thePULSELetters home from Iraq
This holiday season, these local service people are giving their family, friends and neighbors a true gift
December 2004 – Whatever your position is on the U.S. involvement in Iraq — pro-war or pacifist — our American troops overseas deserve your support this holiday season. While the rest of us are curled up by a fire enjoying holiday cheer or snapping pictures of family members reveling in their Christmas Day treasures, thousands of service men and women are away from home, missing out on the holidays.
For these local service people, memories of home — poignant moments that capture lives left behind — hold deep significance. These men and women cannot share holiday meals with family and friends, attend religious services at a favorite church or watch their children tear through mountains of green and red wrapping paper.
But those are sacrifices many are willing to make for their country — including the overseas service men and women and their families below who agreed to talk to The PULSE about what they’ll miss this holiday season. Each shared different feelings about being away from home, but they all are comforted by being part of something greater.
It won’t be Christmas
“He says he can’t wait to get home to Worcester and get back to school, even though he is doing his duty there. We’ll count the days until he’s home.”
– Donna Snair, mother of Corporal Justin Snair, USMC Iraq
For Army Reservist Lieutenant Joseph Wanat, last year’s holiday season was bittersweet. On December 26, the day after Christmas, his unit was deployed to Baghdad, Iraq.
This year, things are no different — Wanat is celebrating Christmas and New Year’s on the dry, dusty plains of Baghdad. And it’s a muted celebration at that, he explains in a recent email, as the terrorist threat to U.S. soldiers and civilians increases during the holidays. All of which, he professes, makes him miss his family and home even more.
Back in Worcester, Wanat’s wife, Kathleen, says the holidays just won’t be the same without him.
“It will be hard waking up on Christmas and not having the family together,” she explains. “It won’t be Christmas.”
When Wanat comes home, his wife says, the family will celebrate a belated Christmas with a trip to a warm, sunny beach.
Yvonne Topping of Westborough shares something with Kathleen Wanat — both are missing a family member at the dinner table this Christmas. Topping’s daughter Joy is in the Army’s Military Police and has spent several holidays away from home.
“I don’t bring out the traditional familiar decorations, it makes me too sad,” Yvonne Topping says. “The holidays are not the same.”
Before being sent back to a base in Germany for a medical condition, Joy Topping was stationed in Fallujah, Iraq with her unit. Her mother sends reminders of home — a Red Sox hat to celebrate the team’s World Series victory and seasonal DVDs like White Christmas.
Well deserved support
Joy Topping joined the Military Police two and a half years ago. Topping’s mother says she has heard dissatisfaction for the Bush administration and American involvement in Iraq on the part of her peers. But still, she says, she feels the troops should be supported.
“I know sometimes people don’t agree, but people are very generous for the soldiers,” Mrs. Topping comments. “Americans are goodhearted. Our family feels that it was the right decision to intervene. Freedom isn’t free, and Joy feels that she’s entertaining them over there so we can walk around here. She believes in what she’s doing, and we believe in her.”
Last Christmas, Topping traveled home to Westborough to spend the holiday with her family during a block leave from Kaiserslautern, Germany before heading to Iraq for a 12-month deployment. Some men and women in her unit decided to stay in Germany during leave, one of them being her friend Spc. Jonathan R. Kephart.
“I called him on Christmas just to tell him that I was thinking about him and the other guys back there,” Topping says via email. “It was a quick conversation, but that’s the last Christmas Kep will ever see. He was killed in Iraq on April 9, 2004. That’s a hard memory, but I’m lucky to have it. It will be a part of my Christmas memories forever.”
“Who’s your Baghdaddy”
“I love the snow and freezing my butt off while waiting in line for Sh’booms!”
– Sergeant Denny Meadows, Al Taji, Iraq
Joseph Wanat has served in the military for 15 years — he was deployed during Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s. During peacetime, he resides in Worcester with his wife and two young children, Madeleine, 2, and Colin, 6 months, whose birth he missed by two weeks due to travel conflicts in Iraq.
“I was not able to make it home for his arrival,” he says, adding that he did get to experience the birth by phone. “I came home later to meet him.”
Wanat’s Army Reserve unit, which is out of Providence, Rhode Island, has been assigned to oversee operation and infrastructure maintenance of Iraqi rail systems. He works at the Baghdad Train Station, adjacent to the “Green Zone,” the area where current Iraqi government officials reside and the U.S. and British Embassies are located.
Scheduled to come home in January, Wanat has sent several packages home to his family, including stuffed camels, a handmade Iraqi quilt and novelty “Who’s Your Baghdaddy” t-shirts that he says are very popular with stationed troops. He has been very lucky. He is able to keep in close touch with his family, because he has almost unlimited Internet and cell phone access. As part of his job, Wanat has to keep in constant contact with U.S. contractors and Department of Transportation staff
Still, he says, that’s not enough. There are some things that just can’t be experienced over the phone, like seeing his children grow or enjoying the changing of New England’s seasons.
