The President announced yesterday that he was nominating Craig Fugate, the Director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, to be the Administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA. I have known and worked with Craig for over ten years. His appointment to FEMA is a great loss to Florida but a gain for the country.
We received an email yesterday morning stating that Craig had called an "all hands" meeting at the State Emergency Operations Center at 1 P.M. We had heard the rumors that he was up for the job and assumed that this was the big announcement. Over lunch the secret leaked into the media and by the time Craig arrived at the EOC the room was full and expectant.
There were still a number of us in that room who had endured that grueling six weeks in 2004 when the state was hit by four straight hurricanes. The following year we were hit by another four hurricanes, plus the large deployment of Floridians to southern Mississippi after Katrina. But there were a lot of new, young faces in that room, and the hurricanes are still just as big and dangerous, but Craig won't be there with us this summer if the storms come back.
Craig doesn't make long speeches, whether he is praising us or yelling at us. He was full of praise for all of us and for the rest of the State Emergency Response Team. We are recognized around the country as the Super Bowl Champs of state emergency management. There were some old hands, no longer with us, that I wish could have been in that room to hear that speech.
All too quickly Craig was finished and walking out of the room, to a standing ovation from everyone present. I am sad to see him go. When he walked through the door I could feel a part of the burden that he carried shift on to my shoulders. Even Super Bowl Champs are only as good as their last game.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
The Lion of Babylon - the Novel
After four years of work, multiple drafts and rewrites, I have judged my novel, the Lion of Babylon, ready to face the public. All I need now is an agent, publisher and contract. If it only worked that way.
In case anyone has checked the bestseller list lately, there isn't a lot of Iraqi war fiction on there. There isn't much Afghanistan war fiction either. Evidently, the American public is not interested in those kinds of stories. That's all right. Someday they will be. In the meantime I have entered my novel in four contest. Contests are good in that if you win you can add the credit to your query letter to an agent. Contests are bad in that you might lose, because there are a lot of good writers out there. That's okay. I'm a good writer, too.
In February I entered the Amazon Breakthrough Novel, sponsored by Amazon.com. The top 500 entrants will be announced on March 16th, and an excerpt from their novel posted on the Amazon web site. By April 16 the 500 will be cut to 100 and by May 16 the 100 will be cut to three. The following week the grand finalist is named, and that person gets a publishing contract with Penguin. Such a deal.
To enter the ABNA contest I had to submit a 300 word "pitch" on my novel. All of the initial entrants are narrowed down to two thousand based on this pitch. They read an excerpt of the first 5,000 words of the novel for these two thousand and select the 500 based on the excerpt. So the pitch is important, only until you make the two thousand, when the excerpt becomes important.
If I make the top 500 on March 16, you will be able to read my excerpt. In the meantime, here is my Pitch:
"The Lion of Babylon", an 83,000-word novel, is a fable of men and women, Muslims and Christians, Americans and Iraqis, who look into their futures during a time of war to decide what will become of their lives. Haider, an Iraqi boy who can see the future, foretells the coming of the American Army and of a man who will help him complete his lifelong dream. The Lion of Babylon, a statue in the ruins of the Biblical city, is the source of Haider's power and the key to unlocking the secret of his past.
Haider meets Dan Murphy, a soldier with a personal mission to win the war, but can't tell if he is the man foretold by the Lion. In desperation, Haider teaches Dan to see the future, but the man and the boy envision two different versions of life and death for Murphy and his fellow soldiers. Haidar's quest has its parallel in the wartime struggles of an ensemble of characters that includes an indecisive Army colonel, a young lieutenant out of her element, and a religious soldier with a crisis of faith. As they navigate both personal and military battles in a war zone, they discover the humanity that lies within the Iraqi people and their own reserves of strength. The Lion of Babylon touches their lives and grants Haidar the answer to his past and his future.
