Soldier Writer

Boarding a C-12 on the last leg of my last mission

This is me, May 25, 2006, bedraggled, tired, needing a shower, and somehow lucking out and getting a ride back to my base in Qatar on a C-12 aircraft, with air conditioning, comfy seats and no need for earplugs, thanks to a helpful cohort in Kuwait.  This is the end of my last mission for this six-month deployment, and I am definitely ready to return to civilian living.

Katrina - continued

An hour south of New Orleans, I passed through the small towns of Empire, Port Sulphur and Buras. The damage there was even worse. Shrimping trawlers had run aground beside the roadside and lurked like strange specimens out of context. A large rectangular fish truck was propped at an odd angle against a tree as if a giant's hand had reached down and rearranged it more to his liking. As we drove toward Port Sulphur, large sections of land just off the edge of Louisiana's Highway 23 were obscured by water, looking more like lakes. About 100 feet out, I could barely see the tops of trees, their branches reaching upward as if trying to untangle themselves from the muck below, to escape their watery prisons. Just minutes down the road, a detour took us around a doublewide trailer that sat squarely across the median blocking two lanes of the highway.

But, although we had a job to do, we did get a day to see the sights. I chose to spend mine with a cup of chicory coffee and a plate of beignets (square doughnuts heavily dusted with powdered sugar) at the famed Cafe Du Monde. Past the little town of Desallemandes, an hour from New Orleans, I took an airboat tour of the swamp country with a couple of true Cajun tour guides. I also walked along New Orleans' famed Bourbon Street, listening to the drifting sounds of blues and zydeco.

It was surreal. It almost appeared that things were going on as usual, as if nothing had changed, when just miles away, whole lives had been altered forever. But, when I looked more closely, I noticed representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), police at every turn, and now and then, a desert-camo humvee rolling through the backdrop of the fairly bustling street scene. I had always wanted to visit New Orleans, but I don't think I ever envisioned doing it this way. The city and its people left an indelible mark on my life.

I found it difficult to return home after only a month, and to turn away from a situation that for many is far from over. I can close the cover on this chapter of my life experiences. I can return to normality and try to find the right words to describe my experiences there in answer to the questions family, friends and coworkers ask.

I can jump back into my awaiting life, back to work and back into the arms of the one I love. But Louisiana has changed me. It has made me more thankful for what I have, given me the opportunity to touch the lives of others, and to be more keenly aware that nothing in life is ours forever. We have to live and appreciate each and every day, each tiny detail of our lives, because in life nothing is ever certain.  If you think it is, ask a former resident of the Ninth Ward.

Katrina - continued

My coverage of stories took me to communities inside and around New Orleans.

In the community of Algiers, I accompanied medics from a California field artillery unit on foot, as they walked door-to-door offering free tetanus, and hepatitis A and B immunizations. Children came running out at the sight of us, and one little girl showed no bashfulness at all as she came up, hugged me, and smiled up at me, while her bold sister tried vehemently to get me to photograph her by showing us what a good dancer she was.

I wrote a feature on a first sergeant from a California unit who was returning to what was left of his grandmother's house, a place where he'd spent long stretches of his childhood. I donned a pair of hip waders and followed the man and his uncle into the shabby structure, dodging boards with rusty nails, and wearing a protective face mask to filter out any particulates. I couldn't believe the damage inside, and I looked incredulously upon a chair stuck in the ceiling and snapped photos as the first sergeant dug beneath dirty, jagged glassware in kitchen cabinets, searching for his grandmother's jar of rare coins she'd requested he find.

Another story led me to the small community of Violet. There, stranded dogs bounded unafraid and hungry, up toward the sides of our slowly moving vehicles. We moved in a convoy, our vehicle behind a truck bed full of Georgia firemen and ahead of a Humvee carrying California Guardsmen to pull security. I cautiously followed the firemen and armed National Guardsmen inside the former residences. The parts that still stood housed tattered, disheveled blinds and pictures of healthy chubby-cheeked children flanked by white walls and ceiling fans blotched with mildew. Floors were slick with inches of mud that clung to my combat boots. I photographed an unblemished American flag that stood vertically, as if with determined pride, in the middle of a storm-ravaged yard.

Now and then, we encountered the former residents of these homes sorting through the rubble. Outside one home, I found a middle-aged couple cleaning around their house. They told me they had narrowly survived by escaping their swiftly flooding attic and jumping into their boat, where they rode out over five hours of the storm's 150-mph winds.

