OTTUMWA — Soldiers’ families have more experience than they want in how to cope with family members being deployed. During Friday’s Fourth annual Diversity Conference at Indian Hills Community College, a group of area residents tried to give the community a look at what happens on the home front.

This is the second deployment for the 833rd Engineer Company. They left for Iraq last summer. Family members said it’s hard to tell just what is happening because they get two different messages. They criticized media coverage for focusing on bombings and attacks as opposed to the humanitarian work their soldiers talk about.

“One thing that is difficult for me is the media. You don’t want to hear what they’re reporting, because usually it’s not the truth. This deployment it’s not as much about the media as it was with the 224th,” said Geri Eklund, the mother of a soldier with the 833rd.

She admitted it’s hard to ignore news reports completely, though. Eklund held up a binder with clippings and news stories about the deployment. “He came back and he said ‘Oh, that’s nice Mom.’ I told him ‘One day you’re going to appreciate it.'"

Phil Swift has seen the view from Iraq and from the United States. He said people who are protesting the war “probably aren’t bad people,” but they lack information about what he and other soldiers see.

“It was hard. We would sit there and watch the news and ask ‘What country are they talking about?’” Swift said.

Part of the challenge is that the situation in Iraq is changing. Swift said the people of Ramadi clearly hated American soldiers when the 224th first arrived. That changed over the course of their deployment. The military’s orders changed as well. The formal rules of engagement scaled back to account for the Iraqi public’s shifting views.

The panel kept coming back to frustration about the American public’s inability to understand what is happening on the ground. Sandie Mason’s son is on his second deployment. She said the soldiers patrol for weapons caches and try to limit the amount of firepower that falls into insurgents’ hands.

Even the patrols are changing. The military shifted from the lightly-armored Hummvees to better-protected vehicles. Brian Chambers said his son wrote that he feels much safer on his second deployment because of improvements in the vehicles.

Safety is a relative term, though, and it showed when soldiers returned. Swift said driving through Des Moines construction areas after his return to Iowa was a nerve-wracking experience. He was used to scanning for good hiding spots for explosives, and construction zones offer far too many to track.

The public has helped, too. Panel members agreed that the welcome the soldiers receive when they return is overwhelmingly positive. It doesn’t make up for the lost time, but the support is always welcome.

“The American people are standing behind the soldiers,” Mason said. “That is what is so very important.”

Matt Milner can be reached at (641) 683-5359 or via e-mail at mwmilner@mchsi.com