POLAND – On Iraq’s biggest road – the six-lane highway between Baghdad and Kuwait City – the border is marked with fences, walls, guard towers and deep ditches. For U.S. soldiers occupying Iraq, it’s the gateway home.

“When we rode through on the bus, there were horns and hollers,” said Staff Sgt. Bruce Morris, a 32-year-old father and husband from Poland.

The soldiers had spent almost a year together in the desert, often rebuilding the road that would take them home.

“We looked at each other,” Morris said. “We knew we’d made it out.”

On June 11, exactly 13 months after he left home, Morris arrived at the Bangor Air National Guard Base along with 26 other Mainers, all members of the 133rd Engineer Battalion of the Maine Army National Guard.

Twenty-seven left. Twenty-seven returned. In the early days of the war, each had volunteered for duty in Iraq.

Morris, who joined the guard during the buildup to the first Gulf War, felt obligated. He had served for 13 years and trained for a job, driving and maintaining heavy machinery. If he were needed, he would go.

“Why should I sit here and keep watching it on the news?” he said.

One day, when a guard clerk asked him questions from a survey – fishing for men and women who would volunteer – he said yes.

“I felt in my heart that we were going to go, one way or another,” he said. He didn’t even ask his wife, Alicia. He didn’t need to.

“I knew he wanted to go,” she said. She backed his decision to leave. “But it was harder than I ever dreamed.”

On May 11, 2003, Morris left. First, he went to Georgia. On June 1, he arrived in Kuwait where his first impression was of unimaginable heat.

The plane touched down at 9:45 p.m. The temperature was 99 degrees. The furnace-blast heat struck him as he walked out of the aircraft.

“It was hot, red hot,” he said. “I thought, What am I doing here?'”

For nearly a month, the unit stayed in Kuwait waiting for equipment to arrive and acclimating to the desert.

The first thing he learned was almost nonstop hydration. Water bottled in Saudi Arabia was supplied to the troops in 1.5-liter bottles. Morris would go through one or two per hour, every hour.

“If you were doing anything at all, you dried up,” he said.

It would grow worse in Iraq. That summer, reports would surface among the media of temperatures hitting 160 degrees.

Morris felt it. It’s impossible to describe, he said.

“Turn your oven up to 160 degrees,” he said. “Wait until the light goes off. Then, open the door and feel inside. It’s just like that.”

The heat made everything more difficult. Anything metal left outside would become impossible to touch without gloves. Engines needed light mixtures of oil to work.

Trucks and guns

The unit was sent to Talil Air Base, about eight miles outside the southern city of Nasiriya. It would be Morris’ home.

His battalion worked as road builders, most often fixing portions of the Baghdad-to-Kuwait highway. Each morning, the drivers, mechanics and others who made up the road crews would gather for a briefing, as though preparing for a combat mission. They would discuss their route to the work site, sometimes 75 miles away, the operation of their radios, safety concerns and what might have been learned during the night about the enemy.

They would hear about attacks on U.S. convoys, of uprisings and casualties.

It was a surreal change for Morris, who works on road crews in his civilian life. He drives a truck for the Maine Department of Transportation. In some ways, his work there was the same as it is here, only with guns.

“That’s real time going on,” Morris said. “There are real bullets. There are real explosions.”

Sometimes, they would hear gunfire at night. “I’ve heard the mortars go over,” he said

Whenever the crews left the base, they were on edge.

“You never know when a rocket-propelled grenade is going to poke out the back of a truck and shoot at you,” he said.

It never happened to him. He worked to stick to his routine, in which he found order and hope. Regular hours meant time to relax in his air-conditioned tent, which he shared with 10 men. He might read or watch a movie. It would be nothing special, just something to take his mind off that place.

And sometimes, he would call home. Calls lasted only a few minutes, due to the cost. He’d talk with Alicia and Allison, his 10-year-old daughter.

Holidays were especially tough. “I’m basically a family man,” Morris said.

Catching Saddam

One of the better days was when soldiers captured Saddam Hussein.

Whispers began circulating among the men. At first, Morris didn’t believe it since tall tales had a way of circulating.

“The American military is run on rumors,” he said.

He didn’t believe it until he saw the pictures on a recreation tent TV, where CNN or Fox News always played.

“There he was,” he said. “It was real. And we got him.”

Morale blossomed.

“We thought it was going to get better,” he said, even though experts suggested that the fighting might get worse.

It did.

On April 20, a man from Morris’ home unit in Maine, Spc. Christopher D. Gelineau, died in an explosion outside Mosul. Three other men were hurt in the blast.

“When I heard that, I was devastated,” said Morris. To know that someone from Maine – someone from his own unit – had died, shook him. It reminded him of the jeopardy he faced.

Yet, Morris has little anger for the Iraqis.

Few people in the United States know that many Iraqis are working on U.S. bases there, often in service roles. They work in the kitchens and laundries. They also work on the reconstruction effort alongside the soldiers, rebuilding and renovating.

“They just want to live,” Morris said. “They’re as curious about us as much as we’re curious about them.”

He believes they want a secure place to call home, without fear.

It’s a concept that Morris has a special appreciation for, given his time away. He plans to return to work on Maine roads in August. Until then, he’ll be with his family.

Sitting on a lawn chair on a sunny afternoon – with his wife and daughter nearby – he says he needs little else.

He didn’t crave certain foods or luxuries while away. The night he returned, about a dozen relatives gathered at his home. They ate and talked.

“Just sitting around with the family was all I wanted,” he said. “Everything that makes my life so good was here.”

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