Arkansas City ? It was tough for Darci Hedrick when her husband was deployed to Iraq on her 20th birthday, but some newscasts are even harder for her to take.

A bulletin about three Marines killed in a helicopter crash in southern Iraq was particularly nerve-racking.

Her husband, Max, is an Army specialist in the 82nd Airborne Division, the same one listed in the helicopter crash.

“It scares me, and I will stay glued to the TV until I’m sure it’s Army or Marines,” Hedrick said.

Two weeks after the crash, Hedrick finally got definite word that her husband was safe in a phone call from the wife of the unit’s captain.

“He called me and said they are completely safe,” Hedrick said. “He said they were sitting out in the desert playing video games and waiting to carry out their mission.”

Hedrick said it was difficult not hearing from her husband and not even knowing where he is stationed. Before the crash, Hedrick thought her husband’s unit was in Afghanistan. Now, she thinks he is in Iraq, but it is possible the unit was split between Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hedrick and her husband had been living off base in Fayetteville, N.C., and she had returned to Kansas a few days before he was called for deployment.

Her phone rang at 2:30 a.m. on March 17, her 20th birthday.

Dodge City Parks and Recreation employee Mike Hovey hangs yellow ribbons in the Mayor's Christmas Tree to honor troops serving in Iraq. Each ribbon Hovey placed Wednesday had the name of a local resident serving in the military.

“That was some birthday present,” Hedrick said.

The Hedricks have been married for a year and a half and have a 7-month-old daughter.

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Parsons — Vietnam War veteran Charles Wells knows to expect the unexpected when it comes to combat. He just hopes his son, Jonathan, stays prepared for anything Iraq might send at him and other U.S. troops.

Wells said that none of the events of the war so far were terribly surprising, but he was concerned about nontraditional tactics including suicide bombings and soldiers dressed as civilians.

Wells’ son, Pfc. Jonathan Wells, left Feb. 25 with the Army’s HHB 214th Field Artillery Division, which is operating inside Iraq.

“You just hope your loved one stays safe and out of harm’s way,” Wells said. “Jonathan said the few contacts they have had so far have been with civilians who are unbelievably poor. He said little kids will come up to them and offer their shoes for food, and they will see them digging through the trash for something to eat and they will try to give them something.

“It concerns me, though, about who is really a civilian. It’s scary.”

Wells said his 24-year-old son used computer equipment mounted on a Humvee to program coordinates for combat missions and missile launching systems and also does computer maintenance.

“He’s not on the front lines, but he’s not on the back lines,” Charles Wells said. “He’s right in the middle. We hope he doesn’t see any action, but you never know.”

Charles last heard from his son about 15 days ago.

“He was talking about himself, not the war. He knows what Mom wants to hear,” Merrilee Wells said. “The one thing he said that I really liked is that when he first went into this war, he went because it was his job. Now that they are over there and they see the way the people live, he said we really need to be there. He said, ‘It’s not just politics. It’s people.”‘