“I miss the fall foliage the most and that crisp morning air,” he says, and then jokes, “that and the ability to wear a sweater with shorts.”
And he even misses the holiday family squabbles.
“My wife and I have an annual battle over fake tree vs. real tree,” he says. “I prefer the fake one for environmental reasons… I’m usually on the losing end.”
His wife says it’s a little heartbreaking for her to watch Madeleine begin to speak and comprehend the world while her father is overseas.
“She talks to her father on the phone,” she says. “And she walks by pictures of him and says ‘Dada.’”
Business as usual
Scheduled to come home in January, Wanat has sent several packages home to his family, including stuffed camels, a handmade Iraqi quilt and novelty “Who’s Your Baghdaddy” t-shirts that he says are very popular with stationed troops.
As the holidays approach, families call and email more frequently. Yet for soldiers, Joy Topping says, the holidays mean business as usual.
“We work 24/7/365 days a year, especially in Iraq,” Topping writes. “You treat Christmas like any other day. I didn’t even know it was Easter this year. There are more important things going on that need every soldier’s full attention.”
Sergeant Denny Meadows, a Marine Reservist who volunteered to go to Iraq when his unit didn’t get activated, is currently stationed in Al Taji, a town north of Baghdad. He says the Marine Corps Birthday on November 10 was a bigger celebration this year than Christmas. It was an honor, he says, to celebrate the USMC birthday in a combat zone doing what he’s trained to do — protect his country.
“Other than that,” he comments, “holidays are just another day over here.”
For many, the holiday season is also a time to return to faith. Some find refuge in church, while others embrace the silent relationship between themselves and God. Topping says she feels her faith has kept her grounded during her tenure overseas.
“Faith is something you need in Iraq,” she writes. “It gets crazy over there, you lose friends. I would never make it anywhere in this world without my faith.”
Meadows shares a similar mindset. His faith is always with him, he says, even as he’s torn from his family and stationed in a country that sees more pain and bloodshed with every passing day.
“I could be home playing Xbox or here in Iraq training the New Iraqi Army,” he says. “My faith would be the same.”
The little things
While every overseas soldier longs to see family members and friends, many we spoke with say it’s often the small details that are missed the most.
“I miss going to football games on Thanksgiving,” Topping says. “I miss the snow falling outside and being warm inside with my family.”
Meadows says one of the things he misses most is the Worcester club scene.
“I love the snow and freezing my butt off while waiting in line for Sh’booms,” he says.
Meadows, who is 25 and a graduate of Dudley’s Shepherd Hill High School, says he also wishes he could have been home for Thanksgiving, his favorite holiday.
“My family gets together and we just pig out and drink while watching football,” he says via email. “It’s great.”
A mother’s holiday wish
“Faith is something you need in Iraq. It gets crazy over there, you lose friends. I would never make it anywhere in this world without my faith.”
– Joy Topping, Military Police, Fallujah, Iraq
Donna Snair of Worcester says her son Justin, who is in the Marine Corps and stationed in Iraq, shares similar sentiments.
“He says he can’t wait to get home to Worcester and get back to school, even though he is doing his duty there,” she explains. “We’ll count the days until he’s home.”
After attending Virginia Military Institute out of Doherty High School, Snair moved closer to home following the events of September 11, 2001. He attended Assumption and Becker Colleges before his reserve unit was activated and deployed in June 2004. He was in Iraq by his 22nd birthday.
“I was very concerned, but I supported him, which is what they all need,” Snair’s mother says, as she explains that the holidays are extra difficult this year. “It will be tough on Christmas not having him here. He is a very bubbly kid and he brings a lot of life into our house.”
Mrs. Snair wishes her son a peaceful holiday and hopes his memories help him through the season.
“I hope he can try to think of the good times we had when he was younger,” she says. “I hope that he knows how proud we are of him and that we are always thinking of him.”
The family sends care packages overseas full of books and Justin’s favorite snacks — popcorn, cheese crackers and nuts. His mother says that the family is sending him something special for the holidays, mentioning that he enjoys getting their mail.
“The few minutes he stops to read a letter or open a package from us takes his mind off of all that he has seen,” she says.
She can’t wait until he returns home again, something, she says, that is sure to happen in the new year.
Determined heroes
Laid-up with a medical condition in a German hospital, Topping says she’s getting antsy and hopes to soon return to her second family — her fellow soldiers in Fallujah.
“Hopefully I’ll be back in Iraq,” she wrote, her determination echoing the overall sentiment of American troops. “I realize that most people flinch by that ‘hopefully,’ especially my parents, but those guys are my family. We’ve been through more together than I will ever be able to talk to you about. I just want to be with my buds. I shouldn’t be shamming while they are fighting this war…and I don’t want to be.”
The PULSE wishes Joseph Wanat, Joy Topping, Denny Meadows, Justin Snair and the rest of the American service men and women, as well as a their families, a peaceful and healthy holiday season.
