HINESVILLE, Ga. — For 10 often anxious, often lonely months, this has been Mr. and Mrs. Brewer's war, and they don't know when it will be over.
By herself, Jennifer Brewer has found and rented a mobile home for her family on the edge of this small Georgia town. She assembled a dining room set and a crib, jump-started her Chevrolet Cavalier and is puzzling over how to fix its leaky brakes.
To feel close to her absent husband, the 20-year-old Army wife wears his old gray T-shirts and shorts to bed. Operation Iraqi Freedom and its run-up have made her a single mother, and alone she has witnessed 13-month-old Austin's first steps, his first tooth, his first birthday and his first attempt at speech.
"His first word was 'Dada,' " Jennifer Brewer remembered, her hazel eyes bright with the irony of it. "I don't know where he got it from."
Outside Fallouja, about 30 miles west of Baghdad, Specialist Scott M. Brewer, who saw his wife and son for the last time in September, shares a room in a low, flat concrete building with a half-dozen other American soldiers. All the windows have been broken and there is a makeshift door. An air conditioner in one window frame groans and stirs the air, providing slight relief from the 120-degree temperatures.
The tall, slender scout with Echo Troop, 9th Cavalry Regiment, attached to the 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized), received the Army Achievement Medal last week, basically recognizing that he has served in the Iraq war, and with distinction. But on a hazy evening, as other soldiers lounged around, smoking cigarettes, his thoughts were on his wife.
What does he miss about her? "Everything," replied the 21-year-old with close-cropped brown hair and a narrow, sunburned face.
For tens of thousands of American families, the war against Saddam Hussein and subsequent occupation of Iraq have become the dominant facts of their lives, a rupture and ordeal people not in the military may have a tough time comprehending.
"Imagine all the uncertainty you have in a marriage in normal times," said Walter Meeks III, director of the museum at Ft. Stewart, Brewer's home post as part of the 3rd Infantry. "Now we multiply that by the fact that the spouse is not only away on deployment but in potential harm's way."
