-
THE NEW YORK TIMES
November 10, 2006

When Soldiers Fall, Grief Binds a Unit’s 2 Worlds

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/10/world/...artner=homepage
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006...10unit600.1.jpg
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006...for-webUNIT.jpg

By MICHAEL LUO and MICHAEL WILSON

BAGHDAD, Nov. 9 — Memorial services honoring fallen soldiers from the First Battalion, 22nd Infantry in Iraq used to require planning meetings of as long as 45 minutes. But at this point, they take barely five.

(...)

In October, 105 American troops were killed in Iraq, the most since January 2005. The spike in deaths, more than three years after the war began, became a major factor in the sweeping Democratic gains in Congress this week. Colonel Osborne’s soldiers alone lost nine comrades, just as the battalion was beginning to make preparations to return home later this month.

The 800-strong Army battalion, part of the First Brigade of the Fourth Infantry Division based in Fort Hood, Tex., has been patrolling a vast swath of land west of Baghdad riven by Sunni Arab insurgents.

The losses in the unit in October were the most suffered by any battalion or squadron, according to a New York Times database of war casualties compiled from information provided by the Pentagon.

Back home, among the soldiers’ wives, fear spread in ever-widening circles. News sped from a woman’s living room in Killeen, outside Fort Hood, to her friend across town and then across the country.

(...)