Bisbee mother got to talk to her soldier-son stationed in Iraq

BY BILL HESS
Published/Last Modified on Monday, Aug 18, 2003 - 12:54:47 pm MST

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Herald/Review

BISBEE -- Early Sunday morning, Rosemary Vargas was awoken by her son's voice on her answering machine.

Scrambling to pick up the telephone, Rosemary Vargas got to talk to her soldier-son before he hung up. It was the first time she heard his voice in nearly five months.

To Rosemary Vargas, her son, Spc. Francisco Vargas, sounded tired.

"He said it was very hot and he can always hear gunshots," she said.

Cisco, as he is known to family and friends, is stationed in Mosul, Iraq, with the 52nd Engineer Battalion, out of Fort Carson, Colo.

Saying the telephone connection was bad, Rosemary Vargas said she spent most of the 10 minutes she and her son were talking asking him "if he could hear me."

Prior to Sunday's phone call the only news she had about her son was his photo appearing in two issues of Newsweek magazine-- one in mid-June and the other in early July.

One part of the phone call was not a happy one, when Cisco told her about a soldier friend -- a woman -- who had been wounded and taken to a hospital in Washington, D.C.

"He said she will have to learn to walk all over again," Rosemary Vargas said.

As for her son, she expects to have a good Christmas with him.

"He said he is suppose to be home in December," Rosemary Vargas said.

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