During my coverage of a project to salvage the damaged Jackson Barracks Military Museum and its relics, I met Stan, its curator, and was amazed by his resilience. He had lived in the city for over a decade, Katrina had taken his home, and yet there he was, still faithful to his position, trying to uncover the historical remnants of a military past from the wreckage, so some of it could be restored. He said there was "no such thing as a problem," and that he only saw opportunities. He said this even as he stood among what was once a proud display of antique military equipment, not far from the theater of the museum that still held three feet of filmy, toxic water.

At a school in the town of Belle Chasse, I photographed a group of soldiers greeting students and presenting teddy bears to the children returning to school after a month of being displaced. For some of the children, it might have been the only toy they owned, since many of them had lost their homes and the possessions therein.

Katrina - continued

If I wanted to jump full-swing into the profession I loved, then here was the time and place for it. There was no shortage of action. Stories begged to be covered. Everywhere I went, I encountered soldiers handing out meals ready to eat (MREs) and bottles of water to residents, or I heard of people making a difference in the lives of others. For the first time in a long time, I wasn't only partially involved in life, somewhere watching a clock and checking off items on a task list. I was contributing to something larger than life.

My experiences as a soldier there not only enabled me to do my job and tell a story with words and photographs. They had deep significance for me personally.

My unit assigned me to cover a visit by former President George Bush, Sr. I also had the opportunity to shake hands with current President George Bush, as I stood in a massive military crowd. He made a brief but meaningful speech about our role in helping the victims of Katrina and the State of Louisiana, and then he thanked us and waved from the ramp as he boarded Air Force One.

But the most inspiring memories of my time there come from my interviews and encounters with the residents of Louisiana. I grew up in the South, so I understand the hospitality that sometimes seems foreign to people who have never been there. But I cannot put into words the pride it gave me when people personally thanked us. It went beyond the expected hospitality. A number of restaurants were thanking soldiers by not allowing them to pay for their meals or giving automatic discounts. When we ate at a local Chinese buffet, a lady seated in the restaurant came to our table and directly addressed us all. She apologized in advance for "any unfriendliness we might come across" in New Orleans. She wanted us to know that "99.9 percent of the population is glad you are here." I think all of us were moved by her words. I felt this goodwill everywhere we went in the city. The people were so welcoming. Drivers would honk or wave when we passed in our Humvees. This was the first time I'd seen or felt a direct impact from my contributions as an American soldier.

The people I met made me proud to be there and further strengthened my sense of purpose.

I have fond memories of the times I spent with a group of ladies at a middle school outside the city. These ladies, the regular cafeteria staff of the Harry S. Truman Middle School in Jefferson Parish showed their appreciation to our Wyoming units and Arkansas Guard soldiers by stuffing us with homemade red beans and rice, sweet squares of cornbread, gallons of iced sweet tea, and tasty servings of coconut cake. They were extremely kind and told us how glad they were to have us there. We enjoyed their presence just as much, if not more than they enjoyed ours. Their genuine hospitality and welcoming spirit made me feel like I was one of their grandchildren who had come for an infrequent visit, and they were doing all they could to spoil us before we left. We looked forward to their evening meals during the course of quite a few tiring days, and when it came time to return to Wyoming, we weren't yet ready to say our tearful goodbyes.

Katrina - continued

Once there, we shuffled through a neverending line of other arriving Guardsmen from many different states to get chow, and then settled into enormous tents where we battled mosquitoes with bug repellent, and walked a short distance over dirt to get to the showers.

After a few days of the usual military "hurry up and wait," we headed for The Big Easy.

There, we bedded down on cots in an open hangar at Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base New Orleans, located on the outskirts of the city. We continued to fight the overbearing humidity and heat there with huge fans working overtime. It was an improvement over accommodations in Alexandria, over three hours northwest of New Orleans. Eventually, during our last two weeks there, we moved all of our belongings to the temporary lodging area that everyone called the "tent city." We tied a tarp up inside the tent and hung it over a rope as a makeshift wall to provide privacy between the men and women in our unit, and it was "Home, Sweet Home" until our departure.

