Pfc. Myron Phernetton

3rd Stryker Brigade

2nd Infantry Division

FOB Warhorse

Baqubah, Iraq

Dear Pfc. Phernetton,

I'm sure you're wondering why in the world you, a 24-year-old soldier from Stillwater, Minn., would be receiving this letter from a guy you've never met in Portland, Maine. So I'll get right to the point.

I just had a wonderful visit with your 80-year-old grandmother, Marilyn Zenca (also known as "Grammy"), down at her home in Old Orchard Beach.

First, let me say right off that she thinks about you and your comrades all the time, which I'm afraid is more than I can say for much of America these days.

Between the escalating conflict in Afghanistan and the war of words over health-care reform back here at home, it seems Iraq has all but vanished from our national attention span. Ask someone on the street how many U.S. troops are still attached to Operation Iraqi Freedom (the answer is still 130,000), and I'll bet you a clean pair of socks that most would say they've long forgotten.

But grandmothers never forget.

And they never stop worrying, do they, Myron?

I first heard about your Grammy a week or so ago, after she walked into her weekly newspaper in Biddeford to ask about getting a photo of you along with a little blurb about your deployment in that week's issue.

By the time she was finished talking to the managing editor (who happens to be my wife), they were both wiping away tears.

So I called Grammy to find out a little more and – she being a grandmother and all – soon found myself in her kitchen with snapshots and news clippings about you spread out all over the counter.

Front and center were two photos: one shows you at age 4, posing in your miniature military fatigues and dog tags; the other shows you 20 years letter, standing ramrod straight in your real-life Army dress greens.

"There's my little love bug," Grammy said, looking at both.

She told me how you were "all heart" as a kid and how, back home, you still "have more friends than Carter has liver pills." She told me how military service runs deep through your lineage and how, even as a small boy, you always dreamed of being a soldier.

She told me how she attended your graduation from basic training down at Fort Benning in Georgia and went looking for you after your unit fell out, and she was about to give up when, standing right in front of her, a strapping young soldier said, "Grammy, I'm right here."

"I didn't recognize him!" she said. "He's such a man!"

She told me how after your training you started "yes ma'am-ing" and "no ma'am-ing" her until she finally raised a hand to stop you and exclaimed, "What's the matter with you? I'm Grammy!" And then you said, "Yes, Grammy."

She also confided how your mother, before you left, told you to "visualize a big round bubble and you're inside of it. And as long as you're inside it, you're going to be protected."

Tell you the truth, Myron, I pity anyone who tries to tell your grandmother that the danger is over in Iraq, that you guys are just mopping up with nary a threat in sight. "They're dreamers," she said, whacking the countertop with her open palm. "They're dreamers!"

Grammy, you see, knows all about the vehicle rollover just over a week ago that claimed the lives of two guys in your unit. And only Tuesday, three soldiers out of Fort Richardson in Alaska were killed when their vehicle got hit by an improvised explosive device in Baji.

"What can I say?" Grammy asked, blinking back the tears. "I feel so helpless."

That's why, after your mom told her you'd gone six days without a shower, Grammy filled that last care package with three packs of baby wipes. As she loaded them into the box, she said, it seemed like only yesterday that "I was using them on his bottom."

Between you and me, Myron, the...