This novel will resonate with readers of "The Kite Runner". My inspiration for this story came from the ten months that I served as an Army officer near the ruins of the city of Babylon. My essay on the Iraq war was selected and recorded by the "This I Believe" Project, and was featured on National Public Radio's web site during Veteran's Day in 2007 and 2008.
In case anyone has checked the bestseller list lately, there isn't a lot of Iraqi war fiction on there. There isn't much Afghanistan war fiction either. Evidently, the American public is not interested in those kinds of stories. That's all right. Someday they will be. In the meantime I have entered my novel in four contest. Contests are good in that if you win you can add the credit to your query letter to an agent. Contests are bad in that you might lose, because there are a lot of good writers out there. That's okay. I'm a good writer, too.
In February I entered the Amazon Breakthrough Novel, sponsored by Amazon.com. The top 500 entrants will be announced on March 16th, and an excerpt from their novel posted on the Amazon web site. By April 16 the 500 will be cut to 100 and by May 16 the 100 will be cut to three. The following week the grand finalist is named, and that person gets a publishing contract with Penguin. Such a deal.
To enter the ABNA contest I had to submit a 300 word "pitch" on my novel. All of the initial entrants are narrowed down to two thousand based on this pitch. They read an excerpt of the first 5,000 words of the novel for these two thousand and select the 500 based on the excerpt. So the pitch is important, only until you make the two thousand, when the excerpt becomes important.
If I make the top 500 on March 16, you will be able to read my excerpt. In the meantime, here is my Pitch:
"The Lion of Babylon", an 83,000-word novel, is a fable of men and women, Muslims and Christians, Americans and Iraqis, who look into their futures during a time of war to decide what will become of their lives. Haider, an Iraqi boy who can see the future, foretells the coming of the American Army and of a man who will help him complete his lifelong dream. The Lion of Babylon, a statue in the ruins of the Biblical city, is the source of Haider's power and the key to unlocking the secret of his past.
Haider meets Dan Murphy, a soldier with a personal mission to win the war, but can't tell if he is the man foretold by the Lion. In desperation, Haider teaches Dan to see the future, but the man and the boy envision two different versions of life and death for Murphy and his fellow soldiers. Haidar's quest has its parallel in the wartime struggles of an ensemble of characters that includes an indecisive Army colonel, a young lieutenant out of her element, and a religious soldier with a crisis of faith. As they navigate both personal and military battles in a war zone, they discover the humanity that lies within the Iraqi people and their own reserves of strength. The Lion of Babylon touches their lives and grants Haidar the answer to his past and his future.
This novel will resonate with readers of "The Kite Runner". My inspiration for this story came from the ten months that I served as an Army officer near the ruins of the city of Babylon. My essay on the Iraq war was selected and recorded by the "This I Believe" Project, and was featured on National Public Radio's web site during Veteran's Day in 2007 and 2008.
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Suicide in the Army
The Army Times and National Public Radio recently reported on the growing suicide rate in the Army. The number of suicides has increased every year, growing from 87 in 2005 to 143 in 2008. The Army is aggressively trying to address the issue, but has been unable to find a specific cause of this increase.
The question arises as to whether the increase in suicides is directly related to the increase in combat deployments and "stress on the force" that comes from fighting two wars with a much smaller Army than existed in the Cold War era. While 35% of the suicides from this period were soldiers who had not deployed, 78% of those who committed suicide while deployed were on their first tour.
The immediate response by the Army is to require 2 - 4 hours of training on suicide prevention and identification across the force. This training will be conducted between February 15 and March 15.
In the summer of 2003, while I was in Iraq, the number of suicides increased dramatically for units deployed in that country. I vividly remember the suicide of a civil affairs captain that occurred at Camp Babylon while I was there. The man had a wife and children. The Army leadership responded in the same manner by requiring suicide prevention and identification classes for all of us.
