Knee Deep in the Hooah!

(“Alex Callahan,” the nickname for a baby boy left in a plastic bag near Forward Operating Base Callahan, sleeps soundly at the Coalition base in northern Baghdad. The baby was thoroughly checked out by medics and given a clean bill of health.(U.S. Army photo)

Soldiers in Northern Baghdad watched suspiciously when a car approached a checkpoint and left a package. What they found in the package was not what they had initially feared, but rather a tiny baby whose presence among the soldiers brought memories of home and hope.

Baby left at doorstep finds new home

(Excerpts below; LINK to article)
by Zach Mott
3rd BCT, 4th ID

Soldiers recently watched as a car pulled up to an entry control point at Forward Operating Base Callahan in northern Baghdad. They continued to watch as a woman stepped out of the car holding a bag. Once the woman dropped the bag near the gate, internal alarms were ringing and a careful search was called for and conducted.

That search yielded a newborn baby wrapped tightly in cloth. Soldiers raced to the bag, retrieved the child and brought him to the aid station to be examined.

“We unwrapped it to make sure he was alive – and he wasn’t sick, he wasn’t dead, he wasn’t injured,” said Staff Sgt. Paul Briscoe, the aid station non-commissioned officer in charge at FOB Callahan. “He was a perfectly healthy baby. I’m guessing three to seven days old. He was in perfect health. There wasn’t a scratch on him.”

This unlikely sight brought images of the Las Vegas native’s two children to mind.

The soldiers have cared for the baby, ensuring that his stay at the FOB was “as comfortable as possible.” The wee-one already has an adoptive family lined up. An Iraqi National working at FOB Callahan and his wife will become the proud parents of this precious package.

The baby is to be adopted by the brother of a local national, who works at the base. The brother, and his wife, have been married five years and have been unable to have a baby of their own. The interpreters at FOB Callahan have taken a collection to donate to the family to help care for the baby.

Despite the thousands of miles that separates the Soldiers from their families in Colorado, one constant remains with this baby and those they left behind.

“He’s sleeping and pooping, just like a regular baby,” Briscoe said.