A Unit's Fitful Year at War

As the year went on, roadside bomb attacks against the 5th Battalion mounted steadily: There were 22 in April, 27 in May, 21 in June, 47 in July.

The battalion encountered 50 in the first half of August.

"I keep on praying, Don't blow, Don't blow, please don't blow up!" Pfc. James E. Tickal, 24, of Oviedo, Fla., wrote in a leather-bound diary he kept in his Humvee.

On Aug. 26, while Workman was on leave, a bomb exploded beneath one of the Humvees, hurling the five-ton vehicle two feet into the air but causing no injuries.

The next day, the rattled soldiers crammed into a small room for a security briefing. The meeting was run by Baker, the laid-back platoon sergeant from a family of Louisiana musicians. On his wall, Baker kept an autographed black-and-white promotional photo of his sister Vickie, a Mississippi blues singer. On breaks, he smoked white-tipped Black & Mild cigars and wrote sad songs about Iraq in a green field notebook. After nearly 20 years in the Army, Baker was just months from retirement. He fantasized about what his life would be like: fishing for catfish in a pond near his family's Louisiana farm, playing trumpet and singing with his younger brother Luster's band, the Groove Crew.

In the meantime, he was trying to stay alive.

After the previous night's attack, Baker told the soldiers he had asked his superiors if they could run a mine sweeper over the road, which was cratered from dozens of bomb explosions. The platoon members believed other bombs lay buried there, waiting to go off. Baker said he was told the equipment was being used elsewhere.

He reported to his men: "I pretty much let 'em know that I'm getting tired of getting hit like this. I'm tired of getting hit and we returning fire, and we go in the area, and nobody knows what is going on. So let's just say, 'Screw it. We'll just keep . . . ducking and rocking, and it'll be fine.' "

Someday, said Sgt. Patrick Hagood, 24, of Anderson, S.C., that wasn't going to work anymore.

Hagood, soft-spoken and cerebral, was one of the battalion's rising stars. He had once been accepted at Morehouse College, the 138-year-old African American liberal arts school in Atlanta, but decided to join the Army because he had already made the commitment and didn't want to renege. Now he was planning to make the military a career, reasoning, "I could be around in college for four years, and I guarantee I'd never, ever, see guys risking their lives to save mine." He had recently bought a house near Fort Stewart and had gotten serious with his girlfriend, Merideth Sanford, a sales associate for a wireless telephone company.

Baker looked down at Hagood, who was sitting on a white plastic chair in full battle gear.

"Yeah," Baker said matter-of-factly. "One day somebody gonna get us."