike home. I’ve eight more months to go … ”
Surrounded by shelves of books — “Flyboys” by James Bradley, “War Trash” by Ha Jin, “Reading Lolita in Tehran” by Azar Nafisi, and the poems of e e cummings and T.S. Eliot — Eaton sits quietly at night on his sleeping bag-lined bed to pen letters to his daughter, Zoë.
She is 3 years old now, a carefree little girl who attends day care in Athens, where Eaton, a full-time soldier in the Georgia National Guard, has made his home with his wife, Vicki.
Eaton plans to give Zoë the box of letters he’s writing her during his year-long deployment in Iraq.
He wants her to open the little white envelopes — numbered, dated and addressed to her — on her 16th birthday.
In the combat zone, after almost eight months of grueling urban warfare, Eaton, like other 48th Brigade Combat Team soldiers, contemplates his mortality. There is the danger here, he said, of too much time to think.
A hardened infantryman with 23 years of military service, Eaton has led more than 75 patrols into the rough urban areas of Abu Ghraib since his unit, Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment, arrived in Iraq last June. The platoon sergeant has seen firefights, roadside bombs, car bombs, rockets, mortars and gunfire.
But it isn’t the thought of dying that haunts Eaton. He remains fearless when he leads his men out of the gates of Camp Liberty.
What he is afraid of is that his little girl may grow up never knowing her father.
“I wanted Zoë to know not just who I was — that her father was a soldier serving in Iraq — but I wanted her to know the essence of who I was,” Eaton said.
I write you now because I want you to know who I am or … was. Just in case. Because here, now, there are no guarantees. No promises kept.
Just patrol after patrol into the unknown.
Listen to the cello. Imagine a Chinese birdcage full of finches. A vase of yellow and violet. A Persian rug. The smell of autumn rain, old leather books on a shelf — life. Life is to be lived artfully.
With all of my being, I love you, Zoë,
Pai
Eaton knows the life he cherished back home could vanish with a bomber’s finger on a detonation device, with a sniper’s bullet, with one accidental rollover of his Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Then Zoë would grow up never experiencing all that was her father, much like Eaton himself, who lost his mother, Vera Maria, before his fifth birthday.
There were years of silence at home. His distraught career Navy father could not bear to discuss the woman he loved — and lost to multiple sclerosis after eight years of marriage.
“I never knew who she was, except that she was from a blue-blood Brazilian family in Rio de Janeiro,” Eaton said. “We didn’t talk about her for years. I wanted Zoë to have something fresh. I wanted her to know the quirks of my life. That I prefer overcast skies to sunny days. I like cities but I prefer European cities. That I like Beethoven.
“I know that once we leave this place, Iraq will not be a topic of importance for the next 13 years when Zoë turns 16,” he continued. “Time moves on. It will be interesting because these letters will unlock memories of my own.
My beloved Zoë:
Monet was best friends with Renoir. In 1870, France fought against Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War. Renoir wanted to enlist but Monet was against it. Monet thought Renoir was far too sensitive. J.D. Salinger, George Orwell, John Dos Passos, e e cummings, and the founder of the Bauhaus all served.
I often wonder if I’m “Monet” or “Renoir.” I would spare anyone the experience of conflict.
Each day is full of discomfort. Such is the soldier’s life. Each patrol is wrought with an overwhelming sense of helplessness, of a neverending spiral downwards.
Mind numbing — too much visual data. Turret rotating, fleeting images in the crosshairs. My mind drifts. Sounds blend, the armored beast whines, everything ugly … Much too much to ponder. So I succumb. I give in and accept as those did before me.
I ride, forgetful of fear. Wanting to see all that is ugly in the crosshairs. And I see beauty. A small Iraq girl waving.
In the war zone, Eaton, who was pursuing a fine arts degree from the University of Georgia before he deployed, finds it incongruous to engage in what he finds artful. Instead, he reads a lot of history, especially military and political history. One of his heroes is George Washington.
“Why? Because he was imperfect,” Eaton said. “He wasn’t the intellectual Thomas Jefferson was. Because he led from the front — and he persevered.”
By his bed, Eaton keeps a combat log. His father did the same when he was a naval aviator in Vietnam. As a boy, he sneaked peeks into his dad’s logs.
“Everything in red is action,” Eaton said, flipping through the pages of his log. One-third of his entries are penned in red ink.
“Unfortunately I’m experiencing the same thing my dad did,” Eaton said. “But this is such a unique war. We’re not getting slaughtered out there. The problem is far more complicated and messier. That adds this huge surreal quality to what we are doing.”
Eaton’s platoon is called the “Black Sheep” because it was put together with soldiers from the 121st’s Bravo Company, which was split up before the 48th Brigade deployed to the Middle East.
Charlie Company soldiers affectionately call Eaton “Pappy,” after the nickname of Maj. Greg Boyington, who led the squadron known as the “Black Sheep” in the South Pacific in World War II. Boyington got the nickname because he was relatively old for a fighter pilot.
True to his nickname, Eaton fathers his soldiers. He tells them to make their peace and to know that they will undergo changes. The insurgency in Iraq, he said, peels everything to its bare minimum. Everything is raw.
“This is a visual war,” he said. “We are constantly searching and scanning. My right hand is always on the trigger. The tangibles that make an individual soldier feel they are making a difference here are very difficult to find.
“One thing I tell all my soldiers is to not be concerned with the effectiveness of our operations on a day-to-day basis. I tell them that because it is an abyss, a black hole. That it is something for historians to reflect on. Just concentrate on the missions. Right now is not the time to wrestle with those issues.”
Eaton talks about how great American generals have said that war is the ultimate human profanity.
“I now understand that perfectly,” he said. “It’s not just profane, but vulgar. For me, this experience makes what is beautiful even more beautiful.”
