On her first combat deployment to Iraq, Elissa Lonsdale-Nester served as a Combat Medic and Paratrooper with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, based out of Vicenza, Italy. Her unit deployed at the start of the initial invasion in March 2003. This book chronicles her time in Iraq as a young soldier and medic. Based on her journal, it will give readers an inside, most personal, up-close look into the life she had in the desert from 2003-2004. Readers should be prepared, there may be triggers in this book as she speaks in her own words on casualties, death, destruction, and bombings. Elissa is now retired and living with her family in South Carolina. She teaches CPR and owns her own business.