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January 2006
Baby Noor making progress
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A check-up Tuesday of Baby Noor, the Iraqi infant airlifted to Atlanta surgery on Jan. 9, showed she is making progress, hospital officials said.
Dr. Roger Hudgins, chief neurosurgeon at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, removed a tube that had drained fluid from the baby’s back, the hospital said in a statement. Noor is said to be in good condition and is healing well.
In a few weeks, Dr. Andrew Kirsch, a urologist at Children’s Healthcare, plans to examine Noor to assess her bladder function. Doctors have said a second surgery is possible to reposition her bladder and create an opening an inch or two below her belly button; urine would empty through the opening. The goal is to make life more convenient for Noor, who is paralyzed below the waist and has no control of her bladder and may have to wear a diaper for many years.
Born with a severe form of spina bifida, Noor seemed destined to die in a slum near Baghdad until Georgia-based National Guard soldiers took an interest in her. They made contacts and pulled strings that led to a rare trip out of Iraq for Noor, her father and grandmother.
Noor’s grandmother said she is pleased with the baby’s progress.
“It is a blessing to see Noor so happy now that her condition is improving with each passing day,” she said, according to the hospital’s statement.
Relay points can be lonely outposts
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Moni Basu/AJC
Spc. Nathan Rosser, 24, pumps fuel from a truck at Relay Point 10 in southern Iraq.
When the 48th Brigade Combat Team moved out of Camp Striker near the Baghdad airport last October, soldiers of the 148th Support Battalion found themselves scattered all over Iraq.
They are the truck drivers, mechanics, fuelers, ammunition haulers, medics and cooks — the soldiers who support combat units in the field. Some of them were sent to relay points — known as RPs — that dot the desolate landscape in southern Iraq.
Just off what the U.S. military calls Main Supply Route Tampa, the miniature bases assist the convoys that travel this main north-south road between Kuwait and Baghdad. Soldiers stop to refuel, fix vehicles that break down or to seek safe haven within the walls of giant Hescos, mesh bags filled with dirt and sand that form the perimeters of the RPs.
These bases are worlds unto their own; the soldiers live somewhat isolated from the rest of their companies on outposts that do not offer the conveniences of 21st century war.
At Relay Point 10, somewhere between Nasiriyah and Basrah, a solitary Georgia flag flutters above the ground at the main watchtower. The 22 soldiers of the 148th occupy trailer space and cook their own food with groceries and supplies trucked in from Tallil Air Base, about an hour north of here.
Battalion soldiers from Tallil regularly convoy in with water tanks, food and other necessities to sustain the rustic camps. There’s no PX, and dining or recreation facilities here. All the eye can see beyond the sand berms are the deserts of southern Iraq and miles of highway. There is often nothing surrounding these pockets of military life.
“It’s a little boring. When you’re here, you’re here,” said Spc. Nathan Rosser, 24, who works in a Wal-Mart return center in Macon.
But sometimes, the soldiers said, they like the fact they are far from the hustle and bustle. And it can be liberating being away from the watchful eye of the brigade’s command, they joked.
There’s not much to do but “it’s not really that bad,” Rosser said.
Noor released from Atlanta hospital
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baby Noor, the Iraqi infant who had surgery for spinal defects, has been released from the hospital after a week of monitoring for the possible buildup of fluid in her back, hospital officials said Thursday.
Noor al-Zahra was evaluated by her surgeon, Dr. Roger Hudgins, and listed in good condition before her release Thursday from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. She is expected to return to the hospital next week for a checkup, hospital officials said in a statement.
The 4-month old has spina bifida, in which the backbone and spinal cord do not close before birth. She had surgery Jan. 9 to remove a fluid-filled sac from her back and to position her spinal cord in its proper place.
But she returned to the hospital Jan. 18 so doctors could insert a drainage tube after her grandmother noticed swelling in the baby’s back. Hospital officials said the swelling appeared to be a minor accumulation of tissue fluid and not more dangerous spinal fluid, which could have required major surgery and led to a buildup of life-threatening pressure in her brain.
Her father and grandmother have been staying with a host family in the Atlanta area while Noor recovers.
Baby Noor was discovered in December by U.S. troops during a raid. The soldiers noticed paralysis in the baby’s legs and what appeared to be a tumor on her back and contacted U.S. physicians, who agreed to treat her.
Clinic gives boost to civilians, troops
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Moni Basu/AJC
Sgt. Angela Gowen, a nurse from Tifton serving with Charlie Company, checks a patient's temperature at a daylong clinic. In a village just outside Nasiriyah, two cousins await treatment.
Naf al-Bezir, Iraq — Within minutes, the Al-Badoun elementary school’s transformation — from a place of learning to one of healing — was complete.
Stretchers on stands, boxes of medicine, stethoscopes, blood pressure gauges. Soldiers of the Georgia National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team carried the supplies in quickly and with the same precision they march into combat.
For the rest of the morning and well into the afternoon, medics from Charlie Company of the 148th Support Battalion examined patients. The line was long, snaking from the school’s front gate around the dusty yard adjoining it. The Iraqis waited patiently, amid a howling dust storm, for a rare chance at a good examination and proper medication.
It was the first time since the arrival in Iraq last June of the 48th Brigade medics that they were able to treat Iraqi civilians on their turf.
“It’s very rewarding, ” said 1st Lt. Anna Talerico, a physician’s assistant from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “I’m having a good time, though, as you can see, it’s somewhat limiting.”
Limiting because the clinics were set up in stark classrooms that had no electricity. The cold crept in through cracked windows and doors that did not close all the way.
Limiting also because the medics did not have access to all the equipment and drugs they needed.
Seizing the opportunity
In this village just outside Nasiriyah in southeastern Iraq, there is just one clinic to serve the people, most of whom belong to the al-Badoun tribe. The Georgia soldiers saw an opportunity to help here without fear of roadside bombs, suicide bombers or snipers.
During their six-month stay in the Baghdad area last year, these soldiers did not attempt such a mission because insurgent activity made the soldiers too vulnerable to attack.
“We couldn’t do this in our old sector,” Talerico said. “It was just too dangerous.”
But in Nasiriyah, there has not been much violence since March 2003, when invading U.S. forces fought fierce battles with Saddam Hussein’s army. In one battle, a convoy was ambushed leaving 11 soldiers dead and seven others, including Pfc. Jessica Lynch, as prisoners.
Nasiriyah lies in the heart of heavily Shiite territory. The holy cities of Najaf and Karbala are a short ride up the main north-south highway the U.S. military calls Main Supply Route Tampa.
“There are no terrorists here,” said Ahmed Abar Fahad, 30, son of one of the community leaders. “It is safe here. We do not allow outsiders.
“The problem in Baghdad is the public. My people will not help the terrorists.”
Lt. Col. Scott Carter the brigade’s civil affairs officer, said it also helps that villages and towns in southern Iraq have functioning governments. And that Army officers do not have to meet with local leaders clandestinely.
“In our old sector, I couldn’t go to meet a local leader at his office,” said Carter, a senior project manager at a graphics packaging company in Warner Robins. “It always had to be a secret location. Today, I expect local sheiks to thank us openly. They would never do that in Baghdad.”
Carter said Guard soldiers are well-suited for such missions because they are citizen-soldiers accustomed to working in the civilian world.
Treatment appreciated
Shiites, who form a majority in Iraq, were persecuted under Saddam and, for the most part, residents in this area were happy to see advancing U.S. troops during the march to Baghdad.
“Now it’s so much better,” Fahad said. “The control over us is no longer there.”
But life’s everyday routines and rhythms along the banks of the Euphrates River have changed little since Saddam’s ouster. Loyalty to clan and tribe remain strong. Tribal leaders command great respect.
The 48th Brigade has been working with some of these leaders since it arrived in southern Iraq in late October.
“We need Americans to stay in Iraq to help us rebuild our country,” said Fahad, who often gets U.S. contracts for projects in the Nasiriyah area.
Despite the relative calm, the problems of Iraq are as persistent here as elsewhere, if not more so. The Shiites, downtrodden for so many years, live in some of Iraq’s poorest areas. It was obvious on the faces of the those who came to the clinic. Their clothes were ragged and socks were darned repeatedly, their skin cracked from years of work in the sun.
They scooped up chips, cookies, cartons of cereal and candy for their children.
Sarah Adel came in to see Talerico with her 3-year-old grandson, Murtada. The little boy was suffering from a cold. Upper respiratory diseases and stomach problems are common in Iraq. She complained of pain in her ribs and a burning sensation in her stomach.
“I think she has arthritis muscle pain and a little bit of acid reflux,” Talerico said.
Rewards twofold
Sgt. Angela Gowen, a nurse from Tifton, shuttled into another room to sort through drugs lined up on a table. She returned with Tylenol and some Indian-manufactured pills to treat the stomach acidity.
“It takes a lot of talking to find out whether the child has any allergies or other problems,” Gowen said. “The language barrier is a pain.”
