BURLINGTON - Command Sgt. Major Richard Bayliss has brought a kernel of the Midwest to the Middle East.

The top noncommissioned officer in the Iowa Army National Guard's 224th Engineer Battalion has planted a patch of sweet corn inside a fence line at a U.S. Army post in the Sunni Triangle in Iraq.

If the weather cooperates, the soldiers of the 224th should have fresh sweet corn come mid-June.

"The command sergeant major is a corn-raising fool back home," Lt. Col. Todd Jacobus, the 224th commander, wrote in an e-mail message last week.

The 224th, deployed in January, is based in Fairfield, with companies in Burlington, Mount Pleasant and Ottumwa and a detachment in Keokuk.

When his tour of duty ends next spring, Bayliss, 38, will return to the 2,500 acres he farms with his sons near Hedrick, northeast of Ottumwa.

This is the first year Bayliss can remember missing out on planting his sweet corn in Iowa.

"It is hard to be this far away from the farm operation," Bayliss said by e-mail.

Bayliss found a promising quarter-acre in Iraq across from the battalion motor pool and planted hybrid seed corn mailed to him from Iowa.

"I'm curious to see if (the corn) will grow and stay alive in this environment with so much heat, pollinate properly and produce an ear," Bayliss said. "It takes a lot of water and I'm not sure we can supply that amount timely enough to keep it alive."

The 224th could use some sweet news. Two soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb while they were riding in a Humvee in February. Another soldier was killed when he was shot by a sniper last month.

Bayliss says planting the corn helps keep him connected to Iowa despite all the chaos going on around him.

"I think it's neat that I'm planting a corn crop here in Iraq at the same time that my sons are planting the corn crops in Iowa," Bayliss said.