Soldier in Iraq grateful for stateside help

MAT-SU — While we have been enjoying the warmest start to summer in recent memory, Sgt. First Class Jason Gray could probably do with a little less sunshine.

In Baghdad, he said Friday, it’s been in the mid-90s for quite sometime.

Gray has been in Iraq on this tour since November 2010. He’s an Iowa native who moved to Wasilla in 2002 after falling in love with Alaska during a military posting here.

In a sense, it’s a pretty standard Alaskan story, but Gray said he has more than just mountains and scenery on his list of reasons he loves Alaska.

“I almost died over here back in 2006 because of an IED,” Gray said, referencing the now infamous improvised explosive devices that are the weapon of choice for the enemy in Iraq.

Gray said Alaskans helped put him back together.

“I had to go to a speech therapist. I had to learn how to talk again,” he said. “I couldn’t raise my arm past a certain height.”

His shoulder needed to be reconstructed. He had seizures that kept him from driving. His right eye would shut off periodically.

Alaska’s medical community helped him through it all, even finding him a pair of glasses that could fix that eye problem. And now he’s back in Iraq, able to contribute what he feels is one of his biggest strengths.

“I’ve always felt I’m a natural-born leader,” Gray said.

He works at Camp Liberty in central Baghdad as what’s called a geospatial engineer. He adds information to satellite photos. An analogous civilian application would be mapping salmon runs for the Department of Fish and Game.

It is, of course, very useful for combat teams to have various important things highlighted and labeled. Gray said his work hours vary depending on his assignment. Sometimes it’s an 18-hour day. Sometimes it pretty closely resembles a civilian 9-to-5 job. He said he likes those days.

“It allows us to talk to our loved ones back home,” he said.

For him, those loved ones include his wife and best friend. She’s lived in Wasilla since she was 12, Gray said. He can’t talk about home without mentioning her, as he did when asked if he had any message he wanted passed on to people here.

“I’d like to thank everyone there,” he said, for patching him back up after he was injured. “I love Alaska. Especially my wife.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.