A patient interpreter sorted through a litany of problems. Many of the women complained of back and shoulder pain from carrying heavy loads in the nearby farmlands.
The Georgia soldiers treated about 60 families on this day. Many were turned away because the soldiers had to return to Base Camp Adder before dark.
Maj. Ray Polk, commander of Charlie Company, said his soldiers welcomed the opportunity to practice their medical skills.
“They saw too many bad things,” said Polk, a physician’s assistant from Dahlonega, referring to his medics’ roles in combat trauma situations. “I was worried they would never get to do this; that they would only see the combat side of it.”
Polk said his medics have dealt with more than 20 deaths and treated over 100 wounded soldiers in the brigade since last June. They have even treated insurgents who were detained by the brigade. But, until this trip, never had an opportunity to see ordinary Iraqis who needed medical attention.
The soldiers left Naf al-Bezir as the dust storm swallowed the village feeling that this, perhaps, was their most rewarding mission yet.
British, Americans try to speak same language
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tracy J. Smith/48th BCT
British soldiers John Wilson (right) and Paul Keeble.
Tallil Air Base, Iraq — The Italians control Nasiriyah in southeastern Iraq and have a huge contingent stationed at this base, just outside the city.
Then there are the Americans — The Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team among them — Australians, Japanese, Romanians and of course, the British.
The facilities here are a global smorgasbord. The tactics differ as well. Each nation’s military has its own way of doing things.
“When you approach convoys, everyone has their own SOP (standard operating procedure),” said John Wilson, 35, a warrant officer class 2 from Chelmsford, England. “There are different attitudes toward the local population.
“With the Americans,” said Wilson joking about perceived U.S. aggressiveness, “you gotta dig a hole and get in it.”
And then there are obvious language barriers, especially with the Japanese, Italians and the Romanians. And sometimes, with the Georgia soldiers, too, said the British, poking fun not just at Americanized English but that good ole Southern twang.
“I can’t understand a word they say,” said Colour Sergeant Paul Keeble, 37. “But they all seem friendly. It would be better if they could speak English.”
English humor or a bit of Olde Country snobbery? A Georgia soldier at the table took it all in good stride. You say tomato, I say …
Keeble, a member of the 1st Battalion of the King’s Own Royal Border Regiment, arrived at Tallil at roughly the same time the 48th Brigade moved here from Striker in October.
Before arriving in Iraq, Keeble said he went through a 10-week course in Arabic to help him work with Iraqis in the area. His unit has been helping train the Iraqi Army.
Added Keeble, a continuous clown: “I can speak a little bit of American as well.”
Chicken on the grill, Iraq-style
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Moni Basu/AJC
Lt. Michael Zellous, 41, of Riverdale fires up his grill.
Tallil Air Base, Iraq — On the menu at the dining facility here:
Fried chicken, pork chops, veal cutlets, fried rice, taco bar, succotash, mixed vegetables, salad bar, onion rings, French fries, hamburgers, hotdogs, chicken breasts, sandwiches, apple pie, brownies, layer cake and ice-cream.
So much food. And yet, for soldiers spending an entire year deployed in Iraq, it all begins to taste the same after a while. There’s a distinctly bland flavor and not much variation to the daily menu.
Veteran soldiers in the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team scoff at complaints - think about the soldiers who landed on the beaches of Normandy and shivered in the trenches all over Europe,eating cold slop in tin cans. Or C Rations in Vietnam.
Yes, but this is a different world. And Iraq is a vastly different war.
Georgia soldiers have learned to be inventive when keeping their stomachs full, their energy levels up. At some camps, soldiers are offered a wide array of microwavable items they can take back to their tents or trailers. Thai soup bowls, Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs, Ramen noodles, canned soups. Others buy meat at the PX to cook to their liking.
Take 1st Lt. Michael Zellous, for instance. Dressed in his Riverdale High School (where Zellous teaches math) t-shirt worn stylishly over Army-issued long johns, Zellous took time out to clean out his Weber grill.
“I like to cook, he said standing amid a field of gravel at Base Camp Adder’s Living Area III. “I do it all the time at home.”
With that, Zellous fought the chilly wind to light a fire and throw some chicken on the grill.
At Camp Liberty in Baghdad, soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment’s Charlie Company often grill hunks of USDA approved steak - sometimes so thick that it’s impossible to cut with a plastic knife.
At Camp Scania in central Iraq, home to soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment, an enterprising young Iraqi named Qasim Jidan opened a small café within the confines of the military base.
The café offers freshly baked Iraqi flat bread, falafel, hot soup, tea and soon, Jidan promised, roasted chicken and kebabs.
“I wanted the soldiers to try Iraqi food,” said Jidan, 22, who also owns a small shop next door.
The soldiers love the café. Unlike the bustling chow hall with its rows and rows of tables and chairs, Jidan’s café offers tables of four - a place for the soldiers to gather and “just hang out” like they would at a restaurant back home.
“It’s a nice break from the chow hall,” said 1st Lt. Jeff Morgan, an engineering inspector from Douglasville. “It’s a good place to come socialize.”
Now, if only they could get a mug of icy cold beer. Alcohol, of course, is forbidden for military personnel in Iraq, but there’s always “near beer.” Odoul’s, Coors and even Becks offer non-alcoholic options.
And no, you still don’t feel a buzz if you drink in quantity. This according to official testing conducted by Georgia soldiers.
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.
Q&A with flag donor Sgt. Mark Kuenzi
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sgt. Mark Kuenzi’s job was patrolling a war zone halfway around the world when he read about little Rachel Renbarger. The 38-year-old Griffin man decided to send Rachel a symbol of his appreciation: a regulation-size American flag he flew daily in Iraq. • Full story
Kuenzi contacted the AJC Gwinnett News for help in relaying his offer. In e-mails, he also answered some questions about his life in Iraq and his gesture.
Here is an edited transcript:
Q: Did you fly the flag on missions in Iraq?
Kuenzi: The flag went on 62 combat patrols on a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, call sign Comanche 32.
Q: Has your flag ever come under fire?
A: We heard rounds hitting the sandbags above our heads the first time outside the wire after about a week in country and yes, the flag was with me. My LT [lieutenant] was showing me the defense of a small base (raider base). We have since found a few IED (Improvised Explosive Devices) and ran over a few.
Q: Is this a flag that was assigned to your unit or one you brought from Georgia?
A: I brought it with me.
Q: Why did you bring the flag with you?
A: I always take the flag with me, the reason being to be buried with it if that happened or displayed after retirement in six years, which ever comes first. We were in Bosnia for a six-month NATO peacekeeping mission. I did not take this one to Bosnia. That flag is at home.
Q: Why did you want to mail Rachel and her family this flag? Do you feel she has been mistreated, or do you view her as a stalwart girl who took responsibility? (Many readers thought the adults and politicians had ducked responsibility in handling the flag affair.)
A: I thought Rachel was denied her flag so why not give her one that truly was there for independence? I know that sounds corny, but there you go.
Q: The flag on the street was a non-city-sanctioned Fourth of July neighborhood project that prompted a couple of complaints from neighbors. Rachel and her father have researched flag rules and concluded they should not have painted it on the street because it could be walked on. With that in mind, how do you view painting the flag on the ground? Where do you fit in on the debate?
A: What about a huge flag held by high school kids or college students at halftime in the middle of the football field and then dragged across the ground? There is no harm intended. Should I be denied the right to have a flag on my truck just because it’s dirty?
What if Rachel had painted a flag on a bedsheet instead and hung it on the side of the house and then threw it away? No harm intended.
People wearing the flag on their clothes, that is their way of displaying the flag. I was in Bosnia when 9/11 happened and when we came back the flag or the representation of the flag was EVERYWHERE. Was that a bad thing? HELL, NO!
Q: What do you think of Mr. Ogden’s objection to the flag being painted on the ground or about Richard Hutchinson, Vietnam War vet, organizing the painting?
A: Everybody’s views about being a patriot is different. The one thing that both of them will agree on is that the other is a patriot.
Q: Spokesmen for national veterans organizations say there is a generational split regarding the handling of the flag or its image between more current veterans and Ogden’s generation. What is your view?
A: I have a lot of friends who are veterans of World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm and now here and when it comes down to it, we all gather at the flagpole.
Q: What does the flag mean to you?
A: The flag means safety to me. I have been in a few countries in my life and I have always gone by if not into the U.S. Embassy. I don’t know what it is. I just feel safe with that flag nearby. I am with friends.
Q: Describe your experience in Iraq.
A: Ask either Mr. Ogden or Mr. Hutchinson, it’s the same. I wish that I never had seen some of the things that I have: an insurgent threw a satchel explosive in the cab of a dump truck because the driver hauled gravel for the Americans. Meeting an informant one night and then seeing his executed body. Coming across a 15-year-old with his hands tied behind his back and a bullet in his head.
Q: What do you miss most about home?
A: The smell of grass — but I would be happy to smell the jet fumes at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah.
