When dad goes off to war: Brittany Fraser's father has been in Iraq for more than a year, and life on the home front hasn't been easy.

• Author: Fraser, Brittany
• Position: VOICES

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The day in August 2006 when my dad said goodbye to leave for Iraq was the hardest day of my life. My father is a captain in the Army, and his deployment to Iraq is 15 months long.

When he left, 15 months sounded like an eternity, and I thought I would never make it. It certainly has been hard, but now, it's almost over.

My father is an ordnance officer, part of a team in Baghdad that is helping to train the Iraqi national police force. Worrying about him is a daily thing. I try to talk about my fears with my morn and my sisters instead of keeping my emotions bottled up inside.

I'm the oldest of three girls and I'm very close to my father, so it's hard not to have him here to talk to, play basketball with, or just hang out.

WEB CAM VISITS

My dad e-mails a lot and we have a web cam at home, so we do get to "see" him. And sometimes we talk on the phone, but nothing is a substitute for having him at home.

My family life changed dramatically when my father left. Not only was he not around, but my best friend and her sister moved in with us because their mother, who's a major in the Army, was being sent to Iraq at about the same time.

Suddenly, I had two more "sisters" in the house. At first, it was difficult to adapt to sharing my home and my morn with two other girls. But now we're all a team, and it's going to be hard to say goodbye when their morn comes home.

We live on the Fort Irwin Army post, so a lot of kids have at least one parent in Iraq or Afghanistan. Having the shared experience of a parent in a war zone has made us all much closer friends.

In September, my dad came home for two weeks of R&R. We had a...