Elyse Braxton was deployed to Kuwait as an Individual Augmentee, with the United States Navy, in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom from July 2007 to August 2008. She served as a Staff Nurse at the United States Military Hospital Kuwait Expeditionary Medical Facility at Camp Arifjan and at the Troop Medical Center at Camp Buehring.

Ms. Braxton enlisted in the United States Navy Reserve in April 2003, in an Aviation rating, and graduated as the Distinguished Graduate from boot camp in October 2003. It was, in December 2003, during her second volunteer vacation to serve at, the United States Army, Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, in Germany, that she was divinely inspired to become a nurse. She was commissioned as an Ensign in the United States Navy Nurse Corps upon her graduation from Villanova University's College of Nursing in July 2006.

It is the author's wish to share her thoughts, feelings, dreams, observations, and prayers captured from the full circle perspective of a woman deploying for the first time.

I like the order

Of the Japanese haiku

Short and to the point

'Tis ever constant

The rhythm of a haiku

Like a beating heart.

My book of haiku

A journal through poetry

Memories forever