Karaoke great way to meet a fellow GI
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Liberty, Iraq — They had heard about a soldier named Chuck who wore bright orange tennis shoes with his Army-issued gym clothes and stood on stage every Thursday night at one of Camp Liberty’s recreation facilities. With microphone in hand, he was a transformed soldier, singing his heart out to the crowd.
Soldiers of a Gainesville-based infantry unit decided to “check out Chuck” on karaoke night.
Diversion is a vital necessity for soldiers who go on exhausting patrols all day and night. The officers of the 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment’s Charlie Company grabbed a table and played rounds of cards while soldiers queued up for their chance to shine.
“It’s fun. I love to sing,” said Staff Sgt. Renee Newfrock, 47, of the 10th Mountain Division’s 1st Brigade, after belting out a rendition of Melissa Etheridge’s “Come Through My Window.”
“This is a great way to meet people,” said Newfrock, from Ft. Drum, N.Y., where the 10th Mountain is based.
Next up: Sgt. Tikoi Mangual, 30, from the same unit. He sang “Lady in Red.”
“It’s my ice-breaker song,” said Mangual, originally from Bayamon, Puerto Rico. “I get up there with butterflies. But this is great. It breaks up the monotony here.”
None of the Georgia soldiers dared to show off their vocal skills. But they offered plenty of moral support, even holding up lighters for encore performances.
At times, it was almost as though they were home. At a bar in Buckhead or Roswell — minus the civilian clothes and alcohol, of course.
“This is actually enjoyable,” said 1st Lt. Will Phillips, 35, a fulltime Guard soldier from Roswell.
After a litany of songs and endless rounds of cards, the Georgia crowd was ready to call it a night. They would, apparently, have to come back another time to catch Chuck, though his very existence was by then in question.
‘Walk to Baghdad’ concludes Saturday in Savannah
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Family Readiness Groups for the 48th Brigade Combat Team are wrapping up their “Walk to Baghdad” Saturday at Savannah Mall.
Since the BCT’s deployment last May, families have walked in honor of soldiers. Their objective was to collectively walk the distance from Savannah to Baghdad.
The final laps will be done from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday. The opening ceremony will be on the Target side of the mall. Registration starts at 9:30 a.m. The event includes music, face painting for children and lunch. Organizers will have banners and cards for attendees to sign and videotaping available for people to record a personal message to U.S. troops.
An 11:40 a.m. ceremony will pay tribute to fallen brigade members.
The public is welcome to all events.
More information is available from the FRG chair for Bravo Company/148th Forward Support Battalion. She can be reached at mari918021@comcast.net.
Doctors drain fluid from Noor’s back
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Doctors admitted Noor al-Zahra of Iraq to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Wednesday morning to drain fluid from the baby’s back.
Surgeons performed a life-changing operation on the Iraqi infant last week, a month after soldiers with the Georgia National Guard encountered her while raiding a house near Baghdad. Doctors removed a mass of skin from Noor’s back and repaired a damaged portion of her spinal cord.
A follow-up appointment Tuesday revealed fluid on Baby Noor’s back, the hospital said in a statement. In Wednesday’s procedure, doctors hope to determine whether her spinal cord is leaking fluid or whether the fluid is the result of post-surgery swelling.
Doctors continue to monitor Noor for signs of a fluid build-up in her brain, a finding that would trigger a second surgery to insert a shunt.
Brothers in war, they help to liberate Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Capt. Anthony Fournier of Augusta heads a unit that once patrolled the Abu Ghraib region.
Baghdad, Iraq — The two men come from opposite worlds, but the Georgia schoolteacher called the soldier sitting next to him his brother — his Iraqi brother.
On a misty January evening, Capt. Anthony Fournier invited Hassaneen, an Iraqi army company commander, to dinner at Camp Liberty’s Cafe de Fleury dining hall.
Between eating chunks of chicken tenders, watermelon and a salad, Hassaneen showed equal respect for Fournier, commander of the Gainesville-based Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment of the Georgia National Guard.
“The American soldiers have been very good to us,” said Hassaneen. The Iraqi soldier’s full name and rank have been withheld to protect his identity.
At first, it seems a strange alliance — the tall and burly former member of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guards, who was taught to hate America, and the soft-spoken social sciences teacher from Augusta, who left his family behind to fight in a foreign land.
Fournier’s soldiers have been patrolling the Abu Ghraib area near Baghdad since the Georgia Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team arrived in Iraq last June.
Fournier passed the torch to Hassaneen this month. The Iraqi army has taken over parts of Abu Ghraib that Fournier’s men kept watch over —areas known as White Gold, 1 March and the Soviet-style flats at Al Ban.
They are impoverished and filthy neighborhoods where friend is hard to distinguish from foe.
Dressed in an old chocolate-chip and khaki army battle uniform that U.S. soldiers donned during the Persian Gulf War, Hassaneen joined Fournier and his officers for an after-dinner smoke outside Charlie Company headquarters.
He made himself comfortable on a wooden bench to answer a barrage of questions from the Georgians. And to ask questions of his own.>
Hassaneen was curious about the new sage green army uniforms.
“Are they designed for the jungle? he asked.
“Tell him they are for everywhere,” Fournier said to an interpreter.
“It is a nice color,” Hassaneen said. “But I think mine is better for Iraq.”
Uniform differences are only a sliver of what separates American and Iraqi soldiers fighting the violent insurgency.
Hassaneen’s men are young new recruits who have little military experience. The challenges of training them from scratch while attempting to stave off bloodshed have been great.
The White House regularly announces progress on that front, but U.S. soldiers working with the Iraqis on the ground know that the road ahead is an arduous one. They know that much will depend on the leadership skills of officers such as Hassaneen.
“He’s doing a great job in Abu Ghraib,” said Fournier, who began working with Hassaneen after the Oct. 15 referendum on the Iraqi constitution.
Fournier said he and Hassaneen approach missions differently. In sweeps through the Al Ban apartments, for instance, Hassaneen insists on entering every home himself to question residents about suspicious activities. It is customary in Iraq for the commander to conduct the interviews, Fournier said. That makes it impossible to enter every apartment in a short amount of time. Fournier’s men usually split up by squad in order to cover more ground.
Hassaneen said that in this war in which gathering of intelligence is imperative, the Americans often have better luck.
“Sometimes the local people lie to us,” he said. “They are more scared of the American soldiers.”
Only 30, Hassaneen served for eight years in the elite Hammurabi Division of Saddam’s Republican Guards, named after the great Babylonian king. Hassaneen was stationed at Taji in 2003, when the United States and coalition forces invaded Iraq, and he was part of the forces that fought Fort Stewart-based soldiers, then the 24th Infantry Division, which in 2003 as the 3rd Infantry Division led the charge into Baghdad.
“The Iraqi army was a very strong one. Very brave,” Hassaneen said, at once proud of his service and fiercely critical of the Saddam dictatorship. “I am very happy the Americans destroyed Saddam Hussein.”
Hassaneen also recognized that the new Iraqi army has a long way to go. He predicted that the Iraqis will need another two years before they could stand on their own.
“We need lots of equipment, helicopters,” Hassaneen said.
“Do you need any Bradleys?” Fournier joked about his own inventory of the armored fighting vehicles that Charlie Company soldiers use for patrols.
Fournier said he has a standing invitation for dinner at Hassaneen’s house in Babylon, about an hour south of Baghdad. At the moment, traveling that distance without a military convoy is too dangerous. But one day, perhaps, the schoolteacher from Augusta hopes he will be able meet his friend in a peaceful Iraq.
And, they will once again break bread together.
Doctors find swelling in Baby Noor’s back
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Doctors at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta found some swelling today on the back of Baby Noor, the Iraqi infant brought to Atlanta for treatment of a severe form of spina bifida, but they could not immediately determine the cause.
The exam found no evidence of a fluid build-up in Noor’s brain, which would have led to a second surgery to insert a shunt to drain the fluid.
Children’s Healthcare said in a statement that the fluid probably was either spinal fluid or fluid that resulted from post-surgery swelling.
Surgeons plan to drain the fluid in coming days and continue to keep close watch on the baby, who is staying with a metro Atlanta host family.
Georgia National Guard soldiers found Noor while raiding a house near Baghdad last month. They made arrangements that led surgeons at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta to perform life-changing surgery for free a week ago.
Tallil Air Base: More luxury, less busy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tallil Air Base, Iraq — Like many of the soldiers of the Georgia National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team, Staff. Sgt. Floyd Barnes had looked forward to moving away from dusty Camp Striker near the Baghdad airport farther south to Tallil Air Base.
The brigade would be in a much safer place and the facilities were plush compared to the tents and makeshift offices and recreational facilities at Striker.
At Tallil’s Base Camp Adder, soldiers are housed in trailers, which for the most part are much cleaner and more private than the 16-man tents that the Georgia soldiers occupied up north. And they get to sleep on real beds with relatively new mattresses. No more sleeping bags on Army cots.
