Christmas with a U.S. soldier

December 25th, 2005. Christmas day in the Atlanta airport with a U.S. soldier on his way back to Iraq.

A young man in combat.
Short brown hair, blue eyes, nice new shoes, my age (28). He is dressed well in his clean crisp army attire. He sits next to me in the smoking lounge, awaiting his flight as am I. We begin speaking. I ask him "How are you getting there?" He responds "I haven't been told yet." He doesn't know how he is getting to Iraq (they don't tell the soldiers their itinerary in advance).

He is an infantry soldier based in the impoverished town of Abu Graib, just north of Baghdad. There are no journalists embedded where he is stationed because it is too dangerous. He's already spent nine months there and is on his way back. On Christmas Day.

Violence everywhere
He seems surprisingly calm. He has a gentle face, but is cleary weathered by war. He tells me he has become numb to the violence because there is so much of it. He expressed his disappointment with how much the press covers only the bad news (violence) and not the good news. The press cares about selling programming, whatever it takes.

He is on the front line, in the infantry and has been in the U.S. Army for years. He was in Bosnia in 1995 and says that the violence is much worse now in Iraq. There is a sense of confusion and helplessness amongst the Iraqi citizens. They are living in war and many of the rich Iraqis have left. Those that remain in Iraq are often paid by the "freedom fighters" (a.k.a. insurgents, resistance ... terrorists ... civilian-killers) to plant bombs. This means that many Iraqi citizens are so poor that when they are offered money, they accept, even if it goes against their morals.

This U.S. soldier sitting next to me is saddened by the situation in Iraq. He has heard atrocities from the Saddam times and wonders what alternatives there were but to take Saddam out of power by force. He hopes the situation improves and is there being as respectful as he can, given the horrible situation.

Road bombs and bombs in the markets.
"Bombs go off all the time in the open air food markets found all around town," he explains. "When a bomb explodes near civilians, my human nature is to go near to help the hurt. However, many times, another bomb explodes, hurting those that get near to help." It is disastrous.

Mercenaries
"Do you have any interaction with the mercenaries?" I ask him. He responds: "Well, I wouldn't call them mercenaries, but we don't have interaction with the security contractors, even though they are paid by the government too. I actually have no idea what they are doing there." I ask him: "I've heard that some of the worst atrocities have been committed by the security contractors and not the U.S. military." His response: "Yeah, I could believe that."

Integration?
"Do you ever eat Iraqi food?" -- "No," he replies, "although sometimes the families whose homes we enter offer us sweet and delicacies, we must decline because the sanitary conditions are much different there." He enters peoples' houses and tries to respect the people inside.

A brief encounter
We leave no contact information with each other and don't even exchange first names. We speak for around twenty minutes. He asks me if I've ever been to Iraq. "No, I haven't," I confess.

He confirms to me that other towns and villages are now being seiged and closed off much like Fallujah was in April and November of 2004. When I tell him about a recent documentary, made and released in Italy, showing how white phosphorous burns peoples' bodies but not their clothes, he responds vaguely, saying it is unfortunate that extreme measures must sometimes be taken.

A colleague of his comes into the smoking lounge and exclaims "our fleet is ready to go!" With that, the nameless U.S. soldier and I part ways -- both spending the rest of Christmas day on airplanes crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

As I walk to my gate, for my flight to Europe, I pass swarms of other army men and women on route to Iraq. On Christmas Day. Back to the war on Christmas Day.