I do not know enough about suicides or their causes to be able to say that the strain on the Army from multiple long deployments in a combat zone would be a source of increased suicides. Ultimately, the Army is made up of people, and the many complexities of the motivations and situations of the soldiers in the force should preclude any sweeping generalizations. The trend, however, is disturbing.
The question arises as to whether the increase in suicides is directly related to the increase in combat deployments and "stress on the force" that comes from fighting two wars with a much smaller Army than existed in the Cold War era. While 35% of the suicides from this period were soldiers who had not deployed, 78% of those who committed suicide while deployed were on their first tour.
The immediate response by the Army is to require 2 - 4 hours of training on suicide prevention and identification across the force. This training will be conducted between February 15 and March 15.
In the summer of 2003, while I was in Iraq, the number of suicides increased dramatically for units deployed in that country. I vividly remember the suicide of a civil affairs captain that occurred at Camp Babylon while I was there. The man had a wife and children. The Army leadership responded in the same manner by requiring suicide prevention and identification classes for all of us.
I do not know enough about suicides or their causes to be able to say that the strain on the Army from multiple long deployments in a combat zone would be a source of increased suicides. Ultimately, the Army is made up of people, and the many complexities of the motivations and situations of the soldiers in the force should preclude any sweeping generalizations. The trend, however, is disturbing.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
On Blackwater, and life and death decisions
Out of the blue I received an email from a member of Ambassador Bremer's Blackwater Personal Security Detail (PSD). He had visited my web site and seen the pictures that I had taken of Bremer's visit to Karbala in February 2004. The emailer accompanied Mr. Bremer as a part of his PSD during that visit. I also wrote about the visit in my book "Messages from Babylon." The man asked that I keep his name confidential and I will honor his request. He explained that anonymity was important for those in that line of work, and I imagine he wanted to continue working in that area.
Evidently, current and former members of Blackwater are a tight fraternity and they stay in contact with each other. Thus, I learned from this gentleman's email that three Blackwater employees who were in Karbala with us that day would later die in violent deaths. Two of the men's deaths came shortly after the visit. One of the three was Jerry Zovko, a Croatian-American, former Army Ranger, and one of the four Blackwater employees who were ambushed and killed in Fallujah on March 31, 2004.
Much has been written about Blackwater and their activities in Iraq and other places. The name Blackwater has almost become synonymous with controversy. I don't have a lot of first hand knowledge about the controversies and didn't take the time to read all the books and articles about what the firm's employees did or did not do.
I can comment on what I know. Iraq was a tough place to try to make good, informed judgements and decisions. Everything was so strange and alien that situations were difficult to place into some kind of context. And context was everything. In order to compare the different possibilities, or courses of action, one had to evaluate these possibilities against your base of knowledge or known experiences. And to be honest with you, sometimes as I searched for an answer I realized that even though I was fifty years old and had been in the military 28 years I didn't have the knowledge or life experience to make an informed decision. But the decision was mine to make and no one else's. The toughest part was that my decision might mean life or death to someone, possibly me, or even worse, someone else.
So many of the decisions would seem innocuous to the casual observer. Should we go this way or that way? That's not too difficult a decision in Tallahassee, but is one with wider ramifications in Baghdad. Should we go today or tomorrow? Sometimes today looked a little too dangerous, so I went the next day. Thank God I didn't make any decisions that got anyone killed. That's why I hesitate to criticize decisions made in a combat zone.
"Why, that was obviously a stupid decision," you might say.
Very little was obvious in Iraq, or that clear, or defined, or crystalline. The men in the Blackwater PSD that I saw in Karbala on that February day in 2004 looked like they were trying very hard to do a very difficult job as professionally as they could. I could see that they were under a lot of stress. I can't speak to what the rest of the Blackwater people did or didn't do. I wasn't there. I didn't know what they new at the time of the decision.
And even if I did, I wouldn't be quick to criticize.
