By Nick Buglione
These are just a few things East Meadow native Fred Dana missed while spending nine months in the desert, anxiously awaiting and then carrying out Operation Iraqi Freedom.
And while that first hot slice from the popular East Meadow Avenue pizzeria surely melted in his mouth when he returned home, it could not have been as savory as finally seeing his family again.
"I missed my wife and my kids the most," said Dana, 37, a sergeant first-class with the Army Reserve 773rd Transportation Company, based in Fort Totten, Queens.
Just weeks after his Oct. 13, 2002 wedding to wife Monica, 28, Dana shipped out to Kuwait, along with the rest of the company. "I knew back in July of last year, before we even got word, that we were going to go," he said. "We were there for the initial startup, to push all the fuel. That was all they were waiting for, for all the fuel to be in place before they started the war."
The 773rd was responsible for getting gas to military units scattered throughout Iraq. Dana, who heads up the maintenance team, was in charge of keeping all the fuel transportation vehicles rolling.
Having arrived in November, he and his fellow soldiers were itching for the war to start. "We were like, Come on, let's get this thing over with," Dana said. They got their wish on March 19, when war broke out following Saddam Hussein's failure to comply with President Bush's ultimatum to leave the country. With butterflies fluttering in his stomach, Dana and his company crossed the border into Iraq the next day.
"You try to put everything out of your mind, as far as home," he said, but "you can't put it out of your head."
Shortly after the war's onset, Dana made a quick cell phone call to his wife, who was fighting nerves of her own. "I kept asking him, 'Are you OK?'" Monica said. "But really I think I was asking, 'Am I OK?'"
In the age of 24-hour cable news, Monica had a better grip on what was going on in the war than her husband, who was fighting it. Though she tried hard to keep the TV off, Monica's eyes were often glued.
"I tried very hard to keep it together," she said, for the sake of daughter Katrina, 19 months, and Daniel, 9, Dana's son from a previous relationship. Meanwhile, in Iraq, Dana and the 773rd were sometimes putting in 15- and 16-hour days and moving fuel at an astounding rate, often taking mortar and sniper fire. By war's end, they would complete 200 missions, move 12 million gallons of fuel and drive over a million miles.
How they were received by Iraqis varied, Dana said. "You have people who were downtrodden by Hussein and definitely welcomed us, and the people who were in his favor resented us."
As a mechanic, Dana often had to make runs for parts to Doha, Qatar, which gave him a chance to call Monica. "One time he actually had somebody else call me up," she said. When she heard a strange man identify himself as being from the 773rd, her stomach dropped. "Right there, your heart skips a beat," she said.
Fortunately, her husband was fine, and just about a month after it began, the war was over.
But the killing didn't stop.
"When the war was over, it did make me feel better," Monica said. "But I was also very aware of the fact that just because the president got on TV and said that the war was over, they were still being targeted."
Dana and his men had to remain as vigilant as ever. "Every evening I would go to a leaders' meeting and we would get the intelligence reports," he said. "We would hear every day that we were losing one or two soldiers, and it's still that way."
More American soldiers have died since President Bush officially declared the conflict over than did in the war's first phase. By June, morale in the 773rd was starting to slip as soldiers began wondering "when they hell we're getting out of here," Dana said. "Everything was up in the air," said Monica of the prospect of her husband's return. "He had to call me up until the last minute to tell me he was definitely getting on a plane."
When he finally did make it home, his family was ecstatic. "When my dad came back I was saying, 'My daddy's back, my daddy's back,'" said Daniel, who Monica believes has become a far more social and active youth since his father's return.
Dana is still getting used to being home, acclimating himself to the routine Monica has had the family on in his nine-month absence. Much has changed. Katrina's crawling days are behind her, and she's now walking on her own.
"It's different when you're coming back," said Dana, who has been on vacation and will shortly be returning to work. "Obviously she's gotten a lot bigger, and [Daniel's] gotten a lot bigger. Before I left, I was doing the bills and kind of used to things being on my routine."
It doesn't really matter, though. The Danas are a finally a family again.
