FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. -- Shaded by a towering blue spruce in Wheeler Park stands a gray granite monument that honors this city's men and women who have died in combat from the Spanish-American War to, as the memorial reads, "Iraqi Freedom."
The name of Lance Cpl. Marty G. Mortenson was etched into the stone on the eve of Armed Forces Day in May. A month earlier, on April 20, Mortenson had been killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq.
Just a few months before he died, Mortenson sent his mother an e-mail: I am really sorry about [forgetting] your birthday . . . I am so streesed out that it is really bring [ing] me down. . . . I have had so much on my mind . . . going off to war 4 the 3rd time isn't easy.
Mortenson was on his third tour -- his third pump, in Marine jargon -- in Iraq. He had spent his 20th, 21st and 22nd birthdays in Iraq. Before he left on his last tour, he told a friend in California: "It's like three strikes, you're out. I have a feeling I'm not going to come home."
A generation ago in the Vietnam War, grunts had to survive 13 months and then knew they were going home for good. But the nature of an all-volunteer military has changed deployments and expectations for America's troops.
With the military's numbers at their lowest level in modern history, no draft to bring in new recruits and no end in sight to the U.S. deployment in Iraq, more American troops are likely to be going on multiple tours. The Army has sent multiple units to Iraq for second tours. The Marines, which deploy units for shorter stints, are embarking on third tours. Three infantry battalions and three rotary wing squadrons of Marines are on their third pump in Iraq.
At least 13 troops on their third tours, most of them Marines, have been killed.
"We're not expanding numbers, and we're not reducing our commitments around the world," said University of North Carolina history professor Richard H. Kohn, a former chief of Air Force history at the Pentagon. "We're taking it out of the hide, as they say in the military."
"If they have to go back a second or third time, particularly a third time, is it really fair?" he said. "I would call that an extraordinary burden."
Approximately 17,000 of the nation's 191,000 Marines are stationed in Iraq. "We certainly understand the individual sacrifice to go over three times, but seven-month rotations ensure the right mix of people go over, and it keeps the deployment cycle down to a manageable rate," said Maj. Jason Johnston, a Marine Corps spokesman. "As time goes on, we will see more and more of this."
For Mortenson and the members of the 1st (infantry) Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division at Camp Pendleton, Calif., the orders for Iraq came in January 2003, in March 2004 and in February of this year.
"I remember before we went in, nobody's ever been in combat and we didn't know exactly what to expect. But we were all motivated that we could do it. We were really eager to go," said Lance Cpl. Eric J. Young, 22. Like Mortenson, he was a squad automatic weapon (SAW) gunner in Alpha Company.
