Iraq war hero going back for third tour

Chris Carter loves the Army, but he might love the University of Georgia a little more.

When his unit (Alpha Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division) entered Baghdad in the spring of 2003, he hoisted a UGA flag over one of the presidential palaces.

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Family photo

Chris Carter, now an Army major, and his wife Celeste are expecting a second child — and Carter is embarking on a third tour of duty in Iraq — in October.

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JOHN MOORE/STF

U.S. Army Capt. Chris Carter calls for an armored ambulance for an injured woman caught in the crossfire with Iraq forces on a bridge in Al Hindiyah.

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In a less puckish moment on the same tour, he jumped out of his Bradley Fighting Vehicle in the middle of a firefight to rescue an Iraqi woman on a bridge near the Euphrates.

That event was captured by an embedded Associated Press reporter and broadcast around the world, putting Carter in the uncomfortable position of being an early hero in a war with few heroes. A standing ovation at his church upon his return to the United States embarrassed him. “I’m just a small-town guy who probably got more attention than he deserves,” he said back then.

Today, Carter has been promoted from captain to major. He is preparing to embark on his third tour of Iraq and for the birth of his second child; both events are scheduled to occur around the same time in October.

Between the first and second tours, he met his wife Celeste at a wedding of mutual friends. “When I met him, I didn’t put two and two together,” she said. “I didn’t know who he was until later. You’d never know it, because he didn’t talk about it.”

Married in 2005, they have a 10-month-old boy, Jackson, and one on the way. Currently they live outside the Fort Stewart Army base, in the Richmond Hill community.

Carter was in on the ground floor of the Iraq war, and he may be there as the United States winds down its involvement. He has mixed feelings about that possibility: he knows the war is stressful to troops and their families, but he wants the mission completed before the U.S. leaves.

“We want to see it done properly so that we don’t have to go back there 5 or 10 years down the road,” he said.

Carter has one other hope for his return: that Tim Tebow will be gone from the University of Florida, and Georgia will have a chance to run roughshod over the Gators.

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