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Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2007

Back home from Iraq, veterans settle into new lives

For weeks after he came home from Iraq, Salvador Mejia couldn't keep his car between the white lines. He knew he should stay in his lane, but his Ford Explorer just kept straying to the middle of the road.

And he couldn't keep his eyes from scanning the shoulders for IEDs.

"I was pretty paranoid at first," said the 26-year-old Mejia, now a Merced police officer. "It took a while to readjust."

Going to the grocery store was hard, too. There were too many people there to keep track of. "It felt weird to go anywhere without my rifle," Mejia recalls.

Three years later, he says, the after-effects have subsided. But thoughts of the war zone where he spent 12 months never end. "I guess it's always in the back of my mind," he says. "I think about the guys who are still there all the time."

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan in the wake of Sept. 11. The military cannot provide numbers on how many of them call Merced home, but estimates place that figure in the hundreds. Of those, three died fighting. Some are still away. Many have come home. For them, life back in Merced is both a welcome respite and a place where they can remember a lot -- sometimes too much.

Salvador Mejia

From the time Salvador Mejia was a little boy, he knew he wanted to be a soldier.

The oldest of four children and his parents' only son, Mejia grew up in Prunedale, not far from Fort Ord. "We'd pass by it all the time driving down the freeway when I was little, and I could see them out there marching," Mejia recalls.

And he loved G.I. Joe, he says, smiling. "All I ever wanted to be was a soldier."

He joined the Army three weeks out of high school. He was still 17, so he had to convince his mother to sign off on the decision. He spent two-and-a-half months in basic training at Fort Benning, Ga. "It was the middle of summer. People were passing out left and right (from the heat)," Mejia said. "It was the hardest thing I'd ever done before.

"I loved it."

Mejia scored high enough on the written tests to get a communications job. After six months at Fort Gordon, 250 miles east of Fort Benning, he was sent to his first duty station at Fort Hood, Texas. He met his wife, Linda, there -- she was a supply sergeant -- and spent two-and-a-half years learning his specialty, retransmission communication. In 2002 he left on a 15-month mission as part of a United Nations unit that patrolled near the Demilitarized Zone between North Korea and South Korea. Halfway through, he came home on leave to get married. By then, his wife was out of the Army and living in Los Banos.

Mejia was 21. He'd been promoted to sergeant. His four years with the Army were almost up when he decided to re-enlist for another two. "I guess I thought I was still too young to get out," he explains. "I wanted more experience."

Three months after he re-enlisted, the war in Iraq started. Eight months after that, he was on a plane to Baghdad.

"I think it took me a couple of days just to realize I was there -- that this was all for real," Mejia remembers. "I was upset about going, and it was really hard on my wife. But at the same time, after all the training they'd put into me, I would have felt like a failure if I hadn't gone."

After two days there, Mejia fell into a well during a night mission near Samarra, about an hour north of Baghdad. "It was pitch-black out, and I guess I wasn't used to the night-visions yet." He reckons he fell 10 feet. The water was up to his chin. "I was really scared for a few minutes that they'd never find me," he says. After about 20 minutes, another soldier heard his calls. He got out.

During the year Mejia spent in Iraq, his unit's main job was to relay communication. In his first mission, he ran a 10-man communications center from the top of a mountain south of Mosul. They were supposed to be there two weeks. They ended up staying three months.

"The best time to join the Army is when you're really young because then you don't know anything else," says Mejia. "Some of the stuff I did there -- I look back and I wonder if I could do it now."

They lived in a rundown building with no plumbing. They built a makeshift bathroom and burned their feces. It was Mejia's job to make sure their generators, radios and weapons were working, that everyone was bathing and that soldiers who manned fighting positions stayed awake. "The bad guys all knew we were up there," Mejia says. "We'd get mortared. We'd get bombed. But we never lost anyone."

They spent another three months at another jury-rigged communications center on Sinjar Mountain near the Syrian border. A Yezidi shrine also stood there. "The Yezidis thought we were there to protect their shrine," said Mejia. "I've heard since we left that there were a lot of civilian casualties there. That was hard to hear. They were really nice to us."

When his unit wasn't camped at hilltop communications centers, they were back with their company protecting convoys and conducting missions -- or, as Mejia puts it, "killing bad guys." Twice the convoys he was protecting were hit by IEDs. Throughout his year-long tour, one soldier in his company was killed. His brigade lost about 25. "I think it's worse now than it was back then -- at least as far as I can tell from the news," said Mejia. "It seems like the insurgents are more organized now and better trained. It seems like more people are dying."

When he came home on mid-tour leave, a man at the Dallas airport handed him $100. On the last leg of the trip into San Jose, a woman gave up her first-class seat for him.