My other seven unit members and I spent one month there on the base, working out of a crowded office to write, edit and transmit our stories for publication. It was a bit of a transition getting used to Army living again, but after a few days it no longer fazed me. After a full day's work, I was too exhausted to care where I lay my head at night. I thrived on the feeling that I was part of something greater than myself and found myself fueled with excitement over getting the chance to really exercise my journalistic skills. I wanted this job from the day I enlisted in the Army. But print journalist was a hard-to-come-by military occupational specialty in a small job field when I joined, and it wasn't until I'd served four years active duty as a radio communications specialist and got out and joined the Guard, that I finally attained it.

Soldiers from a Maryland public affairs unit had already been on the base for two weeks when we got there. They took us out on the first day to familiarize us in finding our way around the city. It was important that they did so, because once they left, it was up to us to get around in the communities to do our stories. I didn't know what to expect. I hung on to every word our guides said, shaking my head in disbelief as they related the things they'd seen. As I did so, I stared out the vehicle window in awe at the passing destruction. I saw enormous uprooted trees, ragged downed power lines and a high-rise hotel with blown-out windows. I saw a house where someone had marked "HELP" twice in bright, red paint on the roof, and I silently hoped whoever made the request had been found in time.

My previous concerns quickly paled in comparison to the wreckage I saw before me. Suddenly the worries of canceling business travel plans, and writing up instructions to leave with my boyfriend so he could manage my bills, faded into the background. Before I left, I had been frustrated and felt overwhelmed by the interruption of day-to-day activities. Once I came to New Orleans, I realized many of these Louisianans no longer had their everyday lives to return to, as I did. The ones who did survive were starting over from nothing, in a new town, without a loved one, or missing a home they'd lived in for decades. It just seemed a world away from Wyoming – from its mountains, dry climate and swiftly approaching winter – to this place with soaring temperatures that left clothing soaked in minutes. Being there had a way of stripping away all of the details and showing me what was most important in life. The unbreakable human spirit and rampant kindness seemed to be more valuable currency than the once precious possessions many people had lost to the hurricanes.

Casper resident, Army journalist covers post-Katrina operations in La.

By Jennifer Sardam

I stood in the middle of New Orleans' Ninth Ward, one of many areas decimated by Hurricane Katrina. Raising the Nikon D1 camera slung around my neck, I began to shoot rapidly. The mud-coated sea of debris around me made it hard to believe I was still in my own country.  The eerie calm of the Ninth Ward belied the turmoil that had rendered it this way only a month before. Sludge-covered cars with busted windows, some teetering atop others, littered the landscape amidst scattered masses of splintered boards that were once homes. A barge had crossed over into the neighborhood when the adjacent levee broke from flooding. Its monstrous bulk bore down upon a school bus like a symbol of the chaos that placed it there. It was hard to accept the scene I saw before me as reality. It was worse than anything I'd seen on the news. I was sent there to document it as an Army National Guard journalist, but it was hard to imagine I could do it the justice that reality did so well.

Notification of my deployment had come only days before, and it had taken me by surprise. I was running the exhibit booth with my boss at a conference on a clear, sunny day in Jackson, Wyoming, when my cell phone rang. A friend from my Wyoming Army unit told me we had to be at the Laramie armory, bags packed and ready the next Wednesday morning. My mission as a member of the Wyoming Army National Guard’s 111th Press Camp was to provide coverage of U.S. Army and Air National Guard units participating in hurricane relief operations. Until that point, my knowledge of the damage done by Katrina came from the devastating images I saw coming from the major news networks, flashes of distant reality neatly framed in my television. My everyday thoughts at that time were focused toward personal financial concerns and projects due at work. I never thought I'd find myself standing in the center of the hurricane's aftermath in a place that seemed a world away from home in Casper, Wyo.

I'd been in the active-duty Army for seven years and spent almost five more years in the Army National Guard. For the last seven years of my military service, I've been a print and photojournalist working in the public affairs field. I assumed that one day I would be called to deploy. Yet, for all of this time, after being stationed in Alaska and Germany, and taking part in military exercises in countries as far away as Korea, this was my first real-world mission. I always thought if I were ever mobilized, it would be to go to Iraq. Yet I found myself on American soil helping people just like you and me.

My journey began at the Rock Springs Army National Guard Armory, where I joined my unit and other Wyoming Army Guard members. During two days there, we received hepatitis A and B and tetanus vaccinations, ensured all of our military documentation was up to date, and loaded our duffel bags and other cargo onto a pallet that accompanied us on a C-130 aircraft to Alexandria, La.

continued

Meeting Fla. Gov. Jeb Bush again

While deployed to Southwest Asia in April 2006, I had the unique opportunity to meet Gov. Jeb Bush for the second time in my life.  I had had the honor years before in 1998, when I was assigned to photograph an event in Saint Augustine, Fla., during the campaign preceding his successful election as governor.

