11 Days Till Baghdad

As part of a battalion that has been in almost every American conflict since the Civil War, these newest soldiers of the 2-16 had been training for a year for some type of mission, though they didn't know any details. When their deployment to Iraq became official in late 2006, they were told they would be protecting fuel convoys coming into the country from Jordan. But then Bush's troop increase was announced, along with a strategy shift toward counterinsurgency warfare, and now the soldiers were hearing that their mission would involve patrols somewhere in Baghdad.

Where exactly, and what exactly, were still a mystery to them. Kauzlarich knew. So did his top commanders. Every day, they would disappear for a while into a secure room at battalion headquarters to learn more about the area they would be trying to bring under control. "A mean and nasty little place," Kauzlarich said when he emerged one day, and meanwhile his soldiers continued to prepare for whatever.

"What in the hell?" asked Command Sgt. Maj. Michael McCoy, the battalion's top enlisted man, as he inspected lines of soldiers who stood at attention in the parking lot in their body armor, acting as if the wind wasn't making the temperature feel barely above zero. Straps weren't tight enough, ceramic plates intended to stop bullets were an inch off, medical kits containing compression bandages and tourniquets were attached to the left side instead of the right. "Consistency," McCoy reminded them. What if it was dark? What if in that dark another soldier was trying to find your medical kit, and you couldn't help him because you were too busy bleeding, and you couldn't direct him because you were too busy screaming?

They had briefings on health risks. Wash your hands. Don't smoke. Drink bottled water. Wear ear protection. Wear cotton underwear. Watch out for rats. "From what I hear, the forward operating base we're going to is right next to a sewage plant," said one of the briefers. And then came a chaplain who began: "All right. Stress management. Suicide prevention. Let's go." And on he went. "This is important. If you are not ready to die, you need to get there. If you are not ready to die, you need to be. If you are not ready to see your friends die, you need to be."

They had battle training, too, one day mounting up in mockups of Humvees that were surrounded by video screens showing all kinds of hellish scenarios. They were trying to maneuver to a downed helicopter. That was the exercise. There was an explosion, a suicide bomber, an ambush. One of the Humvees was hit. Two soldiers were dead. Three were alive. "You're talking about somebody who's on fire," came the directions to soldiers in one of the other Humvees, who were on their way to attempt a rescue. "You're talking about someone whose fingers are burning off. They can't reach over and unbuckle their seatbelt. You've got to get them out . . ." and meanwhile one of the "wounded" soldiers began crying theatrically, "I want to live! I want to live!"

This was Spec. Ryan Nyhus, 19, of whom Kauzlarich said: "The kid's heart is as big as a basketball. He's a superstar." A superstar now, but a year and a half ago he was a high school wrestler in Wisconsin who didn't get the college scholarship he'd hoped for, and so was open to a suggestion from a friend that they join the Army together. Nyhus was sworn in first. Then came the friend's turn, and as he raised his hand, someone noticed that he had signed his name on the enrollment form in the wrong place, and as Nyhus tells it the friend took it as a sign from God "and walked out. Went home. Now he's really big into photography."

Eight hundred soldiers, 800 stories.

McCoy's: Age 44, wife, two children, career Army. "My job is not to die for my country," he said. "It's to see how many of those bastards I can kill for their country."

Staff Sgt. Frank Gietz, 41: two Iraq tours already, the last one doing convoy escorts in which 18 of 132 soldiers in his company were killed, now in charge of a platoon of 32, one of whom asked him just before Christmas how to deal with having to kill somebody. "Yeah, it worried me," Gietz said. "That's why I talked to him for two hours." And said? "Put it in a dark place while you're there."

Pvt. Mario Luna, 17: He asked Gietz the question. He asked it because a girl he had been talking to asked it of him. "And that got me all wound up," Luna said, so Gietz told him to look at the thing he was about to shoot at "as a target, not as a person, and that got me back in the game."

Eight hundred -- and every one was now the responsibility of Kauzlarich, who kept disappearing into the secure room and reappearing with adjustments and refinements.

"I am right now vetting an initiative in which all of us grow mustaches," he told his command staff at one of their daily meetings. Maybe it would foster trust when they moved along the streets of Baghdad, he explained, because Iraqis regard a man with facial hair as a man and a man without facial hair as a boy. "Any advantage we can get," he said, and then he looked at the men he was talking to and wondered aloud: "Can you grow mustaches? I look at you. You've all got such baby faces."