Soldier recalls time in Iraq during WL program
Published 3:18 am Sunday, November 13, 2011
During the eight months Zach Smith spent inIraq, he built a shelter out of plywood from supply boxes to sleepin.
“When there are mortars and explosions at night you don’t feel realsafe in a tent,” Smith said. “I found a strong wall and built ashelter around it and slept there by myself.”
It was not an uncommon sight in the area.
“It looked like a homeless camp with all the things we had set upover there,” Smith said.
Smith had occasion to remember on Friday his time in Iraq. It wasVeterans Day, and he was the featured speaker at West LincolnAttendance Center’s annual Veterans Day celebration.
The celebration also included performances of The Star-SpangledBanner and a medley of patriotic songs by students.
Students from a social studies class delivered a presentation inwhich they recounted the number of American servicemen killed ineach of the country’s armed conflicts.
Smith is becoming familiarwith Veterans Day programs at area schools. He is a graduate ofEnterprise Attendance Center and spoke at that school on VeteransDay last year.
Smith left the Active Guard Reserve in 2007 and now serves aspastor at Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church in Amite County, so neitheris public speaking new to him.
“You always need to take the opportunity to speak when it is givento you,” he said. “You always need to be ready for God to useyou.”
Smith recounted how he began to consider the military in highschool, but after graduation he went on to Copiah-Lincoln CommunityCollege. Then, after speaking with his parents, he decided towithdraw from college and enter the armed forces.
The day he went to withdraw from classes was Sept. 11, 2001.
“My parents urged me to wait a little while, and so I did,” Smithsaid.
His desire to serve continued, though, and Smith enlisted. He wasnot alone, either. Smith said 10 or 11 guys from his graduatingclass at Enterprise were stationed in Iraq while he was.
“We would bump into each other all over the place,” he said.
Enlisting wasn’t the hard part, though. The hard part came when hewas married in 2004 and shipped out to Iraq only 20 days later.
Smith bleakly remembers what came after.
“It was a bad deployment,” he said. “A lot of guys got killed.”
Smith recalled one night in which six vehicles were blown up.
This year’s Veterans Day fell shortly after statewide elections inMississippi, an appropriate combination for Smith.
Smith was stationed in a small town south of Baghdad where part ofhis job was to undertake local elections.
“I still have an election poster that has all the faces of thecandidates covered because they were afraid of retaliation,” Smithsaid.
Speaking after the program, Smith emphasized that all veterans havesomething to say or contribute on the day dedicated to them.
“All those men in front of you have their own stories,” said Smith,referencing the veterans who attended Friday’s service at theschool.