Local soldier addresses chamber

Army Specialist Jonathan Hughes had been back from Iraq since September when he spoke at the local chamber of commerce meeting last week.

He spent nine months in the northern part of the country, including in Mosul, the city that was taken from ISIS last summer and was basically leveled in the process as Iraqi forces moved forward.

"Our job was just to advise and assist," Hughes said. "Every movement that they made, we were one step behind them."

A "combat engineer," Hughes said American forces would go through the city on patrol with Iraqi soldiers in the effort to clear out ISIS.

"We would try and clear out all the bombs that they would leave behind," he said. "They would booby trap almost everything as they left it."

Hughes, who grew up in the Grand Coulee Dam area and graduated high school from Almira-Coulee-Hartline, said the area of Iraq he served in looks quite similar to the countryside around Almira. Temperatures climb to 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer and drop to freezing in winter, he said.

"After Mosul fell, all the ISIS guys spread out to all the surrounding villages, and to Syria too," Hughes said. He said aside from Iraqi troops, they also worked around small militias called "popular mobilized forces."

"They were all fighting ISIS, so they all had a common enemy," Hughes explained, "but they still want ... sovereignty from the Iraqi government. ... I'm sure once we leave, they're going to fight for it again to get their own land back."

He said some Iraqis are very happy the U.S. is there. Others are not. "We either got a wave or a finger," he said.

Hughes, who spoke to the Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce at the Melody on Thursday, is now stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, until his first contract is up. He plans to re-enlist and hopes to go to Alaska.