A cloudy, cool, almost windless day at the major American base north of Baghdad, flight operations going in the background: Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters coming and going, transport planes, jets of various kinds, and in the middle of the sand and the pounding noise and exhaust fumes and occasional indirect fire — mortar attacks — from local insurgents, Delta Company of the 2-147 Assault Helicopter Battalion keeps plugging through the daily routine, which means, basically, keeping a bunch of Blackhawk helicopters in the air.

As the top enlisted man in Delta, Esquivel supervises 98 soldiers whose job it is to keep the battalion's Blackhawk helicopters in the air: everything from drive-train repair to avionics maintenance. Which sounds complicated, and is — though it's also somewhat analogous to what the local Lexus dealer does. They do lots of brake jobs because the Blackhawks often do "roll-on" landings, where they taxi after landing, instead of coming straight down, and the big, brutal gun-metal black machines can really chew on the brake pads. Tires get torn up by rough-country landings, and in Iraq's summer heat, which can get well into the triple digits, the electronics have a hard time.

Winter was a recurring theme with the troops, Minnesota or not. Specialist Comfort Stelzer, 22, of Ellsworth, Wis., Pfc. Scott Swart, 19, of Henderson, and Danielle Petree, 21, of Winlock, Wash., got entangled in a discussion of snowboarding vs. skiing when they were asked about whether they missed winter: They did. A lot.