He says the hardest part about being away was not seeing his wife. "By the time I came home, I'd been married two years, but I'd really only spent about two months with her."

And he questioned while he was away whether that sacrifice was making any difference. "I knew I was there for a reason, but at the same time, no one there seemed to be appreciating it. ... You'd make progress on one side of town and then things would fall apart on the other side. It's kind of like in Merced. You get rid of one drug house, and another one just pops up somewhere else to take its place."

When he came home, driving proved problematic. So did large crowds and loud noises. When someone started popping the balloons that decorated a family party celebrating Mejia's homecoming, he became visibly jarred, his wife recalls. "He got upset and he yelled at them to stop. He was edgy all the time for the first few months," Linda says.

And, she adds, he was quieter than ever. "Sal's always been a pretty quiet person, but after he got back, it was hard to get even a word out of him."

Mejia says the after-effects have all subsided now. "My family says it didn't really change me. ... I think it did a little." He says he complains less -- about everything. And he appreciates more. "The kids there don't even have shoes. It's 130 degrees out and they're running on the pavement without shoes."

In the weeks after he got home in November 2004, he saw on CNN that a mess hall where he'd eaten countless meals had been bombed. His wife doesn't like to watch the reports out of Iraq, but Mejia says he wants to know what's happening. "It depresses her, but I want to see it. I still feel really connected to it."

Within a month of Mejia's return, his wife was pregnant. He was hired by the Merced Police Department as a training officer about a year later. "They say they like to hire vets," Mejia smiles, "because they don't ask as many questions."

He's been a patrol officer for about a year-and-a-half. He hopes to eventually make detective. "I love being a cop," Mejia says. "My wife makes fun of me. She says I'm the only person she knows who can't wait to go to work." His wife says she thinks the reason he loves it so much is that the camaraderie reminds him of the military.

Ask Mejia if he would go back to Iraq now, and his answer is simple: "I couldn't go back now that I'm a dad. Having kids changed everything." His son is now 2. His daughter is 1.

Until his eight-year obligation to the Army officially ended this April, Mejia worried about getting called back. "I know a few guys who had that happen, so it's definitely something I thought about it."

Because he never gave the Army his new contact information in Merced, he knew if the call came, it would come to his parents' house. His mother knew that too. "Whenever she'd see a number come up on their phone ... that she didn't recognize, she wouldn't pick-up," Mejia says. "She was afraid it would be them."

Ronald Luker

On a recent Thursday, Ronald Luker sat flipping through the glossy pages of a hard-cover, bound book. The professionally printed album, which at first glance looks like a high school yearbook, contains the only photographs Luker has from the 12 months he spent in Iraq.

Someone high up in his battalion had hundreds of copies printed. Luker bought one, though he's hardly looked at it in the two-and-a-half years since he came home.

"I didn't take any pictures when I was there," says the 30-year-old Los Banos native. "I didn't even bring a camera. You don't want those memories, because most of them are bad."

He points to a picture of a soldier. "We found his teeth in the back of the Humvee after the explosion," Luker says. "Half his face is made of plastic now."

He points to another. "He was shot in the lung by a sniper."

He points to another. "His parents spent about $10,000 sending us packages after he died. They were the only reason we had a Christmas."

He points to another. This time, the soldier is hunching next to a tall pile of rifles. "This is weapons buyback," he explains. "We'd pay the Iraqis cash for their guns so they could buy food, and so the guns wouldn't end up getting used against us later."

Luker's dad fought in Vietnam. His grandfather received a Purple Heart for his service in World War II. "It's a family tradition, I guess," Luker says about why he chose to join the military. "And the benefits aren't bad."

For six years after he finished high school, Luker worked odd jobs, mostly in restaurants. He joined the Army in 2000, the same year he married his wife, Crystal. She stays home with their three girls, ages 11, 7 and 5. He's now a Merced police officer.

During the five-and-a-half years he served in the Army, including the year he spent in Iraq, Luker's wife and daughters lived at Fort Hood, Texas, where he was stationed.

They learned he'd be going to Iraq about six months before he left, in March 2004. So they bought life insurance policies. They signed the documents so his wife could make financial and legal decisions without him. They came to California for two weeks to visit their parents. Luker explained to his two oldest daughters where he was going. "There's things you can do to try to get ready, but you can't really prepare," he says.

When he got to Baghdad, the culture shock overwhelmed him. "Nothing is the same there. You have to re-learn everything, and you have to do it fast." The weather alone was a huge adjustment, he says. "You get used to 130 degrees. And then when it's 90, you're freezing."

