… If only in my dreams

Robert and Louise Keneally have a right to be worried about their son in Iraq.

First Lt. Sean Keneally, a West Point graduate, is a platoon leader with the 1st Battalion, 24th Regiment of the 25th Infantry based at Fort Lewis. The Stryker Brigade, named for the light armored vehicle they take out on patrol, is stationed at Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul, where an apparent suicide bomber killed 22 people and wounded about 70 others this week.

The Keneallys, who live in Spokane Valley, woke Tuesday to news of the worst single attack on U.S. forces in the war. It would be 13 hours later before they received word that their son was not among the casualties and then only through an unofficial source.

“A couple of times I thought I heard a car in the driveway,” Robert Keneally said. He feared the worst, Army officers with bad news. “You work through that whole deal. Then you just hang in there and hope that he is OK.”

Even before Tuesday’s attack, Keneally’s platoon had been under constant threat of attack. Their forward operating base has been mortared several times since the unit deployed in October, Robert Keneally said.

“A lot of people don’t understand the level of conflict we are in,” Robert Keneally told The Spokesman-Review last month when his church, the Grace Harvest Fellowship, was collecting donations to send phone cards to the troops for Christmas. “This is a full-blown war and the danger these troops are in will continue for a long while.”

Early this month, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a National Guardsman who was waiting in Kuwait to enter Iraq, “You go to war with the Army you have.”

The Army we have in Iraq this Christmas is made up of the sons and daughters, husbands and wives of working people all across America.

What these men and women ask in return for their service to country is to be not forgotten, particularly this time of year.

There is scant chance of that, at least not in the homes of four Spokane-area families who spoke to The Spokesman-Review this week about Christmas without their loved ones – Lt. Keneally, another Army officer from Spokane Valley who flies a Chinook helicopter and two Washington National Guardsmen from Spokane’s North Side.

‘A huge hole’

Robert Keneally, associate pastor at Grace Harvest, is a retired Air Force officer who knows about being away from home during the holidays.

“But this is the first time I’ve been on this side of it,” he said, describing the incomplete feeling of having an empty seat at Christmas dinner. “It makes you realize how much you miss that family member.”

Sean Keneally is the youngest of four children. “You can imagine how they all doted on him,” his mother said. Though his sisters, nieces and nephews will all be at the Keneallys today, “not having him here is a huge hole in the festivities. It’s on everybody’s mind.”

It took an extra effort for her to decorate the house this year, but she did because it is important for her son to know his family is keeping Christmas. After all, that is what he is fighting for, his mother explained.

This year, Grace Harvest Fellowship, which has its own video production studio, taped a Christmas pageant at The Met, where the church choir and soloists performed. “Northwest Christmas” will air today at 5 p.m. on PAX television, and the program was shown during church services last weekend to honor military families. The Keneallys have sent their son the DVD.

“He wants to know what everyone is doing even though he is not part of it,” Louise Keneally said. “It’s one of the things we can do to bring Christmas to him.”

Mom flies a Chinook

You think squeezing that minivan into a tight parking spot during the Christmas rush is tough? Try lowering a 25,000-pound payload on a dime from the belly of a Chinook helicopter during an Iraqi sandstorm.

Army Capt. Amy Mead said goodbye to her husband, 7-year-old son and parents on Thanksgiving Day on her way to Balad, Iraq. Though the CH-47 pilot’s hitch is supposed to be up next month, her parents, Rick and “Pete” Giampietri of Spokane Valley, do not expect her back until at least next summer.

After more than seven years in the Army, this is not the first time the 1990 graduate of Central Valley High School has been away at Christmas. But this time, it’s a little different, said her mother, who is called Pete.

“I don’t feel good about her in Iraq, but I’m so proud of her,” she said.

Of course, she is worried about her daughter, “but worrying doesn’t do much good.”

As a little girl, Mead wanted to be a doctor, her mother said. Her best friend was going to be the pilot. Somewhere along the way the two swapped dreams. The Army taught Mead to fly after she earned her college degree at Eastern Washington University. She also attended the University of Kansas and Gonzaga University, where she entered the ROTC program.

She chose to fly the Chinook, Boeing’s huge, twin-rotor workhorse of the U.S. military. Mead, 31, is based at Fort Bragg, N.C.

Mead’s father is the football coach at Central Valley High School. Her mother is retired and stays home “to be available” for her grandson, Andy. She said her daughter was concerned about being away from her son, “but he’s doing well.”

“Kids are pretty resilient,” she said. “He’s proud of his mom, the pilot.”