“We all love it here. Time’s just slow,” said Spc. Daryl White, 34, a corrections officer from Douglas and a soldier in the 648th Engineer Battalion’s Charlie Company. “But we don’t have mortars coming in here. It’s a lot safer.”
Some of the boredom translates into more crowded recreational facilities here at Tallil.
“It seems that there was more to do up there,” Barnes said as he sat behind the takeout desk at the chow hall here. He said he enjoyed his job more at Striker because he stayed busier - security concerns mandated tougher rules such as searches of civilians entering the facilities on base.
“To me, it’s kind of isolating down here,” Barnes said. “Maybe that’s because I’m not going out on convoys.”
Striker was as smaller facility. It was easier to run into friends, stop to have conversations. Here, the distances between living areas, company headquarters and other facilities are much greater.
Because units such as the 2nd Battalion, 121sy Infantry Regiment, are providing security for long convoys to military bases up north, including Anaconda, Liberty and Scania, soldiers are often gone for days. When they return, they are tired and spend their time resting in their trailers.
Barnes said soldiers at Striker were able to visit other bases nearby such as Liberty or Slayer. They could eat at different places, shop at a variety of PXs and attend events outside Striker.
Here, the 48th soldiers are restricted to the air base.
But what about the more comfy accommodations?
“I was here in ‘91 when we didn’t have any [air conditioning],” Barnes said. “So, living in tents didn’t bother me.”
But not all shared that opinion. Some soldiers are elated to be here at Tallil.
“I’ll take safe and comfortable any day,” said 1st Lt. John-Paul Laurenceau, a database administrator from Lawrenceville who serves in the brigade’s Headquarters and Headquarters Company.
Baby Noor out of hospital for now
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Doctors at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta discharged 3-month-old Noor al-Zahra of Iraq on Friday.
Plans to insert a shunt to drain fluid from Noor’s brain were scrapped after exams found no accumulation of fluid. That may mean Noor will need less intense follow-up care in Iraq, but it’s still possible that she’ll need a shunt, hospital officials said.
On Monday, surgeons removed a mass of skin from Noor’s back and repaired part of her spinal cord. She suffers from spina bifida, a birth defect.
Following the release, Baby Noor went to the home of a metro Atlanta family with her father and grandmother, who accompanied her from Iraq.
The host family has been trained to monitor Noor, and she will have regular checkups, said Helen Shepard of Childspring International, a nonprofit that arranges treatment in the United States for sick children from abroad.
Noor probably will remain in metro Atlanta for at least two months, with a second surgery to reposition her bladder. Doctors say she will be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life and is likely to have limited control of her bladder and bowels.
On Sunday, members of Shepherd of the Hills United Methodist Church plan to preÂsent a $25,000 check to Childspring a donation that is earmarked for Noor.
Fear, future weigh on Baby Noor’s family
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Abu Ghraib, Iraq — Family members of Noor al-Zahra, the baby with a birth defect who underwent lifesaving surgery in Atlanta this week, said Tuesday they were considering moving because of possible retribution by anti-American insurgents.
The family also told soldiers from the Gainesville-based 48th Brigade Combat Team they were worried that they would not be able to provide a lifetime of care for Noor, who doctors expect will be paralyzed from the waist down and will have limited control of her bowels and bladder.
Noor’s grandfather, Khalaf, said the family realized Noor would need specialized care when she returned to Iraq.
But the local hospital in Abu Ghraib is sparsely stocked and has no facilities to treat the kinds of problems Noor might develop.
In the past, soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment’s Charlie Company have helped stock the pharmacy shelves with their own supplies.
Noor’s family may have to take her into Baghdad, where hospitals have better resources.
“She’s likely to need a pediatrician, at least on an annual basis,” said Maj. Susan Robinson, an Army doctor at Camp Liberty who examined Noor before she left for Atlanta.
“Iraq has a lot of good doctors. It’s a matter of getting their facilities together.”
Surgeons at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, which is treating Noor for free, plan to decide today whether to proceed with a second surgery.
They performed a scan Tuesday to check for a buildup of fluid in the baby’s head, common in such cases, but found none, hospital officials said.
Doctors plan to continue monitoring her for evidence of fluid accumulation and will perform surgery today to insert a shunt to drain fluid if they find any buildup. Noor could remain in the hospital for several more days.
In Abu Ghraib, Noor’s mother, Iman, looked at Atlanta Journal-Constitution photographs of her little girl taken Monday after Dr. Roger Hudgins and a colleague removed a growth from her back.
Iman smiled in amazement, showing the photo to several of her sisters-in-law.
“I am very happy that it [the growth] was removed,” Iman said. “I am grateful to the Americans. But I am still very worried for my baby.”
She said she understood that Noor would likely be in a wheelchair and need extra care.
“But at least this is life, not death,” Iman said.
Noor was born in September with a severe form of spina bifida. Her spinal cord had not fully closed during Iman’s pregnancy.
Iman said she wished she could be with Noor but that the family decided it was not proper for a young Iraqi woman to travel so far from home.
“I can take care of Noor. I am her mother,” Iman said. “But about medicine, about money, there is nothing I can do.”
Khalaf said his family was of modest means. He asked Sgt. 1st Class Michael Sonen about setting up a cash flow from donations in the United States to his bank account here.
He said Noor’s father, Haider, who accompanied his daughter to Atlanta, did not graduate from high school and sometimes is unemployed.
Sonen tried to allay Khalaf’s fears by telling him that charitable organizations in Atlanta had collected money for Noor’s care.
But even with financial help, Noor’s life is not likely to be easy in the slums of Abu Ghraib.
“She’ll return to the life she was born into,” Sonen said. “It will be difficult. But I do believe some Americans will maintain contact with the family and try to support her recovery.”
Noor’s family lives in a squalid neighborhood, where clean water and electricity are scarce and violence is common.
The pockmarked road outside Noor’s home was covered in ankle-deep mud and slushy sewage on Tuesday.
The family home is not well-suited for a child in a wheelchair. The bathroom is outdoors, in a courtyard.
Relatives said they were thinking of selling the house.
Noor’s aunt, Hannan, said the family feared that too much publicity surrounding “Baby Noor,” as the soldiers have come to call her, may make them a target for insurgents.
Hannan said the risk was worth it in order to give Noor a chance at a normal life.
“We are grateful and thankful to the Americans but the situation is dangerous in this city,” she said. “It will not be easy for us.”
Robinson said she was concerned that the family might move to a rural area where adequate medical care was lacking.
“That would be a problem,” she said, especially if a shunt is inserted to help drain fluid buildup in the brain. “That would mean a lot more maintenance.”
The family knew when they accepted assistance from the American soldiers that it meant putting the family at risk.
The soldiers who helped rescue Noor also realized their good deed could come at a price.
“Will the insurgency kill her?” Sonen said. “That is my deepest fear. To know that a child was killed just because we gave her help — that’s a heavy burden to carry.”
Staff writer Mark Bixler in Atlanta contributed to this article.
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Soldiers on patrol, on edge
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Khalaf al-Sultan, Iraq - Although he had already spent almost eight months in the combat zone, Spc. Jeffery Campbell knew that on this day, he would be starting over.
After countless patrols into the urban squalor that is Abu Ghraib, soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment’s Charlie Company had been assigned a new area of responsibility.
Campbell and other members of his platoon were about to roar out the gates of Camp Liberty once again in their armored Bradley Fighting Vehicles on patrol. He knew he would face uncertainty, as these 48th Brigade Combat Team soldiers do whenever they go on patrol.
But this would be different. This day, they would be going into an area they had not seen before, and the tension was even more pronounced.
Campbell awoke early, as he does every morning he goes on a mission. After checking his weapon and equipment, he strolled to the chow hall in pre-sunrise darkness to eat a breakfast of Lucky Charms and a cheese omelet before heading to the AT&T trailer.
Without fail, Campbell calls his wife, Elizabeth, before he goes “outside the wire,” a term soldiers use for patrols outside military compounds. He and his wife, a pharmacy technician, talked about her work day, about the life he left behind in Royston in North Georgia’s rural Franklin County.
“I think it’s a lot harder for our families,” he said. “I worry more about stuff at home than I do about what we are doing here.”
Always on alert
Outside the Charlie Company command post, 1st Lt. Jeff Moran, a full-time Guard soldier from Ball Ground who was to lead the patrol, gave instructions to his troops.
Moran’s platoon would begin scouring villages south of Abu Ghraib, an area that the regiment’s Alpha Company once roamed.
“It’s much more wide open,” Moran told the soldiers. “So the chances of a triggerman positioning himself is higher.”
A little after 7 a.m., Moran’s two Bradleys rumbled out of Entry Checkpoint No. 7.
Inside the armored vehicle, Campbell was hardly recognizable under his heavy body armor, arms pads and ballistic goggles. He played with his wedding ring, a band of white gold on his left hand. It’s his good-luck charm. It’s his motivation.
It was going to be a long day — at least 12 hours in an area southwest of Baghdad where other soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard have been hit since they arrived in Iraq last June.
