Ja: Local boys with the U.S. military in Iraq

"Right now I'm prepared and ready to go. I'm Iraq bound after months of training. It's go time, don't worry, I'm ready."

That's the last paragraph of a letter that 29 year-old Jamaican-born US Air Force sergeant Fitzroy Munroe wrote to his father Lucius Munroe.

"When I read it, I cried, because I was afraid for him and touched by the fact that he's always thinking of us. He's the most focused and conscious of my eight children, I can't lose him," says Lucius as he takes a break from lunch preparations at the Whitfield Town family restaurant named Air Force One after his son's achievement.

"I don't support the war, and I didn't want him to go, but I knew I couldn't stop him," Lucius continues.

Fitzroy, who said he recently received a medal for bravery in an enemy attack, e-mailed the Observer with good news for his family: he'll be home next month. He hopes that they read his message in the newspaper because sometimes it's hard to reach them by phone.

Lucius Munroe busily preparing lunch in the Air Force One Restaurant named after his son's [Fitzroy Munroe] placement in the US Air force.
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His tangled web of memories includes seeing an American soldier clean up after an Iraqi prisoner of war who went into shock and vomited.

"And the worst thing I've seen is about four Iraqi men blown to pieces by their own people," writes Fitzroy who was also part of the Afghanistan occupation that the US dubbed Operation Enduring Freedom.
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With his tour of duty almost at an end, he carefully couches his reply when asked if he wants to remain in the United States Air Force. But his commitment to the army is obvious.

"I'm a warrior for life; it's hard to walk away after seven years," the sergeant said. "I'm. fighting to stay alive. I'm only here on the orders of the USA and when you are in the military you follow orders."

His biggest fear, he says, is dying in his sleep from a rocket-propelled grenade attack.

"I just want to be awake for the fight," he says.

Here's another story about another Jamaican boy doing good work in Iraq.