Troops' work goes on amid hints of Christmas, tugs of home

BAGHDAD -- John Alonzo knew Christmas would be his toughest time in Iraq.

"Ever since I volunteered, I haven't been looking forward to it," said Alonzo, a 27-year-old and private first class from Lubbock, Texas. "My son wants to know why I can't be home for the holidays. He doesn't understand that I can't just quit."

Before dawn yesterday, Alonzo and the rest of the Fifth Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment rolled through muddy streets in a volatile corner of east Baghdad, hunting house-to-house for Shi'ite militia leaders and bomb-making materials.

Although they did not know it, a roadside bomb in the same neighborhood had killed three US soldiers the day before; a fourth died in an explosion in Diyala province east of the Iraqi capital.

As the sun came up over the city yesterday, a soldier sang "Silver Bells" while others smashed windows in a tall residential apartment building to get a better look at the street below. "It's Christmastime in the city," he crooned.

A mortar round landed in the area. Later, a rooftop sniper fired a single shot that penetrated the helmet of a US soldier, grazing his head. The troops will spend Christmas raiding another part of the city.

"It's hard. But we've still got work to do. The mission doesn't stop," said Alonzo, who left his job as a beer salesman and enlisted because the Army provided better healthcare benefits for his three small children and money for his wife to finish college.

There are small signs of the season across Iraq, where thoughts of the friends and loved ones they miss weigh heavier than usual on the minds of US troops. But for most, Christmas is just another day.

"In the back of your mind you think about it, but there are no holidays in Iraq," said Staff Sergeant Brandon Scott, a 35-year-old from Woodbridge, Va., and the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, which is part of the Army's 3d Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2d Infantry Division.

Scott said he was spending his third Christmas in four years away from his four children. "We don't really have time for Christmas," he said.

On a recent patrol, Staff Sergeant Anthony Handly said he saw evidence of Baghdad's small Christian community. "There was actually a store selling plastic Christmas trees," said Handly, 30, of Bellingham, Wash. "I guess someone in Baghdad is celebrating it."