September cannot come fast enough for Bermudian Donna Thomas and her family.

That is when she expects her son, Sgt. Daniel (Parker) Thomas will return to the United States from his duties in Iraq with the United States Army.

In the meantime, however, she and her family face another agonising eight months worrying about her 23-year-old son's safety.

As any mother would, Mrs Thomas worries constantly and follows the news continuously as the American troops continue their bid to restore order in Iraq following last year's war and the recent capture of president Saddam Hussein. Sgt Thomas has been in Iraq since last August.

“He's grown up and married but he's still my child,” Mrs Thomas said this week, not concerned about sounding like an overprotective mother.

“When we left the States, Daniel was two and he stayed here until he was 14. He went back to the States and graduated from Morris High School in the Bronx and went straight into the Army… that was his choice.

“He wanted to go into the Air Force, we made an appointment and went up there and the guy never showed up. All the Military offices were in the same building, the guy from the Army came and spoke to him so he decided to go into the Army in the end.

“When he comes back from Iraq he's thinking about transferring to the Air Force because he said this way he won't be away from his family as much. He said he loves the Army but now that he has a family he wants to be with his family more.”

Sgt. Thomas (23) married Cherish last June and they now have a daughter, Syanne, who was born while dad was in Iraq serving his country.

“I also talk to his wife and she's counting the months that he should be back which should be September,” said Mrs Thomas.

“He misses watching his child grow and she could be walking by the time he gets back. Right now she's staying with her mom because he doesn't want her staying by herself with a brand new baby.

She says while she enjoys being with her mom she wants to be on her own. She said she will stay with her mom for three months and then she'll go back to Kansas. Her mom is in Georgia. It is hard, even when I talk to her I can hear it in her voice ‘I wish it was all over soon'.

Sgt. Thomas was able to return to the States to be with his family in early December and received the best possible Christmas gift...the birth of his daughter.

“She didn't tell him she had the baby, he went home and saw the baby and was so surprised,” said Mrs Thomas whose granddaughter was born in November.

“He didn't want to go back once he saw his daughter. It was a surprise for him because she wasn't supposed to have the baby until the end of December.

“They had Christmas two weeks before Christmas. They allowed him to come home from December 5 to 20.”

Sgt. Thomas first joined the army at the age of 17 and has served his first six-year term, re-enlisting just last year for another four years. He has dreams of becoming a psychologist but the next four years will determine whether he pursues that or make the Army a lifetime career.

“He did say to me if he came out of the Army right now he wouldn't know what kind of work he would do because he feels all the Army has done is train him to kill,” said his mother.

After completing boot camp, Daniel first served in North Korea for a year, before going to Kuwait for six months and California for a month and then went to Louisiana to train for his promotion to Sergeant.

He wasn't amongst the first troops sent over to Iraq as he was shipped there last August, two months after getting married. He is presently stationed just outside Baghdad, the capital, and has been living in a building since he has been there. This week he was preparing for a switch to a new location... and living in a tent.

In a report earlier this week it was stated that approximately 105,000 troops would be going to Iraq this winter to replace the 130,000 who have been there since the start of the war. Some 80,000 of them are Army soldiers. And there appears to be no end in sight for solders in Iraq as the US Army's top general is planning for the possibility of tens of thousands of troops remaining in Iraq through 2006.

The time spent in Iraq has been tough on all the members of the US Armed Forces who fear for their lives daily even though the war has ended and Saddam Hussein has been captured.

“I talk to him at least once a week, sometimes he calls me twice a week,” said Sgt. Thomas' mother.

“We also e-mail each other. His last request was that we send movies over to him. He said whenever the guys have free time they gather in each other's rooms and watch movies, but movies are hard to get.

“The last time I talked to him was (last) Monday and he said ‘mommy, I don't know, things are sort of rough on this side'.

“That is the first time I could hear in his voice that he sounded like he was tired of it. Like he said, if he has gone over there during the war he would know who his enemy is, but now he doesn't know who his enemy is. They don't want any of the US people over there.”

Anxious to keep abreast with what is going on in Iraq with the troops, Mrs Thomas watches CNN quite often, hoping she will see him.

“I also listen to BBC and at first I was scared to listen but everybody was saying ‘Donna, you just have to face it, just watch and hope you see your child and know that he is alive',” Mrs Thomas explained.

“Sometimes I'd be sitting right up in the TV and I told him ‘I swear I saw you on the TV one time' and he said ‘you might have, because I've been around the camera'. Even my other son said he thinks he saw him on TV.”

Just about every day US troops lose their lives in ambushes or other attacks, more than were killed during the war which began almost a year ago.

