For Army mom, a quick trip home

By Darrell Laurant

Published: July 13, 2008

The News & Advance interviewed the family last year. Click here for a video

April Holt didn’t realize how much she missed the color green.

“When I was flying from Atlanta to Lynchburg,” she said, “I couldn’t believe how bright the green was down below me. I guess I’d gotten used to sand.”

And boredom, and heat, and 13-14 hour workdays, and even the occasional rocket that finds its way into FOB (Forward Operating Base) Kalsu.

“They make a whistling sound when they come in,” she said. “They’re just fired randomly from trucks, and they could come down anywhere. I called my Dad when I first got there and told him I couldn’t sleep because of them.”

Her father, Rudd Holt, a Vietnam veteran, told her she’d become accustomed to it. She did.

Since last October, she has been stationed at FOB Kalsu, roughly 25 miles south of Baghdad, taking it one day at a time. Meanwhile, her four children — Joshua, 8; Nikolas, 7; and 5-year-old twins Zachary and Emma — have been staying with her parents, Rudd and Janet Holt, in Wyndhurst.

“I’ve been very proud of them,” said Janet. “They’ve adjusted really well.”

“I try to call them every weekend,” said April, who is divorced. “I think that helps a lot.”

Ironically, she plans to seek out even more sand this week. The family is spending time at Virginia Beach, courtesy of the prodigal daughter.

“There isn’t much to spend your money on over there,” she said.

The metropolis of Baghdad might as well be on the moon, as far as FOB Kalsu is concerned.

“We’re a blackout FOB,” April said, “which means we cut all the lights out every night. We tried keeping them on one night and got hit 17 times.”

Holt’s job as an Army Sgt. E-5 is to sit at a computer terminal and keep track of all the U.S. equipment in the region.

“We lose a lot of trucks,” she said. “The Iraqis have gotten good at blowing them up.”

She likes what she does, and the people she works with, but her first Iraq tour was made considerably more difficult by a bout of what turned out to be MRSA (a particularly virulent form of staph infection).

“It started out as three sores on my legs,” she said. “I thought they were spider bites, but they kept getting worse, and my roommate suggested I go to the TMC (Troop Medical Center). The doctor there cut one of them open, and told me it was MRSA. It had spread all through my body, and I had it in eight different places.”

Thanks to a regimen of killer antibiotics, the infection was beaten back, but it took four months.

“I wasn’t quarantined or anything,” she said. “I just went on with business as usual.”

The Holts’ neighborhood threw a party for Holt when she arrived — after three days of travel — on July 7.

“Everybody has been supportive,” said Janet Holt, a Bedford County elementary school teacher who said she is feeling better after a battle with cancer.

A story about April and her kids (and Janet’s struggles to balance this new responsibility with chemotherapy treatments) ran in The News & Advance last fall, and a number of local groups adopted the four children and their grandparents, especially around Christmas.

“There are too many to thank individually,” Janet said, “so I’d just like to thank all of them.”

As for April, she’s home until July 25 and due to return stateside next January.

“I can feel the time getting shorter,” she said.

Before her posting at FOB Kalsu, Holt thought she would re-enlist.

“I’ve changed my mind,” she said.

Holt gives Zachary and Nikolas some attention Thursday at her parents’ home in Wyndhurst. The children have been staying with Holt’s parents while she is on a tour in Iraq.

Sgt. April Holt watches her oldest son, Joshua, do push-ups as the rest of her children, Emma (from right), Zachary and Nikolas look on. Since leaving for Iraq, the Forest resident has battled a case of MRSA and constant threats from rocket attacks. She will return to Iraq soon after spending a three-week leave with her family in the Lynchburg area.