If a mortar shell had hit a little closer, hit a little harder, John Mark Windle’s last meal on earth would have been served by the U.S. military. And he wouldn’t even have finished it. Windle, a major in the National Guard, was transferring detainees in Tikrit, an Iraqi city northwest of Baghdad that once housed the presidential palace of Saddam Hussein. It was regarded as a thicket of insurgency, the uppermost point of the “Sunni Triangle” occupied in part by armed Sunni Muslim loyalists. After transferring prisoners, Windle and a couple of soldiers crowded inside a massive mess tent to eat lunch. There were maybe 700 people inside. Almost finished with lunch, the Tennessee native heard a distant thud. Another came a couple seconds behind, louder. It was mortar fire. “That’s going out,” Windle told one of the soldiers eating lunch nearby—he thinks. Or maybe he said, “That’s us, isn’t it,” referring to U.S. mortar units. Windle can’t remember exactly what he said. In fact, Windle can’t remember much about anything that happened in the next few moments. He does not remember whether it was the third or fourth round that came down next, came down almost on top of the mess hall, scrambling everyone outside. He does not know whether he was hit with shrapnel or the butt of an M-4. Whatever it was knocked him to the ground, where he remained for a few seconds before staggering to the door. Windle does remember hearing a soldier say, “He’s bleeding.” He remembers because he was surprised to learn the soldier was talking about him. Before he knew it, a full-bird colonel had wrapped his forehead in gauze. At some point somebody took a camera out of Windle’s pocket. Whoever it was took a couple of photos, then stuck the camera back inside. The major was taken to a hospital, where he spent three days. Doctors had to monitor him because one of his eyes remained dilated, indicating he’d suffered a concussion. But Windle saw four other soldiers injured that day, two with stomach wounds. “There were people hurt a lot worse than I was,” he says. The difference was that John Mark Windle didn’t have to be there. He may have been assigned to the 11th Armored Cavalry Division overseas, but at home he belongs to another powerful group: the Tennessee state legislature, where he has served as a representative since 1990. As a fellow legislator noted, he probably could have gotten himself out of harm’s way with a few phone calls. The difference was that John Mark Windle didn’t have to be there. He may have been assigned to the 11th Armored Cavalry Division overseas, but at home he belongs to another powerful group: the Tennessee state legislature, where he has served as a representative since 1990. As a fellow legislator noted, he probably could have gotten himself out of harm’s way with a few phone calls. But he didn’t. That makes Windle a solitary figure among his current fellow lawmakers—and rarer still because the Livingston representative is a Democrat, fighting a war that has become a polarizing partisan issue for the Republican-controlled government. Not unlike many soldiers, Windle has a hard time putting his Iraq experience into words—a testament as much to his stoic Middle Tennessee roots as the general confusion of wartime—especially a war that has divided the country over its aims. On the subject, Windle calls Iraq “a Gordian knot,” and says little more. At the same time, Windle’s story shows the difference between war as an abstract topic on the nightly news and as a matter of grave concern when the neighbor boy is the one shipping off overseas. If Windle’s career in the statehouse demonstrates the adage that all politics is local, his service in the Iraqi conflict—and the concern of his constituents—proves that all wars become local too. The call that sent John Mark Windle to war came so late at night that he had to ask a friend the next day if he’d really received it. Sometime around 3 a.m., the phone rang. When he answered, a sergeant—male or female, Windle isn’t sure—advised the eight-term legislator that he was hereby on alert. Mostly, this meant he wasn’t supposed to travel beyond Middle Tennessee until further notice. The sergeant used the phrase “by presidential order.” Until then, Windle had no reason to think he’d go to war. Since forming in 1977, his unit, the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment—one of five major commands that comprise the Tennessee National Guard—had never been sent into combat. Yet Windle also knew the call was no false alarm. He’d received a similar call in late 2002 when he was summoned to Kosovo as part of NATO’s commitment to oversee the return of refugees. A practicing lawyer, he had been stationed at Camp Bondsteel for six months, advising the base commander on legal issues involving Halliburton and other contractors as well as processing and paying claims filed against the army. Windle is 43, tall, with a long, thin face and an athletic stride. A populist lawmaker, he is in many ways a throwback to an earlier era. He’s one of the few legislators who still embodies the citizen-statesman envisioned by the Tennessee founders—modest, rural, good-natured, accessible. Universally known as John Mark or J.M., he often uses sentences like “It’s all good, brother” or “We’re cool, brother” when responding to friends and constituents. He considers his mother Onita his best friend and has never married, though he plans to some day if he finds the right partner. “Love