Back from Iraq - Part 3

I was most stunned by how magnificent the palaces (formerly owned by Saddam and still standing) are there.  One of them is used as the American Embassy in Baghdad, and we stayed there.  It was amazing.  I just stood there gawking at the immensity of the rooms.  Even the bathrooms that we used were gorgeous, oversized and crafted from what looked to be marble and gold.  But it was also difficult to think that a lot of the grandeur we saw was probably built with Oil-For-Food money while the average families of Iraq starved and were mistreated and kept under Saddam's evil thumb. 

We even saw some of the torture devices at Abu Ghraib, and it was impossible to imagine such cruelty.  It felt as eerie as when I visited the former Dachau concentration camp in Germany when I was stationed there years before.  The camp is now a solemn memorial to remind people why certain eras of history should never be repeated.  Hopefully enough people get the message.

During this morning’s conversation, one of our team members made an astute observation.  It may seem easy to figure out for those who are not in the middle of this, but to us it was just a day on the job until we stood back and thought about it.  Our cohort caused us to stop and realize what a rare chance we'd actually had.  We stood on the rooftop of one of Saddam’s palaces (Al Faw) with four U.S. governors!  No one does that every day.  He said that this will stay with us for the rest of our lives, and we all agreed.  We will be telling our friends and families stories of this week and these few months for a long time to come.  He’s right.  I never looked at it from that angle until he brought it to our attention.   

I am not a particularly religious person, but I felt a calling to my heart and soul when I first heard of this mission over e-mail during a day behind my desk at work in January.  I haven’t yet determined where (if anywhere) this is leading me.  But what I do know is that I was supposed to be here.  None of this was unplanned or is a mistake, in my opinion – not the fact that we have the particular wonderful people we have on our team or any of the experiences we endure and partake in together.  We are all following our own paths somewhere, and I’m glad we are able to do so as “one team, one fight!”

Back from Iraq - Part 2

Surprisingly, I didn’t feel fearful this week.  In 1994, when I was a soldier in the 101st Airborne Division, the mere mention of deploying to Kuwait had me shaking in my literal combat boots.  We were geared up to go at the behest of President Clinton at that time, and just days before our deployment was to begin, the whole plan was called off.  I was still very young physically and emotionally then, and had felt such relief at that moment, being more concerned with my lifespan than with us winning the war.

Skip to the present, and here I was feeling jazzed and curious and very thoughtful, taking in every detail of the landscape as we passed over.  I am proud to be a small piece of this GWOT.  There are many soldiers with more important missions than my own.  And I am not one to deny that they are much better qualified to do these jobs, like being gunners on the tops of Humvees and manning tanks – jobs I know and have no problem admitting I am not as physically able to do as a female.  I don’t have anything to prove; but I am proud to be a soldier nonetheless.

I am a public affairs soldier, and I am proud of serving in my field.  There are many degrees of talent in our field, and I feel that I do my job well.  I’m so passionate about it lately that I don’t think I could do a terrible job if I tried.  My power may not be physical.  But it lies within my ability to tell the stories of those who do have the might and can weather the harshest of conditions, as well as the mechanics, the cooks, the administrative assistants, who behind the scenes keep all of the elements running smoothly.  And that is enough for me.

Being here, to me, is like putting life at home in the States in a little glass display case in front of me, so that everything in life, every detail has so much clarity and is so much easier to see all at once.  It puts things into perspective and makes me thankful for the things I might not have seen before.  It makes every moment in life – even the mundane ones -- more precious.   

None of us had had any sleep but about two to three hours each night when we were working with the governors.  We were up very late sending off photos and captions to their press people and I was like a zombie on my feet, but I wouldn’t let myself do a slipshod job in the name of getting back to my bunk.  I stayed as long as I needed to, regardless of my waning concentration skills.  That first night we went to sleep at about 3:30 a.m. and rose at 5:30 a.m. 