Evidently, current and former members of Blackwater are a tight fraternity and they stay in contact with each other. Thus, I learned from this gentleman's email that three Blackwater employees who were in Karbala with us that day would later die in violent deaths. Two of the men's deaths came shortly after the visit. One of the three was Jerry Zovko, a Croatian-American, former Army Ranger, and one of the four Blackwater employees who were ambushed and killed in Fallujah on March 31, 2004.
Much has been written about Blackwater and their activities in Iraq and other places. The name Blackwater has almost become synonymous with controversy. I don't have a lot of first hand knowledge about the controversies and didn't take the time to read all the books and articles about what the firm's employees did or did not do.
I can comment on what I know. Iraq was a tough place to try to make good, informed judgements and decisions. Everything was so strange and alien that situations were difficult to place into some kind of context. And context was everything. In order to compare the different possibilities, or courses of action, one had to evaluate these possibilities against your base of knowledge or known experiences. And to be honest with you, sometimes as I searched for an answer I realized that even though I was fifty years old and had been in the military 28 years I didn't have the knowledge or life experience to make an informed decision. But the decision was mine to make and no one else's. The toughest part was that my decision might mean life or death to someone, possibly me, or even worse, someone else.
So many of the decisions would seem innocuous to the casual observer. Should we go this way or that way? That's not too difficult a decision in Tallahassee, but is one with wider ramifications in Baghdad. Should we go today or tomorrow? Sometimes today looked a little too dangerous, so I went the next day. Thank God I didn't make any decisions that got anyone killed. That's why I hesitate to criticize decisions made in a combat zone.
"Why, that was obviously a stupid decision," you might say.
Very little was obvious in Iraq, or that clear, or defined, or crystalline. The men in the Blackwater PSD that I saw in Karbala on that February day in 2004 looked like they were trying very hard to do a very difficult job as professionally as they could. I could see that they were under a lot of stress. I can't speak to what the rest of the Blackwater people did or didn't do. I wasn't there. I didn't know what they new at the time of the decision.
And even if I did, I wouldn't be quick to criticize.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Christmas 2003
Instead of spending Christmas in a combat zone thinking about home, I spent Christmas 2003 at home, thinking about Iraq and my imminent return. Along with tens of thousands of others, I was allowed two weeks of leave from Iraq. Some took advantage of the opportunity and went home. One fellow officer met his wife in Germany. Others, and there were more than a few, decided to save that leave (and the extra money it represented) and remain in Iraq.
I wasn't interested in the money - I wanted to be with my family. I had not seen them in over ten months. Although the pain of returning to Iraq would be great, the memories from those two weeks would be priceless. The sharp ache of a temporary loss of a loved one dulls with time. After a while I got used to living without my family. The quality of my life wasn't as good but I was able to focus on the task at hand. Coming home would open that wound and renew that ache, but I didn't care.
I was fortunate in that I was able to get two weeks of leave that encompassed Christmas and New Year's. So it was that on December 21, 2003, nine months to the day after I left the United State for the Middle East, I returned home. That day turned out to be the longest day of my life, and not just because I had a series of long plane flights to endure on the way to see my family after a long absence. The day was, literally, the longest day of my life. I departed a U.S. Air Force base in the country of Qatar at 12:30 A.M. on December 21 for Germany, then Baltimore, then Atlanta, and finally arrived at Tallahassee at 9:30 P.M. on the same day, 32 hours later.
Christmas 2003 was a wonderful experience for me, and filled with remarkable contrasts to the life that I had so recently been living. Yet, my mind was detached in many ways from the events around me. I felt guilty that I was at home for the holidays while so many of my comrades were still in Iraq. And the biggest feeling that stayed with me, one that I carried around like a heavily weighted rucksack, was the knowledge that I had to return to Iraq on January 5, 2004.
Yes, I know, one is supposed to live in the moment, but it was hard.
