Joe Whitney poses with Iraqi guards.

Joe Whitney’s Iraq looks a little like Hawkeye’s Korea.

It’s always 110 degrees out and everything is the color of sepia. The food can be so bad that some guys took to eating nothing but pudding. An old tomcat named Skeeter lives at the base who’s mean to everyone but Joe and looks like his orange cat back home. There can be nothing to do for hours on end – “controlled boredom,” Joe calls it. And people are dying. Mostly in Baghdad, but one soldier in Joe’s unit was killed on his last tour. Everyone’s a volunteer, but if you go over surprised about what’s going on, you’ve probably been living under a rock, says Joe.

It’s not the life of danger often portrayed on TV, though.

“It’s not all busting in doors,” says Joe.

There’s lots of kids. So many kids that sometimes they’re 10 deep crowding army Jeeps. Want a fun diversion? says Joe. Find a sergeant who hates kids. Throw rock candy at his Jeep and watch the children come out of the cracks.

“They’re like seagulls,” says Joe.

There’s kids who Joe plays soccer with on down times. Give an Iraqi child a basketball pump and you’re pretty great, Joe says. Give her a soccer pump and you’re God.

There’s kids who walk several miles from home and spend 14 hours a day tending goat herds. When some guys in the unit are going somewhere on some mission, Joe sees them ahead of their goats in the desert. The nearest watering hole in this dry, arid country is often a half-day’s walk. Most of the kids don’t have shoes. Throw that kid a couple two-liter bottles of water, says Joe, and you’re taking away an insurgent.

“How you treat people is how they’re going to treat you right back,” says Joe. “If you’re cruel to a village, they’re going to be open to suggestion by insurgents.”

Joe’s unit gave kids candy, water, shoes and school supplies. Joe says they will give them pencils and paper and the kids will stare at the pencils, not knowing what to do with them. That’s when Joe and his fellow soldiers will snap out their magic knives and sharpen the pencils.

The idea is to take away their fear, he says.

The unit that replaced Joe’s lost five people before Joe’s unit completely moved out. Joe’s unit only lost one on their entire deployment.

“You have to think about what you’re doing and talk with people,” says Joe.

Joe got back from 11 months and three weeks in Iraq last November. He was in the Coast Guard for four years about 22 years ago. He re-enlisted in the National Guard about five years ago in 2002, a few months after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

He was working in Redmond at an aerospace company and a friend wanted to join up. When he went to the barracks he decided to talk to the recruiter and see if there was a way he could re-enlist.

“I’m willing to join, I said,” says Joe. “What does it take?”

The recruiter took a look at his military record and they said they’d take him. It was no contest for Joe.

“You had me at hello,” says Joe. “I had the ability to join and I thought I could still make a decent experience out of this.”

Joe’s going back to Iraq – or possibly Afghanistan or the continental U.S., his orders haven’t been cut yet – starting the first of June. He’s almost 49.

He got married on Tuesday to Jo Ann. It was a private, intimate ceremony at Lovejoy’s in Florence. Friends and family were there. It was the second marriage for both.

They honeymooned in Yachats, a place they both love.

They were married on the same day they met four years ago.

The way they met is a classic love story.

“When I came home from my first activation, my best friend Randy took me to a little bar to listen to a famous harmonica player,” says Joe.

His friend Susan was best friends with Jo Ann.

“My friend, a technician who worked with me at Rite Aid in Oregon City, took me out to hear a band playing at a pub,” says Jo Ann.

“They’re sitting there having a beer, and I’m totally smitten,” says Joe.

She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

They made eye contact, and that look was magic.

They talked for two hours about everything as if they were old friends.

But they didn’t keep in touch after that night.

“She’s old school,” says Joe.

She didn’t chase him, and their friends were uncomfortable with the idea of setting up mutual friends. He had to do the whining and prodding.

For a year and a half.

“I’m telling Randy, I’m dying here,” says Joe. “We only met once, but it was forever.”

He was in Iraq on his second real deployment, with the hot, sandy wind and the different shades of brown, kicking soccer balls with children and waiting for the real ball to drop.

Joe was in Kirkuk, a quiet farming community over a hundred miles away from Baghdad. Villages were families. If you wronged the chief of a village, you wronged the whole village. But it was so calm that if you really talked to the people, they would tell you who they were. That wasn’t the case in Baghdad, the real hotspot.

“My friend told me how Joe was trying to get ahold of me and would like to get my email address,” said Jo Ann.

So she emailed him and the rest is history.

Joe emailed her back, and they started a steady stream of letters. They saved each email. They still have copies.

In Iraq the villages around Joe’s base didn’t have reliable electricity. There would be nights when the lights around him would flicker on and off.

Joe saw boys and girls among the children. But there were no girls older than 12 in the desert. They were hidden with their mothers learning to be Iraqi women. He could tell when they started practicing by the color of their hands. If their fingers were flesh-colored, they still messed around with the boys and laughed loudly. If their hands were the color of orange, from a spice used in some ritual, they were quiet and respectful.

Joe saw the Saddam smile all over the place, but now the statues are all full of bullet holes. The people aren’t afraid any more, he says.

Joe and Jo Ann were 11 hours apart. It would be the first thing in the morning for Joe and the last thing at night for Jo Ann when they’d check the computer for messages from each other – or vice versa.

Joe would get up that morning and go online.

