BARRINGTON - Filet mignon at 10 a.m. That's what Jillian Camara had for breakfast last Thursday, a day after 20-year-old returned to her Wallis Avenue home after 27 hours in the air and six months in Iraq.

"It tasted good to me," she said. "The food (in Iraq) isn't very good."

Specialist Camara, a United States Army Reserves medic attached to the Civil Affairs Battalion in Ramadi, Iraq, will be home on leave until Thursday, Nov. 20. Then she'll return to Iraq, where she is scheduled to stay for another five and a half months.

Spc. Jillian Camara gets a hug from her dog Flint who was a puppy when she left. PHOTO BY RICHARD W. DIONNE JR.

Spc. Camara graduated from high school just two years ago. But her eyes show more than her years may tell. As a medic who helps care for Iraqi civilians as well as U.S. soldiers, she has seen seven children die at once in an explosion at a black market dynamite shop. She has treated people for gunshot and shrapnel wounds, had rocks thrown at her by 10-year-olds. And she can sleep through the night without interruption, so used is she to the sound of mortar fire and gunshots.

"We can sleep through a mortar attack," she said Friday. "You get numb to a lot of things; you have to."

Spc. Camara, who is staying at her grandparents Mary and Roger Camara's home, always wanted to work in medicine, and upon graduation two years ago worked to become an EMT. She also joined the Rhode Island National Guard — the 443rd Civil Affairs Battalion from Warwick. It was a decision which earlier this year came with a deployment order.

So in May, after stints at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and a short period in Kuwait, she found herself in southern Iraq, attached to a unit designed to help rebuild the country.

While soldiers try to keep the peace, the civil affairs soldier's job is to help the populace get back on its feet. For Spc. Camara, that means that besides offering medical assistance to anyone who needs it, another job is helping to re-build the country's infrastructure. To that end, she has helped build makeshift hospitals, ordered expensive medical equipment for others — and helped install it — and offer whatever other care is needed.

It's fulfilling work, she said, despite the inherent dangers and tragedies that are now commonplace.

But it's not easy. She works six days a week as a medic, and four nights each week goes on patrol through the streets of Ramadi with a small group of soldiers. Driving mostly Humvees, they are heavily armored and, despite her small size, Spc. Camara has become adept at using the large mounted machine guns common on the trucks.

Often, what they see are civilians angry at the United States' occupation. Ramadi, an area of Shiite Muslims, is more loyal to the Hussein regime than were the Sunni Muslims she encountered when first came to Iraq; then, she was stationed in the southern part of the country.

But winning over hearts and minds is one of the civil affairs soldier's jobs, she said; the unit recently received a shipment of thousands of soccer balls, and they are being distributed to children when the unit is out in public.

"They throw rocks at us, we throw soccer balls back at them," she said.

Within the battalion itself, she said, morale fluctuates, but is generally good. Unlike many Americans who learn of the war solely from reports on the evening news and the newspaper, she said there is a lot of good going on. And for herself, she has no qualms about being there.

"At the end of the day, I saved lives. Or I spent $8,000 to deliver this MRI machine. Or I delivered a baby," she said. "I think we're making a difference."

By Ted Hayes

thayes@eastbaynewspapers.com