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The War Hits Home

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By MEG SCOTT

Published: September 26, 2007

Updated: 09/25/2007 06:55 pm

The 'waiting game' isn't a game at all. It's torture for those who sit and wait by computers for word from soldiers in Iraq, holding onto e-mails like life-lines. And when those e-mails stop suddenly, cold fear sets in. Then come the words that no one wants to hear - the soldier has been injured. For family members and friends, the waiting becomes physical pain.

We were just introduced to that waiting non-game this week.

I'd been talking online with Diane Lopes, a soldier whose reserve unit was called to Iraq this summer. The e-mails were up-beat, amusing at times, but they were also camouflage that covers quiet fear in someone who rarely shows it.

We'd agreed to use the e-mails to help paint a picture of a soldier's life in Iraq for Tribune readers; the perspective would be different from in previous wars because this is a non-traditional soldier: a woman, a female Tampa Police officer serving with the military police in Iraq. The things she would miss back home would be different. Her observations would be different. Just the dangers would be the same.

Last week she wrote friends with only one request: that they pick her up some of her favorite shampoo at her former salon - 'just a trial size so it won't cost so much to mail.' She asks for little, friends say. It's the way she is.

In the e-mail before that one, she gave a picture of life in Iraq not usually covered in the news:

'It was 118 degrees this afternoon,' adding that it will only get worse. 'If you go outside this weekend ... up in flames!

'It's long days in the heat wearing an ungodly amount of weight, so I'm pretty beat up,' she says.

She would be. Although athletic and fit, she's a small woman, with dark eyes that usually twinkle rather than weep. She laughs far more than she complains. She's tough in her own way. This woman kayaks in the ocean because the rivers are too tame and rides a Harley with the best.

But she's bothered by the dust. 'Nothing is clean. It's like a magic trick every time you untie your shoelaces. You pull the lace and when the bow knot comes undone, POOF! Ta-Dah!'

And she's bothered by the spiders, scorpions and snakes she's never before seen or heard of.

'Camel spiders the size of hamsters - snakes and scorpions that have neither names nor anti-venom. And the ones that do are a 90-minute plane ride to get to.'

She speaks of a scorpion called the Death Stalker, then laughs, but adds that she fears the snakes, scorpions and spiders more than a gunfight. 'Not that I want either one,' she adds.

'We took pictures at the wire,' she says. 'That's what military people do ... pose in front of the threat and make ourselves sniper bait. Then we look at the photo and say, 'damn, we were stupid!' Hahaha.

'We've been hit twice in five days. We've had one casualty, one amputee and many injured. It was a very sad day. The first one hit about a quarter mile from where I was walking and I barely heard the whistle coming in. Now I walk around looking in the sky everywhere I go.

'It's just hot as heck and dusty, and I'm tired of choking on all this dirt. God grant me the strength to make it!

'I tried to make myself disappear from here,' she says. 'It didn't work, but I'm suddenly missing a few pairs of socks. Hummmmm.'

She was enthusiastic about sharing the Iraq experience with others. We'd talked briefly about how we might begin and how we'd shape the story. She was willing. She was excited.

Then suddenly, the-e-mails stopped. For three days, there was nothing. Then on Saturday, the phone call came from another Tampa police officer. Diane had been badly injured and flown to a hospital in Germany. We heard words like 'transfusions,' and 'shrapnel in legs and arm' but we still don't have all the facts.

We do know that she spoke by phone with her mother in a faraway city, and we believe that she is expected to recover - at least to recover as well as any soldier, male or female, ever recovers from shrapnel wounds and war in general.

Along with her many other friends in the Tampa area, we're all still waiting for more news and all ready to help however we can - including helping her to write the rest of her story - hopefully one about success on the road to recovery.

Meg Scott of Plant City is an adjunct English professor at Hillsborough Community College in Brandon.

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