Giampietri believes her daughter is in the hands of God. She doesn’t quite know what to think of the war in Iraq but at the risk of sounding like an Army commercial, she knows the troops are “being the best they can be. We as Americans have to think that we are doing positive things there.”

A good cause

Pfc. Peter Borg wanted to go to Iraq. After being in the Washington National Guard’s 1-161st Mechanized Infantry Regiment of the 81st Brigade for four years, he was not about to let a foot injury keep him from being deployed with his unit in November 2003.

“He looked around for a doctor who told him he could go,” said Borg’s father, Greg.

A city refuse collector in civilian life, Borg, 30, now spends his days escorting Iraqi or U.S. officials and his nights raiding enemy weapons caches.

“He always calls afterwards and says things went smoothly,” Greg Borg said.

His son told his father about a typical raid. The soldiers use overwhelming force, surrounding a suspect’s home with Bradley fighting vehicles and Humvees in the middle of the night.

“They knock on a guy’s door, and he doesn’t put up much of a fight,” Borg told his father.

Once, the soldiers in Borg’s Humvee spotted a 10-year-old Iraqi boy who was carrying a pistol. They followed him home, and it turned out it was a toy gun. The soldiers chatted with the parents and asked them not to let the boy carry the toy.

Borg comes from a long line of Shadle High School graduates, his father said. His parents, brothers and sister all went to Shadle. Borg, who played football and wrestled, graduated in 1992. He was an Eagle Scout.

Before deploying to Iraq, he became engaged to Allison Coons, 23, who lives in the Indian Trail neighborhood, Borg’s father said. Coons is finishing up her student teaching to become a special education teacher. Borg, who is almost done with his police science degree at Spokane Community College, wants to be a police officer when he gets back.

Greg Borg and his wife, Sue, worry about their son.

“Whenever you see a bomb has gone off or soldiers killed, you get this sick feeling in your stomach,” said Borg, who is a Spokane firefighter and union president. “I’ve worked a dangerous job my whole life and seen guys get hurt or killed, and you realize that’s just part of the deal. Peter accepts those risks. He thinks he is doing something for a good cause.”

This year, Coons is coming over to the Borgs’ Shadle neighborhood home to spend Christmas Day. Borg’s family sent him a package several weeks ago containing “some goodies,” the DVD of “A Christmas Story” and a liner to make his helmet fit better.

The family didn’t put up a real tree this year, just a little artificial tree decorated with flags and “I Love America” ornaments, Sue Borg said.

“We are just going to get through it and count down until he comes home, maybe in February or March,” his mother said. “It’s hard to say with all the extensions. I’m not overly optimistic. We just want him back in one piece.”

‘A waiting game’

Athina Beckham gets cranky when she does not hear from her husband. As a mechanic for the 1-161st, Sgt. Gregory Beckman fixes vehicles that break down and recovers the ones that are blown up around Baghdad.

Ever since soldiers in his unit got computers in their rooms, Beckham’s wife has been able to instant message her husband. A Web cam allows him to see his daughters, Breeana, 8, and Madelline, 5.

“He hopes he’ll be able to watch the girls open their presents,” said Beckham, who lives on Spokane’s North Hill. “But we don’t know if he’s working. Everything is different this Christmas.”

Beckham, 32, said her children are “driving the whole Christmas feeling.” For their sake, she put up the tree and decorations. “It doesn’t feel the same without him.”

Being a National Guard family is different than regular Army, she said. “It’s not like we have that community that you have on base.”

Her family lives in California, but his brothers and sisters will come over on Christmas Day. The family’s church, North Hill Christian, has been wonderful, and she is active in family support. In fact, she is the contact person for nine other Guard families.

Mostly though, Beckham is just waiting for her husband to return home.

“It’s a waiting game,” she said. “We’d love to know the exact date. We’re hoping he will come home by May. My dream date is sometime in March.”

The Pentagon has mobilized more than 185,000 National Guard and Reserve personnel in support of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is the largest mobilization of Guard and Reserve since World War II.

When Gregory Beckham, 30, came home on leave during the summer, he needed to talk to his wife.

“He told me a lot of scary stuff not too many people know about,” she said. “It’s just a scary place, and I don’t think there is a safe place over there no matter where you are at.”

Athina Beckham said she believes her husband has reached “the end of what he can do or what he can handle” in Iraq, but he will endure.

“I know him and there is no way he would have gotten out of it if he could have. I don’t know whether he agrees with everything, but he’s going to do it because he signed up.”

Not even those little “Support Our Troop” magnets on cars all over town mean as much as they used to, she said.

“Half my heart is in Iraq.”