National Guardsman glad to be home safely

Ryan Anderson was deployed with his Army National Guard unit in November 2003, only days after getting married. He returned home safely last month after spending a year in Baghdad.

“I just happened to have a lot of people praying for me,” said Anderson, who was working as a youth minister for three Lutheran churches in the Valley when he was deployed. “God’s hand was really on me.”

Anderson, a sergeant in the 81st Armored Brigade, said his job was training Iraqi defense forces and coordinating their patrols. He went on patrols himself and while he had a couple of close calls, he is amazed at how he always avoided injury. He would sometimes go on an uneventful patrol, but then the next unit to travel through the same area would be involved in a gunbattle. “I just managed to skip through it,” he said.

Some areas are worse than others, but Anderson said, “We always say it’s not as bad as the news portrays. It’s not the same for everybody. The majority of people there aren’t being shot at every day.”

But he did lose two people close to him.

One was a good friend in the unit, Sgt. Damien Ficek.

“He was the greatest soldier I ever worked with,” Anderson said. “It happened at the end of the deployment, which made it even harder.”

The other man he knew who died was an Iraqi interpreter who received many death threats – as do many Iraqis working with Americans – before the day he was shot and killed. “He was a good man,” Anderson said.

Anderson was teaching Iraqi men how to run a defense force. “Everything from public relations to security patrols,” he said. “Leadership was a big thing.”

It was sometimes tough for the Iraqi men he was training, Anderson said. Like the interpreter, they would often get death threats against themselves and their families because they were working with Americans. Some quit.

Adding to Anderson’s stress of serving in a combat zone was being separated from his new wife, Erin. The two tried to “instant message” each other once a day and exchanged numerous phone calls, e-mails and letters.

During Ryan Anderson’s deployment, Erin stayed with her parents in Germany, where her father is stationed as an Army chaplain. She said her faith got her through the year Anderson spent in Iraq. “I don’t know how people do it otherwise,” she said.

The Andersons are together now, living in Spokane. Ryan Anderson said he’s eager to show support for the troops still overseas.

Lutheran churches in the Spokane region have been collecting donated items to put in care packages for soldiers serving in Iraq. Volunteers, including Anderson, will be putting the packages together beginning at 9 a.m. Saturday at Salem Lutheran Church, 1328 W. Broadway.

The effort is being organized by Thrivent Financial for Lutherans. Various Thrivent chapters have donated more than $2,000 to help pay for shipping, with a goal of sending 1,000 care packages to Iraq.

The packages contain things such as toiletries, snacks, toothbrushes, and towels. Anderson said he was always glad to see such packages when he was serving, and any extra items were passed along to Iraqis. “I didn’t have to buy toothpaste the whole time I was there,” he said. “They’re a huge morale boost.”

While he was in Iraq, Ryan was replaced as youth minister at Good Shepherd, Trinity and Christ Lutheran churches – a decision he said he supported. He now plans to attend Moody Bible Institute, either in Spokane or Chicago, and hopes eventually to work with Cadence International, a group that ministers to soldiers and their families.