Returning soldier looks back and forward

Christmas should be strikingly different for James Dickson this year.

He spent last Christmas Eve in a sleeping bag on the ground in a muddy farm field outside Samara in north central Iraq. The smell of burning latrines, a pungent odor he’ll never forget, wafted through the air the next day as he ate his Christmas turkey.

He was serving with the U.S. Army’s 3rd Stryker Brigade. As you may recall, James Dickson’s the young man I wrote about earlier this fall. This blue-eyed, brown-haired boy with the slow, sweet smile used to regularly show up at our door on Spokane’s South Hill. He was a teddy bear of a kid. During all those Christmases past, I never dreamed what lie ahead for him.

This week Fort Lewis welcomed home the 4,800 members of the Stryker brigade who recently ended their tour of duty in Iraq. Earlier this month, just after James’ plane touched down in Bangor, Maine, his mother called me.

“James is on American soil,” she said. Her voice flooded with relief.

This Christmas 25-year-old James once again will be eating turkey with his brother and three sisters, much as he did all those years ago on 25th Avenue.

He returns more grown up now, with stories of the moments that frightened him and the experiences that made him proud.

He remembers riding in a Humvee at Tall Afar when three rocket-propelled grenades flew over the top of the Humvee ahead of him. “That’s the only one that really scared me,” he said. “It was an intense minute and a half or two minutes.”

He was less frightened by gunfire on occasions when he was sheltered inside a Stryker.

James read the column I wrote in September after my interview with his mother, Barbara Schneider. He took exception to her description of the Stryker, which she described as resembling “a Beverly Hillbillies truck with machine guns on top.”

In a conversation on his cell phone from Fort Lewis last week, he defended that feat of engineering which helped keep him and his buddies alive.

“It’s a real good vehicle,” he said “I’m really proud of it.”

The Stryker is a 19-ton armored vehicle, with a .50-caliber machine gun on top, which rides on wheels, making it fast and silent. It’s quieter, James said, than most cars.

“They nicknamed us ‘The Ghostriders,’ ” he said. “We moved in and moved out like ghosts.”

This week the returning men and women of Arrowhead Brigade were welcomed home with a barbecue and speeches at Fort Lewis. The fort commander, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, called the ceremony a chance “not to celebrate war, but to celebrate warriors and their families.”

Neither James nor his mom are likely to celebrate war. But, unlike his mom, James has no regrets that he joined the Army.

“I think it was a good decision,” he said. “I experienced some things most people will never experience in their lifetime. It was a growing experience and a learning experience.”

He comes home proud. “We all did a good job,” he said. “We came home safe. We didn’t have any incidents of wrongdoing or of hitting innocents on accident.”

He sees the war differently than his mother does.

“I see us serving a purpose over there,” he said. “I think she’d like us to all come home right now. But if we did that, the country would be worse off.”

Most Iraqis appreciate the presence of the troops, he said.

“Most of the people we’re fighting (come into Iraq) from other countries,” he said. “If we could get that to stop, we wouldn’t have any problem.”

Foreigner fighters recently bounced from Fallujah to Mosul. “You kick them out of one town, and they move to the next,” he said.

But Iraq’s in a transition stage on its way to becoming a free country, James said. “We can’t abandon them.”

Now that he’s home, James has rediscovered the simple joys of life in America, such as the ability to go for pizza and beer with his friends after work.

He joined his sister, Bridget, for a quick trip to his grandparent’s home in Richland for Thanksgiving. And in December, he’ll spend two weeks at Christmas visiting his parents in Detroit and Toledo. He’s been applying to colleges for next fall, to complete a degree in computer science, and he’s looking for a job. When he wasn’t searching for weapons caches or inspecting the houses of suspected insurgents in Iraq, he was working on Army computers. His stint ends Feb. 28.

“On the first of March, I will be a free man,” he said.

Now it’s time for us to welcome back, and thank, the men and women of his brigade. To reach James Dickson, you may e-mail james.r.dickson@us.army.mil.