Sally

Sally Schmidt. Sally was 21 years old when we went to Iraq. Single, but engaged. She was a half Mexican, half Zuni Indian from New Mexico who was adopted at birth. So the name doesn’t match her striking Latino looks. Raised in New Mexico with a finish in Seattle. So she’s very “Seattle”, complete with the accent and a stint as a Starbuck’s assistant manager. Sally enlisted in the Army after High School and was a supply specialist. She did a short stint in Korea as a reservist and made her way to Washington, where she joined our unit shortly before we mobilized. Started college but hadn’t graduated by the time we went to Iraq. I was an officer when we met and really didn’t know her that well. When I enlisted, she issued me my gear but that’s all I remember until Kuwait. There, she was across the aisle from me in the giant unisex warehouse that I’ve described earlier. Very meticulous, conscientious, smart, driven. Even though she was just a specialist and not a sergeant, she did sergeant’s work. In fact, Sally was always working above her pay grade. She was selected ahead of the rest of the unit along with a few other soldiers to go into Iraq first. We had a small detachment at Iraq’s only port at Umm Quasr. They needed lower ranking soldiers, so she was picked. She was in Iraq by April 6. We had only arrived on the 2nd. By the time we moved out with the main body for Iraq on April 20, Sally had already made several trips to and from Umm Quasr. I lost track of her for a month or so until she came up to Baghdad. She lived in an all-female house right down the street from me. She talked her way out of her supply job and worked civil affairs stuff for the rest of her time in Iraq. She worked at the 354th Civil Affairs Brigade HQ, but liaised with us at the IAC. She was doing at the city level (Baghdad) that we were doing at the country level at the IAC. So I saw her almost every day. As time went on, she would also come to the IAC. By November, she had a desk at the IAC and by December she was attached on orders to us. I spent more time with her than anyone else during my 13 months on active duty. Because I worked with her on projects – unlike Bill, Keith, and Kenny – I spent 12-16 hours a day with her seven days a week. She’s an incredible workaholic and would not leave the office until work was done, often 11 pm at night. She developed databases on neighborhoods in Baghdad and had at her fingertips more raw data on Baghdad than literally anyone else in the country. She was frequently approached for information by many outside agencies. She was constantly developing point papers, concept papers, white papers, etc. for persuasive purposes to advance some project that she was working on. I was the tutor for preparation of some of these papers. She provided the PowerPoint briefs for many of the Colonels that served as senior staff officers. During the day, she would get frequent calls from high ranking officers on the status of briefs that she was preparing for them. She “made their lips move”. You could have pinned Lt. Colonel’s rank on her for the type of work that she was doing. Downtown, she was as fearless as any man and more so than many. Very good with a weapon, and you were safe if she had your back in a tight situation. One time, she was on the phone talking to an ex-boyfriend who was also in the reserves and was reticent about coming to Iraq. She was trying to buck up his courage and told him: “It’s like Indiana Jones over here!” And so it was. I can’t think of a better description. We usually drove on our runs to the UN. I in the lead and she in the trail vehicle. But on at least one occasion, she left on her own and went to an NGO meeting being held at the UN. She went in civilian clothes so she wouldn’t be recognized as a soldier. She did this because NGO’s weren’t forthcoming to the military (putting it mildly) when it came to sharing information. Never mind that we gave them for free the cell phones that they could use to share information with each other (gratitude is not part of the NGO culture). Sally was an avid reader and we had similar taste in books. Although I think I only finished at most three books the whole time I was in Iraq. Didn’t have the patience. She still had side duties as a supply clerk, and this came in handy for obtaining what we really needed and writing off as “combat loss” anything that got destroyed. The NGO Assistance Center was Sally’s brainchild. We set it up toward the end of our time there. It was for Iraqi NGO’s. We registered them and offered them training. Also, a one-stop shop where they could get information on matters pertaining to their disciplines. With money from the Danes, we purchased office supplies and equipment, and computers. I brought my first pair of bifocals to Iraq. But I didn’t wear them until my original pair literally fell off my face one day – the constant salty sweat pouring down my face every day had literally corroded the frames. So I put on my bifocals. They are very difficult to walk in at first. If you look down through the bottom part, the ground rushes up at you and becomes magnified. So Sally would take my arm and say “step” every time I walked over a curb. I felt like an invalid in a nursing home with my nurse. Sally left for a posting in Jordan before I left Iraq. A few nights after she left, I was leaving the Convention Center and misjudged the curb due to my bifocals. I twisted my ankle and landed on the ground, yelling out Sally’s name and laughing/moaning in pain simultaneously. Colonel Edwards left for Jordan around Christmas. He took an assignment to head up a Civil Military Liaison Section to be run out of the American Embassy in Amman, the capital. He wanted me to go. But it would have been for another year and I wanted to see my family. He asked Sally and she jumped at the chance. She went in January, 2004. She spent a year there and made the same name for herself that she did in Baghdad. She took several UN-sponsored and run courses and flew all over Europe to various conferences. She returned to the US, got married, completed her bachelor’s degree, is working on a master’s degree, has a graduate assistanceship, bought a house (she a minor real estate tycoon like Bill – she also owns a house in Morocco that she rents out and makes money flipping houses in the US), works as a contractor at the State Department’s Political-Military Bureau (where I worked, I helped her the job, and of course she did it better than me), and started her own NGO that assists Iraqis in gaining legal entry into the US. And why not? It’s not like she’s doing anything. Sally is the little sister I never had.