Lt. Col Daniel Holland’s love for animals
and compassion for people were profound. He served in Germany, Bosnia,
Honduras, and Haiti. He was posthumously awarded the Legion of Merit, Bronze
Star, and the Purple Heart. Other awards included four awards for Meritorious
Service, Armed Forces expeditionary medal, and The Humanitarian Medal. He was a
favorite of many in the Veterinary Service. A very, very good man.
Finally,
they were able to organize the vets of Iraq, working toward being more
functional, and think more for themselves. Help came from the United States,
from the university of North Carolina, Texas A&M, the University of
Kentucky, and Colorado State, as well as the USDA. A large workshop was set up
to bring all these people together with the vets from Iraq in Northern Iraq,
the Curdish area, where a large gathering would not be as dangerous. This workshop
stressed the importance of Vets of Iraq working together to agree on priorities
and function as a country wide group. A fully functioning lab was brought in,
to help them identify problem organisms. All in all, a very successful meeting.
One USDA lady, Paula Cowan, who was very
important for the meeting, was wheel chair bound. She was discouraged from
coming by many, but she would not hear of it. She had a personal body guard, a
very large man, whose job was to pick her up and get her out of there if
trouble arose.
Later in her tour, Deanna was assigned all
of Iraq south of Bagdad. She needed to go to Fallujah, to help the marines in
establishing a slaughter house. She flew in by helicopter, but was unable to
fly back, the planes were grounded by a large sand storm. She spent the night
at the airport, and the next day, still unable to fly, she was told a convoy
headed back had one more space. It consisted of three heavily armored SUV’s.
Security was provided by a private contractor, Aegis, Britan’s version of Black
water. About halfway back, they were
ambushed by about 30 men. They were shooting mostly small arms, thank goodness,
and the upper part of the cars were armored. They were shooting at the tires.
Three on Deanna’s car were shot out, two on another, but they were “run flat”
tires, so they managed to keep going. After they were out of danger, or so they
thought, they stopped to assess the problem and came under fire again. A rocket
hit between two of the cars, so they quickly got going again, and traveled the
last ten miles to Abu Ghraib Prison on the rims, where they could stop inside
the walls and change tires. Deanna assured me, they played no role in the
infamous activities at that place. They were only there to change their tires
behind a wall.
After returning from Iraq, Deanna’s family
wished to stay at Fort Bragg, where they had bought a house, but Deanna was
needed to take a command at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, where she traveled around a
lot, supervising Vets in half a dozen eastern states. To my knowledge, she
never parachuted in to these locations, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she did.
When Deanna retired, the entire family
breathed a sigh of relief. My brother Harold, the Patriarch of our family and
an old Air Force man himself, lectured Deanna years ago. “You need to stop
volunteering for all these hotspots in the world. Sooner or later, that will
come back to bite you!” Deanna just respectfully smiled, nodded her head. Then
she was off to her next adventure.
Deanna now works for the USDA Chicken
Plant Food Safety Inspection Service. I’m not really sure how, but some way,
Deanna will find a dangerous mission that’s attached to chicken inspecting.
It’s just, I guess, Deanna being Deanna.
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