Campbell had intended to go to college. He started classes at North Georgia College and State University in Dahlonega. But it wasn’t for him. Then he met Elizabeth — a friend of hers had married a friend of his.
At 23, Campbell has made a life with her in a two-story house he built on 5 acres of land adjoining his parents’ property in Royston, where he was born and raised.
He makes his living working sales and installation at a building supply company. He dreams of owning his own business one day soon.
Open area a challenge
With his M-16 locked and loaded, Campbell and the rest of the patrol stood guard on a bridge overlooking what the U.S. military calls Main Supply Route Tampa, scanning the seemingly serene vista for suspicious activity.
Campbell saw date palm groves, lush green fields of crops, mud and concrete houses, irrigation canals and blue skies stretching to the horizon.
“This is so different for us,” he said. “This is the most trees I’ve seen in a while. In Abu Ghraib, there were a thousand windows. We were always looking up at the rooftops.”
Here, Campbell said, it could be easy to get hit by a sniper. But it could also be easy to get complacent.
A handful of boys made it up to the bridge in search of goodies.
“Any time you see a kid running away, that’s a bad sign,” Campbell said, handing out candy from a small pouch hooked onto his body armor.
From a military family
Campbell knew he wanted to be a soldier since he was a young boy. His grandfather served in World War II, and an uncle went to Vietnam. He joined the Georgia Guard three years ago, knowing that world events mandated an eventual overseas deployment.
“I’d probably already have kids if I hadn’t been deployed,” he said, looking at the dust-covered children in front of him. “I’m glad I didn’t. It’s been hard for some of the guys here who have kids at home.”
Campbell said he always stays focused on his job, no matter the surroundings.
“My biggest fear is that someone might get hurt because of me,” he added.
For these soldiers, the mind never stops churning, the body never totally relaxes.
There are dirt roads out here in this new territory for this Gainesville unit. They resemble the country roads many of the soldiers are used to driving their trucks over at home. But in Iraq, they mean only one thing: bombs buried in the ground, known as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.
Moran decided to take his soldiers to check out what looked like old bunkers built in the days of Saddam Hussein. Campbell followed the rest of the crew, trudging through mounds of soft dirt.
“There could be stuff buried all over here,” he said. “It wouldn’t take but a second to dig a hole in this dirt.”
Sweating out the odds
Campbell is the only man in his platoon who hasn’t been hit with a roadside bomb, one of the biggest killers of American soldiers in Iraq. He constantly thinks about how his luck might run out soon.
“It’s getting close to the end,” he said about the brigade’s timetable to go home this spring. “I think about that a lot more — that my number might be coming up real soon.”
After lunch, Charlie Company picked up an interpreter and Capt. Anthony Fournier, a schoolteacher from Augusta who commands the unit, before heading into a rustic hamlet known as Khalaf al-Sultan.
“We’re new here,” Fournier told a villager. “We’re coming out to meet everyone.”
As the captain made his rounds, listening to gripes about lack of water and electricity, Campbell stood guard, handing out more candy to children who rushed the Bradleys when the ramps opened.
“You always gotta wonder who’s worth helping and who we need to watch out for,” Campbell said.
“You can’t ever tell. One day, they are your best friend. The next day, they’re shooting off IEDs. For every thousand people, you’ll get two bad guys.”
He and the other soldiers walked through the entire village, the smell of cow dung wafting through the air. In the distance, there was the metallic clatter of AK-47 fire.
“You feel a lot like a cop,” Campbell said. “You’re walking a beat no one wants to walk. You gotta find the hot spots in your area. Here, we haven’t done that yet.”
This was a better day than others. No one was hurt.
“On bad days,” he said, “you always question yourselves. But if every day was a good day, this wouldn’t be a war.”
Fear, future weigh on Baby Noor’s family
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Abu Ghraib, Iraq — Family members of Noor al-Zahra, the baby with a birth defect who underwent life-saving surgery in Atlanta this week, said Tuesday they were considering moving because of possible retribution by anti-American insurgents.
The family also told soldiers from the Gainesville-based 48th Brigade Combat Team they were worried they they would not be able to provide a lifetime of care for Noor, who doctors expect will be paralyzed from the waist down and will have limited control of her bowels and bladder.
Noor’s grandfather, Khalaf, said the family realized Noor would need specialized care when she returned to Iraq.
But the local hospital in Abu Ghraib is sparsely stocked and has no facilities to treat the kinds of problems Noor might develop.
In the past, soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment’s Charlie Company have helped stock the pharmacy shelves with their own supplies.
Noor’s family may have to take her into Baghdad, where hospitals have better resources.
“She’s likely to need a pediatrician, at least on an annual basis,” said Maj. Susan Robinson, an Army doctor at Camp Liberty who examined Noor before she left for Atlanta.
“Iraq has a lot of good doctors. It’s a matter of getting their facilities together.”
Surgeons at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, which is treating Noor for free, plan to decide today whether to proceed with a second surgery.
They performed a scan Tuesday to check for a buildup of fluid in the baby’s head, common in such cases, but found none, hospital officials said.
Doctors plan to continue monitoring her for evidence of fluid accumulation and will perform surgery today to insert a shunt to drain fluid if they find any buildup. Noor could remain in the hospital for several more days.
In Abu Ghraib, Noor’s mother, Iman, looked at Atlanta Journal-Constitution photographs of her little girl taken Monday after Dr. Roger Hudgins and a colleague removed a growth from her back.
Iman smiled in amazement, showing the photo to several of her sisters-in-law.
“I am very happy that it [the growth] was removed,” Iman said. “I am grateful to the Americans. But I am still very worried for my baby.”
She said she understood that Noor would likely be in a wheelchair and need extra care.
“But at least this is life, not death,” Iman said.
Noor was born in September with a severe form of spina bifida. Her spinal cord had not fully closed during Iman’s pregnancy.
Iman said she wished she could be with Noor but that the family decided it was not proper for a young Iraqi woman to travel so far from home.
“I can take care of Noor. I am her mother,” Iman said. “But about medicine, about money, there is nothing I can do.”
Khalaf said his family was of modest means. He asked Sgt. 1st Class Michael Sonen about setting up a cash flow from donations in the United States to his bank account here.
He said Noor’s father, Haider, who accompanied his daughter to Atlanta, did not graduate from high school and sometimes is unemployed.
Sonen tried to allay Khalaf’s fears by telling him that charitable organizations in Atlanta had collected money for Noor’s care.
But even with financial help, Noor’s life is not likely to be easy in the slums of Abu Ghraib.
“She’ll return to the life she was born into,” Sonen said. “It will be difficult. But I do believe some Americans will maintain contact with the family and try to support her recovery.”
Noor’s family lives in a squalid neighborhood, where clean water and electricity are scarce and violence is common.
The pockmarked road outside Noor’s home was covered in ankle-deep mud and slushy sewage on Tuesday.
The family home is not well-suited for a child in a wheelchair. The bathroom is outdoors, in a courtyard.
Relatives said they were thinking of selling the house.
Noor’s aunt, Hannan, said the family feared that too much publicity surrounding “Baby Noor,” as the soldiers have come to call her, may make them a target for insurgents.
Hannan said the risk was worth it in order to give Noor a chance at a normal life.
“We are grateful and thankful to the Americans but the situation is dangerous in this city,” she said. “It will not be easy for us.”
Robinson said she was concerned that the family might move to a rural area where adequate medical care was lacking.
“That would be a problem,” she said, especially if a shunt is inserted to help drain fluid buildup in the brain. “That would mean a lot more maintenance.”
The family knew when they accepted assistance from the American soldiers that it meant putting the family at risk.
The soldiers who helped rescue Noor also realized their good deed could come at a price.
“Will the insurgency kill her?” Sonen said. “That is my deepest fear. To know that a child was killed just because we gave her help — that’s a heavy burden to carry.”
Staff writer Mark Bixler in Atlanta contributed to this article.
Baby Noor may not need Wednesday surgery
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Doctors at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta will decide Wednesday whether to proceed with plans for a second surgery on 3-month-old Noor al-Zahra of Iraq, the hospital said Tuesday.
Surgeons scanned Noor’s brain today to look for a build-up of fluid, common in such cases, but the exam found no such accumulation, the hospital said in a statement. Dr. Roger Hudgins, the hospital’s chief neurosurgeon, has tentatively scheduled a surgery for Wednesday to insert a shunt that would drain fluid, but the hospital said he will wait until tomorrow before deciding whether to proceed.
Noor continued to rest at the hospital Tuesday, a day after Hudgins and a colleague performed for free a life-changing operation on a baby encountered by National Guard soldiers from Georgia who were raiding a house near Baghdad last month.
Doctors say Baby Noor was smiling and cooing after the first surgery to correct a severe birth defect.
Hudgins told CBS on Tuesday morning that the 3-month-old from Iraq had a quiet and peaceful night.
After surgeons delivered good news from the operating room Monday morning, a wave of relief washed over the baby’s grandmother Soad.
