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Saline High School graduate Alex Plouff, pictured at Mill Pond Park in Saline with the family dog, Bandit, is serving as a mortarman with an armored cavalry unit in Iraq.
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Cheryl Plouff wants to make it very clear: her son Alex is not in harm's way.
He's in a war.
The 23-year-old 2003 graduate of Saline High School is an Army corporal serving as a mortarman with the 3/17 Air Cavalry Squadron in Iraq.
He's been there for more than two months. Right now, he is primarily responsible for escorting officers to meet with local leaders and patrolling the perimeter of the forward operations base south of Mosul.
Alex Plouff is doing what he always wanted to do. His mother knows that.
"Al has talked about the military since he was in middle school," she said. "He's the only eighth-grader I know who read Patton."
A wrestler and football player in high school, Plouff was a senior when the United States invaded Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein. Three years after graduating, he enlisted in the Army, with the full knowledge that odds were good he would be called to Iraq.
It was not his mother's first choice of a career for her son.
"He plugged it to us as he would get to see the world," said Cheryl. "I try to be OK with his decision because, No. 1, he has chosen it. We don't always choose what we want our children to do with their life."
It has not been an easy time for Cheryl with her son at war.
A nurse who is usually adept at compartmentalizing her emotions and concerns, Cheryl has found she may now break out in tears at the most unexpected moments.
The holidays, in particular, were horrible, she said. Not because her son wasn't home, but because of where he was — because he was at war.
She started crying at the grocery store when a woman asked her how her Christmas was going.
"She came around the counter and hugged me," Cheryl said. "And then she gave me a card. She was a member of Michigan Military Moms."
Knowing she was not alone helped. And she has found other ways to cope with the anxiety and stress.
"You keep real busy," she said.
Cheryl maintains a long-distance correspondence with the mother of a private in Alex's unit. She works with other mothers of soldiers, visits the Veterans of Foreign Wars post at least once a month, and prepares care packages for her son's troop.
Cheryl has found helpful a book titled "Surviving the War from Your Kitchen Table," distributed by Michigan Military Moms.
Still, sometimes are more difficult than others.
"Driving to work is very hard because you're all alone," she said. "It's also a great praying time and so that's what I do in the car - pray."
She takes comfort in the knowledge that Alex is doing what he wants to do, is where he wants to be - and is well-prepared for what he might face.
"Now he's trained and armed and he is very good with a gun," Cheryl said. "I think he really likes it now because of where he is. I think he likes doing something important."
At the same time, she is critical of the situation in Iraq.
"One of the scariest things for me as a mother is that they're asking my son to be a policeman instead of a soldier," she said. "It's a totally different discipline."
With the war and her son always on her mind, Cheryl said she is disappointed that the war in Iraq seems to have moved to the back pages, and she is frustrated by the sense that not everyone is focused on the war, contrasting the attention it draws with the wide civilian participation during World War II.
"I don't think the public is aware of how many service people there are in their communities," she said. "I think most people want to do things to help, but they don't know what."
A photo of Alex on patrol recently ran in the Fort Hood Sentinel, and Cheryl was able to view it online.
Her response to seeing her son at war was complex.
"At first, it frightened me," she said. "He looked very sinister, but then I noticed he was bulkier than he normally is and I knew he had his vest on."
She liked knowing her son was taking proper safety measures and looking out for himself.
It gave her comfort to know he wasn't being reckless or cavalier - not too much of a "cowboy."
She finds comfort, too, in his confidence and optimism.
"He plans on coming home," she said.
Staff Writer Brian Cox can be reached at 429-7380 or bcox@heritage.com.
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