Our youngest son, 1st Lt. Michael Johnston, came home recently for a two-week leave from Iraq, where he has served for the past nine months with the 10th Mountain Division.

When he got off the plane in Milwaukee, he appeared as a tall, broad-shouldered Airborne Ranger, betrayed only by his boyish smile. I don't know that I've ever seen anything that looked so good.

Friends have commented to me about how difficult it must be to have a son in a war zone. They're right. It's more difficult than his mother and I ever imagined. I've described it as if I were carrying a couple bricks around all day. I desperately want to set the bricks down from time to time, but I just can't.

But when I saw him emerge from the concourse, I set my bricks down and relaxed. I stopped looking at my watch so much, doing the calculation for Baghdad time, wondering what he's up to. Is he in for the night? Is he on patrol? Is he in danger at that particular moment? For a short two weeks, I knew he'd be safe.

I don't expect any sympathy for my anxiety. Michael is a volunteer, and we supported his decision to serve. He is among the best soldiers this country can produce. He believes in the mission and accepts the challenge head on. He's always upbeat, never complaining. He is taking part in something of truly historic significance, doing something that not all 25-year-olds have the courage or sense of selflessness to do. He is mature beyond his years.

He knows the "snapping" sound an AK-47 round makes as it breaks the sound barrier when it passes over your head. His patrol has been hit a dozen times by improvised explosive devices (IEDs). When they realize nobody is injured, they force a brief laugh just to break the tension. And then they move on.

As we drove down Four Mile Road one day last week, he noticed that someone had set a trash bag out for pickup at the end of their driveway. He joked that if he were back in Iraq he'd be telling me to slow down so he could check out the bag with his binoculars, looking for some tell-tale sign of an explosive device. I reassured him that around here those bags usually just have garbage in them.

Thanks to his pocket-size digital camera and his laptop computer, he was able to give us a guided tour of his surroundings in Yusufiyah. The old abandoned potato processing plant that now serves as his home looks pretty bleak to me. But the guys in his company have fixed it up the best they can, and he says, "It could be worse." Many of the photos reveal concrete block huts, trash strewn streets, and people with a look of despair.

He sees irony in the fact that if U.S. forces pull out, the Sunnis risk being slaughtered by the Shiites. Yet most of the attacks on Americans in his area are perpetrated by Sunnis even though their survival may depend on continued American presence. Everything is complicated in Iraq. Nothing is easy.

We spent a family weekend in Chicago. As we walked down Michigan Avenue to dinner one evening, he said in the weeks leading up to his leave he could hardly wait for it to arrive. Then when he got here, he had this gnawing sense inside him that he should be back in Iraq. He was worried about his guys. The notion of a Band of Brothers applies to all wars, I guess. His medic promised to e-mail him if there was any bad news to report.

Mike has learned a lot about how to be innovative. A homemade device called a "rat claw" can be used to rip the door off an overturned Humvee, allowing a quick extraction of the occupants. A couple of raw eggs poured in a leaking radiator can seal it up well enough to get back to base. Leftover construction material can be quickly converted into soccer goals for Iraqi kids who were using a small pile of rocks to mark their goals.

Several members of his brigade have lost their lives since they arrived last August at their dusty patrol base southwest of Baghdad, in an area known as the "Triangle of Death." One member of his platoon was killed by a sniper last fall. His Iraqi interpreter was killed by an IED on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Mike helped place him in a body bag and carried him to the morgue, wondering if anyone would claim him. Interpreters usually don't tell their families where they are, or that they're working for the Americans.

He wants the mission to succeed because he doesn't want so many of his fellow soldiers to have died in a lost cause. He thinks his brigade has done some good in their area.

Yet they all share a concern for the long-term outlook. His original July departure date now looks like October. And unless things change, a return trip in late 2008 is likely. It strikes me as a heavy burden we place on so few.

I asked him if he was bothered much by all the political discussion back home about the merits of continued U.S. involvement in Iraq. He said he's too busy to think about it much. But he did offer that it's part of what makes this country worth fighting for: Everybody gets to have their opinion.

Mike's leave passed by like the blink of an eye. He spent time with his fiancee, hugged all the relatives, and passed on his insights and experiences to inquisitive uncles.

He got back on the plane in Milwaukee to rejoin his platoon in the dust and heat southwest of Baghdad. We all shed a few tears as he headed down the concourse and disappeared into the crowd of vacationers and business travelers, none of whom probably spent much time that day thinking about Iraq.

Me, I picked up my bricks again and headed home.

Editor's note

Richard Johnston, publisher of The Pantagraph, wrote the following column a year ago, when he was publisher at the Racine (Wis.) Journal Times. Since then, his son has returned to the States, has married and is completing his final year as an Army captain at Fort Benning, Ga. But the thoughts of parents of soldiers who serve are the same today - July 4, the day we celebrate our country's freedoms and those who fight for it.