Tense muscles relaxed. An electric smile lit up her face. She wept. “The results are good,” Soad said through an interpreter. “Thank God. Thank God.”
She also thanked Hudgins, chief neurosurgeon at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, where the operation was performed.
“Noor is very, very strong,” the grandmother said. “From her first days, she’s been very strong.”
“She is very strong because her family is strong,” Hudgins said.
Hudgins and Dr. Fernando Burstein operated on Baby Noor, as she has come to be known, nine days after the infant arrived in Atlanta from Iraq suffering from a severe case of spina bifida.
They removed a mass of skin from the baby’s back and repaired a damaged part of her spinal cord. Their efforts came a month after Georgia National Guard soldiers in Iraq encountered Noor while raiding a house near Baghdad.
Doctors in Iraq told Noor’s family they could not treat her and that she probably would die within 45 days. With help from friends in metro Atlanta, though, the soldiers made connections that led to Monday’s surgery on Noor.
Hudgins said the operation went better than expected. He said the baby will be paralyzed from the waist down and have limited control of her bowels and bladder, but he hopes she otherwise will be developmentally and mentally normal.
He said he plans to monitor her today for signs of a fluid buildup in her brain, common in similar spina bifida cases. If he finds fluid, he may insert a shunt Wednesday to drain the fluid.
Or, he said, he may try to create an internal opening to drain fluid. One benefit of the internal option is that it would not require as much care from a neurosurgeon in Iraq.
“She just radiates good feeling,” Hudgins said of Noor. “We’re getting to the point where we love this child.”
Noor’s father and grandmother, who accompanied her to Atlanta, spoke with relatives in Iraq after the surgery, said Christina Porter of Childspring International, a Christian charity that brings ill children to the United States for medical help.
“We’ve been through a lot of calling cards,” she said. Porter said the father and grandmother are communicating with an Atlanta host family with “charades and sign language.” The father and grandmother speak Arabic; members of the host family speak English, Farsi and Turkish, she said.
Hudgins saluted the baby’s grandmother for having “the courage to hold [Noor] up to men with guns.” He praised members of a Gainesville-based unit of the 48th Brigade Combat Team for taking an interest in Noor.
“They deserve a tremendous amount of credit,” he said.
In Baghdad, soldiers from the unit that helped send Noor to Atlanta watched a news conference about the baby’s surgery on a small computer screen in Sgt. 1st Class Michael Sonen’strailer.
“I think we are all relieved that she now has the opportunity for a decent life,” said Sonen, a soldier with the Gainesville-based Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment.
“This is what America does best — help people,” said Sonen, a furniture maker from Dahlonega.
Staff Sgt. David Squires, who works for a hearing aid company in Gainesville, said he hopes the soldiers’ intervention gave Noor a “better chance at life.” “If nothing else, it showed the family that we took time out to help,” he said. “This small gesture might go a long way in establishing goodwill among the people.”
Doctors expect Noor to stay in Atanta for at least two months for observation and additional treatment.
“It’s hard to tell sometimes if we made a difference here in Iraq,” Squires said. “This baby made us feel like we did.”
Surgery completed on Baby Noor
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The surgery on three-month-old Noor al-Zahra of Iraq went better than expected, her doctor said Monday afternoon.
Baby Noor, as she has come to be known, may have a second procedure Wednesday if fluid builds up in her brain, as is common in similar cases of spina bifida, said Dr. Roger Hudgins of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
“She just radiates good feeling,” Hudgins said. “We’ve gotten to the point where we love this child.”
Hudgins and a colleagues operated on Baby Noor Monday morning. He said he hopes Noor will be developmentally and mentally normal, though she will require a wheelchair and have limited control of her bladder and bowels.
The surgery was undertaken to repair a portion of 3-month-old Noor al-Zahra’s spinal cord that did not fully form during her mother’s pregnancy. They also hope to remove a mass of skin that has grown up around the cord.
The doctors predict success but envision Noor spending her life in a wheelchair with limited control of her bladder and bowels.
“Our best scenario is that she will be a paraplegic,” said Dr. Roger Hudgins, the hospital’s top neurosurgeon, who will perform most of the surgery.
Yet, her future has brightened immeasurably since Georgia National Guard soldiers in Iraq discovered her on a raid last month. Iraqi doctors told Noor’s family they could not help her and that she would likely not live long.
Soldiers from a Gainesville-based unit of the 48th Brigade Combat Team made connections that led to today’s surgery.
“She’s as personable as any 3-month-old I’ve ever seen,” Hudgins said. “She’ll grab your finger. She coos and does all the right things.”
He said he has explained the surgery to Noor’s father and grandmother, who accompanied her to Atlanta.
“The questions they asked were very thoughtful and insightful,” he said. “They got it as well as any parent would get it.”
Hudgins said there is “a 99 percent chance” Noor will survive. He planned to repair the damaged spinal cord, put it in its proper place and remove a mass of skin about 5 inches long and 3 inches wide.
“That skin makes the surgery technically difficult,” he said, “but it’s probably what saved her life.”
Noor suffers from a severe form of spina bifida, an ailment that caused part of her spinal cord to protrude through her back. Hudgins said he believes the skin that encased her cord helped prevent infection.
Intense follow-up needed
Hudgins said doctors and nurses will monitor Noor for signs of a fluid build-up in her head and back, which happens in roughly 90 percent of similar spina bifida cases. If fluid does accumulate, Hudgins plans to perform a second surgery Wednesday to insert a shunt, a type of drainage tube.
At some later date, Hudgins said, doctors at Children’s Healthcare probably will perform a third surgery to reposition Noor’s bladder and let urine empty through an opening doctors will create below the baby’s belly button.
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, which is donating its medical services to Noor, keeps tabs on several hundred spina bifida patients at any given time. Noor stands out because she suffers from a severe form of the birth defect and because she will need intense follow-up care after returning to war-torn Iraq.
Someone will have to monitor the shunt Hudgins expects to insert in Noor. If it clogs and fluid builds up, Noor could die, Hudgins said. In Iraq, she will need access to a neurosurgeon able to unclog the shunt if problems surface. In addition, she will need to see a urologist to deal with whatever bladder issues may arise, he added.
Her family, like relatives of anyone with paralysis, will have to keep an eye on Noor to make sure she has not accidentally hurt her legs, where she has no feeling. Doctors at Children’s Healthcare have treated paralyzed patients who were accidentally cut or burned but did not immediately know it.
Noor also is at risk as she gets older of developing scoliosis, or curvature of the spine, Hudgins said.
“This child is going to have a long, hard road,” said Jim Okula of Atlanta, past president of the Spina Bifida Association of Georgia. “What is the health care going to be like in Iraq?”
Malady gets attention
Though precise figures have proven elusive, Okula said, the association estimates that 1,100 to 1,700 people in Georgia suffer from spina bifida. Parents with affected children often have trouble paying medical bills. Those who live far from Atlanta may have a hard time reaching a spina bifida clinic held several times a month at Children’s Healthcare.
One positive aspect of the Baby Noor case, in Okula’s view, is that more people are hearing about spina bifida, which occurs in roughly one of every 2,000 live births in the United States, according to the March of Dimes.
Baby Noor’s case has given the association a chance to tell people how to prevent spina bifida — women who plan to become pregnant should take folic acid in a supplement or by drinking orange juice or eating oranges, dried beans and legumes, or leafy green vegetables.
“This is indeed helping us raise awareness,” Okula said.
‘Hard road’ for Baby Noor
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Iraqi baby who just last month seemed consigned to die in a slum near Baghdad is to undergo what surgeons call a life-saving operation this morning at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
Doctors hope to repair a portion of 3-month-old Noor al-Zahra’s spinal cord that did not fully form during her mother’s pregnancy. They also hope to remove a mass of skin that has grown up around the cord.
The doctors predict success but envision Noor spending her life in a wheelchair with limited control of her bladder and bowels.
“Our best scenario is that she will be a paraplegic,” said Dr. Roger Hudgins, the hospital’s top neurosurgeon, who will perform most of the surgery.
Yet, her future has brightened immeasurably since Georgia National Guard soldiers in Iraq discovered her on a raid last month. Iraqi doctors told Noor’s family they could not help her and that she would likely not live long.
Soldiers from a Gainesville-based unit of the 48th Brigade Combat Team made connections that led to today’s surgery.
“She’s as personable as any 3-month-old I’ve ever seen,” Hudgins said. “She’ll grab your finger. She coos and does all the right things.”
He said he has explained the surgery to Noor’s father and grandmother, who accompanied her to Atlanta.
“The questions they asked were very thoughtful and insightful,” he said. “They got it as well as any parent would get it.”
Scheduled to begin at 7:30 a.m., the surgery probably will last two to three hours. Hudgins said there is “a 99 percent chance” Noor will survive. He plans to repair the damaged spinal cord, put it in its proper place and remove a mass of skin about 5 inches long and 3 inches wide.
“That skin makes the surgery technically difficult,” he said, “but it’s probably what saved her life.”
