Back to Iraq, back on his feet

NEWPORT -- N.C. National Guard Lt. Ed Salau didn't really understand what he was fighting for in Iraq until he went back without a gun.

Salau, 38, is one of a dozen or so injured soldiers who have returned to Iraq in an experimental program to help them make peace with the place where their lives were changed by war.

"There's closure there, if that's what you're looking for," said Salau, who made the trip last month through a Maryland group called Troops First. "I didn't know that I needed it."

Salau shared his story Tuesday with a group of sixth-graders at Newport Middle School in coastal Carteret County. Social studies teachers at the school invited current and former service members in for a pre-Veterans Day visit to help students understand that today is much more than just a day out of class.

Salau was injured in November 2004 when his patrol near Tikrit, Iraq, was ambushed by insurgents with small arms and hand-held rocket launchers. He and his gunner each lost a leg.

The Army won the battle, Salau always says when people asked him had happened.

He mainly wanted to return to Iraq to show that, thanks to a space-age prosthetic, he is back on his feet after having left the country on a stretcher. But while there, he was impressed by the gratitude of Iraqi military officials and by the changes since he left. During a week's stay, he said, he heard not a single mortar round explode, nor a roadside bomb. The country is on its way to self-governance, he said. It's holding elections.

"It proved to me that we didn't sweat or bleed or die in vain," Salau said.

Jersey kid goes military

Salau grew up in New Jersey without much of a career plan. He joined the Marine Corps right out of high school in 1988, hoping to develop a skill and get money for college. He stayed 12 years, long enough to obtain two college degrees and a fondness for the military.

When he left the Marines in 2000, Salau joined the Army National Guard. Eventually, he ended up in North Carolina, where his unit was called up in September 2003, in the first wave of the invasion of Iraq.

Salau got to Iraq in February 2004 as an infantry platoon leader, part of the Guard's 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team. Later that year, he lost his leg.

During months of treatment and rehab at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, Salau wanted nothing more than to rejoin his unit and go back to Iraq.

"Since I was 17 years old, that's the only life I knew," Salau said of his service. "And who wants to admit that the enemy had a vote in what career path you would take? Warriors don't want to give the enemy that much credit. And we never want to leave our group."

Still, Salau knew he couldn't fight again. He took medical retirement and began spending time with other newly returned wounded and their families, helping them navigate the system, making sure they had what they needed even when they didn't know what that was.

Gradually, Salau began to feel he had to back away from so much raw emotion. He is now a civilian employee of the Marine Corps, coordinating the work of charities and veterans services groups for the Wounded Warrior Battalion at Camp Lejeune.

Earlier this year, he heard about the Troops First plan to take soldiers back to Iraq, a program it called Operation Proper Exit. The group had the Army's support but kept the first trip, in June, relatively quiet because no one knew how the troops would react.

A chance golf course meeting with the group's director resulted in Salau's getting a seat on the flight that went in October. The troops went to several places, including Diyala Province, where Salau had served.

Brig. Gen. Farhan Abbas of the Iraqi Army met the group and told Salau he should be proud of what he had done there.

"He told me that he and his family will never forget my sacrifice," Salau said.

Kids of Cherry Point

Newport Middle School, near Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station, has dozens of students whose parents wear the uniform or who have a relative who served. Many know of someone among the more than 5,130 U.S. service men and women killed so far in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Julie Holt's sixth-grade social studies class, most students are too young to remember much before Sept. 11, 2001. For most of their lives, their country has been at war.

But their questions to Salau and to Marine Cpl. Isaac Brooks, suggest there is much the students don't know.

Do the troops have poison they can put in the enemy's food, they asked? How far can you throw a grenade? In Iraq, do you have war every day? Is it scary to be in the military?

When you got shot, did you play dead?

"Did I play dead?" Salau said, repeating the question. That's a philosophical concept to him now, tied in with the military ethos of never quitting, of claiming victory even with it's not a perfect win.

He recalled for the students the game they may have played as children, chasing one another and shooting with toy weapons. Bang, you're dead.

"I learned in Iraq: it isn't, 'Bang, you're dead,' " he said. "It's, 'bang,' and fighting to live."