Military Life

Call it the forgotten front. The deployments are long, often tedious, sometimes quite dangerous. The weather is hot, the incremental business of improving infrastructure can be frustrating, and most Americans probably could not find the country on a map. But the U.S. is determined to keep insurgents, homegrown or from neighboring Somalia, from toppling the government of Djibouti or using the country as a launching pad. Marines have been deploying there for a decade, with no end in sight.

Of all the duties a Marine can have in Iraq, the one undoubtedly least sought after is becoming one of the least needed. Personnel Retrieval and Processing, a unit that makes its home in a large earth-sheathed hangar on this air base in the desert of western Iraq, has had only about one mission per month this year. The seemingly endless days of idleness are considered ideal by members of this reserve Marine Corps unit from Georgia. "I enjoy the slow times," said Sgt.

About 1,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops launched a major offensive at dawn Thursday in Diyala province, an increasingly violent zone east of Baghdad that has become a haven and training ground for Sunni Arab insurgents. The target of the strike is an isolated landscape of farms and irrigation canals riddled with weapons caches, safe houses and training ranges, U.S. military officials said. The insurgents, however, appeared to be well prepared for the slow-moving assault.

Sgt. Scott Peer woke his wife, Sara, last week with a call in the middle of the night. He'd been stoic throughout his nine months in Iraq with the Minnesota National Guard. This call was different. I'm homesick, he told her. I miss you and the kids. She reassured him: Just a few more months. We'll see you soon. And Sara Peer let herself believe it. But late Wednesday, she learned that her husband would not be home in March as planned.

AFTER unveiling his plan for a troop increase in Iraq this month, President Bush spoke of the burden borne by America's military families -- of "the quiet sacrifices of lonely holidays and empty chairs at the dinner table." The spare, elegant phrase evoked a stoic longing worthy of an Edward Hopper painting. But real life tends to be messier than rhetoric.

In any other city, the sight of an old man standing next to a can on the side of a crowded street would go unnoticed. In Baghdad, it was enough to make U.S. Army Spc. Aurelio Cazares slow down his armored Stryker for a closer look and alert his gunner. The vehicle's gunner fixed his viewfinder on the man and the object and zoomed in, just as a sedan stopped in front of them, blocking the view and adding further suspense to the moment.

IT was the final day of Marine Sgt. Travis Woody's second tour in Iraq when the sergeant major pulled him aside. "Do you know your wife has a drug problem?" Travis sat back, stunned, as the sergeant major showed him an e-mail sent from Twentynine Palms, his home base. Travis' wife, Nicole, was in jail, accused of helping a drug dealer rob, torture and imprison a man over several days in late August in her home on the base.

The high-value target was shacked up with a prostitute. That, at least, was the story provided by an Iraqi man who approached this combat outpost dug into the muddy east bank of the Tigris River in Baghdad. The target was Usama Kokez, a Sunni accused of leading a kidnapping ring that had executed several Shiite civilians. The tip sent 1st Lt.

The U.S. military command center inside this cramped Iraqi police station is off-limits to Iraqi police. A Humvee and two U.S. soldiers block access to the American side. The barricaded police post in northwest Baghdad is called a joint security station, the latest U.S. effort at teaming American soldiers with Iraqi police to battle insurgents and militiamen. But at least for now, the station is literally split down the middle. "We don't trust 'em," 1st Lt.

Petty Officer Corey Baughman stared with narrowed eyes at the objects on the ground in front of him. Sweat beaded on his upper lip. He knelt down and leaned in for a closer look. The Navy explosives ordnance expert had a difficult choice to make, one that could haunt him for life if he erred. Should he buy the striking carpet from Kazakhstan with blue accents against an ochre background, or a rich, wine-colored one from Turkey?