Dear Family and Friends,
Hello! Hello! Hello! Thanks for the many birthday cards and gifts. I am
afraid I will not have the time to write thank yous to everyone since we are
in the middle of Ramadan and our OPTEMPO (operations tempo i.e. the speed
and volume of our missions) is high but I still want you to know your gifts
were received and are much appreciated. It never ceases to amaze me how
little things (good and bad) take on so much significance here. A funny
card, a favorite snack, a quick smile, a firm handshake.they all seem to
mean more than they do at home. We no longer take anything for granted.
Therefore for your gifts and cards, but more so for the encouragement,
support and love they represent, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and
not just for myself, but for all the soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines
who live, work and fight in Habbaniyah.

I did not do anything particularly special for my big day. As you know, I
usually go on an overnight backpacking trip to reflect on the year past and
to make new year's resolu-tions. The holiday, New Years, always seemed to
me to be too arbitrary of a time to make resolutions. It may be a new
calendar year, yes, but it is not truly another new year for me. So I go
out to the same trail every year, read my journal and set goals for the
coming lap around the sun. Last year, sitting by the crackling fire in the
solitude of the woods, the first goal I made for the coming twelve months
was this, "Stay alive". I doubt many people made that same resolution after
singing Auld Lang Syne last January. Now a year later, however, I
understand why I wrote it but I wish I hadn't. I believe more than ever
that there are people, ideals, beliefs and values worth defending, worth
making sacrifices for, worth laying down one's life.Please don't worry. I
am not sad, depressed or suicidal. Simply know that if I must lay down my life,
I am willing and do so gladly, if it keeps my children and yours from having to fight
this fight, if it protects them and you, and if it means that the children of Iraq can
enjoy the promise, prosperity and peace of a free and democratic way of life.
I did, however, have the chance to go on a long night mission the day before
my birthday. Surprisingly, I was nervous before going out. Thanks to your
prayers, my confidence in God's providence and the trust I have in our
soldiers and leaders, I am not normally nervous out in sector, despite being
shot at and blown up.

This night was different.

I am not sure exactly why. Maybe it had something to do with reading a
letter from my oldest boy Bruce right before we left (it made me
homesick.Lesson Learned.don't read letters from home right before going
out); maybe it was related to the exhaustion I was feeling at the time, or
maybe it was related to throwing my paramedic skills into ac-tion earlier in
the afternoon for some Iraqi soldiers who had been badly wounded. Caring
for their mangled limbs reminded me how frail the human body is and how
quickly a life can change or end here.Whatever the reason, I felt the ugly
wolf of fear raising his head inside me. I heard him growl. I saw his
fangs in the moonlight and the hair on the back of his thick neck stand
straight up. I wanted to turn back. I wanted to run away.

But I did not. I would not give the wolf that pleasure.
I thought of our soldiers, the young men and women who face the wolf
everyday. I could not let them down. I also thought about something one of
my favorite professors at Princeton used to say every time I had to give a
speech in his class, "Mr. Etter, in lu-porum os" (into the mouth of the
wolves). The wolf could growl, the pack could sur-round me, but they could
not stop me. They would NOT stop me!

You see it's all about choices. Life is all about choices. I once served
in a unit whose motto was, "Courage without fear". That has to be one of
the dumbest things I have ever heard. It is impossible to be courageous
unless one is afraid. If one is not afraid, there is no courage in going
out naked and alone to face the wolf.

But that dark night, I felt afraid, naked and alone.so permit me a short
digression.

When climbers scale sheer cliffs or icy peaks, we all use the same
equipment. Often times the equipment gets passed around and mixed together.
Therefore there has to be some way of distinguishing what gear belongs to
what climber. We accomplish that by marking our equipment with different
colors of electrical tape in different schemes or color codes. For example,
my mentor had a piece of black tape next to a piece of yellow tape on all
his stuff. One of our best guides at Mountain Dreams, wraps a piece of blue
tape around his carabiners with a thinner piece of red tape over top of the
blue. My part-ner Bob uses a single piece of pink (yes, they even make pink
electrical tape). The color code I use is a piece of yellow, with green
tape centered over top of it. My choice is very intentional. Yellow is
often used to describe fear (he's a yellow bellied coward or he's got a
yellow streak running down the middle of his back a mile wide). And there
are times, when I am on some icy sheer slope or vertical cliff and I am afraid.but
green.green means to go. It is also the color of growth. People most often grow when
they are outside their comfort zones. So I must go and do the right thing, even
if I am afraid. My climbing partners depend on me doing the right thing.
Yes, there may be but-terflies in my stomach, but they don't control me. I
control them. I tell them what direc-tion to fly.

