HOLIDAY WISHES FROM AFAR

HOLIDAY WISHES FROM AFAR
A letter from U.S. Army Capt. Patricia Cika, serving with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, Ar Ramadi.
You can tell it is Christmas, even here in Iraq. Americans from all over the U.S. -- and a good number from the patriotic folks from Youngstown -- have filled our work and living areas with homemade Christmas cookies and Christmas carol CDs. My mother even sent us a small glowing tree. These are juxtaposed against the ruins of rubbled palaces, makeshift walls lined with rifles and sandbag-fortified, plywood windows. Though most of us will be afforded the chance to go to church at our makeshift chapel's services, we do not rely on the enemy to pause during the holidays, so we will not take any days off.
We recently hung some lights up on the palm tree outside our headquarters. At the palm-tree-lighting ceremony, our commander asked us to imagine all the folks back home right now and see the familiar scenes of what you all are doing. I immediately thought of all my family and friends running into each other in the Southern Park Mall; all the ladies of the local churches baking themselves into a frenzy; folks you haven't seen in months -- all out meeting and greeting; the traffic on routes 224 and 422; Midnight Mass on Brier Hill; and the skating and sledding in Crandall Park. Then he asked us to see this as a terrorist sees it, and the thought sent chills down my spine.
Every paratrooper here misses home, but all of us firmly believe we are fighting a war here that terrorists would prefer to fight there at home, and so it is not hard to be here at Christmas so long as we continue to ensure they never get that chance. Every one of us would prefer our hometowns enjoy the peace of Christmas completely oblivious to the more sinister intentions of terrorists.
Paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division have been away from home before at Christmas, in recent memory -- when fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan -- but also moving through the unforgiving and violent days that followed their historic jump behind enemy lines on D-Day. There has always been a heightened sense of brotherhood among the Airborne, a bond that comes from the training, discipline, work ethic and courage necessary to jump out of airplanes and accomplish our missions.
Like the paratroopers before us, we live, sleep, eat, laugh, argue and work long into the night with people from all walks of life who all have one thing in common at Christmas: We are all away from our families. And so we have become family -- some of us literally. My fianc & eacute;, also a paratrooper with the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, is in Fallujah, Iraq. We both deployed to Iraq after tours in Afghanistan. He and I will likely not be able to see each other on Christmas, but we are comforted that we will all be celebrating Christmas here with this, our Airborne family.
We will probably wrap up some strange but practical and highly coveted items such as foot powder or toilet paper and give it to a friend in good humor and genuine affection. My boss, himself on his fourth consecutive deployment, tells us these are the holidays we will never forget. I am sure that he is right. We all miss home, but we will be glad to return to an unharmed, peaceful home and feel like we -- in some very small part -- contributed to that peace.
Merry Christmas, Youngstown, from the All-American 82nd Airborne Division, Ar Ramadi, Iraq.
Patricia