11 Days Till Baghdad

The meeting continued, and meanwhile, outside Kauzlarich's office, Staff Sgt. Jeremy Hodges, 27, one of those baby faces, his with a round scar in a cheek that led to another scar on the back of his neck, told the story of what it was like to get shot in Iraq on July 21, 2006.

"Everything went dark," he said.

And: "I remember the moaning. I remember the gurgling sound in my throat."

And: "I thought it was my last breath of air that day, until I realized the pain was going to last forever."

And: "Hey sir," he wrote during his recuperation, in an e-mail to an officer he had met a few years before who had told him "what a great soldier I was" and "how much confidence he had in me," and who had been "kind of like a father figure to me," and had said Hodges would always be welcome in his command and had single-handedly persuaded him to reenlist.

"I asked him if he still wanted me," Hodges said. "I told him I was broken."

"I don't care," Kauzlarich wrote back. "I'll take care of you. When can I expect you?"

And here Hodges was, one of the 800, ready to tell any of the other 799 what it is like to get shot. Not that they'd asked. "They just kind of stare at me and wonder," Hodges said. But if they did ask, "I'd tell them it hurts."

***

They packed ammunition and photographs and first-aid kits and candy. They went into town and in a few cases drank too much, and in a few other cases went AWOL. Five days before departure, Kauzlarich studied a list of soldiers who wouldn't be able to go. Seven needed some sort of surgery. Two were about to have babies. One had an infant in intensive care. Two were in jail. Two (including Luna) would have to stay back until they turned 18. Nine were, for various reasons, "mentally incapable of doing what we're about to do."

But most could do what they were about to do, were eager to, impatient even, and said so in no uncertain terms.

"You ready?" McCoy asked soldier after soldier during another body armor inspection.

"Roger, Sergeant Major!"

"You sure?"

"Roger, Sergeant Major!"

"It's the decisive point of the fight," one soldier explained later, foot tapping, head nodding, practically vibrating. "This is the chance to win it."

Belief, then. Kauzlarich remembers the day he realized how strong a force it could be. He was in Fort Benning, Ga., for advanced coursework, and at the end of an exercise, as he and other soldiers waited outside for a ride, a visiting soldier from Sierra Leone explained how he had survived that country's various wars.

"In my country, we put on a blouse. It is a magic blouse. When I wear it, I know bullets cannot harm me," Kauzlarich recalls him saying. The soldier then rolled up a sleeve of his magic blouse. "Let me show you," he said. "Give me a knife." Someone gave him a knife. "Watch," he said, and Kauzlarich watched incredulously as the soldier swung the knife, which had a four-inch, razor-sharp blade, down on his soft inner forearm. It went easily through the skin. It went through veins. It went through muscle. It went all the way down to the bone, and for one belief-filled moment everyone waited for the healing to begin -- and then the soldier collapsed.

"That's a form of belief," Kauzlarich said of what he learned that day. "That's also a form of jackassery."

What about Iraq's believers, though? The ones for whom a briefing about suicide would focus on how to do it in order to kill as many American soldiers as possible, rather than on how to prevent it? The ones who believe as surely as Kauzlarich believes, and who are presumably waiting for him?

"Who will win?" he said, rephrasing the questions. "I will win."

He thought about his answer.

"Is that belief or confidence?" he asked. "Is it confidence, or is it overconfidence? Those are questions I have to ask myself. Because if it's overconfidence, it's arrogance."

He thought some more.

"I will win," he said again.

Three days until departure now. Kauzlarich wanted his soldiers to have these last days off to be with their families, who had come here from a dozen states and filled every hotel room in town, but first he gathered them on a field behind battalion headquarters to tell them the details of what they were about to do. It had snowed, and it was cold, and the sun was going down as he said that they soon would be on the edge of Sadr City, Baghdad's infamous and violent slum. The soldiers ringed him and pressed closer to hear, and as he raised his voice, his words about "initiative" and "paranoia" and "emotion" echoed off the ice and the surrounding buildings, making this place feel even chillier than it was.

"Now it's not a game, guys," he said. "You are going to see some horrific things in the next year. You are going to see some things you are not going to understand. . . .

"It's down to nut-cutting time, and we're going to get some, but we're going to do it in a disciplined manner, like we do everything. . . .

"I am absolutely confident in your abilities, absolutely confident. . . .

"The bottom line is this weekend's your last, okay? So call your parents, love your families, stay focused on them for this weekend. Not later than Tuesday night, as soon as you get on that airplane and that airplane takes off, your sole focus is going to be winning our nation's war."

There was a pause, just long enough for the word "war" to echo and evaporate, and then the soldiers began to cheer, loudly and for a while, and then they left the field and headed inside the battalion building, filling room after room not with a soldier's bloodlust, which would come soon enough, but with the wintry smell of boys who have been out in the snow.

***

And then it was departure day, and in the Kauzlarich house a phone call came at 8:30 a.m. saying there had been a death.

The family, by then, was wide awake. The children were running around with stuffed animals purchased over the weekend, each with a memory chip containing a quick recorded message from their father for them to play over the coming year. "Hi Jacob. I love you." "Hi Garrett. I sure do love you." "I love you, Allie-gator."

