Barstow-raised soldier returns home to Fort Irwin

BARSTOW • When Spc. Thomas “T.J.” Craig tells other soldiers at Fort Irwin that he requested to be stationed there, some of them think he’s crazy.

Many of them would rather be somewhere like Fort Lewis, by Tacoma, Wash., where Craig was stationed for three years, with green trees, water, and a mid-sized city near by; not at an isolated post in the desert.

But Craig, a born and raised Barstow boy, wanted to come home so badly that he extended his contract with Army for another three years in December 2007, in the middle of a tour in Iraq, on the condition that he would be stationed at Fort Irwin when his tour ended.

Ever since he joined the Army in 2004 and headed up to Washington, there were things about home that Craig missed: his family, off-road racing and working on race cars with his dad, brothers and cousin. But it wasn’t until he was in Iraq as a medic with the 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division that Craig realized how important it was to him to be close to his family again.

“I think being over there, and this is true for all of us that go, you get so much perspective,” he said. “... It’s nice to really appreciate what you have.”

Craig’s company was stationed in the town of Tarmiyah, about 25 miles north of Baghdad. The al-Qaeda presence was so heavy that when they first arrived, the locals would not speak to the American soldiers, he said. The soldiers were getting hit with mortar fire every night. After nine months there, Craig said, they succeeded in starting a local security force of about 500 Iraqis in the town, and the situation had improved vastly.

In the meantime, Craig’s mother, Becci Craig, a special education teacher for San Bernardino County, confessed that she was a nervous wreck. She sent her son packages, sometimes two or three times a week. Once, she sent him two boxes full of Del Taco hot sauce because he had said it was one of the things he missed the most about home.

As a way of directing her energy, she decided to have the children in her classes at several Barstow schools send letters to all of the soldiers in her son’s company. Every one of the more than 150 soldiers and officers was assigned a pen pal, and each of the kids sent off letter.
“Every single one of them, it made their day,” T.J. said. “It might have made their week or their month.”

Only about 25 of them ever wrote back, Becci said. One of them was Cpl. Jose “Alex” Paniagua-Morales. As it turned out, his young pen pal had left the district in the time it took for his response to arrive. Becci searched all over and couldn’t find anyone who knew the girl. Finally, she decided to write the soldier back herself.

“That was it,” she said. “I had just adopted this kid.”

She never got a response to her letter to Paniagua-Morales. On March 7, he was killed by an improvised explosive device. Two months later, Becci found the letter he had written to the little girl at school and sent it to his mother in Seattle.

Paniagua-Morales was one of seven members of T.J.’s company who died during their tour.

T.J. touched back down in the United States on May 31 and his parents and two brothers came to meet him in Tacoma.

“It was like a huge burden was just lifted from me — it was like, ‘The world is right again,’” Becci said.

After a few more months spent tying up loose ends, T,J, left Fort Lewis Oct. 27 and drove 19 hours straight to get home. That weekend, the family went off-roading together at Dumont Dunes.

On his birthday, Nov. 14, about 45 family members and close friends gathered together to throw him a welcome-home party at Rositas’s Restaurant. Everyone from his high school cross-country coach to his best Army buddy, now living in Los Angeles, turned out for the occasion.

When T.J. tells the other soldiers at Fort Irwin that he asked to be there, they may think he’s crazy.

But when he tells them that he wanted to come home, T.J. said, they all understand.

Contact the writer:
(760) 256-4123 or asewell@desertdispatch.com