Armed Forces

If you're looking for Michael March, he's probably in the basement, slogging on the treadmill. Or he may be doing push-ups in front of the TV. At 38, he wants to be prepared when he begins Army basic training later this week. "I know I'm going to get picked on as the old guy in boot camp," he said. "I don't want to be last." Traditionally the Army has attracted the young, many of them fresh out of high school. They join for the promise of adventure, the chance to be part of something bigger, and a free college education.

The month began with a fatal roadside bombing and ended with word that an American had died of wounds suffered in a firefight. After nearly eight years of warfare in Afghanistan, July proved by far the deadliest month yet for U.S. troops and their foreign allies. Bombs and rocket attacks, ambushes and aviation accidents killed many of the 72 foreign troops, including 43 Americans, according to data at the website icasualties.org. Previously, the highest monthly U.S.

The U.S. and Iraqi infantry soldiers walked in a staggered formation Thursday through northwestern Baghdad's Ghazaliya district, with its chocolate-colored villas and orange trees. With the new year, Iraq was now in charge of its own security, including places like this -- a mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhood that had been the site of raging gun battles during the country's sectarian war, which lasted for most of 2006 and 2007.

Nine Colombian army soldiers were killed in a bloody confrontation with leftist guerrillas early Tuesday along a well-known transit corridor in southwestern Colombia frequented by drug traffickers and insurgents. Analysts believe the attack may be part of a campaign by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to step up its activities before next year's presidential election. President Alvaro Uribe, whose policies have set the FARC back on its heels since he took office in 2002, is expected to seek a third term.

Soon after Barack Obama is sworn in as president, he will face a crucial decision about the future of the war in Afghanistan: what to do with thousands of new U.S. troops that will flow into the country over the course of the year. Within the Pentagon, a vigorous debate has emerged about what the top priority should be for those forces.

The winter assault on the Gaza Strip was officially portrayed in Israel as an attempt to quell rocket fire by militants of Hamas. But some soldiers say they also were lectured about a more ambitious aim: to banish non-Jews from the biblical land of Israel. "This rabbi comes to us and says the fight is between the children of light and the children of darkness," a reserve sergeant said, recalling a training camp encounter.

Key Democrats on Capitol Hill warned Thursday that a decision by President Obama to send more troops to Afghanistan could trigger an uprising within the party, possibly including an attempt to cut off funds for the buildup. "I believe we need to more narrowly focus our efforts and have a much more achievable and targeted policy in that region," said Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Otherwise, he said, "we run the risk of repeating the mistakes we made in Vietnam and the Russians made in Afghanistan."

The general with the easy smile has been here before. A little over a decade ago, Saddam Hussein dispatched him to this province where the oil wells belch orange flames day and night. Now another Iraqi Arab leader has sent him north, in a battle of wills over Kirkuk that has awakened the past and raised fear of new fighting in the territory that the Kurds consider their Jerusalem.

On his fifth Memorial Day holiday as a U.S. soldier, Spc. Erik Oropeza had much to reflect on. Only 22, he has felt the earth shudder from mortar and bomb blasts, faced down enemies who outnumbered and outgunned him, and seen good friends die. While others took Monday off to enjoy picnics with their families, Oropeza's thoughts were with the men who stood with him through the test of combat. "I don't celebrate Memorial Day like other people do," he said. "It's a sad day for me."

Flight was always on his mind. As he plowed soybean fields and chopped cotton in his tiny hometown of Heth, Ark., Jerry Hodges passed the time by imagining himself streaking across the sky in the cockpit of a Navy plane. As a teenager growing up in the 1930s, it seemed an impossible dream. There was no such thing as a black fighter pilot and the Navy was not about to accept its first. But on Sunday, a gray-haired Hodges regaled a small audience with tales of flying bombers during World War II.