Book description
Cindy in Iraq
is Cynthia Morgan's hair-raising yet jubilant chronicle of her perilous
year in war-torn Iraq as a truck driver -- the most dangerous civilian
job in the war zone.
In the summer of 2003, a friend in the National Guard stationed in
Iraq wrote to Morgan about KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary that was
hiring drivers. Morgan was from a family with a long military history;
her oldest son was in the National Guard at the time. Wanting to do
her part for her country and struggling financially after leaving her
abusive third husband, Cindy decided she was "tired of surviving
her life and not living it."
She left everything and everyone behind and set out for Kuwait and
Iraq to be a truck driver for KBR. She felt Iraq would give her the
opportunity she needed to make some changes in her life. Her three
sons, then ages 18, 16, and 15, along with the rest of her family,
supported her decision, but made her promise that she would always
tell them the truth about what she was going through as a driver in
Iraq. Drawn in part from the emails she posted home and the journals
she kept, Cindy in Iraq re-creates in vivid detail how Morgan
overcame the stigma of being one of the rare female truck drivers and
quickly rose through the ranks to become a convoy commander. She led
her fellow Reefer Cowboys -- "reefer" is short for
"refrigerated truck" -- in convoys that delivered necessary
goods to soldiers stationed in such notorious hot spots as Baghdad
Airport, Camp Anaconda -- a place as dangerous as its name -- and
Fallujah. A moving target for insurgents and with virtually no
training, and unarmed as well, she faced being ambushed and shot at,
all while learning how to navigate Iraq's difficult terrain. As the
insurgency heated up, contractors were in more and more peril,
increasingly kidnapped and executed. By the time Cindy's year in Iraq
was up, she had shrapnel in her arm. She also discovered that there
are times when the enemy can be someone you know.
Cindy's journey to Iraq was also a voyage of self-discovery: "I
knew that I would find out who I am and what I am made of here....
Honor, integrity, pride, and humanity can all be discovered. I know
that I still am a very passionate person when it comes to the things I
believe in.... I am still me, but more.... So my story of being over
here is not just one of a female truck driver driving in a war zone in
Iraq. It is a story of me finding the world, and of me finding
me."
Cindy's is an eyewitness account of war that few journalists can
offer: The grateful Iraqi children, the hardworking U. S. soldiers,
and the personal stories of soldiers and civilians alike thrown
together in a war unlike any other the United States has ever fought.
Cynthia I. Morgan drove a big rig across the U. S.
for twelve years before venturing on a one-year contract in 2003 with
KBR in Iraq, where she became a civilian convoy commander in charge of
up to thirty trucks delivering supplies to American bases throughout
the war-torn country. After seven months back in the U. S., she
returned to Kuwait and Iraq to keep driving. She lives, usually, in
Tennessee.
