Rocky Mountain News
URL: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/america_at_war/article/0,1299,DRMN_2116_2741600,00.html
Captain's words larger than life
By Jim Sheeler, Rocky Mountain News
March 19, 2004
At 6-foot-6-inches tall and 230 pounds, with a voice that matched his physical presence, Capt. Eric Paliwoda was the ultimate motivator - a West Point graduate and stickler for military doctrine who could hold his troops' trust in his blue eyes.
After months in Iraq, however, it was impossible for even the massive model of a military man to keep his mind from drifting back thousands of miles, and the things he would do when he was out of the desert, and out of uniform.
Drink water from a faucet . . . Get a haircut from a real barber . . . wear flip flops all day . . . Work on a tan that covers more than my face and hands . . . Rest assured there will be mail . . . Use a flushable toilet . . . Go one day without anything on my head . . . Cut all my food with real silverware . . . Sleep more than 4 hours at a time . . . Eat fast food . . . Take a shower twice in one day . . . Go to a movie that's not shown in a tent . . . Pat my knee and not have dust fly out of my pants . . .
The letter, written by 28 year-old Paliwoda and another Army commander one day during their deployment, is one of the very few of his letters home to express any sense of longing. Typical of Paliwoda, he didn't want his loved ones to know about what the troops missed, but instead what they had accomplished.
In a letter to a girls' lacrosse team coached by his fiancé, Wendy Rosen, Paliwoda mentioned the soccer fields they were building for Iraqi children, along with other humanitarian successes he rarely heard reported.
It's difficult for all of us to be apart from loved ones, family and friends but we're all doing the best we can. Iraq is not the US and every day we're reminded and thankful for everything we have and our way of life. We're still conducting combat operations, we're doing everything we can to help the people back on their feet and let them rebuild their country.
"I think a lot of people don't know what these guys go through," Rosen said in a telephone interview from her home in New York. "It's 140 degrees and they have all this equipment on. He ended up losing 50 pounds. There was so much they went through..."
If Paliwoda were still alive he would undoubtedly stop her here, explaining that it was all part of the job, and that she was the one doing the real work - sentiments he expressed in another letter (also co-written with another soldier) that was sent to every family in his unit:
As a soldier we may have to face moments of sheer terror, and deal with some very unpleasant things, however it is our families that actually have the tougher job. They have to deal with all the little things, to worry about us. That is indeed tougher than our jobs here in Iraq. Because of them, we truly appreciate all of your support for us, and indeed recognize that it is you that gives us even more strength and will carry us through our deployment . . .
"They mailed a copy to each family in his company, with a photo of their loved one," Rosen said. "He made sure everyone had one."
It was a caring side of the massive man that Rosen said she first saw as seniors in college - he at West Point and she at Hofstra - and through their eight-year relationship.
"The first time we went out, we went on a date with his parents, I thought that was pretty respectable of him," she said. "He was a big guy, but he was really funny, charismatic, and a really caring person."
The two dated for six years before he proposed marriage - down on one knee, traditional as always - the day after Thanksgiving, in 2002. They hoped to get married soon afterwards, and he planned to take a position teaching geography at West Point.
As the troops began to build in the Persian Gulf, the couple knew everything would have to wait.
Shortly after the deployment, Paliwoda sent an unusual request for items from home.
"He asked his parents to send him books on the Middle East so he could understand their culture," Rosen said. "Instead of trying to just get through it, he was trying to understand it."
Meanwhile, his letters to his fiancé were informative in a different way: reassuring, funny and soothing; ultimately unafraid.
"I think everyone knows there's always a possibility of - nobody wants to think it. But even in all his letters he always had that way of saying that everyone was going to be all right. That's what he did with his company (of troops). He did the same thing with me, (writing), 'everything's going to be fine.'"
Paliwoda was killed January 2, after his command post with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, attached to Fort Carson, came under a mortar attack.
Inside her home recently, Rosen found a letter that ends the same way the others did: with the softer side of the soldier.
Thank you honey, thank you for your support, your thoughts, your love, your letters your packages, thank you for being you, thank you for being with me, and thank you for agreeing to spend the rest of our lives together.
All my love, Now and forever, your fiancé, your lover,
Eric
Copyright 2004, Rocky Mountain News. All Rights Reserved.
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