hurts,” he jokes. After graduating from the University of Tennessee law school, Windle moved into a house down the street from his parents in Livingston, a town of 3,000 in the upper Cumberland Plateau, an area sometimes called “Little Switzerland.” Livingston is perhaps best known as the hometown of Atlantis shuttle pilot Michael McCulley and James T. Davis, believed to be the first American killed in the Vietnam conflict. Windle’s district was also home to Alvin York, the famed World War I conscientious objector torn between the Bible’s anti-murder message and fighting for his country. Eventually he chose to go to war, making history by capturing 130 German soldiers and killing 25 during the battle of Argonne. But when a movie was made outlining York’s heroics—it was released five months before Pearl Harbor—he was reluctant to participate. The man who went down in history as “Sergeant York” did not see war as something to celebrate. The district has a reputation for being both patriotic and fiercely loyal—especially to its officeholders. Before Windle, the district’s legislator was Tommy Burnett. So loyal were Livingston voters to Burnett that they reelected him in 1984, even though he was serving time in Alabama for tax evasion. Windle himself has never faced an opponent since being elected 16 years ago. The district has a reputation for being both patriotic and fiercely loyal—especially to its officeholders. Before Windle, the district’s legislator was Tommy Burnett. So loyal were Livingston voters to Burnett that they reelected him in 1984, even though he was serving time in Alabama for tax evasion. Windle himself has never faced an opponent since being elected 16 years ago. What’s more, the loyalty runs both ways. In the mid-1990s, Windle considered running for governor against Don Sundquist, mainly to oppose Sundquist’s plan to privatize the state’s prisons. The Department of Correction is one of the biggest employers in Windle’s district, comprising Fentress, Overton and Morgan Counties. The constituency there is overwhelmingly poor, white and remote. At the same time, Windle has managed to accommodate the dissenting views of his constituents. In 2001, he proposed adding “In God We Trust” to the state flag because a Methodist youth group from his district asked him to. Windle then postponed debate on the issue—so the head of an atheist group could argue against it. He is also something of a practical joker. Several years ago, fellow lawmaker Lincoln Davis emerged from a campaign stop at a county courthouse to find that Windle and another lawmaker had driven Davis’ large pickup truck out of sight, around a corner. All laughing matters ended with that one late-night call. Once he’d been notified his unit would be activated, Windle began consolidating his legal practice in Livingston. Clients, mostly involving Social Security cases, were either hurried through the agency’s appeals process or shunted to other attorneys. Windle did not tell his parents he would be leaving until that April, when he finally received written confirmation he was being called to active duty “in support of operations in Southwest Asia.” Windle was pretty sure that meant Iraq. He’d seen enough CNN to know that in the spring of 2004, insurgent hostility was rising in the country. He also knew that—in contrast to the Vietnam era—guard units and not regular army troops were sent to police the region. Even then, however, he would have to wait five months to find out where he was bound. He spent the time with the 278th playing war games with tanks and helicopters in the California desert. After that, he spent another month at Camp Shelby, Miss., awaiting marching orders. It wasn’t until he unboarded a cargo plane at Camp Behring, Kuwait, in November 2004, that he realized he would soon be in a combat zone. He remembers being glad to a certain extent—eager to be part of history, and to see firsthand what he’d only seen on television. “Part of it was, ‘What does it feel like?’ ’” Windle recalls. “When I was a kid, I’d wonder what it was like to be in Vietnam or Germany or the Pacific. It was a somber time. Your senses are heightened. I felt very much alive.” With that, however, came another feeling—a sense of before and after, of demarcation and lines drawn in the sand, of being past the point of no return. The Volunteer State has sent hundreds of legislators into war zones, dating all the way back to the Civil War and beyond. Most were soldiers years before they were elected to the legislature, following a soldier-to-statesman career path as obvious in America as it has been in nearly every civilization throughout history. William Davis, a senator representing counties north of Memphis in the 1970s, was aboard a ship sunk by Japanese destroyers at Pearl Harbor. Fitzgerald Atkinson, a 1960s-era lawmaker and Metro’s second vice mayor, received two purple hearts for gunshot wounds he received at Okinawa. John Tanner, an east Tennessee legislator now in Congress, was a National Guard officer for 28 years. But the end of military idealism during Vietnam has made legislators like Maj. Windle extremely rare. Gone are the days when a lawmaker such as congressman Lyndon Johnson raced to active naval duty three days after Pearl Harbor—only to be recalled by FDR, who didn’t want congressional members in the line of fire. Before Windle, the last Tennessee legislator assigned to combat appears to have been John Badgett, a one-term