Sgt. Anthony G. Jones, fresh off the plane from Iraq, sauntered unannounced into his wife's hospital room in Georgia just hours after she had given birth to their second son, an impish grin on his face.
For two joyous weeks in May, Jones cooed over their baby and showered attention on his wife. But he also took care of unfinished business, selling his pickup to retire a loan, paying off old bills, calling on family and friends.
Three weeks later, on June 14, Jones was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad during his third tour in a war that is not yet 3 years old. He was 25.
"It was like he knew he wouldn't come back," said his grandmother, Ima Lee Jones, who buried Jones near her home in Sumter, S.C. "He told me, `Grandma, the chances of going over a third time and coming back alive are almost nil. I've known too many who have died.' "
Jones' tale may be unusual in its heartbreaking juxtaposition of birth and death, but it has become increasingly common among the war dead in one important way: One in five of the troops who have been killed were in their second, third, fourth or fifth tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Many of those troops returned voluntarily to war because they burned with conviction in the rightness of the mission. Others were driven by powerful loyalty to units and friends. For some it was simply their job.
But as the nation pays grim tribute to the 2,000 service members killed in Iraq since the invasion of 2003, their collective stories describe the painful stresses and recurring strains that an extended conflict, with all its demands for multiple tours, is placing on families, towns and the military itself as they struggle to console the living while burying the dead.
"Two tours is more than you should ask anyone to do," said Randall Shafer, 51, an oil industry consultant from Houston whose son, Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Eric Shafer, just finished his second tour in Iraq. "They know they could die anywhere at any time. That will take a toll on anybody. And it takes a toll on their families."
The milestone of 2,000 dead was marked Tuesday by a moment of silence in the Senate, and President Bush said "the best way to honor the sacrifice of our fallen troops is to complete the mission."
The threshold was crossed with the Pentagon's announcement that Staff Sgt. George Alexander Jr., 34, of Killeen, Texas, had died at Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas on Saturday of injuries suffered in Iraq earlier this month when a bomb planted by insurgents exploded near his Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
Still the nation seems as divided over the war as it did in September 2004, when the 1,000th death occurred during a heated presidential campaign.
The differences between the first 1,000 and the second 1,000 dead illuminate recent trends regarding who is serving in Iraq, who is dying and how the war is progressing.
Most strikingly, death has come quicker, a sign of the insurgency's increasing efficiency. While it took 18 months to reach 1,000 dead, it has taken just 14 months to reach 2,000, according to Pentagon data. More powerful and sophisticated explosive devices are a major reason, causing nearly half of the deaths in the second group.
White soldiers, who represent the vast majority of combat troops, accounted for a larger share of the dead among the most recent 1,000, about three out of four. Blacks and Hispanics died at a somewhat slower rate during the last year.
More than 420 service members, a majority of them Marines and soldiers, have died while on repeat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. That number is expected to climb steadily as the Pentagon continues to rotate its main front-line combat battalions into Iraq.
The Marine Corps suffered a particularly heavy toll, accounting for a third of the second 1,000 deaths, though Marines represent less than 20 percent of the U.S. force in Iraq. Marines have been stationed in some of Iraq's most violent precincts and assigned to lead dangerous anti-insurgent sweeps in restive Sunni enclaves like Fallujah.
The nation's part-time warriors in the National Guard and the Reserves also shouldered a larger burden, accounting for nearly 30 percent of the fatalities, an increase of more than 10 points. The heavier toll came as Guard and Reserve forces were called to combat in larger numbers than at any time since Vietnam, a role the Pentagon plans to scale back in the coming year.
California and Texas had the most deaths, as they did for the first 1,000, followed by New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The largest number came from small towns in the South and the Midwest. At least 17 of the last 1,000 dead were women.
Multiple deployments have clearly embittered some families, driving them to push their children and spouses to quit the military. But others say the willingness, sometimes sheer determination, of loved ones to return to battle has made them see a deeper value in the mission, no matter how deadly or open-ended it may seem.
"I thought initially that we should never have gone to war," said Karen Strain, 51, of North Hero, Vt., whose son, Marine Cpl. Adam J. Strain, was killed by a sniper in August.
"But now I feel we have to finish the job," Strain said, pausing to fight back tears. "Adam gave me more insight for how sad it is for those people, and how we can help give them their freedom. Adam changed my views."
In World War II, many service members deployed for the entire war. In Vietnam, conscripts typically served single 12-month tours, rotating through units that remained at war. It was only after 1973, with the all-volunteer military, that the Pentagon began rotating entire units overseas, theorizing that battalions that trained and deployed together would be more cohesive.
Many parents said they found second and third deployments more gut-wrenching than first ones, partly because they had learned from their children about the gruesome realities of war.
Many blacks are angry about the war, according to polls, military officials and experts. And that opposition is beginning to have a profound effect on who is joining the military -- and potentially who is dying in Iraq, many experts say.
For most of the past three decades, blacks joined the military in disproportionately high numbers, either because they saw it as an equal-opportunity employer or were attracted by its training programs and college benefits. The Army in particular came to rely heavily on blacks to fill its ranks: In the 1980s, about 30 percent of active-duty soldiers were black, Pentagon statistics show.
But black enlistment has fallen off, particularly in the Army, and the war in Iraq is hastening that decline, military officials and experts say. Lower black enlistment means that the military looks more like America in terms of racial balance than it did a decade ago, when it was disproportionately black.
This year, about 14 percent of new Army recruits were black, down from nearly 23 percent in 2001. Army officials say improved job opportunities in other fields is one reason. But a study commissioned by the Army last year also concluded that more young blacks were rejecting military service because they opposed the war or feared dying in it.
As black enlistment has declined, white soldiers have come to represent a larger share of the Army's lowest enlisted ranks, and a larger portion of the dead: about 75 percent for the second 1,000, up from 70 percent in the first 1,000. The death rate for Hispanics and blacks declined in the second group.
Some experts say the increase in white soldiers' deaths cannot be attributed solely to lower black recruitment, asserting that more study is needed before any conclusions are drawn. But there is broad agreement among military experts that if black enlistment continues to fall, it could create long-term manpower problems for the Army.
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