Shipping Off to Iraq

Thanks to Andy Schopps for forwarding this. Rich Franzis was by far my favorite teacher at DHS. Two very different experiences in that same classroom, Ed Yokstas hydrochloric coffee death breath one year, Rich Franzis the next.

Check out this article, this guy is the balls. [From New York Times, January 28]. Here is a link to the original article; I've also pasted it in here so you don't have to register:

Bound for Iraq: Citizen Soldier’s Parting Lesson

THE call came just before Thanksgiving, and Richard Franzis was ready.

He once heard a general say that in the post-9/11 Army Reserves, there are only two kinds of reservists: “those who are mobilized now and those who will be mobilized later.” Mr. Franzis was going to Iraq. No matter that he is an assistant principal at Staples High School in Westport, that he is 51 and a few years away from qualifying for a pension, or that he is a father of three. He was going to Iraq.

Mr. Franzis, a sturdy-framed six-foot lieutenant colonel with a close-cut patch of graying hair, will be the intelligence officer of a supply unit stationed near Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, analyzing information on enemy activity. Because he will travel the same roads he analyzes, he will face the risk of roadside bombs and snipers. He has had 26 years to think about risks, ever since he was a young chemistry teacher and began spending one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer in the Reserves, learning the soldier’s craft.

He is going uncomplainingly and prefers to talk about his sense of service, not about whether the war is worthwhile.

“We don’t get to make that choice, whether it’s a good war or a bad war,” he said.

With an additional 20,000 American troops on their way to Iraq, Mr. Franzis helps us recall that there is something noble about citizen soldiers who understand they do not have the luxury of weighing whether their president is acting wisely or foolishly before they agree to serve. A country could not fight wars if soldiers could do that.

“Americans this time around have been able to discriminate the war from the warrior,” is what he will say about the war’s wisdom.

The public thinks of reservists as police officers or plumbers, but there are indeed assistant principals and principals among them, and that is why Mr. Franzis has gotten local attention. So he thought it important to say, “I’m not unique.”

“There are 254 people in my unit, and there are 254 sets of stories,” he said. “Every single one that I called responded magnificently. They are people who don’t need to be doing this. They’re doing this out of a love of country and Army values.”

When he spoke, he was leaving the next day for Coraopolis, Pa., where his unit is assembling before heading for training at Fort Bragg, N.C. By July, he said, “the wheel’s up.” In Army parlance, that means his unit will ship out for Iraq. Still, he isn’t thinking much about dangers.

“You need to put that in a box,” he said. “You can’t do your job if you’re constantly thinking about safety. Of course, it’s over your shoulder all the time.”

What weighs on him, he said, is that a yearlong spell in Iraq will mean missing 16-year-old Liz’s high school graduation, 14-year-old Kate’s soccer games and 8-year-old James’s ice hockey season. He doesn’t say it sentimentally, perhaps, but he will also miss the more ordinary moments in their lives — the bed tuck-ins, the spasms of teenage insanity, the anguish over college applications.

“To disappear off the scope for a year is difficult for a parent,” he said. “My teenage girls are avoiding me because they’re teenage girls — there’s no deeper meaning there. But my kids have been around. They know where I’m going, and they’re sad about that. But they’re proud of what I’m doing. They get what I’m all about.”

Just to reassure James, he drove him to school on Jan. 16, the day he left, just as if it were any other school day. “I’ll probably give him the longest hug of his life, then I’ll head west,” he said the day before.

He does not mention missing his wife, Peggy, whom he met in 1986 when they were teachers in Darien. But the glances he gives her speak for him. Peggy, a long-haired brunette, does not talk much about the chance that she may lose him or have him wounded, preferring to concentrate on the outpouring of help.

“There’s a lot of unknowns out there, and those are probably the hardest,” is all she will say. But the apprehension is palpable in the taut way she grips her hands as she talks about those unknowns.

Mr. Franzis said that students at Staples High had told him that his leaving had “brought the war home because they didn’t know anybody who went before.” He is also pleased that he has been able to teach them about duty, and not because of anything he has said.

“They see that I get called and I go, that when you take an oath and make a commitment, that it does mean something,” he said.

Some students told him they would pray for him. That surely must have reminded him that his life would be on the line. High school students do not usually remember assistant principals in their prayers.