The Emporia Gazette

May 28, 2012

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Iraq isn’t what it used to be. Staff Sgt. Misty DeDonder has been there before, and sees a marked change in circumstances — and in her own circumstances, too.

DeDonder has been home on leave for several weeks and will fly out on Sunday to Kuwait.

“That’s technically where we live, but we’re in transportation so we’re up north most of the time,” she said. “We live in Kuwait in a building, but we live in Iraq in a tent most of the time.”

DeDonder first went to Iraq in 2003-04, when the war was picking up in intensity.

“I was there when they tore down the government, and the police force and the border control and all of that,” she said.

Now, the country has a police force and its own government in place, with U.S. citizens training them in how to do their jobs.

“And now you see them all over the place, the Iraqi Army and the Iraqi police,” she said. “It’s really nice to see all of the good changes that have been implemented that will help our people.”

One of the best changes is that DeDonder’s group is returning more equipment from Iraq to Kuwait than it is taking to Iraq.

“We’re mostly hauling stuff out of Iraq, so it’s actually kind of an exciting thing, to help get troops out and send people home. We still do take stuff up north, but not like we did before,” she said.

“… You can see a change in everything. It’s so much more calm there and the people are so friendly. It’s just a lot different than it was last time. Last time, it was a lot more fearful.”

DeDonder has found that Iraq’s landscape and climate vary dramatically, according to the area.

Iraq has seasons similar to those in Kansas, though the temperature in winter doesn’t drop as low and the heat in summer can be horrendous. And although Iraq does seem humid, the humidity doesn’t reach the 70 percent or more levels that are common in eastern Kansas.

DeDonder also has sensed a difference between Iraq and Kansas elevations.

“I think the elevation is closer to sea level or something, because I can sure run a lot easier there than I can here,” she said.

The landscape often is flat and sandy enough to warrant wearing turbans and flowing robes for protection from wind-whipped sand, rather than from the heat.

“They actually wear that for a reason. … It’s not just because it’s the fashion over there; it’s not just ornamental. They use it because it’s definitely needed on occasion,” DeDonder said. “We have protective goggles, garb like turbans. We have stuff that’s issued to us to protect.”

But Iraq is a land of contrasts.

“You get towards the Euphrates and the Tigris and it’s a lot of farming and a lot of grass and a lot of trees, and a really pretty, pretty area,” she said.

“The first time I went up there I thought, ‘Oh, this is why it’s the Promised Land.’ You can definitely see it’s a gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous place in some areas, in that Mesapotamia area between the Tigris and the Euphrates.”

Grapes and date trees are bountiful, as are other fruits.

“I’ve been given strawberries, oranges, and bananas and all kinds of stuff,” she said. “Their seasons aren’t as extreme as ours.

“Even when it’s winter and cold, it never gets really freezing until you get up north, toward Turkey. I’ve never seen snow there.”

When she begins her return to the Middle East on Sunday, it will be to do again what she’s had in her mind since she was a child in elementary school.

“I wanted to join the Army since I was probably in about fourth or fifth grade,” DeDonder said. “We went to my older cousin Lance’s basic training graduation in Fort Knox, Ky., over a Fourth of July weekend. … The graduation was so amazing. I was drawn in then.”

Before graduating from high school, she had enlisted in the U.S. Army.

Her first deployment to the Kuwait-Iraq area during the early stages of war did not change her mind. She was doing something she wanted to do, and that aspect has not changed.

What has changed for this deployment is that she has a husband, Kevin, and two children, Bethany, who celebrated her fourth birthday anniversary on Sunday, and Leo, who turned 2 on Sept. 6.

DeDonder confessed she’d finagled a little to time her brief leave to coincide with the children’s birthday celebrations.

When she left on Dec. 1, 2008, for several months of training in Indiana and California before going to the war zone, Leo was “basically a baby,” she said. “He didn’t talk at all when I left. Now he’s potty trained. He’s a big boy already and ready to go farming” with his dad — and Leo was saying plenty on Thursday, when Kevin DeDonder drove down the road without his little farmer beside him.

Misty DeDonder’s mother, Debbie Lingenfelter, and Kevin’s mother, Terry DeDonder, have helped him take care of the children while Misty completes her tour of duty; two days a week, the children go to preschool.

The family keeps in touch frequently, through a computer set-up arranged by their friend, Bobby Thompson, who owns the Help Desk, a computer repair company in Emporia.

With the set-up, the three DeDonders who live near Reading Lake can see the DeDonder who sleeps in a tent in the Middle East.

“You can see each other and talk to each other at the same time, and it’s free,” she said. “It’s like talking on the phone and seeing each other at the same time.

“It’s so, so different than it was the last time. Last time I had to stand in line probably at least two hours to use the computer. Now I can buy a card and use it where I live.”

That helped the children, especially Leo, remember their mother and recognize her when she got home.

“They were pretty excited,” she said.

So were the children at Timmerman Elementary School, where DeDonder had been student-teaching before her unit was called up.

DeDonder went to talk to a Timmerman class taught by her cousin, and was spotted by her former students, who now are in second grade.

“I got to go see my class. The second-graders at Timmerman are all doing stuff to help out the Iraqi kids,” she said. “It was really exciting. … and I wanted to spend more time with them.”

So, she returned to Timmerman on Wednesday, and was allowed a little time with her former students to talk about what she was doing in Iraq and catching up on what they were doing in Emporia.

DeDonder is eager to get back to the States and finish the one remaining semester that will complete her degree and her teaching certificate. She almost lost the first student-teaching semester because she had to leave before the semester was over.

“Mrs. (Bev) Maricevik was my teacher and my mentor teacher at Timmerman,” she explained. “I could have lost that entire semester that I did (student teaching). She helped me get everything finished. She was excellent.”

Leaving her degree behind, however, wasn’t nearly as stressful as leaving behind Kevin and the children.

She contrasted her first tour of duty with the current one.

Then, she craved special foods that she could only get at home in the United States. Now, food had no priority at all when it was time to come home on leave.

“I just really wanted to see my kids, my husband and stuff. Last time I wanted to come home for a nice grilled T-bone,” DeDonder said. “But (the family) definitely trumped it.”

DeDonder estimated that her tour of duty could be over by February, or perhaps early March.

“We tell our families anytime between February and April,” she said.