Haiku of Love and War: OIF Perspectives From a Woman's Heart

Elyse Braxton was deployed to Kuwait as an Individual Augmentee with the United States Navy in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom from July 2007 to August 2008. She served as a Staff Nurse at the United States Military Hospital Kuwait Expeditionary Medical Facility at Camp Arifjan and at the Troop Medical Center at Camp Buehring. Ms. Braxton enlisted in the United States Navy Reserve in April 2003 in an Aviation rating and graduated as the Distinguished Graduate from boot camp in October 2003. It was in December 2003 during her second volunteer vacation to serve at the United States Army Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany that she was divinely inspired to become a nurse. She was commissioned as an Ensign in the United States Navy Nurse Corps upon her graduation from Villanova Universitys College of Nursing in July 2006. It is the authors wish to share her thoughts feelings dreams observations and prayers captured from the full circle perspective of a woman deploying for the first time.