[Vision2020] A Soldier's Song

[Tom Hansen]

>From this week's (week of August 8, 2005) Army Times -

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A soldier's song
Guardsman in Iraq records underground hit

His boots battered, his spirits sinking, Spc. Luke Stricklin struggled to
explain his experiences in Iraq to his family and friends back home who kept
asking him what it was like to fight in Baghdad. But one day, he said, he
looked at the bottom of the boots he'd worn 12 hours a day for 14 months and
he wrote down a song.

"Bottom of my boots sure are getting worn

There's a lot of holes in this faded uniform. 

Hands are black with dirt and so is my face. 

Ain't ever been to hell, but it can't be any worse than this place."

The 22-year-old Arkansas National Guardsman kept on writing, entering lines
on his laptop computer or jotting them down in a green waterproof Army-issue
notebook he was required to carry while on patrols.

He showed them to his buddy, J.R. Shultz. The two worked out the music and
decided to record the song. 

Stricklin grabbed his $25 guitar - which an Iraqi boy found for him at a
Baghdad street market - and the soldiers shut themselves in Shultz's room in
a bombed-out concrete building at their Baghdad camp. They set up the laptop
recording software and hooked up a cheap microphone.

When the song was finished, Stricklin e-mailed it home.

"The song started playing and I literally broke down in tears," said his
mom, Sheila Harrington. "It all came together, the whole scenario of it for
me."

Harrington quickly forwarded the e-mail on to friends and family, and then
to the local Fort Smith, Ark., radio station. It prompted dozens of
requests.

The song became "American by God's Amazing Grace," and by the time Stricklin
came home from Iraq in March, it was on country radio rotations from
Albuquerque, N.M., to Lima, Ohio; and Lexington, Neb., to Jackson, Tenn.

Stricklin started playing local shows in Fort Smith and before long was on
his way to Nashville, Tenn., where he recorded a studio version of the song
and his self-titled debut album, due out in September.

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Take care, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"I think one of the best ways to support education is to make successful
private schools like Logos prosper through tax exemption."

- Donovan Arnold (July 11, 2005)