“Good morning, sweetheart, have a good day today,” Joe would write. “I have to go to work.”

It was “a world in chaos,” he says.

“My morning was her night.”

They used instant messenger and email, and saw each other’s faces so close on the screen they could practically touch each other thanks to webcams.

“I was absolutely taken with her,” says Joe. “She had some kind of magic. She was the chocolate in my Raisin Bran.”

Kirkuk wasn’t a hot spot, but Joe’s unit had their fair share of surprises. Bombs going off in the distance would sound like a soft wump-wump against the sides of their tents when they were sleeping. Once Joe, a driver for the higher-ups in his unit, four hits were targeted for his vehicle. A fender was dented once.

“I was very, very lucky,” says Joe.

The only soldier his unit lost while he was in Iraq was a friend. Kevin Davis, “a really neat guy,” had something blow up under his truck. It took five hours for it to kill him.

Joe did odd jobs in the unit. He worked on computers. He cut hair and shaved heads of sergeants and soldiers alike. His room had the only computer and the Playstation on the base, and the only coffee maker. Guys would show up at his room at midnight just before they had to go out on an all-night mission. “Make us some coffee Joe?” they’d ask, giving him their cups. Groggily, he’d start up the machine.

He wasn’t the only practical joker, but he would sooner crack a joke than whine about the rubber turkey served in the mess.

Jo Ann has four children and one grandchild from a previous marriage. A 13-year-old son, Keenan, lives with them and attends Siuslaw Middle School. Joe has two children from a previous marriage.

Joe hates answering the question that is always asked when people find out he has been to Iraq – why? The answer gets old and it never seems to be enough for the people who ask. “It’s the right thing to do,” says Joe. But he’ll say it over again and get asked the same question by somebody else.

Memorial Day is coming soon, a day that’s hard for Joe.

“It brings back a lot of emotion,” says Joe.

But Joe doesn’t want to be somebody’s martyr. He just wants to serve his country, he says.

Joe’s reasons are his own. His family and friends know what they are, and that’s what’s important.

Joe comes from a family that is familiar with serving their country. His father fought in Korea. His 24-year-old daughter is in the army. His brother spent seven years in the navy and his grandfather was in the navy for 31 years.

His daughter, in Japan right now and flying home to see Joe before he leaves Oregon, graduated from boot camp on September 2, 2001.

Joe was in the air four days before September 11.

And Joe’s birthday is September 10. The mornings after his birthday have been rough since 2001.

Joe wants to protect his daughter. He doesn’t want her to be in Iraq without her father by her side.

“I would rather myself go over than her,” says Joe. “It’s an odd way of looking at it, but I guess I’d be saving her by going over. I’d love to be able to take care of my daughter.”

Joe’s going because he has life experience that he can share. He’s been there, done that. He spent 22 years doing odd jobs and construction work around the state. He got married, got divorced. He spent those years with a big question mark, just trying to have fun and make the most out of life.

“I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up,” says Joe.

Joe’s going to show those young 21-year-old bucks what’s what.

It’s a good feeling when Joe walks through an airport in his uniform with the rest of the guys. It’s a good feeling when a young child sits atop a parent’s shoulders and points, and the parent says in an awed voice, “There’s an American hero.” That never fails to make him smile.

But Joe’s not going for the awards. Joe doesn’t want to be a hero.

Joe will be the first to say he’s just a regular Joe. He’s going because he has a job to do. And he really does believe it’s the right thing to do.

Joe’s the kid in the school yard who got a big laugh out of taping a “Kick Me” sign to the back of the subsitute teacher. He looks like a Teddy bear, one with a moustache, shaved head and constant crazy smile.

Keenan wears an army T-shirt and looks up to his stepdad. When the kids at school talk about what’s going on over in the Middle East, Keenan can say his stepdad’s been there, he’s in the army. Instant cool factor.

Joe says Keenan often watches him pack for his summer departure. Joe has to pack up his military clothes and his box of toys – computer, camera, candy and water for the children, things to do in the often long empty hours. He sees Joe’s Kevlar, flak jacket and duffel bag on the couch in the living room.

“I have a lot of things to take care of before I leave,” says Joe.

Joe used to work for Coastal Hearth and Home in Florence before preparing for June got to be a lot to handle. He’s not looking forward to the flight. Going home the last time he flew from Kirkuk to Kuwait, Kuwait to Budapest, Budapest to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Ireland, Ireland to Newfoundland and finally Newfoundland to Texas.

Jo Ann says that they went to a deployment briefing for families. They were told not to watch the news too much. Not to get saturated with the bad stuff, because it will make you worry too much.

Joe’s bringing over his technology, and they’ll be able to talk on email and instant messenger again. They’ll be able to use their webcams to see each other’s faces. Joe will take pictures of everything and send them back.

In the meantime, they will see each other every day. They plan to spend as much time with each other as possible.

“It will be hard,” says Jo Ann. “But we take it day by day.”

Before Joe gets his assignment he will stay stateside for training. He says he will make sergeant on this tour.

He will be an engineer, working on construction and rebuilding efforts.

There will be different shades of brown if Joe goes to Iraq, and a lot of the same thing every day. There will be a lot of pudding. There will be rock candy and unsharpened pencils and soccer and dull hot sand. But there will also be red hair in pixels.

Maybe even a snake under a sergeant’s pillow.