EMMITSBURG, Md. – March 26 was Staff Sergeant Chris Alley’s day off. He wanted to catch some sun by the pool in Baghdad. What he caught instead was shrapnel.

“I heard a whistling and that isn’t a good thing in Iraq!” Alley wrote in a letter to Emmitsburg.net. “I immediately flipped the chair over my body just in time for the impact of a 107mm rocket about 30 meters (35 yards) from my spot. The impact was a bit deafening and I saw the dirt and shrapnel hitting the pool water. It was then quiet so I got up and started running for cover about 40 meters away.”

Before he had gotten too far Alley saw an injured woman bleeding from her face and body.

“I knocked her down shielding her up against a wall and checked her out, and then I went back and got my towel to apply pressure to her wound,” Alley wrote.

He got a lieutenant to fetch an aid bag and he dressed the woman’s wound.

“The Lieutenant and I then heard another shout for a medic and we ran off in the direction of the shout and we found a Peruvian Guard semiconscious,” Alley wrote.

The guard had no obvious wounds, but he was moaning about his neck. Alley and the lieutenant put him in a neck brace.

Alley got through the attack with only a little ringing in his ears. However, he later found a piece of shrapnel in his sock, which he taped to his dog tags. He also received the Combat Action Badge for his actions during the attack.

Alley is now back from Iraq, spending time with his family and enjoying nothing more dangerous than wrestling with his young son, Quinn.

He served in Iraq with his Pennsylvania National Guard Unit from July 2006 to July 2007. His job was to manage 90 different properties in Baghdad’s International Zone. His properties included warehouses, a hospital, 15 embassies and forward operating bases.

“I had to deal with representatives from Poland, Bulgaria, Japan and generals,” Alley said in an interview with The Dispatch. “They were in my office on a daily basis.”

Alley has served in the military for 18 years – 6 on active duty and 12 with the National Guard. In fact, he reenlisted for another six years while he was in Iraq.

While his abilities proved he was well suited for the work in Iraq. Working in Saddam Hussein’s former palace, which was a quarter mile long, took a bit of getting used to for lineman for Comcast Cable.

“It was kind of surreal,” he said.

Having spent a year in Iraq working with the Iraqi people, Alley has formed some opinions on what is happening. He calls it a proxy war. He said the Iranians are supporting the Shias and the Saudis and Jordanians are supporting the Sunnis.”

“It’s not really Sunnis vs. Shias,” Alley said. “It’s the insurgents from outside Iraq trying to instigate attacks. Ninety-eight percent of the Iraqis want to live just like us.”

Al Qaeda knows this and so they target the infrastructure in Iraq to make the lives of the people miserable.

“Americans think of Baghdad and Iraq as such an awful, awful place, but I know soldiers who have served two, three, four tours,” Alley said. “If it was so bad in Iraq, they would have gotten out.”

Alley said he worked with three interpreters who risked their lives every day to come and work with him. They took different routes to and from work every day.

“They did it because they believe in the same things we believe in,” Alley said.

While he respects the efforts of the Iraqi people to rebuild their country, he doesn’t have much good to say about politicians and the media who paint doom-and-gloom scenarios about the situation in the country.

“For every negative thing you hear about, there’s one or two good things going on that you don’t hear,” Alley said.