Petty Officer 3rd Class Jonathan Hutto has criticized the war in Iraq on "60 Minutes," in speeches, and in a soon-to-be-published book. But he seems a bit puzzled when asked whether that has complicated his relationships with shipmates aboard the Norfolk-based aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, where he serves as a mass communications specialist.

Lt. Chris Asper, 40, a Seabee based at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base, deployed to Al Kut, Iraq, in July 2007 as part of the troop surge. Asper and his unit, Amphibious Construction Battalion Two, performed reconstruction projects, including checkpoints, for the Army. They returned Jan. 25. Asper lives in Virginia Beach.

WASHINGTON Six days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, President Bush went to the wounded Pentagon to prepare military leaders for what he said would be "a long campaign."

PORTSMOUTH Even three years later, Capt. Kevin Knoop still vividly remembers the first soldier his trauma team couldn't save. He was an Army guy. Sniper wound, below his Kevlar vest. No heartbeat. In the operating room of the makeshift hospital at Al Taqaddum, Iraq, Knoop recalls, the surgical shock trauma platoon got the man's heart pumping on its own. But the pulse soon faded.

NORFOLK Jon Bartlett is finally learning how to run again. Bartlett was a 19-year-old private first class when his Humvee hit a roadside bomb in September 2004 in Iraq. The blast tossed the vehicle hundreds of feet, turning it into a mess of shredded steel.

Staff Sgt. William A. Rossin, 53, earned a Purple Heart for wounds he suffered in Iraq. His Virginia National Guard unit lost two men when a suicide bomber leveled a dining hall in Mosul in December 2004, killing 22 soldiers.

NORFOLK Boys sitting around a table at Sewells Point Elementary School discuss having a parent overseas helping the war effort. "It's kind of hard, because you don't see them every morning," says 11-year-old Casey Connor, whose mother is leaving next month for a year in Bahrain.

Karie Darga sent a husband to war, grieved over his death and is now making slow, steady progress in creating a memorial to military spouses and families. The idea was hatched last April, on a car ride back from a Florida memorial service honoring her husband, Chief Petty Officer Paul J. Darga, 34. He was killed by a homemade bomb in August 2006, leaving behind her and their daughter, then 2.

Jon Thompson, former fleet master chief of U.S. Fleet Forces Command, is president and CEO of the USO of Hampton Roads.

Angela Bievre of Virginia Beach lost her husband, Army Staff Sgt. Mario Bievre, on June 23, 2006, when a homemade bomb exploded near his Humvee in Baghdad. Just three months earlier, while he was home on leave, the couple had celebrated the birth of a daughter, Adrianna. She was 5 days old when her father returned to duty.