In the middle of a protracted war on terrorists abroad, the Army is responding to a deadly kind of collateral damage emerging on an unexpected flank: the home front.

Amid the sleepy Southern towns and pine-bluffed bombing ranges that surround America's largest Army base, four military wives are dead in less than six weeks – three of them killed by spouses recently returned from tours in Afghanistan.

While military experts say it's a stretch to say that these spousal homicides are directly linked to the war, the common thread seems to be that all of the couples had marital problems that may have been exacerbated by their deployments.

But even if the killings are indeed a tragic coincidence, the Army on Thursday kicked off an investigation here at the main deployment point for America's wars. The focus: what the Army can do to better understand – and prevent – spousal abuse, especially among families of elite front-line soldiers. It's the sixth domestic abuse investigation in the Army since the late 1980s.

"These are the biggest, baddest bears in the forest," says James Morrison, a retired military sociologist who used to teach at Ft. Bragg's JFK Special Warfare School. "It's certainly a weird coincidence that these killings have largely involved troops where violence and aggressiveness is encouraged."

Experts say that soldiers are about twice as likely as civilians to turn violent at home – though there are no studies looking specifically at elite troops who are spearheading the war on terrorism. But today, the fact that a majority of the men involved were Special Forces officers raises a specter of concern over the ability of the country's most gung-ho fighting men to make peace at home.

"This is certainly a very troubling series of events, and absolutely tragic," says Delores Johnson, chief of the Army's Family Advocacy Programs at the Pentagon. "Everyone wants to make sure we are doing what we need to do to transform these tragedies into something meaningful."

The series of killings began June 19, when a Special Forces soldier home two days from Afghanistan shot his wife execution-style and then killed himself. A few days later, an Army cook stabbed his wife and set her body on fire. On July 20, police discovered the bodies of an elite Delta Force soldier and his wife in their Stedman, N.C., home. That same day, police arrested Special Forces officer Bill Wright after he led investigators to where he had buried his wife, Jennifer.

"Until [Bill] came back from Afghanistan, I didn't worry about violence," Ms. Wright's mother, Wilma Watson of Mason, Ohio, told the Associated Press. After his return, six weeks ago, "he was getting these attacks of rage."

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