Brothers renew bond in Iraq
February 26, 2009
Brothers Renew Bond While Serving in Iraq
By Daniel Heimpel
It’s a long flight. The helicopter blades cut the deep night as Aaron Schilleci travels to celebrate the 28th birthday of his younger brother, Dan, on Oct. 6, 2006. The flight passes over the calm, wide valley of the Tigris, the flat expanse of desert, an oil pipeline and villages that soldiers like Aaron never enter.
The lights of Mosul – its 2 million inhabitants under curfew – rise up as the Apache touches down on the expansive airfield once manned by Saddam Hussein’s army. Aaron alights and gets on a phone. He is patched through to Dan.
“Hey what’s going on bro,” Aaron says. “Can you come pick me up?”
Dan, despite having spoken to his brother about the potential visit, is nonetheless surprised. “What? Are you kidding?”
“No, I’m here in Mosul,” Aaron replies.
Dan gets in his truck and drives to the airfield. This is the second of five times the two brothers from Valencia will get see one another during their 15 months in the war zone. For both, that connection becomes an invaluable shield against the horrors of war, as well as the lack of understanding they will find back in America.
Aaron and Dan, now 31 and 30, respectively, are the oldest of four Schilleci children. So close in age, the two brothers were always together as kids.
They shared friends, and after high school both moved to Van Nuys and studied history at UCLA, where they both joined the ROTC. Aaron was commissioned for active duty in the Army in 2001, and Dan moved on to join the Army Reserve in 2004.
Dan says he and his brothers, including younger brother Jacob, weren’t like most Jewish kids. All three played football in high school. All are big and athletic, and they come from a family with a military legacy. Their maternal grandfather, a Jewish immigrant from Russia, flew for the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. Their paternal grandfather fought in the Navy in Vietnam.
Both Dan and Aaron describe their life in Valencia as solidly middle class. Their father worked as an engineer for Lockheed, and their mother was a real estate agent and worked for the family’s clothing import company. The Schilleci kids were far from spoiled. With four kids, Dan says, “there were too many of us to always get what we wanted.”
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