Texas soldier's e-mail to wife from the front inspires a song to remember

With 'Hey, Beautiful,' musician Elana James pays tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

By Wes Eichenwald
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Tuesday, November 11, 2008

"Hey beautiful well we were on blackout again \ I can't wait to get out of this place and return to you where I belong."

It began with an e-mail from Iraq dashed off one Tuesday morning in December 2006 from Staff Sgt. Juan Campos to his wife, Jamie, back home in McAllen in the Rio Grande Valley, a region that has sent so many of its sons and daughters to troubled lands.

"I don't know how much more of this place I can take. I try to be hard and brave for my guys, but I don't know long I can keep that up, you know. It's like every time we go out, any little bump or sound freaks me out. Maybe I'm just stressin is all."

Campos' words were among those published in a New York Times article on March 25, 2008, under the headline "Six of the Fallen, in Words They Sent Home." One of the readers was Elana James, singer and violinist in the Austin band Hot Club of Cowtown; she was immediately struck by Campos' message.

"Here are people (who) have very modern ways of communicating, and yet they're so far away," James says. "I didn't think it was poetic, but I was bowled over by the writing and especially the one Campos letter. It was so beautiful; he said everything in that one brief letter. Also, none of it was about him — it was about his caring for other people."

Stirred by the sentiments, James started thinking there was a song there. She worked out a melody, composed an arrangement, then recorded it with the band. It's a departure from Hot Club's usual Western swing and vintage jazz; James' voice floats breezily above a country-folkish melodic line, her violin underpinning it all. The tempo starts slowly, picks up in the middle, then winds down near the end. The song's mood exists in a zone between whimsical and mournful, ending up at matter-of-fact. It stays with you.

Hot Club is offering "Hey, Beautiful" as a free download on its Web site; James plans to include it on the band's upcoming album, to be released early in 2009, and is working out details for any royalties the song might generate to be given to Campos' family (she's been in touch with them via e-mail).

A military portrait of Juan Campos shows a solidly built, square-jawed, poised young man wearing tinted rectangular spectacles, a camo jacket and brown T-shirt. He looks like the type of guy you'd want watching your back in the field.

Campos, along with his three brothers and two sisters, was raised by a single mother (his father died when Juan was 4). His friends described Juan as quiet, well-mannered and reserved, except when showing off impressive moves on the dance floor. In 2000, when out with some pals at a McAllen club called A.K.'s, he noticed bartender/waitress Jamie Drury; after some hesitant flirtations, they began dating. They married in 2003, and Juan adopted Jamie's young son, Andre. From the start, he impressed Jamie's mother, Birdie Mcvaney. "When I first met him," she says, "I told him right away he was good son-in-law material."

Mcvaney is also impressed with James' song.

"It's beautiful," Mcvaney says. "It's so pretty. Jamie loved it, too."

"I don't feel like it's my song," James says. "It's his song. I'm just helping to get it out there."

"You know, you never think that anything is or can happen to you, at first you feel invincible, but then little by little things start to wear on you ..."

The Army was a big part of Campos' life — he enlisted for a four-year hitch not long after graduating from Nikki Rowe High School in McAllen in 1998, then worked for U.S. Customs and Border Protection before re-enlisting in 2003 . In 2007, Campos, three years in Iraq under his belt, was in the First Battalion, 26th Infantry, Charlie Company, patrolling the volatile Adhamiya neighborhood in north Baghdad. It was a place where soldiers knew that when away from their barracks, they could be killed at any time.

"Well things here always seem to be ...... uhm what's the word ..... interesting I guess you can say. You never know what's gonna happen and that's the worst part."

In April 2007, Campos enjoyed a two-week break back home, visiting various family members and taking Jamie, Andre and Mcvaney on a trip to San Antonio. But as the vacation drew to a close, a sense of foreboding hung over the couple. On May 3, the day he headed back to Iraq, Mcvaney says, "We took him to the airport, and something felt different. It was so different that Jamie broke down, and she was sick to her stomach for days."

Eleven days later, on May 14, 2007, a roadside bomb blew up a Humvee in which Campos was riding. He suffered burns over 80 percent of his body; despite multiple skin grafts at a San Antonio Army hospital, he died two weeks later. He was 27 years old. A few days before he died, Jamie had told him she was one month pregnant with their child, conceived during his last leave. (She later miscarried.)

Unlike past generations of soldiers, who mainly communicated with loved ones on the home front via slow-to-arrive mail, today's troops employ e-mail and blogs to keep in touch in something close to real time.

Mcvaney is the Texas state coordinator of Soldiers' Angels, a nationwide volunteer organization providing informal support to current and former armed services members. When contacted by a Times reporter seeking communications from soldiers who had been killed in action, she forwarded the message to Jamie Drury-Campos, who sent along some of Juan's e-mails.

"Do me a favor, though, when you go to my sisters or moms or wherever you see my family let them know that I love them very much..ok?"

These days Jamie and Andre, now 10, live in North Carolina, where she is attending school. "He was a very devoted husband," Jamie says on the phone, emotion rising in her voice. "Did everything for us, went out of his way to make sure we were well taken care of. He was one of a kind. He (left) some big shoes to fill."

Juan Campos is buried in a military cemetery in McAllen. As is usual in such places, his tombstone is a simple marker inscribed with a cross, his name, rank and dates of birth and death. The final words on the stone, however, are not military issue:

"We'll meet in our dreams"

Amid these eventful days, one might perhaps find a moment to spare a thought for Juan Campos and his friends, people not unlike him, both those who survived and those who live on in memories and dreams. And the occasional page on the Web.

"Well I better get going, I have a lot of stuff to do. But hopefully I'll get to hear from you pretty soon.*muah* and hugs. Tell mijo I'm proud of him too!"