Alex Paul
A decade ago, John Thoma sat in classrooms at Hawthorne Elementary School.
Friday, Corporal Thoma returned to the school, this time to tell students about the year held spent in Iraq as a member of the Army Cavalry.
As a sea of arms waved through the air to gain his attention, Cpl. Thoma, 21, answered questions from fourth through sixth grade students in the covered play area behind the school.
“Iraq is not like Sweet Home at all,” Cpl. Thoma said. “Not at all. It’s very hot there. The hottest it got was 157 degrees and in the winter, it gets cold, down to freezing. You have to get used to extreme temperatures differences.”
Cpl. Thoma said fellow Sweet Home soldier Brad Martinez, his best friend since grade school, shared his experiences as a member of the Second ACR Cavalry based in Ft. Polk, Louisiana.
“We shipped out March 28, 2003 and returned home April 13, 2004,” Cpl. Thoma said. “During the main battle for Baghdad, we didn’t get into much action but after that, we saw plenty.”
Cpl. Thoma said that even though he had to kill Iraqi combatants, some in close quarter tactics, he found the majority of Iraqi people to be very “kind…they will give you everything they have to be your friend.”
He said that although his mission is to fight, Iraq has many “really good, nice, considerate people…you don’t see that on TV news.”
He said the non-terrorists are deeply religious and that the Muslim religion does not support anarchy or terror.
“Iraq had a very bad leader named Hussein,” Cpl. Thoma told the students. “He killed thousands of people he didn’t like and he did it in front of their families.”
Cpl. Thoma said his unit has helped support rebuilding in schools and hospitals after the main fighting.
Many of the students’ questions focused on whether Cpl. Thoma had been shot at.
“I wasn’t shot at during the war but afterward, our unit lost four soldiers in one attack and 16 were wounded,” Cpl. Thoma said. “One of those who died was from Portland and we were friends.”
Cpl. Thoma told the students the modern cavalry doesn’t ride horses, as it did 100 years ago, but moves on Humvees and Bradley tanks.
How could he sleep knowing there was a chance of being attacked? a student queried.
“In the very beginning, I was so nervous, I didn’t sleep for four days,” Cpl. Thoma said. “And then, for the first four months, I slept on the hood of our truck. There was no air conditioning and it was very, very hot. The food was awful.”
One student said he liked MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) but Cpl. Thoma asked him how he would like eating the meals that were up to four years old three times a day, every day.”
Cpl. Thoma said his unit was ambushed at one point and 18 Americans held off more than 600 Iraqis.
“There was one guy shooting at me from me to you,” Cpl. Thoma said, pointing to one student less than 10 feet away from him. “He’s currently residing six feet under.”
Cpl. Thoma said that although his unit includes 4,000 soldiers, most soldiers’ lives revolve around their troop or company, about 120 men.
“Those are the buys you work with every day,” he said.
When asked if Saddam Hussein was like Hitler, Cpl. Thoma said Hussein did admire Hitler and that Hussein’s father and grandfather had supported the Nazi dictator during WWII.
During his stay in Baghdad, Cpl. Thoma spent a day at Hussein’s main palace.
Did he ever had have-to-hand combat with an Iraqi?
“Yes, but they are small people, due to living in a harsh environment,” Cpl. Thoma said. “A big Iraqi would be about 150-170 pounds and I weigh about 200 pounds.”
What do the soldiers do for fun? a student asked.
“Anything to keep your mind off the heat,” Cpl. Thoma said. “One day we built a hooch out of palm leaves. We play a lot of cards. Then, we started getting packages from home and that was great. We ate a lot. Food is a good pastime.”
Much of Cpl. Thoma’s time was spent destroying ammunition left over by fleeing Iraqi soldiers.
“The problem was that terrorists were hooking C4 (explosives) to the ammo and blowing it up against us,” Cpl. Thoma said. “So, we destroyed as much as we could.”
Did he ever have close calls?
“I’ve had grenades land just feet from me and I had a large explosive device bounce off my truck but it didn’t go off until it hit the ground,” Cpl. Thoma said.
How has he dealt with killing?
“Killing affects people in different ways,” he said. “I had two friends killed one night and I was very angry. I was sad when I had to shoot a 14-year-old, but all he had been taught was hatred and to kill us.”
Cpl. Thoma said he wanted the students to know that the “Army is good” and to not believe everything they are seeing on nightly TV news.
He has re enlisted for another four years in the Army, Cpl. Thoma said. His wife, Cindy, who also served as a cook with his unit in Iraq, is now out of the Army but may re enlist as well.
Cpl. Thoma brought a display of photos taken in Iraq and asked the students to autograph an Iraqi flag.
When asked if he liked his job, Cpl. Thoma told the students he was the type of “kid who liked blowing up things, so yeh, I like my job a lot.”
A drive is underway to secure basic school supplies to be shipped to schools in Iraq. Paper, pens, pecils and boxes of eight crayons are needed.
Supplies or money to help pay for postage, can be delivered to the Hawthorne Elementary library.