Okay, we all know smoking cigarettes is very bad for your health. But when you are in war, there are a lot of things that are bad for your health. Roadside bombs, snipers, suicide squads, and insane kidnappers quickly spring to mind.

Weighed against those immediate threats, the distant dangers from a pack of Red & Whites seem trifling to some  soldiers. They're much more worried about making it through another day in bleak, war-torn Iraq than about the prospect of a lung disease forty years in the distance.

On a dreary afternoon in Mosul, one of the hotspots for insurgent activity during 2007, Cigarette smoking was directly responsible for saving several American soldiers,

That day began like every other day for the squad. Responsible for securing about a hundred miles of the ragged border between Iraq and Turkey, they alternated stays in four makeshift barracks/HQ. They would work out of one base for a few days and then move on to the next. Their tedious operation ran on for months.

Clean out one area. Move on to the next...then the next...then the next...then back to the first base.

The small group of fighters was led by my son, a Sergeant who had been called up from the National Guard after Nine Eleven, and who has remained on active duty ever since. He transferred out of his Massachusetts unit when he found out they WERE NOT going to Iraq. He volunteered for a Southern calvary unit when he found out they WERE going to Iraq.

After checking his Laptop around 1500 that afternoon, my son decided to have a cigarette.

"Okay guys, everybody outside," he said, "It's time for a cigarette break".

Most everybody was at the door in an instant.

"I don't smoke Sergeant. I'm going to stay inside.", said a young E3.

"That wasn't an offer Private. That was an order. In this unit we all stay together. Outside, now!", commanded my son.

Seconds later as they began to ignite their smokes, a screaming rocket scored a direct hit on their building and blasted it to rubble. The bunks they had been lying in moments before, were reduced to smouldering bits of rag. Their clothes, their personal effects, and everything else inside was destroyed....but they didn't suffer even a scratch!

Months afterward, on Christmas leave, as he told me the events of that day, my son said. "Everybody in the outfit was sure glad that I smoke. They were all jumping around and laughing and slapping me on the back cause I saved their lives but I was p....d off."

"Why were you upset?," I wondered.

"My laptop." He answered. "I left it inside. I had just bought it. I use it for work but it's not covered by the army. Now I'll have to spend a couple thousand dollars to buy another one."

"Maybe not," I told him. "I'll write a story about how smoking saved the lives of American Military and perhaps the cigarette company will purchase the laptop for you."

......So if anybody from Phillip Morris reads this....please send the Laptop to Sgt. Russo, care of me...his father.

Thanks in advance. Billrrrr