From his mountainous outpost, Alec Ganzel can see a road in the
distance where an occasional car passes. The car is a speck on the
horizon with a trail of dust ballooning behind it.
From his mountainous outpost, Alec Ganzel can see a road in the distance where an occasional car passes. The car is a speck on the horizon with a trail of dust ballooning behind it. He is miles from his favorite pizza place, where he used to meet friends every Tuesday, or Hollister Hills, where he’d go dirt-bike riding. Ganzel is stationed in Afghanistan.
When most Americans are focused on Iraq with its significantly higher number of American casualties, one Gilroy family is sending its love to the dry, mountainous country to the west. Recently, eyes turned Afghanistan’s direction when NFL-player-turned-soldier Pat Tillman was killed in an ambush, proving Afghanistan is still a war zone.
“I suppose that’s better odds, but it’s still pretty scary,” said the Marine’s mom, Debbie Ganzel.
Some 2,000 Marines have been sent to Afghanistan in recent weeks, bringing the size of the U.S. led coalition to more than 15,000 soldiers.
Ganzel, 19, is in a remote area about 200 miles north of Kandahar building a base for the Army to take over. His mother isn’t sure where he is – exactly, because he’s not allowed to tell her the name of the town.
Because of his isolation, the family communicates mostly through the mail. Letters from Alec take 10 to 12 days to arrive, while letters from the United States take seven days to reach Afghanistan, she said. Phone calls are few and far between because the phones are turned on only sporadically and each conversation is limited to 20 minutes.
His phone calls are welcomed yet oddly difficult.
“It’s hard when I talk to him on the phone,” she said. “You feel like you’re walking on egg shells. I try to keep it as positive as we can. We talk about what he would like to do when he comes home.”
Most of all he looks forward to relaxing at home and sleeping in, she said. Since he arrived in Afghanistan in early April, the television and e-mail he enjoyed while aboard his ship have been replaced by endless drills. If he does have time off, he is eating or sleeping.
“He wants downtime,” she said. “He just wants to be home, to play with his cat and his dog.”
They also talk about their annual family vacation to Yosemite and a trip to San Diego, to see some of his former Marine Corps sergeants and his sister Laurel, a junior at San Diego State. He has another sister, Jenna, who is a junior at Gilroy High School.
Alec joined the Marines because he wanted to help protect his country, she said. Two months after graduating from GHS in 2002, he entered boot camp.
He is scheduled to return to the United States in September. For his mother, that means more months of becoming teary-eyed just thinking about her son.
“Even a movie sometimes, and it will be nothing related to the military,” she said sets her off. “It’s funny how it affects you.”
