"GLAD WE WERE THERE":

Back From Babylon He's just one Marine, but this returning trooper saw no quagmire in Iraq (CARLTON STOWERS, 10/09/03, Dallas Observer)

Sitting at the kitchen table in his parents' comfortable DeSoto home, looking out on the line of miniature American flags his father has placed on the front lawn, Marine Corporal Lee Strange is relaxed and smiling. Now into the second week of his 30-day leave after lengthy service in Operation Iraqi Freedom, the war, for the moment, is a million miles away and a young lifetime ago. [...]

The war Strange saw and was part of differs from that many back home have been hearing and reading about. "Morale [among the troops] isn't low," he firmly insists. "In fact, it is very good." Why? "Once you become aware of how much you're helping people who not only need it but want it," he says, "you feel good about what you're doing. I saw a lot of happy faces along the way. That's the kind of thing that kept us going."

Reluctant to discuss the political furor the war has generated stateside, the young Marine says he's avoided reading newspapers or watching the news since returning home. Only when prodded will he suggest that the media reports he's been made aware of in recent months "have put out things a little differently" from what he saw and experienced. Words like "quagmire" clearly are not part of his vocabulary.

Now, briefly back in the civilian world where electricity and running water and the smell of mother Donna's cooking are taken for granted, it is "the journey" that Strange remembers; being at the wheel of an armored Humvee for long stretches, then alternating with a gunner and, finally, being ordered to the back of the lengthy line of advancing military vehicles for a brief catnap and an MRE. They rarely stopped, except to dig foxholes in the hardened Iraq soil and engage in a battle.

The names of the cities and hamlets soon became a blur--An Nasiriyah, Ash Shatrah, over the Euphrates to Ad Diwaniyah--as they advanced northward. "You could tell," he says, "that at one time it had been a beautiful country, before Saddam took all the money for himself. By the time we arrived, the towns were run-down, and living conditions were obviously not what they should have been."

It is, in fact, the people that have stayed with the young Marine, the faces of waving children peering from behind a mother's dress or hefted onto a father's shoulders as the American motorcade passed. Strange enjoyed handing out the small gifts he and his fellow soldiers carried with them. "You realize pretty quickly that all kids, regardless of their language or the country in which they live, love candy. And soccer is the main sport over there, so when we'd pitch a new soccer ball into a crowd of little boys, eyes just lit up."

His mother, he remembers, had sent him a small stuffed turtle with a request that he pass it along to one of the Iraqi children. "I wish she could have seen the smile on the face of the little girl I gave it to," he reflects.

Those, he says, were the good times. "The little things like that were what made me feel good about what we were doing. At first, I was a little surprised at the welcome we were receiving. But, quickly, it became obvious that the vast majority of the Iraqis were glad we were there, glad we were helping them."