Noor suffers from a severe form of spina bifida, an ailment that caused part of her spinal cord to protrude through her back. Hudgins said he believes the skin that encased her cord helped prevent infection.
Intense follow-up needed
If today’s surgery goes well, Hudgins said, doctors and nurses will monitor Noor for signs of a fluid build-up in her head and back, which happens in roughly 90 percent of similar spina bifida cases. If fluid does accumulate, Hudgins plans to perform a second surgery Wednesday to insert a shunt, a type of drainage tube.
At some later date, Hudgins said, doctors at Children’s Healthcare probably will perform a third surgery to reposition Noor’s bladder and let urine empty through an opening doctors will create below the baby’s belly button.
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, which is donating its medical services to Noor, keeps tabs on several hundred spina bifida patients at any given time. Noor stands out because she suffers from a severe form of the birth defect and because she will need intense follow-up care after returning to war-torn Iraq.
Someone will have to monitor the shunt Hudgins expects to insert in Noor. If it clogs and fluid builds up, Noor could die, Hudgins said. In Iraq, she will need access to a neurosurgeon able to unclog the shunt if problems surface. In addition, she will need to see a urologist to deal with whatever bladder issues may arise, he added.
Her family, like relatives of anyone with paralysis, will have to keep an eye on Noor to make sure she has not accidentally hurt her legs, where she has no feeling. Doctors at Children’s Healthcare have treated paralyzed patients who were accidentally cut or burned but did not immediately know it.
Noor also is at risk as she gets older of developing scoliosis, or curvature of the spine, Hudgins said.
“This child is going to have a long, hard road,” said Jim Okula of Atlanta, past president of the Spina Bifida Association of Georgia. “What is the health care going to be like in Iraq?”
Malady gets attention
Though precise figures have proven elusive, Okula said, the association estimates that 1,100 to 1,700 people in Georgia suffer from spina bifida. Parents with affected children often have trouble paying medical bills. Those who live far from Atlanta may have a hard time reaching a spina bifida clinic held several times a month at Children’s Healthcare.
One positive aspect of the Baby Noor case, in Okula’s view, is that more people are hearing about spina bifida, which occurs in roughly one of every 2,000 live births in the United States, according to the March of Dimes.
Baby Noor’s case has given the association a chance to tell people how to prevent spina bifida — women who plan to become pregnant should take folic acid in a supplement or by drinking orange juice or eating oranges, dried beans and legumes, or leafy green vegetables.
“This is indeed helping us raise awareness,” Okula said.
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History lesson softens war’s realities
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ur, Iraq — It almost felt like time travel.
Within minutes, the small bus and a few Humvees had transported the Georgia National Guard soldiers from the middle of a 21st-century military base to an ancient civilization.
From the modern wonders of sophisticated weaponry, Internet technology, cafeterias and laundromats, soldiers of the 48th Brigade Combat Team found themselves steeped in history, walking on grounds that were first settled in 4,000 BC.
Ur, capital of the once powerful Sumerian kingdom, had special meaning to the soldiers — Ur is believed to be the birthplace of Abraham, who some scholars call the father of Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
Once, the mighty Euphrates flowed through Ur. But over the years, the river changed its course, leaving the landscape a rugged vista of cracked earth and mud, hues of brown as far as the eye can see.
Surrounding the ziggurat lie the ruins of royal palaces, tombs and houses, some of them bolstered by reconstruction. Other parts remain as they were thousands of years ago.
“I think this is awesome,” said Spc. Bobby Cash, 28, a sheriff’s deputy from Augusta who serves in the brigade’s military police contingent. “You come here to Iraq to fight a war and get to see so much history.”
Like a holiday
For the Georgia soldiers, the outing felt like a mini holiday in the middle of a grinding yearlong deployment in the desert.
Ur, just outside of Nasiriyah, about 230 miles southeast of Baghdad, falls within the confines of Tallil Air Base, one of Saddam Hussein’s old military installations now used by U.S. forces. Part of the 48th Brigade has been stationed here since late October.
The ancient Mesopotamian city’s centerpiece is a five-floor-high ziggurat that can be easily seen from the road that winds past the chow hall, PX and brigade headquarters at Tallil. The brigade takes soldiers to the site for tours three times a week, a practice the 48th adopted from the Army unit it succeeded here.
Cash and about 20 other soldiers clicked their cameras as Dhaif Mohsen, the unofficial guide of the ancient city, led them through the ruins. He and two brothers have become caretakers of the property since the toppling of Saddam in April 2003.
Mohsen, 46, lives in the modest house in which he was born in the shadow of the imposing ziggurat, which archaeologists say is the most well preserved such structure from the age of the Sumerians. Mohsen’s grandfather and father worked on excavations at the site at various times.
The Sumerians built the terraced structure on top of a temple to the moon god Nanna. Mohsen said the ziggurat served also as administrative center for the city.
Structures similar to ziggurats have been discovered in other areas of the world — the Aztecs, for instance, built terraced temples for their gods. But none is as old as the ziggurats of Mesopotamia.
Brigade soldiers in the western Baghdad area visited another unusually well-preserved ziggurat built by the Kassite rulers of Old Babylonia in the 14th century B.C.
As the 48th Brigade soldiers began their tour, about a dozen Iraqi children in brightly colored clothes ran up to greet them at the base of the structure. The soldiers handed out food and toys before climbing the long, steep staircase.
“Before Muhammad and Jesus were here, the ziggurat was already ancient,” said Capt. Anthony Fournier, 38, a schoolteacher from Augusta who commands Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment. “Maybe it transcends the religious war going on.”
A view and opinions
In Ur, 48th Brigade soldiers climbed the hundreds of steps to the top of the ziggurat, from where they had a panoramic view of the countryside.
When Saddam came to power, he opened Tallil, much to the consternation of archaeologists who feared a military site so close to an ancient wonder would be damaging.
Tourism in Ur declined, especially after the eight-year Iran-Iraq War. Even those who managed to get permission to visit Ur were barred from climbing the ziggurat because of the views of the base.
Mohsen took the soldiers on a tour that lasted about 90 minutes. Bitter about Saddam’s persecution of Shiites in southern Iraq, the guide often included sharp political commentary with his colorful narration.
He told the soldiers that Saddam often compared himself to the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II.
“But Nebuchadnezzar didn’t dry up the marshes,” Mohsen said, referring to Saddam’s efforts to drive out the marsh Arabs from their homelands in southern Iraq. “Nebuchadnezzar didn’t put one million Iraqis in the ground.”
He led the soldiers to one of the tombs where the ground had caved in, leaving only a small, dark opening.
“They catch Saddam in a hole like this,” Mohsen said.
“There’s no love lost, is there?” said Maj. Dean Shoucair, 40, a doctor from Chicago who serves in the 148th Support Battalion’s Charlie Company.
‘This is pretty cool’
The 48th Brigade soldiers were keenly aware that not many Americans have had the opportunity to visit sites such as Ur.
“This is pretty cool,” said 1st Lt. Jonathan Fisher, 26, a schoolteacher from Fayetteville who serves as a chaplain with the 48th, as he stood in one of the courtyards in the house believed to be Abraham’s. “God called Abraham from this house. You don’t get this kind of history in America. This is ancient. This is a precursor to life.”
After many years of neglect, Mohsen said, Iraqi archaeologists are resuming excavations at Ur with United Nations funding.
“I’d like to see what else is under this ground we’re walking on,” said Pfc. Brent Register, a 19-year-old high school graduate from Augusta who works in brigade headquarters.
Mohsen said he hopes the renewed excavations will again spark tourism at Ur.
“This is important not only for Iraqis but for the rest of the world,” he said. “This city is holy land for three major religions.
“Ur means many things to me,” he continued. “This is my father’s home, my grandfather’s home. This is my civilization. My holy place.
“This is a very good thing that the American soldiers have come. They are taking pictures that they will take back to America. Everyone will see Ur.”
Spc. Nicholas Rogers, 22, a machine operator from Covington who works in brigade headquarters, said the soldiers were lucky to see the ruins.
“I think this is great,” he said. “We’re stepping on holy ground.”
Hours drag for mother left behind
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Curtis Compton/AJC
Neurosurgeon Dr. Roger Hudgins bonds with Baby Noor at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.
Abu Ghraib, Iraq — Tears rolled down Iman’s cheeks, her gaze fixed on a reporter’s computer screen that lit up one corner of the dark living room. In front of her were images of the baby she gave birth to three months ago.
Now, almost 8,000 miles separate the young mother and her first-born child, who was flown to Atlanta for treatment of a life-threatening spinal cord defect.
Iman had treasured the tiny girl that doctors in Iraq said would not survive long. She had never imagined she would be separated from her except in death.
Noor al-Zahra, the Iraqi baby discovered by soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team during a raid last month, arrived in Atlanta on Saturday for desperately needed medical care.
Since then, the family home in Abu Ghraib has fallen silent.
Iman said the entire family was grateful to the soldiers who made possible Noor’s treatment. But for Iman, the days are achingly slow; the nights long, lonely and often sleepless from worry.
