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Iraq GIs continue missions on Christmas

Dec-24-2006 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Pfc. John Alonzo knew Christmas would be his toughest time in Iraq . "Ever since I volunteered, I haven‘t been looking forward to it," said the 27-year-old, from Lubbock, Texas. "My son wants to know why I can‘t be home for the holidays. He doesn‘t understand that I can‘t just quit."

Although they did not know it, a roadside bomb in the same neighborhood had killed three U.S. soldiers the day before; a fourth died in an explosion in Diyala province east of the Iraqi capital.

A mortar round landed in the area. Later, a rooftop sniper fired a single shot that penetrated the helmet of a U.S. soldier, grazing his head. The lightly injured soldier was treated at his base camp.

"It‘s hard. But we‘ve still got work to do. The mission doesn‘t stop," said Alonzo, who left his job as a beer salesman and enlisted because the Army provided better health care benefits for his three small children, and money for his wife to finish college.

"In the back of your mind you think about it, but there are no holidays in Iraq," said Staff Sgt. Brandon Scott, a 35-year-old from Woodbridge, Va., and the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, which is part of the Army‘s 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division.

But that doesn‘t mean there aren‘t gifts.

Capt. Samuel Fuller, a 29-year-old Chicago native, said his wife arranged to send a small present for every member in his 72-soldier company.

Asked what he wanted for Christmas, Fuller‘s thoughts turned to roadside bombs known to soldiers as Improvised Explosive Devices.

At an Army outpost in Ramadi, the most-dangerous city in insurgent-dominated Anbar province west of Baghdad, soldiers decorated a full-size artificial Christmas tree with mines, smoke grenades and machine gun rounds and stuck a massive knife on the top.

He is right, but there are other, less violent signs of Christmas.

An inflatable snowman too tall for the low ceiling guards the hallway of the headquarters building at camp Liberty, and soldiers stuck a small pair of red-and-green, plastic reindeer antlers on the front of one of the Stryker vehicles they ride to missions.

Curled up in a camouflage sleeping bag on a green cot inside a former prison where some soldiers at Liberty sleep, 1st Lt. Sean McCaffrey put on a red Santa‘s cap and smiled...


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