The traveling is worse than any long road trip you can imagine.  There is no comfort to be had in military aircraft.  You are constantly picking up your bags and carrying them over long distances in the middle of the night or in the heat of the day, in the rain.  Your knees are buckled into positions you didn’t even know they could maintain for an hour-long flight, until you had no choice.  You are told your flight is leaving soon and then told the flight was abruptly changed to a cargo flight, and you now have to wait 12 hours, and you have to regroup and keep a smile on your face.  Then you spend that time attempting to sleep on the hard, dusty, thinly carpeted floor of a huge tent where the lights remain on and everyone is tromping around in and out of the area on their way to their own paths of duty.  At the same time, you must constantly keep a hold on your weapon and never let it out of your sight.  I sleep with it right beside me in bed or take it to the nearby showers.  It is only now that I can truly understand why it was drummed into the very cores of our existence in basic training.  The weapon could be the difference between your living and dying, and it really becomes a part of you that goes everywhere you go in theater here in Southwest Asia.

The good thing – and I’m not complaining – is that I’m now in an Army where we get daily showers, and there are free Internet cafes and many more things taken care of by the influx of civilian and DoD contractors.  Things are still MUCH better than they used to be.  Even the quality of the Meals Ready-to-Eat has improved by a landslide.  The little amenities make a huge difference in a place like this, and we are always so thankful to the USO for being everywhere we are.

Back from Iraq - Part 1

Now that we are back safe and sound in Qatar, I can tell you what I’ve been up to this entire week.  I was in Kuwait and the locales of Baghdad, Balad and Abu Ghraib Detention Center (which is formerly the prison used by Saddam Hussein to torture and kill over 30,000 people) in Iraq. 

Our team followed four governors (West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin III, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack) around the different areas of operations as they met with troops from each of their home states. 

On the second day in Iraq, the governors split up for a few hours and visited troops in different camps.  I was solely assigned to provide coverage of Gov. Jeb Bush during his visit to Abu Ghraib, as the three others of our team were separately assigned to other governors for this purpose.  Being a former longtime Florida resident (a place where my heart still resides), I enjoyed meeting him once again, just as much as I did back in the summer of 1998 when I photographed him at the World Golf Village in St. Augustine, Fla., during his campaign, which ended in his successful election to the office of governor. 

Gov. Bush took down my grandfather’s phone number and twice made sure he had it and told me he will be giving him a call soon. I hope so.  Contacting their constituents is a regular thing the governors do for obvious reasons, but I told him it would be very meaningful to me and to my aging grandfather, who is a Navy veteran and not in the prime of his health right now. 

I also found it amazing how down to earth the governors are.  After the second day with them began, they seemed just like anybody you’d meet on an everyday basis.  Gov. Bush was braving the extreme heat at Abu Ghraib that day right along with the rest of us.  We were all in the helicopters together, and had anything happened, any one of us had just as much of a chance as anyone else to get injured.  Thankfully, we were not though.

I spent about an entire hour there constantly on the move and totally “in my zone,” as I scribbled down cutlines and hurriedly made my way from one soldier to another, photographing the handshakes with the governor, recording in a pocket notebook the hometowns, full name identifications and units, on the fly. 

The scariest thing to me was flying over Baghdad in the pitch black of that first night and also during the day on that second day, seeing these green flares flame up and narrowly graze pass our helicopter.  I could actually feel the heat emanating from them as they whizzed by, since the doors had been removed from the Blackhawk.  I’m not sure which was worse – seeing a flare that first night and not knowing the origination of it and what it really was, or knowing that the second day we saw them these could easily have been someone marking us as a target, according to talk I heard going around.  I remember thinking ‘okay, what would happen if those things didn’t go in the other direction and instead went through the helicopter and toward us?’  I’m glad I didn’t have to find out any more than that. 

Everything became crystal-clear to me that this was no longer just bits and pieces of what I saw on T.V., where I could change the channel if it didn’t appeal to me.  I was not magically converted to some kind of protected status because I was accompanying governors.  We were a visible target in the air, inside a chopper, and if someone had wanted to take us out, they could have. 

It personally hit home as to why keeping information secure is so very vital.  If I had e-mailed or called friends or family on the cell phone and said, “Hey, guess what I’m getting ready to go do?”  I could have very well jeopardized the safety of everyone on those helos.  We are taught to be very cognizant of this.  It may be exciting and seem harmless to share the news of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with the people at home who are just living a routine existence, but it could also be a deadly mistake that affects more than just the person delivering the message.  The eyes and ears of Al Qaeda are everywhere, and, no, it’s not a right-wing conspiracy.  The Global War on Terror (GWOT) is real, and it exists here and in Cyberspace.  My liberal flower child mind of a decade ago would not have accepted this then, but I now know the truth when I see it and feel it all around me.