A local Linden resident is soon to be leaving for Iraq to join the U.S. Army in their effort to insure peace in the torn land.

Sgt. Latonya Watters, a former schoolteacher, is currently home from two months of special training, preparing her for the journey to Iraq at Fort Stewart in Georgia. She was there with close to a 1,000 other soldiers all training getting ready to be deployed.

Her husband, Linden Police Officer Dexter Watters, doesn’t understand why America is in Iraq in the first place. He feels America shouldn’t be there because the people there don’t want to help in the effort to repair their land.

But what he does understand is that his wife is going to be gone for 545 days with limited commutations. Since they have been married, this will be the longest Watters has gone without seeing his wife.

Sgt. Watters is scheduled to take the 26-hour plane flight from Fort Stewart to Iraq on January 15, 2004.

Sgt. Watters has served in the Alabama Army National Guard for 16 years now. She is in the 850th Transportation division, which are the supply trucks. Her job is to drive the supply trucks with supplies like food, water, ammo, and clothing to the soldiers on the front lines of the war effort.

Officer Watters doesn’t like the idea of her driving the supply trucks cause he knows during wars the supply trucks are the first things to get ambushed.

Officer Watters knows his wife will be serving her country, but he knows that it will be hard to watch the television and hearing about soldiers dieing and wondering, and waiting for that phone call. He knows that through his friends and church he will be able to make it through this tough time.