Editor’s note: PGA TOUR veterans Frank Lickliter II, Corey Pavin, Jerry Kelly, Donnie Hammond and Howard Twitty are spending Thanksgiving week in Iraq paying tribute to the soldiers stationed there as part of the USO’s “Operation Links Handshake Tour.” While he is there, Lickliter will be writing a blog for PGATOUR.com. This is his fifth installment.

SOMEWHERE IN IRAQ -- Today I want to talk about our security. We have four men with us who are responsible for our welfare and safety at all times. Their names are Capt. Garnett, Major Ritter, Capt. Stump and Scott Past. It has been a pleasure to get to know all of them. We, as a group, can’t thank them enough for what they’ve done for us, as well as their regular job safeguarding our country. We were all talking the other night, and Major Ritter brought up the fact that it’s pretty ballsy for non-combatants to be in a combat zone. Then, of course, there were the usual questions about our intelligence. But his point was that he respected what we were doing and appreciated it.

There are concrete bunkers everywhere we go -- the mess halls where we eat with the soldiers, our sleeping quarters, the PX. You’re never more than 50 yards from one. There’s T-Wall, a series of concrete retaining walls, all around the living quarters, too. When we get in the Black Hawk helicopters, we wear Kevlar vests with ceramic plates in the front and the back just like the troops do. We have Kevlar helmets, too. We have always felt incredibly safe. I’d like to also thank the Army aviators who have been entrusted with out welfare as we flew from base to base. We never felt in any danger. They are true professionals.

We had local soldiers assigned to our group at each base. Sgt. Richards and Sgt. Hamblin, a pair of medics, stayed with us while we were in Balad. We had dinner with them on Saturday night, and they stayed up until 2 a.m. talking with Brian Pavlet, another member of our group. I think he had a very quiet morning -- kind of like I did the other day after staying up with the troops until 3 o’clock. But I finally got some sleep last night.

We found out Sunday morning that our flight back to Kuwait was delayed. So we asked if we could go to the hospital, and they cleared it right away. It was an incredible experience and an amazing operation. There are five helio pads for medivac use, and the hospital can handle eight major surgeries at once. If a wounded solider gets to the hospital, he has a 98 percent chance of survival. Some of the best doctors our country has to offer work there. It’s like a modern-day version of M*A*S*H -- they always say without the alcohol, of course.

The actual hospital is set up in tents. We saw the rooms where they handle the triage, as well as the operating rooms. We went into the ICU. Jerry Kelly and I spent about 10 minutes talking to a kid named Sgt. Kim. His face was burned, but we didn’t talk about his injuries. We just talked about where he was from, what unit he was in, how long he’d been in Iraq -- things like that. He really brightened up just talking with us. Plus, he was getting ready to be discharged the next day, and he was really looking forward to that, as you can imagine. We were so impressed with everything we saw. The doctors and nurses are incredible. They’re so dedicated and extremely competent. We are lucky to have people like that tending to the sick and wounded.

Howard Twitty, Frank Lickliter II, Corey Pavin, Donnie Hammond and Jerry Kelly.

One thing you might not know is that the doctors at the hospital also take care of Iraqi soldiers and the local people, too. There is a city of about 30,000 outside the base. One common theme we hear from the soldiers -- and it usually comes in the form of a question -- is that they don’t understand why all the good things they are doing in Iraq aren’t reported to the American people. Like, the 100 kids who came to the base last week and were given books and school supplies. Or how when the Americans first arrived, they helped get the electricity and water up and running in the city outside the base. Things like that happen all the time, but no one writes about it.

After the tour of the hospital, we went back to the tarmac to wait for the C-130 that was supposed to take us back to Kuwait. We were talking about all the things we’d done and everything we’d seen when Scott came on board and told us we were going to escort a fallen soldier back to Kuwait. The bus got totally quiet when he said that, and it stayed that way for a long time. We were there when the honor guard put the flag-draped coffin on the plane, and we were with him the entire way. When we got to Kuwait, we stayed for the ceremony they had. There is nothing I can say that can do justice to the memory of that man. It was a very moving experience for us all, one that we will never forget.