Stories

Name: Morgan Ringeisen

Age: 22

Hometown: St. Cloud, Wis.

Military Rank/Unit: Petroleum Supply Specialist, 832nd Medical Company Air Ambulance/first-year cadet ROTC

Tours: September 2006- September 2007, Taji and Baghdad, Iraq

MORGAN RINGEISEN

by Kristen Manders

Christmas in Baghdad

Morgan Ringeisen of St. Cloud, Wis., enlisted in the Wisconsin Army National Guard when he was 17. He didn't have the greatest high school career and saw the military as a way to start a new life. Ringeisen was deployed in June 2006 and spent his first three months in Camp Atterbury, Indiana. Afterward he was sent to Iraq for a year with the 1157th Transportation Company out of Oshkosh, Wis., as a petroleum supply specialist. For the first three months, he was stationed in Taji, about 12 miles north of Baghdad. In the remaining nine months of his tour, he was at Camp Liberty, a U.S.-controlled base camp in Baghdad. Ringeisen quickly adapted to the stressful life in the war zone. But on certain days, he remembered all that he had left behind in Wisconsin.

It would have been nice to be able to have Christmas Day off and just say, “Hey, it's Christmas. We're not going to shoot at you today,” but it's a combat zone. You don't really have that option…

The rest of the story can be found in the book War: Through Their Eyes, which is sold at the University Books & More.

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