And so came one more juxtaposition: "Sir, there's been a casualty forward," the caller said.

The dead soldier, who in coming days would be identified as the 3,100th U.S. fatality of the war, wasn't in Kauzlarich's battalion, but his brother was, and that's why Kauzlarich was being called. The parents didn't know yet. They were somewhere in the area visiting their son who was about to deploy, and a search for them was underway. Did Kauzlarich happen to know where they were saying goodbye to one son, so they could be informed that their other son had died?

He hung up. He pictured the soldier -- not the dead one, whom he didn't know, but the one in his battalion, who of course would now not be going to Iraq, at least not right away. He made some calls. No luck. More calls.

The morning continued. Seven-year-old Allie wanted his attention; the night before, after saying she had a headache, and then saying she might have a fever, she had said, "I don't want you to leave," and when he told her, "I'll be okay, and if I'm not okay, you'll be okay because I'll be checking on you," she had said, "Then I'll kill myself so I can be with you." The boys, too young for such sensitivities, ran around the house clobbering each other as usual, while Stephanie had her own images to contend with.

"Gray. Dismal. A very sad place to live," is how she would picture the place her husband was going when she would close her eyes. She had done her time in the Army after graduating from West Point, and she had a soldier's guarded sense of sentimentality, but now came a new image, that of a freshly dead soldier. She had been keeping any doubts about the mission to herself. "He believes in this," she had explained one day. But this day was different. "You better come back," she now said.

Belief vs. uncertainty: Such was the subtext in 800 places that morning as the Army continued its search for two parents and a son. The soldiers would be leaving in two groups over the next 24 hours. The first group was due at battalion headquarters at 1 p.m., and at 12:42 the first hug was underway in the parking lot, a tangle of moving arms that was still going strong at 12:43. By 12:45, tears had begun in several places, including inside a car where a woman sat motionless against the door, head in her hands, and so it continued as the afternoon progressed.

The soldiers smoked. They got their guns. They lined up their body armor. They waited, checking their watches, with wives, girlfriends, children, parents, grandparents. "I seen 'em off in World War II," said the grandfather of a private named Ricky Andrus. "I had a brother who was killed. A pilot on a B-24. He went down in the Mediterranean. He was 20 years old." Which was one year younger than Andrus, who was loading the family car with things he wouldn't be taking, including a pair of cowboy boots whose top halves had been dyed a beautiful blue.

A sergeant named Johnathan Pritchett, meanwhile, was kissing a young woman who was up on her tiptoes, while Gietz told his platoon to start wrapping up the goodbyes already, while Nyhus stood alone on a loading dock and recounted the advice he'd gotten the night before during a call with his friend the photographer. "Keep your head down," the friend had said.

Three p.m. now, and Kauzlarich arrived with Stephanie and the children. "This day sucks," he said. The soldier and his parents still hadn't been found, but it was only a matter of time now, and Kauzlarich understood there would be ripples as word began seeping out, first through the soldier's squad, then his platoon, then the battalion. Blood through a magic blouse; that's what the effect of this death would be. "There's nothing good about it," Kauzlarich said, and when he began saying goodbye to his family and Allie started to cry, something she hadn't done all the other times he had left, that only made things worse.

He said goodbye to his family in his office. He said goodbye again when he put them in the car. He said goodbye again when they didn't leave right away, just stayed in the car, and then he went back into his office and into the final hours.

Computer: packed. BlackBerry: packed. Extra tourniquet: packed. Extra compression bandage: packed. Family photo: packed. Lights: off. He shut the door to his office. He ducked into another office when Jeremy Hodges, who would be staying behind to recuperate, called to him. "Thank you. I will," Kauzlarich said, and walked on. "Jeremy Hodges. Great American," he said, and then he made his way to a nearby gymnasium for one last ceremony, this one with no TV cameras, no trumpets, no drum. Just soldiers sitting on bleachers, eating cookies and waiting to be bused to a plane and listening to one last speech.

"This is going to be hard. Probably the hardest thing you've ever done," the speech began. "But it's going to be okay."

It was the same thing Kauzlarich had said a few days before to his command staff, but this time it was a general talking while Kauzlarich stood to the side, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet and looking at row after row of soldiers, every one of them his.

What if they die?

And what if he dies?

Would such a death, in such a war as this war has become, be worthwhile?

"It's worthwhile if we win," Kauzlarich said. "But to sacrifice, there's got to be a purpose. And if we don't win, then our sacrifices are going to be in vain."

"Good luck and Godspeed," the general said, ending his speech, and then it was time to go.

Out went the soldiers, funneling into single file to get through the exit doors. They had learned in training to avoid such a formation. Too easy for the enemy to get them. "The fatal funnel," it was called. But here, there was no enemy, only Kauzlarich, the man who had yet to fail, clapping them on their backs as they moved past.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Yessir."

"Good?"

"Yessir."

"Ready to be a hero?"

"Yessir."

Out they went, one by one, hundreds of them, until there was only one soldier left for Kauzlarich to speak to.

"Are we ready for war?" he asked himself, and then out he went, too, onto a bus, onto a plane, into Kuwait to regroup with his soldiers, and as of this week, into the heart of Baghdad, where any moment now their surge will begin for real.