As Christmas 2008 approaches I think about all the service men and woman in harm's way around the world, away from home on the holidays. And I still feel a trace of guilt. I am at home with my family, and they aren't. Yes, I know, the guilt is not logical, but it's hard for me not to feel it. I have something in common with them, something that we shared and continue to share.
And right now, five years later, I still feel that bond with them. I truly hope that it never goes away. To all of you out there in uniform, doing a nasty, rotten job away from home and family during the holidays, I send you my very best wishes, and sincere hope that you will return home safe. God speed and God bless.
I wasn't interested in the money - I wanted to be with my family. I had not seen them in over ten months. Although the pain of returning to Iraq would be great, the memories from those two weeks would be priceless. The sharp ache of a temporary loss of a loved one dulls with time. After a while I got used to living without my family. The quality of my life wasn't as good but I was able to focus on the task at hand. Coming home would open that wound and renew that ache, but I didn't care.
I was fortunate in that I was able to get two weeks of leave that encompassed Christmas and New Year's. So it was that on December 21, 2003, nine months to the day after I left the United State for the Middle East, I returned home. That day turned out to be the longest day of my life, and not just because I had a series of long plane flights to endure on the way to see my family after a long absence. The day was, literally, the longest day of my life. I departed a U.S. Air Force base in the country of Qatar at 12:30 A.M. on December 21 for Germany, then Baltimore, then Atlanta, and finally arrived at Tallahassee at 9:30 P.M. on the same day, 32 hours later.
Christmas 2003 was a wonderful experience for me, and filled with remarkable contrasts to the life that I had so recently been living. Yet, my mind was detached in many ways from the events around me. I felt guilty that I was at home for the holidays while so many of my comrades were still in Iraq. And the biggest feeling that stayed with me, one that I carried around like a heavily weighted rucksack, was the knowledge that I had to return to Iraq on January 5, 2004.
Yes, I know, one is supposed to live in the moment, but it was hard.
As Christmas 2008 approaches I think about all the service men and woman in harm's way around the world, away from home on the holidays. And I still feel a trace of guilt. I am at home with my family, and they aren't. Yes, I know, the guilt is not logical, but it's hard for me not to feel it. I have something in common with them, something that we shared and continue to share.
And right now, five years later, I still feel that bond with them. I truly hope that it never goes away. To all of you out there in uniform, doing a nasty, rotten job away from home and family during the holidays, I send you my very best wishes, and sincere hope that you will return home safe. God speed and God bless.
Monday, December 01, 2008
The Wall of Shame
For a number of reasons no one from the the unit I served with in Iraq, the 358th Civil Affairs Brigade, out of Norristown, Pennsylvania, will contact me anytime soon about attending any reunion for the veterans who participated in their deployment to Kuwait and Iraq in 2003 and 2004. We weren't exactly the Band of Brothers.
And I don't mean that in a disparaging way. There were a lot of obstacles that stood in the way of our being a close knit unit. First, there was the rank structure. Of the 150 persons in the unit 12 were colonels, 28 were lieutenant colonels and 34 were majors. There were only a handful of of lieutenants and captains. The great majority of the rest of the unit were lower ranking sergeants and enlisted persons.
Secondly, the Norristown unit was filled to full strength by replacements brought in from other units in Pensacola, Florida and Lubbock, Texas. I was one of the officers brought in from Pensacola. Ultimately, less than half of those that deployed to the Middle East were originally from the Norristown unit.
How did this happen, you ask? The answer is controversial, complex, and was a source of conflict within the unit for the entire tour. As hard as it may be for everyone to believe, not everyone was thrilled at the prospect of being torn from home, job and family and thrown into a year (or longer) deployment to a real shooting war (unlike some of the previous peacekeeping missions some of us had participated in) to the Middle East. And despite all the secrecy involved in our ultimate destination, we could all read the papers and we knew that we were heading for Iraq.