Republican representing Blount County from 1951 to 1953, who flew cargo planes out of Japan during the Korean War. Badgett, however, actually served between sessions, as the Tennessee legislature met only every two years in the early 1950s. Not only was Windle to miss an entire session, he would also be on the ground, taking hostile fire. For the first six months of his yearlong tour, he was stationed at Forward Operating Base Bernstein, a former Iraqi air base not far from the town of Tuz and about 110 miles northeast of Baghdad. Windle was one of five attorneys assigned to the 278th, performing typical Judge Advocate General tasks like advising the base commander of the rules of engagement. For the first six months of his yearlong tour, he was stationed at Forward Operating Base Bernstein, a former Iraqi air base not far from the town of Tuz and about 110 miles northeast of Baghdad. Windle was one of five attorneys assigned to the 278th, performing typical Judge Advocate General tasks like advising the base commander of the rules of engagement. His stay at Bernstein—sparse, desolate and relatively calm compared to the rest of the country—was not unlike a jail term. There wasn’t much to do. Aside from work, Windle spent a lot of time either at the gym or watching foreign television shows piped to the mess hall, like Uzbekistan Bandstand. He also read, although his reading material of choice—Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five—sounds like cold comfort. His constant companion there was Sgt. Jaime Carroll, a 24-year-old paralegal assigned to the 196th Guard unit before volunteering to join the 278th in Iraq. “Being in a war zone is not really all that exciting,” Carroll says. “I stayed on post every day except maybe once or twice a week. Something might happen 25 or 30 days out of the 332 days we spent in Iraq. You’re on edge being away from family and being ready for something to occur. When something does occur, it’s pretty intense.” In the upside-down world of warfare, Carroll explains, dullness is comforting, thrills disheartening. “Boredom is great,” he says, “especially when the exciting things can kill you. A long, boring ride [in a convoy] is a great ride.” Unfortunately, not every ride Windle took was long and boring. One of Windle’s duties at Bernstein was making condolence payments to Iraqi families whose cars, livestock or even family members were destroyed by fighting. It required a long, meandering ride into Tuz, where Windle and Carroll processed claims in a government building. The first day after arriving at Bernstein, Windle had to hop a ride into Tuz. It was one of maybe 140 convoys he would take while in Iraq. Windle was in the lead Humvee of a three-vehicle convoy when the gunner’s 50-millimeter jammed. The Humvee pulled over as the problem was worked out. The other Jeeps signaled and went around. About two miles down the road, those Humvees took small-arms fire—shots that would have been aimed at Windle. It was at the government building in Tuz that the Tennessee native caught his first glimpse of the Iraqi people. A town of about 70,000 residents, Tuz is a mixture of Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen, living in relative peace compared with the rest of the country. Its streets are narrow; a large mosque sits at the city center. What struck Windle, facing the citizenry, was a populace not unlike America. “Iraq was an enigma to me,” Windle says. “The people are intelligent and hard-working. They have values. They love their children. They love their families. They believe in capitalism. There’s a market system. They’re merchants. I met a lot of Christians. It’s certainly not a homogenous country, that’s for sure. There were Orthodox Christians, Shiites, Turkmen, Armenians, Assyrians. It was just like the United States—a melting pot to some degree.” As the claims commissioner, he was authorized to pay Iraqis for their losses once an investigator determined the claim was legitimate. A sheep or goat brought $70; a family member was $2,500. Hundreds, if not thousands, of claims came through Windle’s office, and it wasn’t always easy to validate them. Iraqis sometimes filed bogus charges against the Army, trying to collect even if insurgents killed their sons and daughters. Windle would often pay, in American cash, even if the circumstances couldn’t be 100 percent verified. “If it was even close, I paid the claim,” he says. “I wanted to make sure we maintained good relations with the Iraqi people. I thought it was important on the front end that, if we damaged something, we paid for it. We were out to win hearts and minds. If I made a mistake, I wanted it to be in favor of having good relations.” At FOB Bernstein, Windle shared a room with the regiment’s doctor in a concrete bunker built by an Eastern Bloc country. In the morning, someone in his small party would cook breakfast—probably cornbread and pinto beans flavored with peanut butter, a recipe given to him by a constituent. “It doesn’t sound like it would taste good, but it did,” he says. At FOB Bernstein, Windle shared a room with the regiment’s doctor in a concrete bunker built by an Eastern Bloc country. In the morning, someone in his small party would cook breakfast—probably cornbread and pinto beans flavored with peanut butter, a recipe given to him by a constituent. “It doesn’t sound like it would taste good, but it did,” he says. Then Windle would walk over to headquarters for a