By Jeb Phillips
The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS, Ohio — It should be all joy, coming home after spending most of the past two years in Iraq. And it was for a while yesterday at the baggage claim.
Blythe Bowen, 2, yelled “Da-da!” and ran as hard as she could to her father. Bailey Bowen, 3, locked her hands around his neck until he pried them loose five minutes later.
Martin Bowen, 34, wore a T-shirt that read “Mosul, Iraq Fire Department,” and his smile took up his whole face. He’d been on five planes in three days, Baghdad to Columbus, and here were his girls: Blythe, Bailey and his wife, Sarah.
“This is awesome,” he said.
But today, he has to start looking for a job.
“You do a good thing and serve your country,” his wife said. “Then you come home and hope the money doesn’t run out.”
Bowen, of Canal Winchester, had wanted to be a firefighter for most of his life, but this and that got in the way. He worked for a flooring company. The Sept. 11, 2001, attack and the heroism of the New York City Fire Department, though, pushed him to look again.
He took the Columbus civil-service exam, passed, and was put on a waiting list. In time, he could have been hired, and the city would have put him through the Fire Training Academy. He didn’t want to wait, though. He paid to put himself through the academy, then a basic emergency-medical-technician course. Most other area fire departments won’t hire you unless you’re already trained.
“There are a lot of people competing for very few jobs,” said Jim Davis, vice president of the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 67, the Columbus union.
Bowen saw an online advertisement for civilian firefighters to serve in Iraq, working for the contractor Wackenhut Services Inc. Air Force-run bases still rely on military fire protection, but other branches of the service look to private companies.
He applied, hoping he could get a local position first. But Wackenhut called, with good benefits, and good money ($80,000 tax-free per year) and a way to show his patriotism without joining the military. So he went.
He worked at two bases in Mosul: Camp Diamondback and Camp Marez. They took mortars from insurgents, he said, but much of the work was what Ohio departments do: fighting electrical fires, inspecting buildings, running fire-safety courses.
Most of the medic-type work was left to others, though he was involved when some large explosions meant Iraqis were brought inside the camps for treatment.
He worked a one-year contract there, took a three-month leave, and returned for another year. While he was gone, his emergency-medical-technician certification lapsed. He needs it to apply for area department jobs, so he signed up for a course at Eastland Career Center while he was in Iraq. He’s three classes behind already.
He said he’ll go back to flooring if he must, even though he’s been a firefighter in a war zone.
That was on his mind yesterday, but Blythe and Bailey kept wanting their father to flip them upside down at the baggage claim. They screamed, and he laughed.
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