Some of the people in the Norristown unit made a concerted effort to get out of the deployment and some succeeded in doing so. Some had good reasons for not wanting to go and others didn't. Unfortunately, personal hardship wasn't a good reason. The Army had spent a lot of money in training and salary for these people, in some cases for many years, and now was the time for the Army to collect on this investment.
Every person in the Norristown unit that was able to get out of the deployment (and like I said, almost half were able to do so) caused a double blow on the morale of the others. The original members of the unit saw their former comrades dropping, one by one, from the deployment roster. Some were jealous, while others were disappointed.
Every person that was dropped from the deployment roster had to be replaced, primarily with individuals from the Lubbock and Pensacola units. Most of these people didn't want their lives screwed up either. But they were soldiers and they did their duty. Still, they weren't happy at having to take up someone else's slack.
The net result was that we had a conglomeration of people from different units, from different parts of the country, and with different attitudes about why and how they were being sent into combat. When this amalgam of factions was placed into the crucible of the Iraqi desert heat, under way less than ideal living conditions, attached to a Marine unit that really (at first) didn't know what to do with us, the results were predictable.
More people tried to get sent home. Some succeeded. That's when things got ugly. The Operations Officer of the unit had to move out of the communal living quarters when a malcontent urinated in his sleeping bag. There were a lot of unhappy people there.
That is how, on the whitewashed wall of an office in a building on Camp Babylon, Iraq, the Wall of Shame was created. I will not glorify (or condemn, depending on your point of view) the perpetrators of this act by providing their names. Those of us who were there know who they are. Maybe if there was more work for these discontents to do then they would not have had the time or the energy to compile the list of names that made up the Wall. But there wasn't enough work for everyone, and that's a entire other story that I won't go into right now.
The list of names grew before my eyes. I outranked them all and could have stopped them if I wanted to (there were a number of senior officers who could have stopped them but didn't). At the time I remember feeling a strange sort of justice in the list. I knew all the names that were on there. The names were from all ranks, ages, races and religions. There was no discrimination and really only one criteria for having their name scrawled on the whitewash: they had either been in the original Norristown unit and not deployed, or deployed and been sent back home.
Some names generated heated discussions as to whether they should be added to the Wall. The basic defense argument was that the person didn't try to get out of going: they had no choice in their removal, or the reason for their return was reasonable. But no matter how spirited the defense, the facts remained that they were back home in the World and we were (still) stuck at the end of the world carrying loaded weapons because people there were trying to kill us.
As well as I remember, when we left Camp Babylon in September 2003, to be replaced by the 29 nation Multinational Division, the names were still intact on the Wall of Shame. I imagine some Poles or Hungarians entered the office and stared briefly at the scrawling on the wall. They probably ordered some private to paint over it. They didn't know what it was and didn't care.
I don't know if the Wall of Shame is still there, or even if the building is intact. When we got there, the Iraqis had been very busy trying to tear down as much of Saddam's palace complex as possible. But if that wall was still there, I would nominate another name to go on the list - at the very top. And no one would argue with me.
Former member of the 358th Civil Affairs Brigade, former Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserve, convicted felon, for betraying her oath and her trust, for stealing from the Iraqi people and lying about it. I nominate Debra Harrison to the Wall of Shame.
Maybe someday this Band of Misfits may want to get together for a reunion. There are a number of them that I admired and would want to see again. A few of them are still my very good friends. Maybe time will heal the raw emotions. I sure hope so.
And I don't mean that in a disparaging way. There were a lot of obstacles that stood in the way of our being a close knit unit. First, there was the rank structure. Of the 150 persons in the unit 12 were colonels, 28 were lieutenant colonels and 34 were majors. There were only a handful of of lieutenants and captains. The great majority of the rest of the unit were lower ranking sergeants and enlisted persons.
Secondly, the Norristown unit was filled to full strength by replacements brought in from other units in Pensacola, Florida and Lubbock, Texas. I was one of the officers brought in from Pensacola. Ultimately, less than half of those that deployed to the Middle East were originally from the Norristown unit.
