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MOLLY MOORHEADArmy Spc. Sean Woods has a lot to squeeze into his short leave: hugs for eight siblings, a block party and those holidays he missed.
DADE CITY - Sean Woods is sworn to secrecy about where in Iraq he has been stationed for the past nine months. But word is out that the 24-year-old Army specialist is home for a couple of weeks.
A neighbor plans to throw a block party for him Saturday, and eight of his nine siblings will be home during his leave.
Then on Jan. 24, it's back to the desert.
Woods doesn't mind. He was deployed from April to early January, and he has a little more than two months left to serve in Iraq before he returns to his post in the United States.
"It doesn't bother me," Woods said. "I'm doing my job, and I love what I'm doing."
Woods, a 1998 graduate of Zephyrhills High School, enlisted in the Army in 2001, just a month before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
While stationed at Fort Sill, Okla., he didn't expect he would be sent into combat.
"I never did," he said. "But with our training, we're always ready for it."
He learned about three months ahead of time that his unit, the 17th Field Artillery Brigade, would be sent to help oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. They left April 4.
After a stop in Kuwait, his unit arrived in Iraq, in an undisclosed location. Woods can't say much about his missions. But life in war has been intense.
"Everyone has been in these nice places," he said of other American soldiers. "We got a real-world mission going on right now."
On Christmas Day, Woods stood for several hours on a checkpoint. He was provided a good dinner, he said, but that was it for the celebrating.
So the Christmas tree still stands in the living room of the Woods home. Pictures of the 10 children cover nearly every inch of wall space.
Sean's mother, Donna, is new to the worries of a soldier's family. Her fifth child is the only one in the armed forces.
"It's a scary thing because you don't hear immediately," about soldiers being injured or killed, she said. "You just have to have a lot of faith."
Sean, who played football in high school and worked as a lifeguard at Saint Leo University, received lots of care packages from his family and people from St. Mary's Episcopal Church. His favorite gift: jerky.
"It's so good," he said. "It never spoils."
He had access to e-mail and a satellite phone, which kept his homesickness to a minimum. He called his girlfriend, Michele, in Oklahoma almost every night and worked on assignments for his online anatomy class through Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Georgia.
Mostly, though, he tried to stay focused on the task before him.
"We're there to do a job. We kind of tune out everything that you hear negative," he said. "You have a different outlook when you're deployed. You really grow up pretty quick."
- Molly Moorhead can be reached at 352 521-5757, ext. 21 or toll-free 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6108, then 21. Her e-mail address is moorhead@sptimes.com