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Every generation, it seems, has its test. World War II. Korea. Vietnam. The Persian Gulf. Today is no different -- except that, in a sense, everything is different. If you're one of the roughly 2.6 million men and women who serve in America's military, you're on the front line in a war with no boundaries and no end in sight. Your training is unparalleled, but often irrelevant. Whether you're posted to Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo or any number of other places, you're as likely to find yourself policing neighborhoods, guarding schools, distributing food or building roads as fighting enemy soldiers. Who could have foreseen that the generations of Americans weaned on Star Wars and Nintendo would be handed the challenge of a global war against terror?These sons and daughters wear every uniform -- Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard. Some are full-time military, some reserves, some National Guard. Of our active duty troops, almost 4 in 10 are racial minorities. Women make up 15 percent of the force. More than half of our soldiers are married. Domestic postings and civilian jobs have given way to multiple tours in distant places. The stresses are great, and the dangers still growing. Here is a glimpse into the lives of four soldiers who have answered their country's call.
A Kid Without Any Fear
You can't miss the house where Nicholas Cicero grew up: It's practically covered in yellow ribbons, red, white and blue stars, and American flags. At the door, Nicholas greets me with a grin and an enormous yawn; it's past noon, but he's only got a few days to catch up on his sleep after five months in Iraq -- and before shipping out again.
Nicholas had spent his whole life in this house, in suburban Wethersfield, Conn., before joining the Army a year after the September 11 attacks. He signed up just out of high school, for both patriotic and practical reasons. "I wanted to go to college but couldn't afford it, so I looked at the military options," says the smooth-faced 19-year-old, shyly looking away as he speaks.
Just then his father, Mario, who emigrated from Sicily at age 16, bustles into the room. He's come home for lunch, unwilling to miss a minute more with his son than is absolutely necessary. Nicholas used to work alongside him at the painting business he built up, and Mario admits he went along with his son's decision to enlist reluctantly. "I was worried Nicky wasn't going to get to go to college any other way. So it seemed like a good idea," he says. But the time when his son was in Iraq "was a hard five months." In fact, Nicholas faced an ambush on his first day there. Worse was to come.
His parents weren't surprised that Nicholas wanted to be at the center of action. Even as a youngster, he was the kind of kid who was always on the lookout for a bigger, scarier roller coaster. He'd eagerly signed up for one of the Army's most dangerous assignments, as a scout in the 3rd Infantry Division. The job not only offered a $7,000 signing bonus, but seemed to promise an extra measure of excitement. "Scouts are out there in front of everybody, riding Humvees and Bradleys," he says. "It looked pretty cool in the video."
Last March, he shipped out to Kuwait, where he waited for a month. "I didn't know anyone," he says. "But once I was there, I had to put my game face on." He was finally sent into Iraq on April 17, and was told to go out and detain anyone breaking the curfew. That led to the ambush on one of his very first patrols. A guy was walking down the middle of the street, cradling an AK-47. As Nicholas's Humvee approached, another man on a balcony started shooting at the Americans, and a car swung around the corner, opening fire as well.
"We ended up having to blow up that car," Nicholas says evenly. If he sounds calm now, he wasn't then. "That night I was on my cot thinking, This ain't no video game. You can't press the reset."
Throughout the brief "official" war, Nicholas did reconnaissance, trying to find the enemy before they found him. One of his buddies, a 25-year-old from Missouri with a wife and two little kids, died on the road from the Baghdad airport when the Humvee he was driving hit an antitank mine.
After Saddam's regime fell, Nicholas says, "our world flip-flopped. We went from being fighters to peacekeepers in a day. Our training didn't even come close to what we were now doing in Baghdad."
Suddenly, his job was to get the guys selling ammo and bayonets off the streets, and given the challenge, he's proud of what his outfit accomplished. "Not to brag, but our sector was the worst in Baghdad. And for the amount of people we had over there, we did a damn good job."
He didn't have much contact with ordinary Iraqis. "But there were a few kids who would come up and say hello. That was one of my worst fears, having a confrontation with a child. Fortunately, it never happened." Instead, some of the kids reported law-breaking to the Americans in pantomime ("Bang-bang! Argh!") and seemed to want to help.
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