Hicks said he feels he is always "waiting for when it is going to happen."
Sgt. Randy Smith (news - external web site), 25, of Hurricane, W.Va., the leader of Hicks' unit, Platoon 2, Squad 3 of the engineers battalion, said he knows "that any minute anything bad can happen," but he tries not to think about it.
For Ernesto Sainz, 32, the squad's gunner, the night is the worst time.
"I'm always afraid," said Sainz of El Paso, Texas. "That is when you can't see and it's only me, sticking out of the Humvee."
Danger lurks in Iraq
The soldiers talked about the decline in roadside bombings lately but said the ones they have come across recently seem more sophisticated and harder to spot. They talked about the mortars fired by rebels that fall every so often on their base without causing much damage.
They discussed their unease about not knowing much Arabic beyond a few phrases and orders, the lack of translators when they are out on patrol and the dismay they feel when they can't get their message across.
"You'll get a few guys who don't want to cooperate and you will have to rough them up to get their attention," Smith said. "It's frustrating. An ambulance will be coming through, and you will have to stop it."
Hicks felt a different kind of frustration. The battalion had helped establish military sites when coalition troops first arrived, then shifted to checking Iraqi power and sewage facilities, and later renovating schools when major combat was declared over. Lately, though, much of their work has been patrols in Baghdad.
"I was hoping more for the hearts-and-minds work, for more of the humanitarian side of things," said Hicks, who had worked in a program that provides water sports therapy for persons with special needs in San Francisco before he joined the military.
The soldiers remarked that many of the new arrivals are young and inexperienced while those who have been in Iraq for eight months or more feel like seasoned veterans. They also talked about being ready if something happened during the holidays.
In an elevated outpost overlooking a road running beside the base, Sgt. Damon Barouch, 29, of Grand Junction, Colo., watched a white van that had cruised by the base several times. Suspicious, he relayed the word forward to another checkpoint and got a message back that it might be a taxi.
From the far distance came the thud of a mortar being fired somewhere in Baghdad.
"I'm not taking any chance today, for sure," Barouch said. "They may think we are not ready, but we are."
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