PINEVILLE, W.Va. - It's been a hit-or-miss year for gardens. Spring was cool and wet. Heavy rain lasting for days came in late June and early July, but at the house where Charlie Keaton's been living, the tomatoes and beans are coming off the vines. Perfect green and red pears and apples hang heavy from the trees in the backyard, overlooking a slow-moving river. It looks like a good harvest, if they can just keep the deer away.
But if the 35-year-old Keaton has his way, he'll miss the harvest. He'll miss most of football season, deer season and the holidays. He might not be home to take his two boys fishing next summer or see them open their Christmas presents next year. The Wyoming County native will be trading his home in the green hills for sun-scorched rocks and a war-torn dessert.
Charlie Keaton is going back to Iraq. The Iraq war veteran is part of a group that calls itself Veterans Against ISIS. In a couple of weeks, he plans to be living among resistance forces fighting for survival against militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
"We're going over there to offer humanitarian aid, security aid, training - anything we can do to help these guys in their fight against ISIS," Keaton said.
He is one of about 20 Iraq veterans attached to a group formed by Florida native Sean Rowe.
"Almost every one of us is former infantry or communications," Keaton said, "but I'm the only team medic."
Keaton comes from a military family. His grandfather served in World War II. His father served in Vietnam. He joined the U.S. Army in 2001, before 9/11.
An Army Ranger, Keaton said he was deployed as a medic in Iraq from 2003 to 2006. "But I did come back a little," he said.
Keaton said he was part of a multinational Iraqi survey group, made up of a few Americans, a couple of British and Australian soldiers and a few members of the Polish and Spanish armies.
"We looked for high-value targets, members of Saddam [Hussein]'s former regime, Baathist party members and high-ranking officials," he said.
They looked for "weapons of mass destruction." They sifted through the remains of an old nuclear reactor the Israelis bombed in the 1980s, looked for old weapons caches in Baqubah, and provided security for a civilian team as it searched a truck full of scrap metal that tested positive for radioactive material.
"The radiation came from an old X-ray machine that had been looted from a hospital," he said.
Keaton was wounded on Christmas Eve 2004 when his convoy was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Baghdad.
"I got a little bit of shrapnel in my back," he said.
He sighed and then said, "It sounds worse than it is. Two other guys were severely injured. One guy lost his left leg and right arm. Another guy was knocked out. We had to pull him out of the wreck and he had swelling on the brain."
Keaton earned a medal for that - a Joint Service Commendation Medal, for bravery and valor in combat with an allied unit, he said.
In 2006, he left Iraq and the Army, came home to Pineville and tried to move on with his life. He and his wife had two kids.
"I worked in the coal mines a little bit here and there," he said. "I also worked for a private security company for about a year, on and off - it was mostly in the States."
He got divorced and, two years ago, moved in with a childhood friend with a house by the river.
Like a lot of veterans, Keaton wasn't happy with how he was treated by civilians or by the government. He hears a lot of lip service but thinks the proof is in what actually gets done.
"A lot of people don't want to say anything bad about soldiers," he said. "They want to act like they've got respect, but the actual respect isn't there."
Keaton doesn't think most of his countrymen understand men like him or what they've done. He feels unappreciated, discarded by the government, and he isn't a fan of President Obama.
"He ran his election on pulling all the troops out of the Middle East," Keaton said. "He wanted to keep that promise, but I don't think he realized the consequences of pulling those troops out too soon."
He laughed and added, "I guess I'm more of a Bush man," even though President George W. Bush signed the agreement to remove American troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. American and Iraqi officials tried and failed to negotiate a new agreement after Obama took office.
To be sure, the U.S. government doesn't think individuals going over and taking up arms against a brutal army in a foreign country is a good idea.
From the U.S. State Department: "The U.S. government does not support U.S. citizens traveling to Iraq or Syria to fight against ISIL [another acronym for ISIS]. Any private U.S. citizens/civilians who may have traveled to Iraq or Syria to fight against ISIL are neither in support of nor part of U.S. efforts in the region.
"As our Travel Warnings indicate, we have been clear that travel to Iraq and Syria remains very dangerous and that we do not support nor endorse non-essential travel to Iraq or Syria by private U.S. citizens."
Keaton said, "They kind of talk to you like your parents would talk to you."
He said the government also has made it very clear that Veterans Against ISIS is not associated with the U.S. military and can't count on any support if the group runs into trouble.
The government, however, isn't stopping the former soldiers from going.
"Every citizen has the right to fight the enemies of the U.S.," Keaton said.
