USVI: Safe home from Iraq

A USVI couple spent their first year of marriage proudly serving their country in Iraq. Now Conrad and Eshadia Fahie are back home and having an overdue honeymoon. Congratulations on the marriage and safe arrival home, guys. Thanks for standing for rest of us in Iraq.

During the first year of marriage, duty came before romance for the couple, both specialists in the U.S. Army.

They met in the summer of 2002 at Fort Campbell in Kentucky and married Christmas Day that year.

Just two months later, Eshadia, a military cook, received orders that she would be deployed to Iraq - without her husband.

"I broke down in tears because I didn't want to go alone," Eshadia said.

Her plight apparently softened the heart of an official, she said. Next thing she knew, her husband, a helicopter fueler, had received orders, too.

They left for Iraq - together, after all - on Feb. 28, 2003, as part of the 101st Airborne Division, known as the "Screaming Eagles."

One commander joked that "Iraq would be our honeymoon," Eshadia, 21, said.

Needless to say, she wasn't laughing.

Quayyarah West Airfield, a spartan, isolated camp in northern Iraq, was anything but a dream vacation. And it was difficult to be apart while they carried out their different missions, they said.

But the Fahies made the best of things, taking pleasure in shopping trips to a nearby city and in charity work, such as giving out toys at Christmas to needy children.

"The best thing was helping people," Conrad said.