October 4, 2006
to: Sergeant Sumner

I don’t know if you remember me or someone else at 911families, but your web-page had an article about me back in the beginning of the year. It was and I was a survivor of 9-11. I had been recalled out of the Inactive Reserves and off of disability. I used to be a Vice President with Morgan Stanley on the 73rd floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center. I was mobilized to FT Bragg in DEC 2005 and I have now been here in Iraq for 6 months. I am stationed in the Diyala Province. I am 7 kilometers from where al-Zarqawi was killed back in June and in an area swarming with al-Qaida. There are Anti-Iraqi Forces in the area as well, but our main problem is al-Qaida.

I write to you this time to express to your readers the greatest pleasure I have had in a long time! After 9-11, I was disabled for a few years and collecting a VERY healthy disability check for the rest of my life. When recalled last year to the Army, I had a choice to resign my commission or go to Iraq for a year and return to NO disability. Basically, go back in to the work force and have no benefits like before. Financially, I may have made the wrong decision, BUT the pleasure that I get serving my country AND at the same time getting some retribution from the actual people responsible for 9-11, is worth more [than] money then most can imagine.

It was well worth the sacrifice!!

We go through 130F weather, although now it has gotten a little cooler at night. We wear 40-65 lbs. of body armor, weapons, ammo, helmet, gloves, etc. We have no paved roads on our FOB (Forward Operating Base). As an officer, I still share my Containerized Housing Unit with another soldier. It is a steel CONEX, approximately 8′X20′, with an A/C unit and sand bags around it to protect from the incoming mortars. We role out of the gate 5-6 days per week in to downtown on missions. I meet regularly with Provincial Government members including the Governor… I have found that most of the Iraqi people do not hate us the way some may think. They do not want an occupying force, but we are not one.

We are preparing the Iraqi Army and Police to take over, which they have in many areas. What some of the people back home in the States need to understand is that if we pull out too quickly, that we will be back within a few years. Then we will be fighting people trained by us and using our equipment. In the meantime we have taken the fight to them. We are fighting the terrorists in their home, not ours. There is enormous potential here and we hope to unlock it for the Iraqi people, make them our ally, and have them help us destroy terrorism within this region and throughout the world.

Thank your readers for the support of our troops from all of my unit and myself! I have attached a few pictures for you and the readers if you like. The one of me in front of a piece of steel was taken back at Ft Bragg before we left. That was a piece taken from the rubble of the Trade Center and now sits at a museum on Ft Bragg, NC.

Captain A

Photos from Captain A: With a piece of the WTC at Ft Bragg; Shopping in Khanaqin; Humvees in the mountains; and With the kids in Iraq

Let’s Say Thanks!

Captain A added this in a P.S. to his letter:

If you go to the web site at Lets Say Thanks.com, you can pick out a thank you card. The Xerox Corporation will print it and it will be sent to a soldier that is currently serving in Iraq. You can’t pick out who gets it, but it will go to some member of the armed services. It is FREE and it only takes a second. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the soldiers received a bunch of these?

It would be wonderful. Let’s all do it: CLICK HERE