Family shares rushed e-mails from Kuwait

By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer

The tone from Kuwait is frenetic, and the clock is running for 1st Lt. Katherine "Katie" Mobley.

"I was so born to be in the AMEDD (Army Medical Department)," Katie Mobley wrote in a letter to her family in Hawai'i.

Grammar isn't a priority. E-mail contact with home for Mobley, a U.S. Army nurse assigned to the 47th Combat Support Hospital, comes in 10-minute windows once a week from Camp Wolf, and sometimes it takes seven minutes just to make a connection to the Internet.

The 24-year-old intensive-care-unit nurse, a former Mililani and Leilehua high school student, is treating U.S. and British soldiers and Iraqi citizens from the tent compound near Kuwait City.

Her father here in Hawai'i, her husband in Washington state, and many in Mobley's family — all with their own military service — understand better than most the lack of communication, the uncertainty and the wait for the next letter or e-mail home.

All in the family

"I was in Vietnam, and I understand a little bit about what she's going through, going overseas, being so far from home and missing home, but I understand the purpose behind it," said her father, Gary, a retired command sergeant major who spent 26 years in the infantry, and is a JROTC instructor at Punahou School.

Mobley's husband, Keith Hume, is a former Army Black Hawk helicopter pilot. Her sister, Kristine Turner, is an Army captain at Schofield Barracks. Seven great uncles from Kaua'i — all brothers — fought in World War II.

"Having that (military) experience, it wasn't such a big deal to me she was going — we knew there was a possibility and we were prepared for it," said Hume, a civil engineer.

The couple lives about 40 miles south of Seattle, and Mobley usually works on the surgical floor at Madigan Army Medical Center at nearby Fort Lewis.

"When I was in the military, she was still in college (in Seattle), so we were separated during that time," Hume added. "We've been through that separation as part of the military, and we know we could handle that."

Hume said his wife really hadn't talked about what she's doing at the field hospital.

"The information has been really limited that we're receiving," he said. "I didn't even hear from her for the first two to three weeks she was there. She had no way of communicating with me."

Hume gets information from his wife in handwritten letters, too.

"I am on night shift," she wrote recently. "We've been working every day since we got here. I really need a day off to do my laundry."

On March 15, Mobley wrote a letter to her family in Hawai'i.

"We have a (dining facility) that serves hot chow three times a day. The food is pretty good," she said. "They give big portions, and there's food you can grab all you want like fresh fruit, yogurt, H2O, soda, ice cream, etc.

"The females are crammed in a tent. We are temporarily at Camp Wolf, but not for long. We will break off and get our own hospital living tents, our own (recreation), our own (dining facility), etc. I was so born to be in the AMEDD (Army Medical Department)."

Sand, dust a problem

Mobley said British soldiers, Air Force, Marines and Army units from the 101st and 82nd Airborne divisions were at the camp. Physical training was up to the soldiers, she said.

"I have run all but two days I've been here," she said. "I do perimeter runs around Camp Wolf. It's only about 1.5 to 2 miles. I have to run with my gas mask."

Mobley said sand was everywhere. "A lot of people are sick because of the dust in the air, causing their lungs to be congested. The dust is bad. I acquired a (gas) mask from the hospital to sleep with. But some mornings you wake up feeling like you can't breathe."

Hume said his wife told him the Army field hospital does a lot of chemical drills with chemical masks and suits.

"But she said she feels safe because the hospital is a very important aspect of the war ... so there's a lot of security measures," he said.

Susan Mobley, Katie's mom, a kindergarten teacher at Kalihi Waena School, said she's "doing OK, because I know she's in Kuwait City (at Camp Wolf)."

"If she was in Iraq in a hospital following a combat unit, then I'd be much more apprehensive," she said.

Gary Mobley realizes "there's a danger going over there, and she's accepted the possibility of being harmed. I accepted it, too. (But) I'm proud of her. She's there to serve her country."

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-5459.