Face of Defense: Soldier Honors Vietnam-Veteran Father

By Staff Sgt. Mike Pryor, USA
Special to American Forces Press Service

Jan. 3, 2008 - Like any soldier, Army Pfc. Alexander Cesario always makes sure he has all his essential equipment before he goes "outside the wire." For Cesario, that means his weapon, radio and night vision goggles, as well as one special personal item: an American flag his father brought home from Vietnam. Cesario, a Somerville, N.J., native serving as a forward observer with 82nd Airborne Division's Company A, Special Troops Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, has carried his father's flag with him on every mission since being deployed to Iraq a year ago.
The soldier's father, Adam, 61, acquired the flag when he was a young paratrooper serving in Vietnam. The elder Cesario never let a day go by without unfurling the flag, no matter where he was or what he was doing.

"(My dad) flew that flag every day, even if he had to put it up on a radio antenna," Cesario said.

At one point, a mission went wrong and Cesario's father was cut off from the rest of his platoon. For three days, he had to hack it out of the jungle alone, with the Viet Cong in hot pursuit. But even on the run, he still managed to raise the flag each day.

"He didn't stop moving at all for those three days, except to fly that flag," Cesario said.

When Cesario's father returned from the war, he put the flag into safekeeping. He was so protective of it that even family members were rarely allowed to handle it.

"It was like his prized possession," Cesario said.

Nothing could make the elder Cesario part with the flag until Alexander, 19, was deployed to Iraq this year. After he began patrolling the streets of Baghdad, Cesario decided he wanted to carry on his father's tradition. After some arm-twisting, he convinced his dad to mail him the flag.

The flag arrived with step-by-step instructions on how to take care of it, Cesario said. He recalled the final step with a laugh: "If you lose it, don't bother coming home."

Despite the threat of exile, Cesario takes the flag with him everywhere. It is his way of paying tribute to his father, he said.

"I wanted to honor him," Cesario said, "It meant a lot to him, and because of that, it means a lot to me."

The soldier keeps the flag tucked into the front flap of his body armor, close to his heart. He said he's looking forward to redeploying and returning the flag -- now a veteran of two wars -- to its rightful owner.

Cesario, who is single, said he would like to pass the flag on to his own son when he has one. There's only one problem.

"I'll have to pry it away from my dad first," he joked.

(Army Staff Sgt. Mike Pryor serves with 82nd Airborne Division Public Affairs.)

'Civilian Surge' Key to Securing Self-Sufficient Iraq

By David Mays
American Forces Press Service

Oct. 22, 2007 - The recent surge of troops and embedded provincial reconstruction teams to Iraq is providing unprecedented opportunity for Iraqi citizens, a coalition commander said today. "It really wasn't until the EPRT, the 'civilian surge' ... and the surge forces arrived that we began to make what I will call measurable progress along our lines of operations," Army Col. Mike Garret told online journalists and "bloggers" during a conference call from Forward Operating Base Kalsu, south of Baghdad, shortly after he provided a televised operational update via satellite.

Garrett commands the "Spartan" 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, deployed from Fort Richardson, Alaska. Created just two years ago, the Spartans are America's newest airborne unit and the only one located west of the Mississippi River. Garrett and his soldiers are assigned to Multinational Division Center, where for the past 13 months they have patrolled the Iraqi provinces of Babil, Karbala and Najaf and recently have begun working with their civilian counterparts to help rebuild Iraq.

Garrett said he originally had doubts about the effectiveness of the embedded provisional reconstruction team in his area because of the group's small size. "But I tell you, what I found almost immediately as I was introduced to the team leader who was a senior foreign service officer who had served in Vietnam, ... he was focused on the right level," Garrett said. "He was focused at the local levels of government here, and he brought with him and his very small team expertise, that we quite honestly, didn't have."

Garrett said he was impressed at the speed with which the EPRT assigned to his unit acted. "They didn't come into the brigade and talk about projects that would show progress a year or six years from now," he said. "They talked about impact that we would be able to see in 30 days."

One such program carried out by the EPRT working with Spartan Brigade had immediate impact on Iraqi farmers in the mostly rural provinces where Garrett and his soldiers patrol.

"We were providing seed, farm equipment and other things to help our farmers maintain their farms," Garrett explained. "What the EPRT has done for us is to take these agricultural unions, push them more towards a business-like approach. Now they are buying their own seed, they are setting prices for their produce, they are buying farm equipment that they can maintain and rent out to other farmers."

By enabling small groups of Iraqi citizens to become self-sufficient, Garret said, embedded provincial reconstruction team members form a crucial link in a chain that reaches from tiny agricultural communities all the way up to the capital of Baghdad.

"One of the purposes of the EPRT was to increase capacity at the local level and then try to link the local to the provincial levels of government," Garrett explained. "And then the provincial reconstruction teams, which are located throughout Iraq, had the mission of linking the provincial levels of government with the local level and national levels of government."

While Garrett and his team had facilitated economic development programs like a small business training class taught by an Iraqi professional, he said EPRT members have kicked off many other imperative initiatives such as micro-grants for Iraqi entrepreneurs.

"What they've done is taken it to the next level," Garrett said. "The EPRT has been very, very important to us, and they've made a very big difference in terms of our ability to make progress in the governance and economic lines of operations."

While Garrett and his soldiers have seen their share of danger and death during a year of deployment, including the loss of 53 Spartan paratroopers, it is gratifying to know that his unit is truly making a difference in the lives of Iraqi citizens, the colonel said.

"I always felt we were making progress, but there were many days where it was only a feeling," Garrett said. "Today I can tell you that we are making measured progress, and we can see that through the (decreased) numbers of attacks, the increase in employment, the increase in economic development, the programs, the entrepreneurship we're seeing at the local levels, which really does give me cause for optimism."

(David Mays works for the New Media branch of American Forces Information Service.)