Dear Editor,
After a long and scary drive from Kuwait, I arrived in Baghdad (Green Zone) Iraq. It was one of the best and safest places to be living and working in Iraq. It felt like a resort. It didn’t feel or look like a war zone. It looked and felt like Disney World with a big Olympic size pool, several palaces the size of the White House, but much more elegant inside and outside than the White House.
The toilets seemed like they were made with gold and for kings and queens only to use.
It was here that I spent most of my days; I ate like a king and had a queen’s breakfast, lunch and dinner prepared by some of the best chefs in the world. In the dining hall I ate like a king. I thought I was dreaming because in the movies, soldiers didn’t eat so well nor were they treated like kings. I just thought that this couldn’t be real, and that it couldn’t last forever. I felt happy to be in the Green Zone, but at the same time, I felt guilty that other soldiers were living in terrible conditions on other bases. It wasn’t fair to them. Many days I spent sitting by the swimming pool listening to jazz music on a loudspeaker while enjoying the sunshine forgetting where I was, only to be reminded by a loud explosion from a bombshell.
No good thing can last forever so after a couple of months in the Green Zone, I was transferred to Bagdad’s Abu Ghraib prison just after the scandal of American soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees. So I went from one of the safest bases to one of the most dangerous bases.
Unless you have tasted the sweetness of heaven, you will never understand the bitterness of hell. And I was able to taste both. At the prison, I was put to the most severe test as a soldier of my courage and resiliency.
Abu Ghraib was the largest and highest security prison in Iraq. It is five times the size of the Camp Street jail. It was the place where prisoners were hanged by Saddam Hussein. I saw the place where many of the hangings happened.
Abu Ghraib prison isn’t Disney World. It was the first time that I’ve experienced living in prison. I was a soldier, but I felt as though I was a prisoner.
My bedroom was a prison cell. It didn’t have any windows. I lived and worked at the prison, and never went home. We were not allowed to leave the prison because it was too dangerous. If I did, I may not have made it back alive. So I was a prisoner guarding other prisoners.
Of all the military bases in Iraq, the prison was one of the most daunting bases because it faced daily bombings. It was a tense place to work and live; fear was always in the air. We lived and breathed danger and attacks were always imminent.
Yours faithfully,
Anthony Pantlitz
