THE 16th ENGINEERS
Some of our guys...based in Giessen. Read it all to find out how the soldiers reacted to the extension.

When Lt. Col. John Kem, the battalion commander, got the word April 9, he immediately called all the soldiers in the unit into formation and spoke to them.

"There were a few hysterics, a few tears," recalled Kem, who graduated from Langley High School in McLean in 1981 and whose father is director of public works for Arlington County. He told them to take a day to wallow in their unhappiness and then to put it behind them.

"They told us, 'Whine today, and go to sleep tonight, and when you wake up, it's over,' " recalled Staff Sgt. Sean Long, 30, a communications specialist.

Pfc. Erik Ward, 20, of Chicago, said his buddies rolled with the news because of Kem's forthright approach. "Our leadership has been real honest about it," he said. "The colonel told us he was disappointed," just as they were, he recalled.

On this small island at the northern end of Baghdad, which contains a rusting roller coaster and other ruins of an amusement park, Spec. Whitney Eargle, a bridge-laying specialist from Greenville, S.C., stood on sentry duty at dusk, watching for intruders along the river's reedy banks, especially for the nightly visitors he calls "the mortar idiots."

"The truth is, you can be mad about it, you can let it get you down -- but you're still going to be here," he said with a shrug.