NEWTON ? Army Spc. Joseph Cashon can’t help scanning the rooftops in this south-central Kansas town where he grew up. He knows there aren’t any snipers up there. But every time he passes through town, he looks up anyway.

For his fellow soldiers patrolling a densely populated Shiite Muslim neighborhood in Baghdad, he says, checking roof lines “is a way of life. We never let our guard down.”

Cashon, who’s with Fort Riley tank unit, 1st Battalion, 13th Armor, was recently allowed to come home for a two-week vacation from his duties in Iraq. His leave is part of the military’s rest-and-relaxation program, designed to buoy morale.

He said at first he was a little nervous about the reaction he might receive when people in U.S. airports saw him and other soldiers in desert camouflage.

But at the airport in Baltimore, people shook their hands. A woman taking boarding passes insisted they first give her a hug. When they boarded, someone announced that the plane was carrying soldiers bound for home from Iraq. People stood and applauded.

Back home, the 20-year-old soldier is resting his mind and doing many of the things he can’t do in Baghdad.

“I’m going to soak it up,” Cashon says of his vacation.

After lying by himself on a stiff cot, he gets to sleep with his pregnant wife, Krystle, in a comfortable bed. He thinks her pregnancy may be the reason he was picked to come home.

Cashon realizes that a debate still rages over whether soldiers should ever have been sent to Iraq. He wants no part of the debate.

“Most of us,” he said of the soldiers in his unit, “don’t pay attention” to the politics and commentary swirling around U.S. policy in Iraq.

Cashon leaves for Iraq around Oct. 20 and expects to serve there for six months more. He recently re-enlisted for an additional three years. His wife expects to give birth to their son in November.

She dreads the next goodbye. “It will be even harder,” she said. “I want him to stay, but he can’t.”