4Operation American Braves

January 26, 2007 - Drew responds to a letter from Meagan

Aloha! I hope you are doing well and enjoying the nice winter weather in upstate New York. The team I was on won the Christmas Day football game. The teams are picked elementary school style with two captains picking back and forth until no one is left. We do rotate the captains, though. If I could be born in any culture, I would be born American and won't change a thing. Now in could choose what timeframe, I would like to have been in my 20s during the 1950s due to the sports cars, rock n' roll revolution, and swing dancing. Japanese is an interesting culture choice. I would recommend you read the book Shogun, which paints a nice picture of Japanese culture. In terms of religion, I am a Christian (nondenominational) and use the bible and my own reasoning as my primary means of worship. From my experience, the biggest problems in this world stem from religious or fascism extremists. Here in the Middle East we are fighting religious extremists. In South East Asia, fascist extremists cause all the problems. Well, that's enough serious stuff. The library club sounds like something I would have done in high school if my high school had one. What do you do in the club? I was in the Chess Club, which was seen as kind of nerdy, but I didn't care. I just liked to play Chess. That's it for now, take care.

Sincerely,

ANDREW C. JOHANNES CPT. EN

December 25,2006 Major Albert responds to Meagan

Thank you for the letter and support! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas. Our Christmas day here consisted of a 1.5 hour game of ultimate football where half of us limped off the field. We then had a dulma feast prepared by MG Anwar's (Iraqi Army commander) wife. I don't really know what all the food was, but it was really good.

From what I was told,-dulma is vegetables stuffed with rice and seasoned with a special". ,. seasoning. It takes a long time to cook and is the big thing over here. It's not a party. unless someone brings dulma. We did not have any snow, which is a good and bad thing. Snow would definitely have added to the Christmas spirit, but tends to be a hazard for combat patrols. Considering that we all live in Hawaii, the guys on the team are used to not having snow, so it wasn't an issue. Back in Oklahoma where I grew up, we only had snow on Christmas a few times, but it was usually cold!

Thinking back to my Earth science teacher in High School required cleaning a couple of cobwebs out of head, but I am about 90% sure it was Mr. Stone, who was my football coach as well. I remember having a good time in the class and got in trouble for impersonating him a couple of times. Mr. Stone was not an in-year- face-guy though. I loved my High School experience and would go back and do it again if I could. Of course, I will admit that I was a Jock in had to be stereotyped but hung out with people from all groups. The area that I live in Iraq is developed with water and electricity about 70% of the time, which is great compared to other places. In terms of culture, I am located in the melting pot of Iraq with Arab; Kurd, Turkoman; and Assyrians. The culture differences, especially compared to American culture, are extreme. I have to keep that in mind when I start to get frustrated with the Iraqis I work with (which is mixed). In terms of staying in the military, I am undecided as most of the guys in my year group. These deployments (this is my second) are rough on family and "settling down." Well, thanks again for the letter!

December 21, 2006 - Drew responds to Mrs. Deitch

Nancy,

Wow, everything sounds great and we received a bunch of hand sanitizer. We are definitely good on that, now! We could still use some hand soap (for some reason, getting hand soap is hard in the Army supply system, which works 100 times better during Combat then at garrison). Getting the beads should not be a problem. I’ll let you know when I get back to a place where I can send them. We do have a microware, so popcorn is always great to have. Chocolate and baked goods usually get here in pretty good condition but tends to disappear fast (i.e. in our bellies). I am still working on getting the picture for you.

Please give our heartfelt thanks to all the awesome kids and teachers at Fonda. We took great pleasure in hearing from Allyk Cook, Bradley Steiger, and Carly Douglas and their words of encouragement have already helped make the holiday season brighter. Please let Jonathon Danise know that I agree with him about you NOT being the craziest, meanest teacher ever, or at least not the meanest as he put it. I think your wonderful and we all need a little craziness now and then to keep life interesting. You can tell Travis Mulyea that I feel his frustration about only winning one soccer game for a season. The same thing happened to me when I played back in High School. Please give a high-five/hug/hand shake to Nick Quill, Denny Mars, Meagan Holveck, and all the rest of the students from myself and the other guys on the team. CPT Nix, SFC Gallardo, SPC Tavaras, CPT Padlo, SGT Fuel, and MAJ Albert are more of the hugging type while SSG Palin, CPT Gorkowski, SPC Lopez, MSG Armendraz, SGT Bentley, and SGT Fatusin prefer the high-five. Thanks again!