Luker's specialty was operating MLRS vehicles. "It stands for multiple launch rocket system," he explains. "It's basically a three-passenger vehicle with a huge box on the back that shoots rockets or missiles." His 19-soldier platoon spent most of the year patrolling Al Saidiyah, a suburb of Baghdad that surrounds one of the most heavily used highways across Iraq.

Two men in Luker's platoon were killed during his tour. Three others were wounded.

"Of course I didn't want to be there. Of course I would have rather been home fishing, watching my kids grow up," Luker says. "But that was the choice I made when I raised my right hand."

Luker's wife didn't tell the girls before he came home on mid-tour leave. They wanted it to be a surprise. "When my oldest two first saw me, it took them a second to figure it out. They looked at me like, 'Is that really daddy?' But my youngest, she came right to me. She remembered."

He drove home from the airport, but he admits now he probably should have left that to his wife. Sticking to the speed limit was hard. And he hesitated as he approached every overpass. "You forget that you don't have to worry about something being dropped on you. ... That's something that still hasn't gone away."

He can't think of a way to describe a typical day while he was in Iraq, except maybe as "long." He says every day was different and he often went 20 hours without sleep.

Luker came home for good in March 2005.

His youngest daughter, then 2, still hadn't begun to talk. "Within a couple weeks she was putting whole sentences together, practically," Luker recalls. "That was pretty amazing."

His family stayed in Texas for a few months, then moved to Merced. He completed the police academy at Fresno City College. He started with the Merced Police Department in August of last year.

He says he doesn't regret joining the Army. He's glad to have the life experience he gained in Iraq, and he's glad he got to see their culture. He's not sure what kind of difference he made while he was there, but he knows he did his job.

He says the paranoia instilled him in Iraq hasn't gone away: "I watch people, all the time. ... You get used to concentrating on everything, every second. Because you learn that if you're not aware of everything around you, it could mean someone gets hurt."

He says he knows there are other ways Iraq changed him, but he can't quite explain them. "That's probably a better question for my wife," he says.

Dean Sparks

Perhaps the best way to describe how Dean Sparks talks about his experience with war is very matter-of-factly.

"For a lot of vets, Iraq is the biggest thing they'll ever do, and I think that's why a lot of them make such a big deal out of it," says the 24-year-old Sparks, now a Merced-based entrepreneur. "I'm very candid about it. What I saw in Iraq, and what I did there -- it's not affecting my ability to live my life or to run my business."

Sparks graduated from Dos Palos High School in June 2001. He says the first time he truly considered going into the military was three months after graduation, on Sept. 11. A few weeks later, at age 18, he joined the Army. "There was a need, and I reacted to that need," he says about his decision.

After basic training in Oklahoma, Sparks was stationed at Fort Polk, La.

He jokes that his first mission as a soldier wasn't exactly heroic. He spent most of 2003 driving a semi-truck loaded with equipment for a 17-base Army concert tour. Around the same time he left to go on the road with Cheap Trick and Lynyrd Skynyrd, his unit was leaving Fort Polk for Iraq.

"It was a very carefree time for me, while a lot of my peers were off fighting," Sparks recalls.

He joined his unit in Iraq in February 2004. He stayed until April, then returned in December for a second, year-long tour. Throughout his time there, Sparks' unit protected supply convoys traveling from Baghdad. Sparks served as gunner.

He acknowledges that what he saw in Iraq was nothing short of horrific. Two men in his unit were killed. A lieutenant died when a car bomb struck their convoy. A gunner was killed when shrapnel from an IED explosion severed vessels in his neck.

And he admits he was scared. "As a gunner, you're the most vulnerable when you stand up out of the vehicle, when your top half is exposed," Sparks explains. "Every time you'd stand up, you'd wonder if that was exactly the wrong moment.

"And if they didn't sweep (for IEDs) and you're the first vehicle out that night -- you're definitely nervous."

He says the hardest thing about Iraq was knowing he couldn't leave if he wanted to -- "you can't just get sick of it. You made a commitment."

But Sparks says those are all adjustments he expected going in. And though he still thinks about the war zone he left two years ago, he says his time there hasn't affected him the way it has other veterans he knows. "I look at it like, I went there, I did my job and I came home. ... Yeah, bad things happen in war. But I think the military does a good job at making sure you get the help you need to deal with that, if you're someone who needs that."

He recognizes that not all Iraq veterans faced the same circumstances as his unit: "We were lucky because we didn't go looking for bad guys, because that wasn't our job. I think that meant we were a lot safer than some other guys."

Sparks describes the time that's passed since he left Iraq in one word: busy. Within six months of coming home, Sparks had thrown himself into starting a business. Now 10 months old, the direct-mail marketing company he co-founded is thriving, he says.