briefing, or arrange to hitch a ride with a convoy into Tuz. Maybe 30 yards away from his bunker was the camp stockade, which housed insurgents awaiting prosecution or transfer to the Iraqi criminal system. Through his open window, Windle could smell the prisoners’ latrine. It was part of Windle’s responsibility to process inmates, who arrived at camp at all hours. He was the initial judge of whether the U.S. military had a right to detain those they brought to Bernstein, similar to the way a magistrate determines, on initial inspection, whether police have the right to arrest an accused killer. For these types of claims, Windle says, he erred on the side of the Army. It was during this part of his job that Windle was caught in the mess-tent mortar incident—the only time during the war he was injured. The final part of his job involved helping soldiers with legal problems, at home or abroad. Divorces, debt, car wrecks, family members accused of crimes, parents rolled off TennCare, baby issues—Windle handled them all. Since the Morale, Welfare and Recreation office was located across the street from his bunk—which doubled as his office—soldiers streamed over immediately after checking email at the MWR office whenever they learned their families were in trouble with the law. These calls often came in the middle of the night. About six months after landing at FOB Bernstein, Windle was attached to the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, a California-based unit that, like the 278th, figured it would never be assigned to Iraq since it prepared other regiments for combat. He received orders he had three days to get to Mosul, a city of 2 million that has received little media attention—largely because few reporters want to go there. At the time Windle arrived, aboard a Blackhawk helicopter, Mosul was a hotbed of insurgent activity, a Dodge City of daily bombings and sniper attacks. Windle isn’t sure why he, among other military lawyers, was chosen to work with the 11th Cavalry. Nor was he told what his mission was until he arrived at the base. Known as FOB Courage, the base was a former palace used by Saddam Hussein’s notorious sons, Uday and Qusay. Windle was shown to his living space: a giant metal box lined with sandbags, with a makeshift door and window cut in the side. Some palace. FOB Courage had a number of advantages over FOB Bernstein. Halliburton, for example, provided meals of lobster and steak. But the regular Army had a feel quite different than the family-like atmosphere of the 278th. “The tone was stone-dead serious all the time,” Windle says. Most of what Windle worked on in Mosul is classified, so he can only talk about it in generalities. For the most part, he was part of a plan to overhaul and reinvigorate the Iraqi legal process, an essential element of President Bush’s seven-pronged list of goals to accomplish before America can withdraw from Iraq. Windle helped local Iraqi authorities expedite their court system since there was a backlog of prisoners in their jails. And at least once he stood on a hillside and watched soldiers battling insurgents in the streets below, unable to fire because he couldn’t identify a target. It was during his six-month tour of Mosul that Windle feels he came closest to death. On Father’s Day, 2005, Windle was walking up a hill inside Courage on his way to the mess hall when he felt a blast of wind from his left and an accompanying explosion. He recognized the concussion of a mortar shell. This time, though, the blast didn’t injure him or knock him down. He made it to a concrete bunker already filled with Iraqi soldiers. For the next five minutes, some 25 mortar strikes rained down around the open-ended structure. The close calls aren’t what Windle remembers most about Iraq, though. He fondly recalls the evening walks he took around the perimeter of both Bernstein and Courage—a time to collect his thoughts and see the country for himself, without interpretation. Outside Bernstein, oil fires lit the horizon at night. At Courage, he could see into the windows of a family’s home as they hung their laundry or cooked meals. Even so, no image stayed with him more than simply peering into the pitch-black night sky over Bernstein. “The stars were so vibrant,” Windle recalls, “it was like standing in the heavens.” Back home, a world away from the dull boom of mortars, most of John Mark Windle’s responsibilities fell to a trouble-shooting aide who grew up just outside Windle’s district, in Celina. A former newspaper graphic designer, Patricia Collins began working at the Capitol only after Windle was already called into service and stationed in Mississippi. She quickly learned how localized his politics actually were. First, a school group called her the week she began working at the Capitol about a tour. Collins told them she’d find a guide to walk them through. She quickly determined she’d made a mistake. By Windle’s own estimation, he’s personally escorted more than 12,000 school kids through the state capitol. The school would settle for nothing less. They wanted someone in Windle’s office to conduct the tour, just like John Mark would have done—meaning Collins. “I barely knew where to go myself,” says Collins, a folksy, unpretentious type who calls a visiting reporter “a little storyteller.” To prepare, she began reading and interviewed one of the Capitol guides. On tour day, she knew enough to wing it, and was helped by a convenient photo op with