“I am her mother and I am not with her,” Iman said, her eyes locked on photographs of Noor in her arms and of Noor at Baghdad’s Camp Liberty, on the plane to Atlanta and finally at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
“I wanted so much to go with her to Georgia,” Iman said. Only two adults could be flown out of Iraq with “Baby Nora,” as soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment’s Charlie Company came to call her.
The family decided that Noor’s grandmother, Soad, the matriarch of the family would go along with Haider, the baby’s father. It is customary in more traditional Iraqi households for male relatives to accompany women when they travel.
“I miss everything about her,” Iman said through an interpreter as she wiped her face with a black head scarf. “I miss holding her. I miss her tears. Most of all, I miss her smiles.”
Soad’s sister, Sajda, said she thinks of Noor every time her cellphone rings. The phone’s ringtone is a familiar Arabic melody that mesmerized the baby. When Sajda’s phone rang, Noor would stop crying and smile.
“Our house is empty,” Sajda said.
Noor’s family crammed around the computerized slide show of Noor. Iman clutched the laptop, asking if the photographs could be shown over and over again.
Soad’s daughter Zainab pulled out a camera phone and clicked away at the pictures on the screen. It was the only way for the family to have copies — they don’t have a computer on which to view a photo CD. “When will my baby have her operation?” Iman asked. “When will she come back to me? In two weeks? How many weeks?
“I want everyone to know I love her,” Iman said. “I hope she gets better very soon. I am very happy she is getting treatment. But I am very sad that I cannot see her.”
Doctors at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta have tentatively scheduled Noor’s surgery Monday.
Dr. Roger Hudgins, lead neurosurgeon at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, examined Noor on Tuesday and found her in shape for surgery next week, the hospital said in a statement.
Noor was discharged later Tuesday and will stay with her father and grandmother at the home of an Atlanta host family, until she returns to the hospital for the operation.
During the surgery, Hudgins plans to place the spinal cord down the center of Noor’s back and cover it with muscle and tissue.
It is too early to tell how long Noor and her guardians would have to stay in the United States. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad issued them six-month visas.
Tuesday night, Charlie Company soldiers returned a bag full of Soad’s belongings that she could not take with her when she left for the United States.
First Lt. Jeff Moran, a full-time Guard soldier from Ball Ground, asked Khalaf, Noor’s grandfather, if the family felt its security had been jeopardized. Many Iraqis live in fear of being targeted by insurgents if they are publicly identified as sympathetic to Americans. The full identities of Noor’s family members have been withheld in this report for their protection.
Khalaf said the family is doing fine, even though he said, “everyone here knows about it now.”
Iraqis have been able to watch Noor’s story unfold on CNN and Fox News Channel, both of which have shown footage of the family and interviewed Georgia soldiers and the doctors who examined Noor here.
“I am concerned about their security,” Moran told the interpreter to explain to Khalaf. “And is it OK for us to come back?”
Khalaf said the soldiers were welcome anytime.
“We are very appreciative of what the Americans are doing,” he said. Khalaf said it had been difficult to run the household without Soad and Haider. Soad and her sons run a small grocery shop in the Abu Ghraib market.
“It’s not easy to not have my whole family here,” Khalaf said. “But we will go through any hardship for Noor.”
Staff writer Mark Bixler in Atlanta and The Associated Press contributed to this article.
Noor, days from surgery, otherwise developmentally normal
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Iraqi baby in Atlanta for life-saving medical care has weakness or paralysis in her legs but is otherwise developmentally normal, doctors determined Monday.
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta said 3-month-old Noor al-Zahra is “smiling, interactive and playful” and is “eating well and gaining weight.” The hospital is assembling a team to perform free surgery tentatively scheduled for Monday.
Baby Noor’s father and grandmother have spent hours by her side at the hospital since the three arrived Saturday afternoon.
“They just continually say how grateful they are for this opportunity, that it’s a dream come true,â€? said Helen Shepard, development director for Childspring International, a Christian nonprofit that brings children to the United States for treatment. “There’s a lot of laughter going on, tears of joy.”
Soldiers from the Georgia-based 48th Brigade Combat Team in Iraq found Baby Noor, as she has come to be known, on a raid last month. The infant had a growth on her back — skin covering an opening where her spine has not fully formed. Doctors later determined she suffers from a severe form of spina bifida. Lt. Jeff Morgan of Douglas County asked a friend in metro Atlanta, Debbie Stone, if she could arrange medical care for Noor.
Childspring agreed to help bring Noor here, the U.S. military and Delta Air Lines flew the family for free and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta agreed to treat her.
Noor’s father, Haider, and grandmother, Soad, shuttle between the hospital and the home of a host family in Atlanta. They have phoned the baby’s 18-year-old mother, in the Abu Ghraib neighborhood just west of Baghdad, to keep her informed.
“She misses her baby terribly,” Shepard said. “She has a million questions.”
Doctors provided a few answers Monday.
Dr. Roger Hudgins, lead nureosurgeon at Children’s Healthcare, found that a mass on Noor’s back was not leaking fluid, which means her chances are low of contracting meningitis, said Kevin McClelland, a hospital spokesman. The doctor found “weakness or paralysis in the lower extremities, which will likely impair her ability to walk.” But he believes the baby will otherwise develop normally.
Church helping Baby Noor touts faith in action
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Becky Stein/Special
"This is just the beginning," Debbie Stone told fellow Shepherd of the Hills United Methodist Church members during services Sunday.
The plight of a sick Iraqi infant has stirred a spirit of compassion at Shepherd of the Hills United Methodist Church.
The Douglas County church played a key role in delivering Noor al-Zahra from Iraq to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, where she remained in good condition Sunday.
The church’s success against daunting odds in Baby Noor’s case has galvanized members involved in an emerging effort to help more people outside the sanctuary walls.
The Rev. Adam Roberts praised his church’s effort on behalf of the Iraqi infant Sunday but peppered a sermon with references to others who are hurting and vulnerable. He prayed for “all those who are in need … who we might be called to help.”
Now that the church, just south of Douglasville, has raised $15,000 for Noor and helped arrange free medical care, he urged members to clothe foster children, help Hurricane Katrina victims and offer assistance to other Iraqis.
Church members gave a standing ovation Sunday to Debbie Stone, a 40-year-old social worker and mother of two who championed Noor’s cause after receiving an e-mail from Lt. Jeff Morgan, a friend serving with the Georgia Army National Guard in Iraq.
“This isn’t about me. It isn’t really about us,” Stone told the congregation.
“It’s about what God is doing in our community and in our world.”
Founded about 10 years ago, Shepherd of the Hills has about 300 members and a decidedly casual style, with members in blue jeans sipping coffee at tables while men and women sing and play guitars and saxophones on stage.
Its members have periodically raised money for Cambodian missionaries, and one class regularly sends money to a Cambodian orphan in his early teens.
The church has taken up offerings for members behind on utility bills. It collected $3,000 for tsunami relief and $1,200 after Hurricane Katrina, said Krystol Brooks, chairwoman of an outreach committee.
About a year ago, though, Stone and Kelly Smith, the church’s financial manager, began talking about doing more.
Roberts supported an increased focus on outreach when he became pastor a few months ago.
The church has since sent a team to Mississippi to help victims of Hurricane Katrina rebuild.
Members started donating clothes for foster children in metro Atlanta a few months ago at the urging of April Jorgensen, 34.
“Kids can be so mean to children who don’t have the right clothes,” said Jorgensen, a foster mother.
“What we’re trying to do is show God’s love not by preaching or beating people over the head with the Bible,” her husband, Neil, said.
Meeting real needs
Lieutenant Morgan, who has attended Shepherd of the Hills, told Stone about Noor just as Stone and others were finalizing plans for Lifeover Ministries, envisioned as a church-affiliated nonprofit that would help meet real needs of real people.
Stone made Noor a personal cause, making call after call in search of a doctor willing to donate services to operate on Noor. The baby has a severe form of spina bifida, an ailment in which the spine does not fully form.
Stone told the church Sunday she acted to help the infant and the soldiers who found her.
“They go out every day. They’re doing their jobs. They’re patrolling. They’re catching insurgents, but these people have a heart just like we have.
“They want to make a difference,” she said. “Everybody was so willing to help.”
The church’s highly publicized success with Baby Noor — camera crews filmed the sermon Sunday — should inspire members to know what they can achieve in efforts that unfold outside the spotlight, Roberts said.
In addition to collecting clothes for foster children and planning another trip to Mississippi, church members hope to help other children in Iraq.
Stone said soldiers have told her about an Iraqi girl who lost an arm and went blind when a grenade exploded.
“If we don’t help her, she’s going to grow up illiterate,” Stone said.
The church may also collect money to buy and send prenatal vitamins that soldiers could distribute to expectant Iraqi mothers.
Its members plan to buy wheelchairs for several elderly Iraqis and soccer balls for children.
“This is just the beginning,” Stone said.
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