Shipping Out

Bandages and tourniquets, to take one example, are no longer Boy Scout stuff. "That could be saving my buddy's life," Baker said. "I want my buddy to be able to save my life."

Baker is also the training officer for the 1st Battalion, 152nd Cavalry (RTSA), based in New Albany, just north of the Ohio River. The battalion, which includes Charlie Company, the Walterses' unit, is not only cranking back into wartime mode just two years after returning from Afghanistan. It also has the added task of transforming itself from a standard cavalry unit into a faster, more versatile unit known by the acronym RSTA, for reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition.

Typically, such a transition would mean sending soldiers to Army schools, but Baker and his colleagues were forced to develop their own model because classrooms across the country are full and time is short. The Indiana warriors, summoned to reinforce an overstretched active-duty military, are headed back to the combat zone two years sooner than commanders had anticipated.

Because the classrooms are so full, Baker said, "it probably would have taken four or five years to get our soldiers qualified."

In any army, the hardest aspects of training to master and quantify are leadership and cohesion. Sgt. 1st Class Ingle, a combat veteran, believes that his men will be prepared to fight and to watch one another's backs. Yet he wonders how they will react if one of them is killed.

He wonders what will go through his own mind.

"I'm not worried about anything except that," said Ingle, 33, a divorced father of two. "All these guys standing on this drill floor, I know their parents, their brothers, sisters and wives. I'm not worried about getting killed. I've led a good . . . life. There are those that haven't. They're just kids."

'Don't Be a Hero'

Kurt and Chelsea had a baby boy named Brayden in September. Brett and his wife, Danniel, are expecting a girl any day now. They will name her Alexis Gabrielle, a combination of Brett's middle name and the name of a character from "Desperate Housewives."

Brett is also trying to scrape together at least $800 to adopt Danniel's 5-year-old daughter, Brooklyn, before he deploys.

The couple had what he calls a "put-together wedding" with family during the summer. They will have "her wedding" when he returns. He has promised to salt away between $2,000 and $5,000 to pay for it.

When they discussed her desire to be married ahead of his deployment, she said she wanted things in order for the baby. He teased her that it was only about the life insurance. But death is not a topic they often raise with each other.

"I try to avoid it and go in the kitchen," Danniel said one recent night as Brett read a bedtime story to Brooklyn. "We don't talk about what if this happens, what if that happens. We talk about what I'm going to do when he's overseas."

One thing she will do is paint their new place, a two-bedroom house built in 1889 and bought for $59,000. She told Brett he could choose the color of one room, but after joking that he prefers black, he left the choice to her.

Danniel, for her part, is expecting to spend plenty of time with Chelsea. The two women are close. They waitressed together and worked in the same nursing home and may do so again.

"We call and grump together all the time," Danniel said. "If I have a bad day, I'll call and grump to her and she'll grump to me."

The year of call-up should be excellent for their bank accounts. Brett said he makes "maybe $20,000" with overtime at the psychiatric facility. In Iraq, he expects to pocket at least $40,000, helped by state and federal tax breaks. He will reenlist while there, sheltering his $15,000 bonus from taxes.

Brett will put $1,200 a month into Danniel's account, the rest into his own.

"I said I don't want access to it," Danniel explained. "I'm a girl. I'll spend too much."

Those in the group are still a few weeks from saying goodbye to one another for the next major training. After mobilizing to Camp Atterbury in December, the soldiers will make it home for Christmas before leaving in early January for Fort Stewart, Ga., and two months later for Iraq.

The Walters brothers are already planning a celebratory road trip for their return, with a few Charlie Company friends and maybe Steepleton, if he can afford it. Kurt, who wears a ball cap that says TKB, for Tappa Kegga Beer, figures on buying a Harley and heading west, rumbling to California and the Pacific Northwest before turning east and then south, through Montana toward Texas, Florida and the Carolinas.

"After we've been over there, we're going to need some time to wind down," said Kurt, who figures the trip will take a month.

"I told Chelsea it's either that or I can stay right here and act like a freak."

Sabens, as a soldier and a mother, is trying not to let her fretting diminish her pride.

She is troubled by her sons' decision to be in the same squad. She understands their drive to serve together, and she knows how important they were to each other in Afghanistan, but it is hard not to think of losing them both. At work, she reads the Pentagon casualty reports.

"I tell my kids, 'When you go over there don't be a hero,' " Sabens said. " 'Keep your eyes open, keep your head down and your ears open, too, because your ears tell you a bunch of stuff. If your buddy goes down, don't go rushing out there, because you're going down, too. Look first.' "

Sabens has been checking job postings at KBR, the military contractor. When her sons are settled in Iraq, she intends to look for a KBR job at their base for an experienced Army problem-solver who just happens to be a mom.

One recent night at Wild Bill's Saloon in Salem, drinking beer and shots called a "red-headed slut," Brett described a trip home on leave from Afghanistan. Wearing his Army uniform, he met with a third-grade class. Those moments with the schoolchildren echoed his memories and his dreams.

"The way they looked at me -- I loved that look on their faces," Brett said. "Just to stand up for your country is the best thing in the world. I try not to think of how popular or unpopular [the war] is. I don't know what started it or what'll end it, but it's what we've got to do."

Soon the brothers expect to be in the Iraqi desert, where for all the ribbing and the joking, one of their primary goals will be to stay alive. As Brett said: "We've got new kids. We've got to stick around for at least a couple more years."

Whatever happens, they figure to be in it together.

"When we get bored," Brett said, "I'll tell him Superman can beat the crap out of Batman."