ROSHARON, Texas — When the regulars at Johnson's Market Bar and Grill heard that their buddy Allan Smith had been killed in Iraq, they paid tribute by throwing darts and drinking beer, two of Smith's favorite pastimes.
"Allan would've wanted it that way," said Pat Johnson, the bar owner, who was pleased when the funeral featured a video of Smith wrestling a circus bear -- and pinning him.
In another Houston suburb, Dona Davis had received an e-mail from her husband, Leslie, just hours before she was told he had died in the same suicide bombing that killed Smith on Dec. 21. Then she began planning what she called a "patriotism funeral."
"My husband loved his country," Davis said. "One of the last things he told me was: 'We're doing good work over here.' "
Leslie Wayne Davis and Allan Keith Smith weren't soldiers. They were civilian contractors, part of an army of mechanics and carpenters and electricians supporting the U.S. military mission in Iraq. Employees of Halliburton Co., they died along with two of their colleagues and 14 soldiers at a military mess hall in Mosul.
America has never fought a war like this one -- where the enemy is nowhere and everywhere, where civilians do the jobs once performed by soldiers, and where middle-aged grandfathers die alongside 19-year-old infantrymen. This is the country's first outsourced war, where civilians provide the twin military backbones of logistics and supply.
It is a war without a front, where civilians share the risks and burdens of combat. People are killed in the most prosaic of circumstances -- in their sleep, driving to work, eating lunch.
Unlike soldiers and Marines killed in action, contractors killed in Iraq tend to die anonymously, mentioned only in passing. A local newspaper ran a brief story about Davis and Smith, providing basic biographical details.
But their deaths are no less tragic, and the same ripples of grief and pain that flow over military families wash over civilian families.
Unlike the families of service members, the families of contractors have not had years to steel themselves for the possibility of death in combat. Their loved ones don't carry rifles or fire heavy machine guns. They are civilians going about their jobs, and each sudden, violent death is shocking, no matter how many contractors are killed in the chaos of Iraq.