"What the military taught me is that I want to be successful, and I want to earn my living using my brain, not my body," he says.

Sometimes Sparks sees things that remind him of Iraq -- such as a field he recently passed while driving down a rural stretch of highway between Sacramento and Chico. "But I can distinguish between that place and this," he says. "And that's never been a problem for me, not even right after I came home."

Would Sparks consider going back? "I've done my time," he says. "It's someone else's turn."

Mark Fillebrown

It's been more than three years since Mark Fillebrown came back from Iraq, and there are more days now that he doesn't think about his time there than days when he does.

But, like many Iraq veterans, he says the instincts he acquired there persist. He doesn't mind a lot of them, though, like the heightened sense of awareness and his quick reaction time.

"I think a lot of it makes me a better cop," says the 26-year-old. "When your guard is always up, you know you're never going to get complacent."

The side effects from the year he spent in Baghdad have had other advantages, too. "I don't mind a 12-hour day," Fillebrown says. Compared to the 17-hour, scorching days he often worked in Iraq, "even a long shift here is like nothing."

One of 10 siblings, Fillebrown grew up in Merced. He joined the Army right after high school. "I didn't feel like I was ready for college yet, but I wanted to get out of Merced," he says.

Fillebrown's brother also served in Iraq. He's now a Los Banos police officer. He also has a brother in the Navy.

After basic training, Fillebrown spent three years stationed in Germany as part of a military police unit. "I really liked being in the military, right from the beginning," he says. "It was exactly what I was looking for."

In late 2001, Fillebrown was deployed to Kosovo on a seven-month peacekeeping mission. After returning to Germany for a short time, he was promoted to sergeant and sent to Fort Polk, La., in early 2003.

In March of that year, weeks after the U.S. entered Iraq, Fillebrown left for Kuwait. After a three-day convoy, he arrived in Baghdad.

Despite the years he'd spent abroad, Fillebrown says he was immediately struck by Iraq's cultural differences from the U.S. "I think the biggest shock was how little they had over there. They really had nothing. And here, we're used to having everything."

His unit spent their first night in Baghdad in a bombed-out palace that, it was rumored, used to house one of Saddam Hussein's sons. "It was weird because even though it was such a mess all around us, there we were in this palace where everything was trimmed with gold," even the toilet seats, Fillebrown recalls.

He describes Baghdad in those early months of the war as "very chaotic."

Trash and debris that lined the capital's streets provided easy hiding places for bombs and IEDs. Sporadic gunfire was common, and telling enemy from friend was often impossible. "They weren't in uniforms like we were," he explains. "A lot of times, you didn't know they were the enemy until they started shooting."

Fillebrown's company spent their entire year-long tour in Baghdad, where their mission was to patrol the city and re-establish the Iraqi police force. They helped set up police substations across the capital and worked to train local officers. They lived for most of their tour at an abandoned driving school.

Despite the danger, Fillebrown says the heat was the hardest part of living in the war zone. "It's because it was constant," he says. "You were always soaked. The sweat was like a waterfall coming down your face, and it never stopped. Even in the middle of the night, it was still like 110. So you never cool down."

Fillebrown knew going in that he'd be in Iraq at least six months. "But then six months turned into eight months and then eight months turned into a year. ... The not knowing -- it gets really frustrating."

Fillebrown had to wait 10 months for his mid-tour leave. He came home to Merced for two weeks. "It was like culture shock again coming back," he recalls. "You get used to having nothing and then you come home and there's hot showers and cold drinks and you don't have to worry about what diseases are in the water or in the meat."

After two more months in Iraq, Fillebrown came home for good. He worked for two years as a private security contractor at the National Nuclear Security Administration at a test site in Nevada. He was hired as a training officer by the Merced Police Department in June 2006.

He says the adjustment after Iraq was manageable. He found himself scanning bridges and roads and potholes, like many Iraq veterans. "You have to catch yourself. It eventually wears off. ... It just takes a while to undo all the training," he shrugs.

But some notions, such as the heightened sense of awareness, have stuck in his mind. "Even when I'm not on duty, I notice it," he says.

Perhaps the hardest adjustment was getting used to life outside the military. "I loved being in the military," he says. "I missed it a lot." So much so that he says he would have re-enlisted if he hadn't been hired by the police department.

He says he may still join the Army Reserves -- "I haven't ruled it out."

Fillebrown says he doesn't follow too closely what's happening in Iraq now, and he doesn't like to talk about the time he spent there. "If people ask me about it, I'll talk about it," he says. "But I don't really see any reason to bring it up. I was just doing a job."

Reporter Corinne Reilly

can be reached at 209-385-2477 or creilly@mercedsun-star.com.