"You've got to water it every day," said Staff Sgt. Kevin Smith, dutifully shifting the sprinkler to soak another portion of the startling green carpet sprouting near headquarters in this base in Iraq's Diyala Province. It's a bit of the Midwest in the Middle East.
Smith, a 30-year-old former landscaper, has nurtured the desert lawn since "Duce Four," the 1-24th Infantry Regiment, withdrew from urban areas and consolidated at Grizzly about three weeks ago.
"It brings you a little tranquility," he said.
Smith and his wife, Yvonne, are both staff sergeants with the 1st Stryker Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, based at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks. The two are among the best-known and respected noncommissioned officers - he at Grizzly, she at Forward Operating Base Warhorse.
Staff Sgt. Kevin Smith recently affirmed his skills as a soldier by placing first in the brigade's warrior competition, a multi-faceted challenge testing skills ranging from marksmanship and repairing radios to dealing with a roadside bomb. Matched against champions from four brigades at the division level, Smith finished second.
Staff Sgt. Yvonne Smith, meanwhile, is the person to know at Warhorse, where she serves as executive administrator for brigade commander Col. Burt Thompson.
The couple met at Fort Wainwright prior to the brigade's first Iraq tour, which began in October 2004. Their daughter, Aliana Rosemarie is about to turn two. Born between deployments, she remained behind in Fairbanks, in the care of a close family friend, when her parents and other soldiers of the Strykers left for Iraq last fall.
Yvonne, with her bent for scheduling, is planning for step-by-step reintegration with their daughter. "We don't want to just take her away from what she's used to," she said.
For now, a webcam provides a distant mom with precious face time.
"It's really been hard on my wife," said Kevin, who calls her at Warhorse whenever he can. These days his conversations with the other Staff Sgt. Smith inevitably circle to that grass patch.
"He's always giving me updates," said Yvonne. "I guess he and an interpreter friend work on it together.
That friend's story offers another side of family hardships during wartime.
"Joe," an ethnic Kurd whose real name isn't disclosed in this story to protect relatives in Iraq, left Detroit last winter for a post as a civilian linguist with the Strykers. It's not a position the Kurdish engineer would have sought - had he a choice. He has a decade of experience wiring auto production lines. He never imagined he'd be chasing paychecks once again in Iraq, a country he fled in 1992 and reentered at high risk.
"It's bad if anyone recognizes me," said Joe.
More than anything, he hates the separation from his wife and young family.
Like many of the contractors who keep this American war machine running, Joe took the job for the money. After the wheels came off the U.S. auto industry, he spent months looking for work, draining savings, before taking the one offer on the table for a man willing to set fears aside, a man willing to do what he must for family.
Following his first contract as an interpreter, Joe flew home and took his kids to Disneyland.
"What good is the money," he said, "unless you spend it on them?"
Joe recently signed on again as a brigade translator. He brought with him the seeds for the grass so prized by the warrior.
Lonely guys in a war zone, watching grass grow, counting down the days.
O'Donoghue teaches journalism at University of Alaska Fairbanks. This month he and three students are embedded journalists in the 1-25th Stryker Brigade Combat team in Diyala Province, Iraq.
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