HEROES

Face of Defense: Engineer Sees Hospital as ‘Once in Lifetime’ Project

BASRA, Iraq, Jan. 30, 2008 – The Basra Children’s Hospital project can get its hooks into people. Take Army Lt. Col. Kenneth McDonald, for example.

McDonald extended his tour in Iraq to two years from one to help bring the project to a successful conclusion.“Where else, as an engineer, would you want to be?” asked McDonald, who taught in the civil and mechanical engineering department at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., before coming to Iraq in 2006.
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“My first day after arriving in Tallil and then driving to Basra, we were hit,” he recalled, adding that he wondered what he’d gotten himself into. The city has more than its share of indirect fire attacks, with more than 1,000 mortar rounds landing on Contingency Operating Base Basra over the summer.
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The motto at Camp Blackadder, “Living the Dream,” captures the spirit of a team proud of its mission and aware of its circumstances. The slogan can be uttered on occasion with that particular wryness to be found in a combat zone. Some British soldiers in Basra have adopted the slogan, which adorned their shirts at a recent five-kilometer race.

Before extending his tour, McDonald said, he did a lot of soul searching. He concluded with respect to the hospital job that “something as significant as this comes only once a lifetime.”

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http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=48811