Seven months in Iraq, six years back home:
A soldier's war on two fronts
The first time I met Spc. Shane Parham, his face was wrinkled with sadness. Beads of sweat met Iraqi dust and curved down his sunburned skin like the swampy Alcovy River in his native Georgia.
He was in the checkout line at Baghdad's Camp Striker commissary, only two months into his Iraq tour. But already, he'd witnessed war's brutality.
I thought of that first meeting recently as I peered at Parham through a 2-inch thick slab of glass in a prison visitation booth. The cinder-block walls, drab like the Iraqi desert, closed in on him.
Gone was his Army uniform. Instead, he wore tan prison garb, his hands bound in cuffs. His nails were long, his beard scraggly. He was not allowed to trim or shave for fear he might turn sharp instruments against himself, though he had once been chosen to man an M203 grenade launcher.
Tears trickled out of his tired blue eyes, no longer bright and full of promise.
He was a hero, honored by the governor of Georgia. Now the former sheriff's deputy was sharing quarters with thieves, addicts, even murderers.
Spc. Shane Parham was brawny, proud. He had policing and patriotism pulsing through his veins.
Parham holds his daughter Bailey in a photo taken while he was a sheriff's deputy. Later, in Iraq, he would say he hoped his kids would one day know those of his enemies.
Parham saw and did things in Iraq that troubled him. At home, he could not forget.