Army mom savors her time at home

FILER, Idaho – When she went off to Army boot camp two years ago, her 4-year-old son wouldn’t talk to her for months.

“He thought I’d abandoned him,” Melissa Dodson said.

Kamrin, now 6, has been staying with Melissa’s aunt and uncle, Larry and Deloris Evans. To Kamrin, they’re Grandpa and Grandma, and they’ve helped care for him since he was born – seven weeks early and weighing in at just a little more than 3.5 pounds.

While Dodson did her basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C., and then moved on to diesel mechanic training in Maryland, Larry tried to help Kamrin understand why his mother had left. Together, they’d look at the globe, and Larry would point out the places his mother had been.

Finally, after three months, Kamrin took the phone.

“How are you, Bubby?” his mother asked him.

A new beginning

Dodson, 33, moved to Filer from Eugene, Ore., in 1997 to put some distance between herself and a bad relationship and to start a new life. Shortly after she moved in with Larry and Deloris, she discovered she was pregnant.

Kamrin decided to make an early arrival, and his mother was flown to St. Luke’s Regional Medical Center in Boise. Though small and delicate at the beginning, Kamrin began to thrive. Today, he’s 3- 1/2 feet tall, tips the scales at 50 pounds and is smarter than his tender years.

It’s hard being a single mother, and it’s even harder in a small town where job opportunities are few. Dodson had a succession of low-paying jobs – working in a laundry, at a trading post, at a gas station.

Then came Sept. 11, 2001. The terrorist attacks stirred Dodson’s patriotism. That’s when she first started thinking about joining the Army.

“I’ve always wanted to do it,” Dodson said. “9-11 had a little to do with it. I wanted to serve my country.”

So Dodson signed up for three years with the Army, and on June 1, 2002, she arrived for basic training at humid Fort Jackson, where temperatures reached well over 100 degrees. Then it was on to Edgewater Training Grounds north of Baltimore for 16 weeks to train to be a diesel mechanic.

The Army then gave Dodson a chance to see a part of the world she had never even dreamed of seeing. Job skills in hand, she was stationed at Camp Humphreys in South Korea, about two hours south of Seoul.

“I enjoyed Korea,” she said.

Then she got her next assignment – Iraq.

“I was in Korea when the war broke out,” Dodson said. “At first, it didn’t bother me.”

In November, Dodson was sent to Fort Hood, Texas, to fill out paperwork, get a health screening and to take some classes. In January, she found out she would be going to Iraq. She was assigned to the Delta Company 215th Forward Support Battalion of the 1st Cavalry.

She didn’t know just when she would be leaving. Then late one night in March, she called home from Fort Hood.

“She called here and said, ‘I’m standing in line getting ready to leave,’ ” said Larry, tears welling up in his eyes. “It’s very, very, hard.”

She boarded the huge Army transport plane at 1 a.m. With 60 rows and 10 seats across, the supersized aircraft can carry 600 soldiers.

They were headed for Kuwait for a month of desert training before going to Iraq. There wasn’t much conversation among the soldiers who had been up for hours getting things ready for the trip. The long plane ride offered an opportunity for sleep – something that had been in short supply.

“All of us were tired,” Dodson said.

In Kuwait, they worked on getting their vehicles ready and trained in close marksmanship. There are 15 soldiers in Dodson’s vehicle support group – “Fourteen guys and me,” she said.

In April, they got in their vehicles and made the three-day journey through the desert to Baghdad. Each vehicle had a driver, a map reader and a gunner. Dodson was in charge of the map. As they crossed the border into Iraq, children in the villages lined the dirt and gravel roads waving, cheering and begging for food. Dodson and her fellow soldiers tossed them whatever they could – MREs, the candy in their pockets.

“It’s a poor country,” she said. “Little kids beg for food. My heart sobbed for them. Saddam treated his people badly, and the kids suffered the most. They have no choice. They’re there because their parents are there.”

But the demeanor of the children changed as they got closer to Baghdad.

“There were kids Kamrin’s age carrying weapons,” Dodson said.

Long hours, bland food

Dodson and her company are stationed in central Baghdad in the green zone, now called the international zone, where they sometimes put in as many as 14 hours a day fixing military vehicles.

Fun is found in simple things – using the phone, cruising the Internet, playing games, watching movies, the occasional barbecue.

“You guys take little things for granted. We can’t take the little things for granted,” she said.

She said sometimes there’s even a “disco night,” but after working all day in 130-degree weather, she doesn’t feel much like dancing.

“We’re just so exhausted from the heat, all we want to do is take a shower, lay on our beds and watch a movie,” Dodson said. “Half the time, I don’t get through the movie.”

The food is bland, and chicken is a frequent menu item because it’s cheap, she said. They drink bottled water – lots of it – that comes from Kuwait because drinking the water in Baghdad can give a soldier the “Iraqi flu,” something Dodson said she doesn’t care to experience again.

Dodson doesn’t see the conflict ending anytime soon.

“Since Bush declared the war over, we’ve lost more soldiers,” Melissa said. “It’s never going to end over there. They’ve never had independence and freedom. You’ve got to teach the Iraqi people there’s something better.”

Coming home

Soldiers drew numbers from 1 to 146 to determine who would go on leave when. Dodson’s battle buddy drew for her – No. 16.

Dodson knew she would get to come home this month, but she didn’t know exactly when. One night a little over a week ago, Larry and Deloris’ phone rang. It was Dodson. She said she was at the Salt Lake City airport and would arrive in Twin Falls a little after 10.

How did Kamrin feel when he heard his mom was coming home?

“He was so excited,” Deloris said. “He didn’t know.”

Family and friends gave Dodson a warm welcome home at the airport. Kamrin rushed into his mother’s arms.

Dodson is to remain in Idaho until Saturday. Then it’s back to work in Iraq, where she has at least seven more months to serve.

But she doesn’t know for sure when she’ll be home again. Tours are being extended, and even discharged soldiers are being called back to active duty as the country scrambles to find more soldiers. She said it’s hard on soldiers not knowing when they’ll be able to leave Iraq.

“Morale is very low,” she said.

Dodson will head back to Iraq knowing that Kamrin is in good hands.

“He’s with me constantly,” Larry said. “He’s my shadow.”

But for a soldier, the hardest thing about coming home is having to say goodbye again. And it will be especially hard for Dodson to say goodbye to Kamrin.

“Who knows when I’m going to see him again,” she said.