Fort Drum, New York

It is morning on March 20, 2003, the first day of the war against Iraq. And on this Army post in upstate New York, it is raining. Hard.

As Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's early-morning radio address reminds waking Americans that there is sacrifice involved in patriotism, two dozen soldiers with forty-pound rucks on their back practice urban warfare techniques in a march across Fort Drum's main road. Machine guns in hand, the soldiers approach an intersection and pan the horizon. Two of them dart into the center of the street to stop traffic. Then, one by one, the mostly very young soldiers file past, their camouflaged uniforms caked with mud, their grim and grimy faces fractured by rivulets of rain.

Three minivans with moms on the way to the commissary or the office or to drop the kids at school pause on one side of the intersection. Two soldiers in a Humvee pause on the other side. As traffic backs up, no one honks with irritation, as they might in New York City. The drivers sit patiently, respectfully, at the intersection, as if waiting for the passage of a funeral procession. They have seen this a hundred times.

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