“The nine who went down in the helicopter were all from his base,” said Mrs Thomas.

“Just today I picked up the paper and saw seven soldiers have been killed, three injured, and the first thing I think is ‘Lord, I hope that is not my child'.

“And when I spoke to him last week he said three from his base were killed last week. All I told him was ‘Daniel, be careful'. Whenever he hangs up the phone he says ‘mommy, I love you, I'll try to be safe'.

“I know my children love me but the more he tells me the more I worry because in his voice it is like ‘that might be the last time I talk to you'. That's the feeling I get when he tells me that. I just sit there and think sometimes.”

So what is a family to do in a difficult time like this?

“I pray, everybody who calls me say they pray, and my son (Jason) who goes to church at Brighton Hill (Church of Christ) says he goes up to the altar and prays, asking God to watch over his brother.”

Phone calls to their love ones back home can be expensive for the troops.

“He said it is $5 a minute to call Bermuda so I told him to call collect but when he tries to call collect he can't do it,” said his mother.

“We make it (conversation) short and talk about good things. A lot of his money goes into phone calls.

“He said he's not buying clothes or food and just puts his money into phone calls between his mother and his wife. I think it is a hard life, I just wish it (Iraq duty) will hurry up and end.”

Daniel and Jason were born in the United States in New Rochelle, New York when Mrs Thomas was married to an American and living there. An older son, Divon, who was born in Bermuda, died three years ago while Daniel was stationed in California.

“He died on April 17, three years this year, and he (Daniel) took that quite hard,” Mrs Thomas recalled.

“He was in training in California when his brother got real sick and the Army let him out for two weeks to go and see him. He and his brother who is here (Jason) are very close.”

Daniel spent much of his adolescent years in Bermuda and has many friends here.

“He was an A student who started at Powell's Nursery on Friswell's Hill and Mrs. Powell said ‘that child has a good academic mind, put him into a good school' and I chose Saltus.”

Because of her work schedule it was more convenient to switch him to Bermuda Institute where he remained on the Honour Roll.

Then, because of where the family was living, Daniel was moved to Dellwood for his last two years of elementary school, graduating there as top boy. At Berkeley he remained on the Honour Roll for the first two years.

“In the third year he started doing a ‘pack' and I sent him down to Florida Air Academy to the summer programme because I said ‘you're not going to stay in Bermuda all summer getting yourself in trouble',” said his mother.

“I used to tell him that some company he had was the wrong type of company and he used to say ‘momma, you can't go around telling other people's children they are the wrong company'. But when he got older he said ‘I wish I had listened to you because what you was saying was true'.”

The Florida Air Academy in Melbourne, Florida was where he got his first taste of military life and it was that experience that influenced him to enlist after high school.

“When he first got there he was it was a military camp with devils in military suits,” she recalled, laughing.

“The second week he said ‘it is getting better now' and by the third week he said ‘it's sort of nice down here now'. The fourth week hurt my heart because he wanted to go full time but I couldn't afford it. It was $12,000 a term.

“For the summer they did school work and he got on the Dean's List and they told me they would take off $500 but I told them I still couldn't afford it. They went as far as $1,000 but I told them I still couldn't afford it. The lady kept calling me and saying ‘your child is so good and he really wants to stay, is there anybody who can help you?' and I said no.”

According to Mrs Thomas, Daniel told her when he got older he was going to go into the Air Force.

Mrs Thomas doesn't know Bob and Margaret DiGiacomo but they have something in common as they also have a son (Sgt. Jason) serving with the armed forces in Iraq.

“I can understand what any parent is going through with their child over there,” she said.

“Some of them look even younger than my son.”

She admits the phone calls from her son keeps her going, but dreads the phone ringing late in the night.

“I tell people not to call me after 10 o'clock at night, because if anybody calls after 10 o'clock the first thing I think is something has happened to my child,” she stressed.

Daniel has not been back to Bermuda in three years, but his friends here still remember him and ask his mother about him.

“He still asks about his friends here and when I see them I say I spoke to Daniel and they ask how he's doing,” she stated.

“Kitman Jacobs, he always asks about him, and when we went to a family reunion we found out that he was our cousin. They were the best of friends. They went to Dellwood and Berkeley together.

“Calvin Thomas is another one he went to school with at Dellwood and Berkeley. Gina Brangman was a good friend of his. There were so many friends, all of them call me momma and when I see them on the street they say ‘moms, how's Daniel?'

Said his mother: “Hopefully when he comes from Iraq he'll be coming to Bermuda. I don't care if I have to pay for him, his wife and child… he's coming home to see his family. I want to see my child.”