By Howard Wilkinson
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Sgt. 1st Class Bobby Elliott of Union Township has spent the past seven months as a platoon leader in the 4th Infantry Division's Task Force Ironhorse.

Pfc. Christopher Flinn, of the 1st Armored Division's Iron Thunder Brigade, cooked a Thanksgiving meal from his mom.

Spc. Adam Ward (left) of Fairfield serves in the 82nd Airborne . He was friends with Spc. Chad Keith, who died two months ago.

At many Thanksgiving tables today, there will be an empty chair.

It will belong to a son, a daughter, a grandchild, a husband, a wife - a loved one in military uniform, serving in Iraq or others places around the world.

Area families with loved ones serving in Iraq will celebrate the traditions of today's holiday feast, complete with the groaning table, the full bellies, the lazy afternoon of football and fellowship.

Overseas, nearly 9,800 Guard and reserve troops in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana are on active duty, many of them in Iraq. Hundreds more regular military personnel from this area are also serving.

For their families back home, the men and women who would have filled those empty chairs will not be far from their minds.

Or their hearts.

Here are a few of their stories:

Pfc.. Christopher Flinn

The mail to soldiers in Iraq was moving quickly earlier this month when Karen Flinn of Glen Este sent a package full of food for a Thanksgiving feast to her 32-year-old son, a soldier in the 1st Armored Division's Iron Thunder Brigade. It's a unit stationed in northern Iraq.

After the package arrived, Flinn prepared a feast for his fellow soldiers and sent his mother this letter:

Dear Mom,

Well, I cooked up the Thanksgiving dinner that you sent to me. I had one hot plate, two pots and access to near boiling water from the water cooler.

I cooked the turkey and chicken in the skillet, frying it in oil, then pouring gravy all over it. I mixed up the shells and cheese with the green beans. The yams heated easily in a pot and the stuffing was a cinch - even got butter from one of the cooks.

I mixed the potatoes up in the coffee can that you sent the bread in and the corn heated up nicely in the can on the hot plate. Nobody had ever seen bread in a can before. Everything went really well, considering my resources. I cooked it all up in an hour.

The meal fed everyone in the platoon (15)!! Everyone told me to thank you for it.

One guy got a Christmas tree in the mail so now they have already set it up and put up some Christmas decorations!

I love you, Mom. And everyone here really appreciates your efforts.

Love, Chris.

Petty Officer Bruce Hawk

After six months at sea, circling the Arabian Sea, the 20-year-old Loveland sailor will no doubt be thinking about the Thanksgivings he had come to know and love back home.

Yes, there will be a holiday feast today on board the USS Peleliu. It is an amphibious assault ship, second in size only to an aircraft carrier, that carries Harrier jets and has shuttled thousands of Marines in and out of Kuwait since the war began.

But it is not home.

WAR STORIES

Do you have a loved one overseas serving in the military? Are you a soldier or sailor from Greater Cincinnati reading your hometown newspaper on the Internet? If so, we want to hear from you. Throughout the holiday season, Enquirer reporter Howard Wilkinson will occasionally tell the stories of local men and women serving in the military and the families who think of them back home. Send your stories and digital photos to us at hwilkinson@enquirer.com. Local families should include their telephone number. Wilkinson also can be reached at (513) 768-8388.

Back home, his parents, Kris and Angie Hawk, go each month to the military support group in Blue Ash, where parents of soldiers, sailors and Marines meet each month to share stories and assemble care packages for their young people overseas.

Last month, Angie Hawk told of the foot injury her son suffered on the Peleliu's flight deck. Her fellow military parents were relieved to hear that he is OK and back on his regular duty as an Aviation Bosun Handler, working the hangar bays and preparing for the time when he might have to rescue a pilot who crashes on the flight deck.

Petty Officer Hawk, a 2001 graduate of Loveland High School, joined the Navy one week after the World Trade Center fell. Since then, he has found himself smack in the middle of the war on terrorism.

While his parents hear from him regularly - communication with sailors on board ship is much more frequent than communication with soldiers in the field in Iraq - they know that this holiday season will come and go before their son sets foot on land again.

Sgt. 1t Class Bobby Elliott

The 39-year-old soldier from Clermont County's Union Township might have ended his long military career earlier this year, but his discharge was deferred, along with those of thousands of other veteran soldiers, sailors and Marines.

Instead, he has spent the past seven months as a platoon leader in the 4th Infantry Division's Task Force Ironhorse, a unit given the often-dangerous task of combing northern Iraq in search of the leadership of Saddam Hussein's regime.

They are under hostile fire nearly every day. They live in stifling heat, amid sand fleas that sting and bite. And each day, they face Iraqis who, despite their smiling faces, could blow them to pieces.

Elliott talks from time to time with his mother, Ruth Elliott, and his sister, Mia Supe. He wants them to know that the situation in Iraq is not as dire as it might seem to them, watching the nightly TV news and seeing the frightening video of downed helicopters and twisted Humvees.

"He wants people to know the truth,'' said his sister. "He wants people back home to know that for every Iraqi that hates Americans, there are a hundred more who are grateful we are there.''

From time to time, the sergeant sends e-mail files to his family full of photographs showing the daily life of Task Force Ironhorse.

The ones Supe loves the most are the ones of her brother and the other soldiers among Iraqi children - playing, laughing, passing out candy to children whose smiles seem out of place in their grim surroundings.

"I look at those pictures and I nearly cry,'' Supe said. "I know we must be doing something right.''

Spc. Adam T. Ward

The 22-year-old Fairfield soldier is with the 82nd Airborne Division, deep in the heart of Iraq's "Sunni Triangle'' where the danger to American soldiers has been the greatest.

His mother, Debby Ward-Ewen of Fairfield, worries that this holiday season will be especially hard for her son, who joined the Army three years ago after one semester in college.

Being halfway around the world, far from family and friends, is hard enough. But her son, she said, will be thinking about one of his best friends in the 82nd Airborne, Specialist Chad Keith of Batesville, who died in Iraq two months ago.

The two soldiers were close friends, she said. When they were back home on leave before being shipped out to the Middle East, Ward drove Keith from his home in Fairfield to Batesville. He met Keith's mother and was a guest in their home.

Weeks after Keith died, Ward-Ewen called Keith's mother in Batesville. She asked that if the family ever moved, would they get in touch with her son, so that he could keep track of the family.

"That was a hard phone call to make,'' Ward-Ewen said. "But I know Adam wants to stay in touch with them. It's important to him.''

Her son, Ward-Ewen said, has talked about going to Arlington National Cemetery to visit Keith's grave.

"I know he has a great sense of loss,'' Ward's mother said. "I know this will change him. I just want him home.''

E-mail hwilkinson@enquirer.com