He might have become just another veteran returning quietly to civilian life but, a little over a year ago, he turned on the television and saw a group of ISIS fighters driving through the Iraqi town of Fallujah.
"They were having their big parade," he said, seething, still angry at the memory. "They were flying their ISIS flags and rolling in their vehicles."
The armored vehicles Keaton saw the militants riding in weren't Iraqi military hardware, though.
"They were American up- and under-armored Humvees," he said. "These were the vehicles we'd given to the Iraqi army."
Keaton heard that ISIS hadn't fought for those trucks.
"The Iraqi army had thrown their stuff down and took off running," he said.
Keaton said he'd fought in Fallujah, he'd fought in Ramahdi. He lost friends there, he said, and they'd left those cities secure.
"It was like a kick in the nuts that our country is actually allowing that crap to happen," he said.
The more he watched and heard about what was happening in Iraq, the angrier and more confused he became by what he saw.
ISIS seemed like something out of a nightmare. Its members tortured and murdered civilians, captured and beheaded Christians, foreigners and aid workers. They raped women and young girls. They were relentlessly spreading terror and destruction.
As far as the response, Keaton said, "It's an airstrike here and there, but it's not enough."
He knows people are tired of war. He's tired of war. The war in the Middle East has dragged on for more than a decade, and he believes it's far from over.
"I don't want my two sons, 9 and 7, to end up getting dragged into that," he said. "I don't want them to know the hardships of war like I had to, like the way my father and grandfather had to."
A little over year ago, Keaton found Rowe, who has been interviewed by a wide array of news outlets, including FOX News, USA Today and Esquire magazine.
Rowe helped organize the group whose purpose is to send veterans back to the Middle East to meet up with the groups resisting ISIS.
"We actually split off from the original group," Keaton said. "The other group was like a Facebook group."
They were against ISIS, he said, but the only fighting they were doing was from behind the safety of a computer keyboard.
Keaton followed Rowe to a more active group and said its members spent the past year preparing, getting in shape, raising money and seeking out groups in Iraq who want and need their help.
So far, there are about 20 members in Rowe's group, including Keaton and another West Virginian.
Some of the group is already in Iraq, but it took a lot to get there. Keaton said Veterans Against ISIS has been plagued with problems - it's been robbed or scammed by people its members trusted. Keaton said they'd planned to fight along side the Kurds, but the group that showed interest wanted to split the team up.
"We thought we'd be more effective working together," he said. "All of us have the exact same training and know how to kind of rely on each other, and things like that." Currently, Keaton said they're probably going to join forces with a group called the Assyrian Christians.
Regardless of who hosts them, Keaton said, he and the others are signing up for a life of scarcity, privation and constant danger. They have some gear already, but most of what they need to conduct security operations or engage in combat isn't readily available to civilians in the United States.
The money the group is raising is to cover the costs for travel and buying equipment and weapons.
"We'll be living on bread and rice, and sleeping on mats if we're lucky," he said, "but that's good enough for me."
The amount of money each participant is raising is different. Some, Keaton said, have set goals of $10,000 or $20,000. He said he doesn't need that much and has about $4,000, much of it out of his own pocket. The rest he's taken from small fundraisers, mostly held at area restaurants.
"The organization has no limit set," he said. "We're talking with donors, even foreign ones, to help fund us."
Keaton said he's also completely aware of what ISIS does to its captives. ISIS fighters have tortured and killed opponents, and posted the videos online.
Swallowing hard, Keaton said, slowly, "I was a Ranger. Not to go over just because they might harm us is not an option."
He shrugged and acknowledged that it's easy to sound brave from a distance. He could say things like he wouldn't cooperate with captors, wouldn't read statements in front of a camera or even that he wouldn't let himself be taken in the first place.
"It would be a lot harder if it happened," Keaton said, "but I don't want any negotiations for me. If I get caught, I get caught. I'm confident in my faith."
Leaving is scary, and he knows he's sacrificing a lot - and asking others to sacrifice, as well.
"I'm going to miss everything," he said. "I'll miss my kids most of all, my friends and family."
He laughed and looked at the river. "I'll miss fishing," he said. "I would say hunting season but, where I'm going, I'll be doing a different kind of hunting."
Most of the veterans, Keaton said, plan to spend a year in the region. He plans to stay 18 months.
"After that, I'm going to come home for some R&R - just a month or two - and then I'm going back," he said. "I'm going to stay as long as I can. I want to stay until it's over."
Reach Bill Lynch at lynch@wvgazette.com, 304-348-5195 or follow @LostHwys on Twitter.