Kansas City, Mo. ? Army Sgt. Donald Walters was looking forward to the start of the war in Iraq, his wife says, because “the sooner this war got started, the sooner he could come home and see his family.”

That was the message Walters relayed to his wife of nine months, Stacie, in their last conversation.

Stacie Walters learned from officials late Sunday night her husband, an Oregon native she met here two years ago, is among the 12 U.S. soldiers missing from the Army’s 507th Maintenance Division, which military officials have said was ambushed by Iraqi forces on Sunday near An Nasiriyah.

Walters, 33, is based in Texas at Fort Bliss, but Stacie Walters is now waiting for news at her parent’s home in Kansas City. The couple has a 9-month-old daughter, Amber.

“There’s so much running through my head,” Stacie Walters, 27, told The Kansas City Star on Tuesday, “but my hopes are up and in a couple of days I’m going to get the phone call that he’s coming back.”

Donald Walters grew up in Oregon and joined the Army after he graduated from a Salem, Ore., high school in 1988. He served in the first Gulf War guarding captured Iraqi soldiers, his family said.

“He came back pretty traumatized from that experience,” said his sister, Kimberly Cieslak, of Salem. “He told us he had to see way too many dead people, and the children were the worst part.”

After getting out of the Army, he spent much of the past decade in the Kansas City area. He served in an Army Reserve unit based in Independence, Mo. from May 1996 to July 2002, said John Travers, chief warrant officer with the reserve’s 325th Field Hospital.

Walters also entered Kansas City’s police officer training program Jan. 11, 1999, but resigned from training that spring and took a civilian job as a detention-facility officer, said Cindy Craven, a department personnel records supervisor. He remained there until March 2, 2001.

After returning to active duty, Walters was deployed Feb. 17 to Kuwait, his family said. Stacie returned to Kansas City to stay with her parents after her husband left for the war, Cieslak said.

Walters was serving most recently as a cook, but was reassigned to a unit that trucked water and supplies to the front-line troops, Cieslak said.

Arlene Walters, Donald’s mother, said she watched the news of the ambush on the 507th unfold on television.

“I’m afraid he’s one of those, the rest of them. They keep showing some that are shot,” she said. “I’m really hoping he could have got away.”

Stacie Walters remains positive. Her church, Winnwood Baptist, has placed her husband on its prayer list.

“He’s probably hiding right now,” Stacie Walters told The Star, “just waiting for his chance to pop his head up when he knows it’s safe.”