How did this happen, you ask? The answer is controversial, complex, and was a source of conflict within the unit for the entire tour. As hard as it may be for everyone to believe, not everyone was thrilled at the prospect of being torn from home, job and family and thrown into a year (or longer) deployment to a real shooting war (unlike some of the previous peacekeeping missions some of us had participated in) to the Middle East. And despite all the secrecy involved in our ultimate destination, we could all read the papers and we knew that we were heading for Iraq.
Some of the people in the Norristown unit made a concerted effort to get out of the deployment and some succeeded in doing so. Some had good reasons for not wanting to go and others didn't. Unfortunately, personal hardship wasn't a good reason. The Army had spent a lot of money in training and salary for these people, in some cases for many years, and now was the time for the Army to collect on this investment.
Every person in the Norristown unit that was able to get out of the deployment (and like I said, almost half were able to do so) caused a double blow on the morale of the others. The original members of the unit saw their former comrades dropping, one by one, from the deployment roster. Some were jealous, while others were disappointed.
Every person that was dropped from the deployment roster had to be replaced, primarily with individuals from the Lubbock and Pensacola units. Most of these people didn't want their lives screwed up either. But they were soldiers and they did their duty. Still, they weren't happy at having to take up someone else's slack.
The net result was that we had a conglomeration of people from different units, from different parts of the country, and with different attitudes about why and how they were being sent into combat. When this amalgam of factions was placed into the crucible of the Iraqi desert heat, under way less than ideal living conditions, attached to a Marine unit that really (at first) didn't know what to do with us, the results were predictable.
More people tried to get sent home. Some succeeded. That's when things got ugly. The Operations Officer of the unit had to move out of the communal living quarters when a malcontent urinated in his sleeping bag. There were a lot of unhappy people there.
That is how, on the whitewashed wall of an office in a building on Camp Babylon, Iraq, the Wall of Shame was created. I will not glorify (or condemn, depending on your point of view) the perpetrators of this act by providing their names. Those of us who were there know who they are. Maybe if there was more work for these discontents to do then they would not have had the time or the energy to compile the list of names that made up the Wall. But there wasn't enough work for everyone, and that's a entire other story that I won't go into right now.
The list of names grew before my eyes. I outranked them all and could have stopped them if I wanted to (there were a number of senior officers who could have stopped them but didn't). At the time I remember feeling a strange sort of justice in the list. I knew all the names that were on there. The names were from all ranks, ages, races and religions. There was no discrimination and really only one criteria for having their name scrawled on the whitewash: they had either been in the original Norristown unit and not deployed, or deployed and been sent back home.
Some names generated heated discussions as to whether they should be added to the Wall. The basic defense argument was that the person didn't try to get out of going: they had no choice in their removal, or the reason for their return was reasonable. But no matter how spirited the defense, the facts remained that they were back home in the World and we were (still) stuck at the end of the world carrying loaded weapons because people there were trying to kill us.
As well as I remember, when we left Camp Babylon in September 2003, to be replaced by the 29 nation Multinational Division, the names were still intact on the Wall of Shame. I imagine some Poles or Hungarians entered the office and stared briefly at the scrawling on the wall. They probably ordered some private to paint over it. They didn't know what it was and didn't care.
I don't know if the Wall of Shame is still there, or even if the building is intact. When we got there, the Iraqis had been very busy trying to tear down as much of Saddam's palace complex as possible. But if that wall was still there, I would nominate another name to go on the list - at the very top. And no one would argue with me.
Former member of the 358th Civil Affairs Brigade, former Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserve, convicted felon, for betraying her oath and her trust, for stealing from the Iraqi people and lying about it. I nominate Debra Harrison to the Wall of Shame.
Maybe someday this Band of Misfits may want to get together for a reunion. There are a number of them that I admired and would want to see again. A few of them are still my very good friends. Maybe time will heal the raw emotions. I sure hope so.
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