Karen’s Place

The Chief just called me. He was standing in a hanger bay in Columbia South Carolina waiting with over 200 other soldiers ready to head out to Kuwait. He said if they didn’t have to stop and refuel it would be a 17 hour flight. 17 hours, that’s all that stands between freedom and safety and the beginning of war. He still states he’ll be safe, although in my most recent conversations with him he’s been a little less insistent. Maybe he learned some things in his ground training, maybe it’s finally sunk in where he’s going, maybe a combination of both. He told me the other day he would be stationed for the next 10 months at Camp Sykes. We can’t find a lot of information about this base on the internet. In fact the most current information either one of us could find was from 2005 and stated:

“Camp Sykes is located in Tall Afar about 40 miles from the Syrian border. The camp is considered to be one of the most dangerous and inaccessible in all of Iraq. The secular nature of Tall Afar’s population has only increased the instability of the area.”

Please, this place has got to of changed in the past three years. It has to of. We’ve made some progress haven’t we? If anyone knows anything about this base, please tell me. There are many people who read this blog who don’t comment, that’s wonderful! I stalk many a blog myself, if one of my readers out there has any information you can share, please email me: kaylyn50 at hotmail dot com. I would really appreciate it.

This is the first time since the Chief told me he was being sent to Iraq that he was anything less than upbeat when we hung up. This was the first time I hung up the phone shaking and in tears.

Am I overreacting? Maybe, but when we can’t trust the media to give us accurate information and we know we can’t, how am I supposed to feel?