So I had to make a decision that night. I had to reach deep inside and go.
Life over here, provides us with opportunities like that.of seeing yourself
truly and clearly. Not every-one responds the same way. I wish I could
tell you that everyone here is brave, but that is not true. There are
cowards among us. Very few, I am happy to report, but they are still here.
I hear people call us heroes all the time back home. That also is not true.
It is an exaggeration. It is part of a growing trend in American culture to
overstate certain truths. There are some, a few, who have done heroic deeds
here, but most of us are just soldiers. We are average men and women,
citizen soldiers we call ourselves in the Guard, who have volunteered for
multiple reasons to be a part of our nation's military. Now our time has
come, our number has been called so we step up to the plate. Most of us
stare down the wolf and do the right thing, not because we are extraordinary
people, quite to the con-trary, we are ordinary men and women in an extraordinary
circumstance. We do it be-cause it is the right thing to do. And each one
of us here knows, in the rare private mo-ments we have, in the inner most
chambers of our heart or mind, we know when we look into the mirror, if we
are brave or something less. And as time continues to pass, we also learn,
who in our sections and platoons, should be numbered among the brave. For
them, there is a sweetness and bond, in this most unique of fellowships.

Combat is a magnifying lens. It seems to make the strong, stronger and the
weak become weaker, more timid and more fearful. I am sure this
extraordinary circumstance in which we find ourselves will change many of
us. I can already see some of the changes and will tell you about them some
other time, but for now, know that we are dug in, committed and pushing
forward.

Oh, and one more thing before I close, I want you to know.I have a new pet.a
wolf.

The thanks of Task Force Panther is extended this week to Lisa Mangum, Tom
Caldwell, Elly Frieder, Patti and Bonnie from the Yellow Ribbon Girls, Doug
and Victoria Cluck and the employees of Harland Financial Solutions, Sean
Ward and the City of Mayfield Heights, Carolyn Young, Carol Carlini,
Pak-tung Le, Kristen Holloway and Operation Troop Appreciation, Deb
Mattocks, Kimberly Coon and her kiddos, Denise Snaverly (who sent me Cubans
and a boomerang from Australia!), Treasure Bertani, Margaret Fisher, Melissa
Dennis, Marge Cornell, Lynne Armstrong, Carepacks.org, Janice Good, the
sinners and saints at my beloved Fairfield and Milledgeville Presbyterian
Churches (hey, what was the idea of sending the preacher a game called, The
Devil's Triangle? Are you insinuating something?!), Jack Zeiders and the
Toscani Thursday Crew (Dave Boles, Dave Lampfon, Gary Goldstein, John Cross
and Lou the cop), Tom Ufer, Jan McHenry and Courtyard Hair, Chip St. John,
Carl Mohrhoff, Betty Voss, Mike Sykora, Karen Rumin, Meade and Pat Sutton, Charles Hudak,
Joanne and Dannie Croyle, Leatha Weese, Janet and Debbie Shaw with Teri Ferilla (who sent me a

Birthday Cake!), some of the employees at Noga Paramedic Service (Thanks Dean, Frank, Bambi,

Meagan, Meghan and Sherry) my children Bruce, Erin and Tristin, my patient and enduring wife Jodi,
my parents Chuck and Vonnie, my in laws Terry and Carmen Gruver (Go Steelers!), and the woman
whose name is now a noun in the official postal system (i.e. "I got a
Volpatti here", referring to a heavy box) Judy Volpatti.

Dave tells me our needs have not changed since last week. They include body
wash, luf-fas, deodorant, q-tips, shampoo, AA batteries, Frebeze, Hand
sanitizers, razors and re-placement blades, shaving cream, OTC meds like
pain killers, cold, flu and cough medi-cine, Benadryl, Neosporin and
Hydrocortisone, snacks like jerky, tuna, ramen noodles, Kraft Mac and Cheese
packets, Campbell's Soup Select in the small plastic bowels, Frito's Stax,
Pringles, granola bars, Twizzlers and M&Ms in the small packets.

I also want to pass along my congratulations and best wishes to four friends
on the recent birth of their daughters, Brian and Lisa Shaw and Dave and
Suzie Hartsell. Coodos to one and all. October babies are the best!

Thank you for all you do for us. May God bless you and our American
soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines. You're in my heart America, and I
shall always be,

Faithfully Yours,
Chaplain(Major)Douglas A. Etter
HHC 1-110 IN, 2/28 BCT
Camp Habbaniyah
APO, AE 09381