U.S. soldiers give Catholic school students accounts of war in Iraq

Published: 2004-01-02

CHICAGO (CNS) -- The situation in Iraq became more real for students at Chicago's Incarnation School in December when Sgt. Ronnell Jackson of the Army's 308th Civilian Affairs Brigade came by for a visit. The man who had been sending the school's junior high students e-mails and letters answered their questions and thanked them for gifts from the past nine months while on a December furlough. Jackson, who knows one of the teachers at Incarnation, is a retired police officer whose reserve unit was called up at the beginning of the war and has recently been busy rebuilding schools and other facilities in the war-torn country. Jackson and another sergeant from his unit, Dave O'Leary, answered questions from the students ranging from the mundane -- about what they wear and what they eat -- to the more profound, such as what it feels like to go into battle and whether they were ever scared.

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