'With the Heaviest of Hearts'

Gifford teamed up with Fennerty in the search, and Linck (whose family could not be reached by NEWSWEEK) joined later. A 27-year-old staff sergeant and the son of a preacher, Gifford graduated from Harding University, a Christian liberal-arts school in Arkansas, in 2003, then moved back in with his parents in Redding, Calif. He decided to enlist after watching the beheading of Nicholas Berg, an American businessman who had been kidnapped in Iraq. "We were both just totally aghast," says Gifford's mother, Marsha. "My older son was serving in the Marines, so we were glued to the television, and when this came on, Micah got angry." The beheading took place in May 2004. Gifford was in boot camp by August.

He wrote few letters from Iraq. In one from Kuwait dated Oct. 21, 2006, Gifford described the routine to his girlfriend, Niki Milano. "As for the things I can talk about that you may or may not want to know ... the camp here is pretty chill. We train every once in a while and the squad leaders try to keep us busy in a good way. Sgt. always ends up asking me what I think we need to work on and I am flattered that he thinks to ask me, but at the same time a little disheartened at the fact that he needs to ask me. Also, the guys get pissy when they have a choice to train or sleep and I come up with something that we need to train on. Then they get mad at me for being the reason they are training and not sleeping."

Later, Gifford tells Niki how soldiers in his unit pass the time: "Reading, playing PSP, watching episodes of House M.D., the Simpsons, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, playing nerdy PC games linked to each others laptops, playing with I-tunes and wandering around aimlessly, doing crossword puzzles and su-dork-u's ... When someone comes up with training that disturbs those things, everyone gets peeved and grumbles all the way through whatever training we do."

After Gifford and Linck were killed Dec. 7, 2006, officers from the base in Anchorage entered the apartment and packed up the belongings of two of the roommates. "They tried to determine what belonged to each of them," Marsha Gifford says. Her son's things arrived to Redding in a box, among them a yellowed copy he'd kept of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper announcing the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Weeks later, officers entered the apartment again to pack Fennerty's belongings. His family received clothes and books, Fennerty's drivers license and a journal he kept before his deployment to Iraq.

In his last e-mail home, dated Jan 5, 2007—15 days before he was killed—Fennerty wrote about being moved out of Baghdad to "topsecretsville, Iraq." "It starts with F and looks a lot like hallelujah," he wrote from Fallujah. "Where I was earlier was like kindergarten and barney compared to this place. No running water, showers, hot chow, phones or Internet ... But the biggest difference is the people friegen HATE us here. I guess it goes with the territory ... Anyway, happy new year to all and take care of yourselves, as I will.

"GO BEAVERS."

© 2007