Specialist Samantha Diver sat on a sandbag on the back of an
open truck, clutching her M-16 rifle as she awaited the end of her two-hour
convoy trip from Balad, Iraq, to her base in Takrit, where she was to be
stationed at a hospital.

Her only comfort during the terrifying journey was the small
Iraqi children on the side of the road, smiling, waving and giving the thumbs-up.

This was her first experience with Iraqi youth, and she knew
from that moment she wanted to be able to speak to these children and the other
Iraqis she met.

Diver, 25, did a one-year tour of Iraq with the U.S. Army
from January 2004 to January 2005.

?You?re [in Iraq] for this war that you don?t necessarily
agree with, you can?t really say anything about that,? Diver said. ?With those
little kids on that first convoy, I started realizing that that?s how I could
communicate with people, was smiling and waving and thumbs-up, and that was
really cool, but that only takes you so far. I really wanted more than that. I
wanted to actually be able to communicate.?

Diver is currently enrolled in second-semester Arabic at the
University of Wisconsin. She started at UW in fall 2005 but didn?t find Arabic
in the course catalogue until two years later to help her understand what she
had gone through in Iraq.

?I guess it?s a need; it?s not really even a desire,? Diver
said. ?I want the cycle of misunderstanding between these different cultures to
stop.?

While in Iraq, Diver worked as a cook and a nutrition care
specialist in a hospital on an Army base that treated both Americans and
Iraqis. Diver said a few of the nurses expressed interest in learning Arabic to
the hospital translator and set up a few classes. She participated until the
hospital became so busy there was no longer time for the classes.

Her current Arabic class meets five days a week to practice
reading, writing and speaking.

?I feel kind of frustrated sometimes; I feel like it?s going
slowly,? Diver said. ?I want to speak it so badly that I want it now. I want it
to be injected in my brain overnight.?
UW student and Army National Guard Staff Sgt. Gerald Eggleston, 32, is also in
second semester Arabic. He spent 10 months in Iraq during his first tour and another
year in Kuwait.

Eggleston said he started trying to learn Arabic before he
even left the U.S., during his training at Fort McCoy, Wis.

?We had these little packets ? it was a different dialect,
but it was still some Arabic,? Eggleston said. ?So I started reading them and
tried to learn the alphabet and some numbers, so I had a little bit better
grasp when I got over there than other guys.?

Eggleston spent about five months training the Iraqi Civil
Defense Corp in Al-Kut, Iraq. He said he and the other U.S. soldiers would give
commands in English, which were then translated into Arabic for the Iraqi
soldiers.

?The pigeon Arabic that I could speak was enough; you?d
learn how to say ?push-up? in Arabic, ?run? and ?faster,?? Eggleston said.

But Eggleston said he still wanted to learn Arabic, since
not enough Americans serving in Iraq know the language. His brigade will be
deployed to Iraq again in 2009.

Eggleston?s Arabic teacher, Sami Alkyam, said Eggleston is
among several very motivated military students he teaches. He said Eggleston
has spoken with him about his time in Iraq and why he?s learning Arabic.

?For him, it?s important to understand how the people that
he?s dealing with are thinking and how they are looking at him as a guy helping
them,? Alkyam said. ?[Military students] say that they?re learning Arabic
because they use it. It?s helped them a lot, communicating with the people,
knowing what they need and building personal relationships with the people.?

Eggleston said he specifically remembers having a problem
communicating with an Iraqi during his first tour in Iraq. The man was trying
to talk with the U.S. soldiers about securing a road, but Eggleston could only
speak a few words back in Arabic.

?I told him I know a little Arabic, please speak slowly, so
he started just rapid firing,? Eggleston said. ?It was frustrating to have a
little Arabic but not enough to know what he was saying. So I want to change
that next time.?

Diver is currently in the Reserves and could be called to
duty anytime until her obligation ends in 2009. She said she has no idea what
the likelihood of being deployed again is, but she hopes it doesn?t happen.

?I do think, regardless of what your beliefs are, if you
agree with the war or not, you?re in this other country,? Diver said. ?I think
you need to understand at least a little bit what?s going on and the people
you?re helping.?