Hendrex, Daniel

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Hendrex, Daniel

PERSONAL:

Married; wife's name Christine; children: Sydney.

ADDRESSES:

CAREER:

U.S. Army, 1990—; Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, present rank, first sergeant; served in Operation Desert Storm in Iraq, Operation Desert Shield in Kuwait, Continue Hope in Somalia, Intrinsic Action in Kuwait, Joint Forge in Bosnia, Joint Guardian in Kosovo/Macedonia, and Iraqi Freedom I and III.

WRITINGS:

(With Wes Smith) A Soldier's Promise: The Heroic True Story of an American Soldier and an Iraqi Boy, Simon Spotlight Entertainment (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Daniel Hendrex is the coauthor of A Soldier's Promise: The Heroic True Story of an American Soldier and an Iraqi Boy, "a compelling ac- count of life on the ground in war-torn Iraq and the friendship that blossomed between Hendrex" and an abused Iraqi teenager-turned-informant named Jamil, observed Sarah Peasley in the Rocky Mountain News. In 2003 Hendrex, a first sergeant with the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, was serving in the Al Anbar Province in northern Iraq when he first encountered Jamil, who approached some American soldiers and asked to be arrested, claiming to have valuable intelligence information. Jamil, nicknamed "Steve-O" by the soldiers, turned in his own father, a former militia leader in Saddam Hussein's army and the organizer of a local insurgent cell, and later helped the U.S. Army on more than twenty missions. "This kid was like finding the Rosetta Stone," Hendrex wrote in A Soldier's Promise. "He seemed to grasp the whole picture." Hendrex continued: "He had a very analytical mind and a very thorough understanding of the insurgency, its hierarchy, and the way it operated."

For reasons of safety, Jamil lived and worked with Hendrex's unit, but his mother was shot and killed in retribution. After Hendrex was shipped back to the United States, he petitioned federal officials to offer political asylum to the teenager, and Jamil now lives in America with a foster family. A Soldier's Promise is "an astonishing tale of two countries and two very different kinds of people joining together against terror and tyranny," noted a contributor in Military Ink.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Hendrex, Daniel, and Wes Smith, A Soldier's Promise: The Heroic True Story of an American Soldier and an Iraqi Boy, Simon Spotlight Entertainment (New York, NY), 2006.