By Mary Owen
“It’s good to touch the green, green grass of home.”
No one knows that more than Brook Turner, a Stayton soldier who literally lived out the Claude “Curly” Putman Jr. song that singer Bobby Bare and others made popular in the mid-’60s.
“After being in Iraq for about three months and seeing how bare, dry and dirty everything was, I really missed the green, green grass – and Oregon as a whole – and thought about it every day,” said Turner, now a chief warrant officer three with the U.S. Army. “I love to play golf and would find myself just daydreaming about being on the course or in my back yard with green grass. So I had an idea. Why not try and grow some? Nothing big, just a small patch that would bring a little color to our living area.”
Five years have passed since Turner planted that small plot of grass in Iraq, but the feat still makes its rounds in cyberspace. He remains surprised and humbled by the attention.
“I never intended it to turn out the way it did,” he said.
Turner and his wife, Kimberly, both Stayton High School graduates, married June 5, 1993, and five days later he enlisted in the Army.
Turner was stationed in Hawaii in 2002, where the couple lives today with their four children, Jorden, 17, Samantha, 14, Courtney, 12 and Ja’Lynn, 9. Turner’s parents, Pearl and Jerry Turner, Kimberly’s mom, Lois Kane (dad Harry recently passed away), and other family members still live in Stayton.
In early 2004, Turner was deployed out of Schofield Barracks to Iraq with his unit, the 1st Battalion, 25th Aviation. When he told his friends he was going to plant grass, most just laughed.
“They didn’t think much of it,” Turner said. “So I told Kimmie to mail me some grass seed and fertilizer. I didn’t know if it would work, but it was worth a try.”
Turner dug up a small area of dirt outside his sleep trailer, lined it with bricks and planted his seed. He watered the approximately 3-by-7-foot plot several times a day using a plastic jug that he filled from the nearby shower trailer. Then he hit a snag – ants.
“The grass seed somehow brought out an army of ants, and they formed a very long string convoy one by one carrying off my grass seed to who knows where,” Turner said. “Obviously that wasn’t working, but that didn’t stop my desire to have a patch of grass.”
Undaunted, he bought seven small patches of sod – hardy, natural turfgrass – from a local Iraqi vendor and replanted the area the ants destroyed.
“It took root, but didn’t spread at all because of the bricks,” Turner said. “I kept the grass the rest of the time we were there – about six months. It did turn brown quickly once the weather turned cold in the winter, but it was just a nice area to sit around and enjoy with my friends. More of a conversation piece than anything else.”
But when his friend, SSG Mark Grimshaw, snapped that now-famous photo of Turner trimming his plot with scissors, conversation spread way beyond those few friends.
“I sent the pictures to Kimmie, who naturally shared them with our family,” Turner said. “Her sister sent them to quite a few people, so I was told. Within a month or two from us taking them, I had guys telling me that their wife or grandma or someone had sent them a picture of me.”
When the photo hit the Internet, Turner was identified on various Web sites as an Australian, a Canadian and an American. Locations of where the photo was taken also varied. People even questioned the photo’s validity when a problem with the camera’s batteries caused the date/time stamp to reset to an earlier date than when it was actually taken.
But Turner’s story spread and other small plots of grass soon sprouted at other U.S. military campsites in the Middle East.
“All I wanted was some color to remind me and guys around me that even in a dusty, sandy, colorless area, that grass was just as green there as it was at home,” Turner said of his little piece of home.
“If that patch of grass brought a smile to someone’s face while we were all so far from home, it was worth it.”
Turner returned to Iraq for 15 months in 2008-09 and will be sent there again next year.
“Although I did not grow grass again, we did make a small golf driving range within our motor pool,” he said of his last deployment.
“There were so many people who helped support our idea. Many places sent us driving range mats, balls and clubs. There were lots of nights with the motor pool lights on that a bunch of soldiers would be out rocketing golf balls at different targets in the motor pool.”
Whether a small patch of grass or a makeshift driving range, Turner’s projects brought much joy to himself and those he worked with. To him, that’s all that really mattered.
“At the end of the day, it is all about the great men and women I have the opportunity to serve with,” said Turner, who will be eligible to retire in three years after 20 years of service.