Drew

PS- Dead fly count at 276 (this is counting both the swatter and the sticky paper) and mouse count remains the same at 1.

December 20, 2006 - Mrs. Deitch writes Drew

Hope you boys are all well. We are thinking about you here. I was informed by the Superintendent of FFCSD, the Board Of Education approved our project unanimously. The nine members will support us all the way. The want to call the press in to document that kids care about our US soldiers. As soon as Dr. Hoffman can decided on a name that he feels is "politically correct" we will publish the information on our Website with encouragement to write letters and the list of things you would like.

Drew, when I was looking on taps.com I saw a women's group that sells bracelet's with 'Baghdad beads'. They said it is a custom for Iraqi women to give their beads to a friend to show appreciation. They sell for $20. each to support taps.

Do you think it possible to send us beads to put one in each of our Braves/MiTT bracelets we are making to sell for shipping money? I think the kids might be more willing to support the bracelet wearing project with something foreign and unusual involved. I thought about buying from taps and taking the bracelet apart, but it is cost prohibitive.

I sent you that 8 foot fly paper but obviously you guys have made a sport out of fly swatting. It came from good old Agway. Do you need foot powder, athletes foot cream or deodorant? Shaving stuff or and cream? This morning I thought about sending microwave pop corn. How about peanut butter? That comes in plastic. Will chocolate get there with out being destroyed?

God keep you safe, I pray each day.

Love you Drew,
Nancy
 

December 15, 2006 - The package arrived!

Nancy,

Captain Nix's half of the room

Drew's half of the room

We received your first package. Please thank everyone on behalf of myself and the team. We have already caught 1 mouse and killed 87 flies. In terms of the candy and snacks, a couple of guys are putting on some weight and we have had to have them conduct more PT (Physical Training, which consists of push-ups, sit-ups, running, and foot marches)! I worked off my share on the marathon this past weekend. My recovery from the marathon (i.e. learning how to walk again, went very well and I contribute my good fortune to the best wishes expressed

by Kaitlin, Meag, Joe, Breana, and Jon. Tell Jon that I hope he does/did well in his concert playing the flute. You can also assure Breana that I will not stay in Iraq for too long. Please tell Alyssia that I will work on finding an army joke translator, but I will need her to send a joke translator for Dufe’s jokes. Lastly, all the guys on the team were very impressed with Katie’s card and will take the underlined words to heart.

I attached a couple of pictures of CPT Nix’s and my room. As you can see, we are living 100 times better than when we were in Afghanistan. However, we don’t spend all our nights in our rooms and usually sleep on the ground/sitting up right in our trucks when we go on long missions.

I also attached the December Newsletter. Please note that I am 2nd in the Frisbee rankings, oh yeah!

Thanks again for you love and support!

Drew

December 12, 2006 - The results of Drew's marathon

On December 10, 2006, Captain Johannes ran in a marathon honoring military personnel who have died in Iraq.

Well, I survived another one. I finished 16th out of 172 with a time of 3:37. My Ipod was on the entire time, and it had half power left. Not bad…

Now I am working on learning to walk again.

Love, Drew

November 28, 2006 - Response to Joe Shea

Joe,

Thanks for the letter and the support.  I appreciate the offers of help.
You were right on about the hand soap.  We wash our hands at every
opportunity so we can never get enough of liquid hand soap.  It is kind of
hard to shake their hands at times (especially when they're wet from using the
restroom), but required for us to be successful.  It is a cultural thing and
a sign of respect for them.  Iraqis are like the rest of the people in the
world.  You have nice guys, good guys, bad guys, crazy guys, and
everything in between.  I don't know too much about the women since we don't
have a whole lot of interaction with them.  Due to the Arab culture, they
have a different set of values that they live by and believe in, which makes
things difficult at times.  They value God, family, tribe, and honor
(different than the honor we value in the US) versus the US values of the
United States as a country, freedom, truth, and progress/hard work.  Sounds
like you lucked out having Mrs. Deitch as a teacher.  She is a wonderful
lady.  Thanks again for the support!

Sincerely,
Andrew Johannes
Captain, Engineer

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