Background:

I was an Engineer Officer assigned to the 852 RAOC of the Arizona Army National Guard. One of the many additional duties I had as a leader in this small unit was being the Public Affairs officer. In this role I used photography to chronicle the deployment, wrote articles about our soldiers and missions they conducted, and supported the other Public Affairs personnel on our base in Iraq. I routinely posted photos on our unit's "unofficial" website... always careful not to violate any security or operational regulations. Over the course of the first several months in Iraq, I was written 7 stories and had 3 published either locally in our base newspaper or back home in Arizona.

Upon returning from a 4 day mission to Baghdad and outlying US bases, I discovered an email from the Public Affairs command that had been sent several days prior regarding an Arizona newspaper requesting personal essays on the Pledge of Allegiance. The deadline for the essays to be turned in was literally 30 minutes from when I opened the email. It was 7:30pm in the evening and the deadline was 8pm.

I actually have a compelling personal story about the Pledge of Allegiance... I decided to pen my essay and submit it. I did not distribute it to anyone else in our unit... as it was so short a notice and our units offices were all closed for the day. I quickly wrote my essay about being a child and refusing to recite the pledge in school... and contrasted that with now being a soldier serving in Iraq and delivering freedom to the people and fully understanding the power and depth of the pledge. I hit the "send" button in my email and thought no more about it...