the governor. “I got a little thank-you note from the kids, so I must have done all right,” she says. Other groups received more or less the same attention. “I gave lots of tours,” Collins says. “I got really good at them tours.” “I barely knew where to go myself,” says Collins, a folksy, unpretentious type who calls a visiting reporter “a little storyteller.” To prepare, she began reading and interviewed one of the Capitol guides. On tour day, she knew enough to wing it, and was helped by a convenient photo op with the governor. “I got a little thank-you note from the kids, so I must have done all right,” she says. Other groups received more or less the same attention. “I gave lots of tours,” Collins says. “I got really good at them tours.” Soon, however, a crisis arose that pushed Windle’s office to its limits. Halfway through the representative’s tour of duty, Gov. Phil Bredesen announced plans to cut thousands of TennCare patients off the state’s managed-care program. The news was greeted across the state with dismay. In Windle’s office, it came as a staggering blow. The district he represents—District 41—has the most TennCare patients in the state per capita. Suddenly, the office was inundated with appeals for help. At its peak, Collins estimates the office averaged 30 phone calls, 45 letters and 50 emails per week seeking TennCare relief. “The TennCare people gave out an 800 number, but nobody wants an 800 number,” Collins explains. “They wanted someone to help. All I could do was call or write a letter. Sometimes they got assistance. Sometimes they didn’t.” Other lawmakers helped write what little legislation Windle’s constituents asked for. “It was pretty quiet while he was gone,” says Charlotte Burks, whose Senate district overlaps with Windle’s. Soon after he departed for Iraq, Burks began posting newspaper articles and postcards on her office door in tribute to Windle. She says she tried to author a resolution in the Senate honoring Windle, but he put a lid on the effort from Iraq. “I think he could have used his position to get out of going over there,” Burks says. “That he didn’t speaks volumes.” Maj. John Mark Windle returned stateside in November 2005, less than a year after leaving for Iraq. Though he never had to use his M-4, he estimates he was shot at seven times by small arms and another 20 times from mortars. As is the custom, the Army kept it quiet about what they intended to do with him until a week before he left the country. His parents met him, as they had done in September while he was on leave in Germany, at the airport. It hasn’t been an easy transition for Windle. He doesn’t talk much about his Iraq experience because, as he says, he’s still trying to find the language to do so. A Democrat, Windle isn’t interested in debating the merits of a war begun by a Republican president. Nor is he willing to speculate whether Iraq will implode into civil war, as some analysts have predicted based upon increased violence and factioning among Sunni, Baath and Shiite sects. His perspective on Iraq was clouded even more by the death of his older sister, Mitzi. She died unexpectedly last January when a blood clot formed during eye surgery. Her death made him more ambivalent about trivial matters, he says. He has no more desire to be called a hero than Alvin York did 65 years ago. “I was a leaf blowing in the wind,” Windle says. While in Iraq, Windle received emails from constituents, but he mainly was in contact through letters, which took weeks to reach him from the U.S. They reflect the homespun concerns of his region. They talk about a Fourth of July parade, barking collies and baseball scores. They worry about TennCare. One mentions a 30-pound rabbit; another brings up the castration of a feline named Oscar. Still another cites Psalms 91:11-14. They discuss electric wheelchairs, Honors English and the Tennessee Association of Rescue Squads. There is news about breast cancer, funerals, the weather. Life’s issues. One letter thanked Windle by saying the American public would “rather bitch about stupid stuff when we need to stand together, be strong for one another, love each other, and remember what’s truly important.” Another signed off in an ancient hand: “Don’t bring one of those Iraq girls home. Your folks wouldn’t like it.” Windle says he responded to each one by hand. His constituents also sent him care packages. They sent boxes filled with powdered milk and dried beans. They sent him gloves, toys and pencils; flashlights, spotlights and skillets; pots and pans. They sent him candy he tossed to children from a Humvee, in his mission to win hearts and minds. They offered to send him guns and rifles, and a police group sent a cleaning kit for his 9-millimeter. One letter gave a report on one of John Mark Windle’s younger constituents. His name is Grant. He is 7 years old, the letter says, and “all about the Army Men.” He has a flag in his room. Each night, a friend of his grandmother relates, when the boy says his bedtime prayers, “he prays for the ‘Army Men.’ ” At least one of those prayers, apparently, went answered. One letter gave a report on one of John Mark Windle’s younger constituents. His name is Grant. He is 7 years old, the letter says, and “all about the Army Men.” He has a flag in his room. Each night, a friend of his grandmother relates, when the boy says his bedtime prayers, “he prays for the ‘Army Men.’ ” At least one of those prayers, apparently, went answered.
