Third round in Iraq to test US troops

It's that third group, made up mostly of noncommissioned officers (NCOs), that is the most crucial to watch, says Mr. Killebrew.

"If the sergeants start leaving, then it's like the canary in the coal mine," he says. "But the NCO ranks are holding very, very firm and getting better all the time, though they're probably overtaxed."

Pvt. Jordan Brasseur, a 19-year-old from the cold reaches of Newport, Vt., leaves Tuesday for his first trip to Iraq. In an interview before going, he said the enthusiasm of the officers in his Third Division unit has rubbed off.

"All the guys have been telling me what a great time it is," said the tank mechanic. "I feel like the training has been really excellent and that I'm ready to go."

That bravado is evident in Hinesville. Around base, when they're not practicing on the Red Cloud Alpha tank range, soldiers drive beefy new trucks and souped-up Asian cars, many purchased using combat bonuses. Even the bumper stickers have attitude: "US 2, Iraq 0," one reads. Another one, on a truck plastered with Army slogans, reads: "2 MUCH 4 U."

Yet all is not well in Hinesville, says Mapes, the private from Chicago. Behind the busy preparation, he describes a simmering despair, with morale dipping as soldiers see an ambivalent US public. There's also the old training equipment – which a soldier in the field takes as a sure sign of faltering public support. Mapes says the prevalence of billboards that warn of the dangers of drunken driving or of riding motorcycles too fast is the Army's acknowledgment that some problems exist.

A Military Times survey of soldiers, released Dec. 30, found that almost four years of war has hardly dented Army morale – but that fewer soldiers support Mr. Bush's course in Iraq and that a growing number believe the US public is no longer behind the military.

One difficulty for the Army is that some veterans appear to have trouble adjusting to public attitudes outside their base towns, say war experts. Part of that can be attributed to the challenge, described by soldiers throughout history, of describing their wartime experiences to civilians. In the field, battlefield realities quickly trump ideology – but the former are difficult for nonveterans to understand, says poet Charles Patterson, a Vietnam vet and author of "The Petrified Heart."

"You aren't fighting for any kind of ideology," says Mr. Patterson. "You're fighting solely to keep everybody alive. All this [stuff] about whether it's right or wrong [that] we're there doesn't matter at all" to the wartime soldier.

In that way, overzealousness to return to the front can be a warning sign. It reminds Mr. Palaima, the classics professor, of an account written by Xenophon, a writer-soldier of ancient Greece, who described one comrade as looking happy "[only] when there was the prospect of fighting, basically exhibiting all the symptoms of post-traumatic stress," says Palaima.

Xenophon might also have been describing Mapes. After two combat tours, he begged the Army to return him to Iraq – an insistence his superiors found disquieting.

After counterterrorism patrols that netted him 10 medals, dozens of firefights, and at least three close calls with mortars and snipers, Mapes says he has received counseling for post-traumatic stress and has decided to leave the Army at the end of his contract. He will not be going for a third time to Iraq, and plans to return to Chicago to work for his dad.

He says he feels disillusioned with the war, betrayed by Bush and the military leadership, and resentful of the physical and emotional effect the fighting has had on him, including sleepless nights and a "jumpy" demeanor.

"I consider myself a realist, and I did learn something from the experience," Mapes says. "But I've come to realize I need a new chapter in my life."

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