My sweet Zoë,
I rode a camel around the great pyramids of Giza. Took a stroll through the Colosseum of Rome. Looked up at Michelangelo’s beauty on the ceilings of St. Peter’s. I played hide-and-seek in the Acropolis and made a wish above Kyoto.
And I, too, have seen the poor and impoverished of the four corners of our world.
I wish to be far from the world I am in at present.
To climb mountains, to paint in my studio, to walk with you, to hold your mother. These fill my dreams. Only God knows my path ahead …
In my mind, I see a birch forest. Autumn leaves. Bright yellow. I yearn for the solitude of the forest.
In the Charlie Company command post, Eaton is a fixture at the small coffee machine that gurgles and churns throughout the day. With his elixir in hand, he begins his daily tirade.
At one moment it could be the crudest telling of a soldier who got blown up by a roadside bomb, replete with foul language expected of an infantryman. No one dares stop Eaton in the middle of his macabre monologue.
With equal ease, Eaton launches into an eloquent story about Ezra Pound eating rose petals at a dinner thrown by Virginia Woolf or the lyrical poetry of Mexican writer Octavio Paz.
His interest in art, literature and other cultures and ideas grew from a childhood home filled with books, visits to Washington’s museums and his father’s passion for black-and-white photography.
A few days ago, Eaton made a list of a hundred things he wanted to do before his life ends. Among them: to cruise Alaskan fjords, obtain a master of fine arts degree, translate Machiavelli’s “Il Principe” from Italian to English, visit his mother’s grave in Virginia, let Zoë touch a penguin, dance the tango in Buenos Aires, listen to Chopin in Warsaw, buy an old motorbike, learn the constellations, build a chicken coop and walk up Mount Kilimanjaro.
“I don’t know of one soldier here who doesn’t know what they’re going to do when they get back,” Eaton said. “When you come back every night to your room, that’s all you’re thinking about. You thank God that you’re alive. It’s very minimal.”
The last thing on his list was to visit his birthplace in Brazil. No. 1 on the agenda was to survive Iraq.
Zoë,
I miss you terribly. I haven’t the words to express the ache in my heart.
These letters are for you, for a young woman to know her father.
It is overcast and a dust storm has rolled in. Visibility is less than 800 feet. We begin our combat patrol at 19:00 until 07:00. I wonder what the night will bring.
I constantly compare and contrast moments of my life to this one now. So very surreal.
I do it because I am a soldier. None of it enjoyable. The American people expect us to perform. And so I shall and do.
What have you planned for your life, I wonder? I hope to be around. I hope to share my life with you …
After 23 years, I have my own reasons for serving. Indeed, it is a privilege and an honor to lead America’s sons under some of the most trying conditions. Nevertheless, I hope for you a life outside my own purview …
Charlie Company soldiers admire Eaton not just for his knowledge of history and the arts or because his contrarian ways keeps things lively on a gloomy day. They respect him, they say, because he is the best of soldiers.
Eaton, however, who served in the Marine Corps straight out of high school, has his own take on soldiering.
“We do things wearing the magic suit that we would never do in civilian clothes,” he said about the raids and patrols his soldiers conduct while wearing the U.S. Army sage green digital uniforms.
“For me, it’s a great acting role. I’m on stage. This is Shakespeare,” he said. “You can be whatever you want. I’ve adopted the role of platoon sergeant. I cuss like the rest of them. I’m decisive. It’s in me, but this is not who I am.
“There are some people who really enjoy it,” Eaton said. “But this business is not for me. In the end, I feel a sense of obligation that someone has to do it.”
Last June, just days after Eaton’s company arrived in the Baghdad area, several of his platoon mates were involved in an accident. Their armored Bradley rolled over into a roadside canal. Two soldiers, including Eaton’s platoon leader, 1st Lt. Will Phillips, were trapped inside.
Ultimately, they were rescued, but it was a harrowing welcome to Iraq.
That night, Eaton, wrote to his daughter. It helped clear his mind.
My sweet,
I always remind my men that the American people expect and demand our courage, our professionalism and sacrifice. I don’t really believe anyone knows just what we do or experience.
The fact everyone survived is a testimonial to God’s ever watchful eye and to a 19-year-old lad. Spc. Jared Callaway [the driver] knew his Brad was about to roll over and he announced “roll over,” “roll over” over the intercom.
The turret crew secured hatches and everyone braced.
When I’m in uniform, folks say, “Thank you for your service.” I never know how to reply.
Eaton writes his letters to his little girl as he sits under an enormous American flag that covers an entire wall of his trailer. On another are maps of Iraq. And a photo of Zoë.
Growing up, Eaton traveled the world with his Navy father and later served in South Korea, Japan, Bosnia and Oman. He uses his childhood and military experiences to dispel myths about Iraqi culture.
“I try to follow up any aggressive action in sector with something positive,” Eaton said. “We came here with honor and we will leave as honorable men.”
Zoë,
One in the morning and we rumble into a courtyard. Pitch black, Ramp drops and my squad runs in over the wall.
We have arrived. Disrupting lives. Children crying. Men lined up. We separate the women.
Searching for wires, remotes and explosives. I dismount my armored beast. My men are everywhere. Doors are knocked down.
Trash strewn about. Dogs barking. Fear. Faces of fear.
And we rumble away with 12 men blindfolded, hands tied behind their backs. And the women watch us. We roll on with images in our heads. Images of children and an empty feeling in our stomachs.
“Rough men.” So very difficult to be those rough men.
We hide inside ourselves. We wear self-made masks to hide that empty feeling. The profanity. The horror is profane but the children — they see through our masks. They see through our rough men.
One of my men bent down and showed pictures of his children. And the crying stopped for a moment. This is Iraq.
