In Colorado Springs, the metro area of 550,000 holds its breath each time a Fort Carson unit is sent to Iraq. Since fighting began, 190 Fort Carson GIs have been killed. It's a city that embraces soldiers with respect - and prays they come home safe.

COLORADO SPRINGS - No city in Colorado has been closer to the war than this one.

Since the fighting in Iraq began four years ago, on March 19, 2003, Colorado Springs has shouldered the burden more than any community in the state.

Most of Fort Carson's 18,000 soldiers have gone out the gates for Iraq at least once. Many have gone twice, and some of the post's Special Forces have gone up to six times.

The Air Force is a major presence, with NORAD, the Air Force Academy and other space operations. But this is more than ever an Army town, and everybody here knows the troops on the ground are doing the heavy lifting in Iraq.

The rhythm of daily life goes on, but when a unit leaves, the city watches and waits with their families, and it grieves with them when tragedy strikes, as it has relentlessly.

Fort Carson has lost 190 soldiers in Iraq. Of the 45 other Coloradans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, 10 were from the Colorado Springs area.

Colorado Springs was a small resort town of about 50,000 when the Army arrived during World War II and built Camp Carson. Then, there were more soldiers than residents.

Now the city and surrounding suburbs of El Paso County have grown to more than 550,000, the most populous county in the state, its economy and lifestyles dramatically diversified.

But the Army remains.

In restaurants and shopping centers around the city, men and women in gray-green Army combat uniforms are commonplace. And those wearing them are accorded a quietly acknowledged respect for the job they are doing.

It is a good fit in a city and county that has always considered itself deeply patriotic and overwhelmingly conservative. Republicans outnumber Democrats more than 2-to-1, and haven't lost the 5th Congressional District seat since its creation in 1972.

Veterans and civic groups step up to help Army families during deployments. Businesses and individuals give money, time and labor to help with household or personal emergencies. In schools and workplaces, there is a sensitivity for the children and spouses who are living with the daily uncertainty of a loved one gone to fight the war.

The city is larger, but it still embraces its soldiers. Its roots and the Army's are, after more than 65 years, intertwined.

Whether through family, church, school or business, the people who populate this community are closely connected to the soldiers who are fighting the war.

These are some of their stories:

View from B Street

Ken Vegoren, 64, served 32 years in the Army, including duty in Vietnam and Desert Storm, before retiring as a command sergeant major from Fort Carson in 1991.

Four years later he and his partner, Connie Kelly, bought the Trophy Shop on B Street outside the Fort Carson gate. A good deal of their business comes from the Army post, and his shop also serves as a kind of country store for soldiers seeking the perspective of an old "top kick."

"I'm a true believer in democracy, and somebody has to do the job, and I think that's our job," Vegoren said of Iraq with a sergeant's directness.

The war has grown longer, costlier and more complex than many had anticipated, but Vegoren is not surprised.

"I was in Vietnam, and I knew that when we got started over there (in Iraq) that it was going to take awhile," he said.

His friends include many Fort Carson soldiers who have gone to Iraq, and some who are there now.

"One kid that just left here, Joe, is a Special Forces soldier. This is his sixth time," he said.

"A young captain (David Rozelle) who lost a leg over there, and they let him stay in, he's one of our customers. He's a great kid," he said.

Vegoren harbors no illusion that war isn't costly to those who fight it. He's sensed the change around Fort Carson.

"War hardens soldiers," he said. "It causes family problems. They have a totally different attitude or feeling toward other people. Some of it is mistrust, some apprehension."

They are guarded toward strangers, he said, but not to him.

"They know that I know where they've been. There's a lot of them come in here and pour their hearts out," he said.

Vegoren follows Fort Carson's deployments closely.

"We worry about them and pray for them," he said.

But he is critical of leaders who propose leaving Iraq.

"I do not believe politicians should have anything to do with military tactics," he said. "They don't know it, and they make dumb decisions. They did in Desert Storm, they did in Vietnam and they're doing it today."

Preaching peace

Jim White, 69, a former Army chaplain, is the retired senior pastor of the First Congregational Church in Colorado Springs and part of a small but determined peace community in the city.

As a chaplain, White discovered early that his primary loyalty was to peace, not the Army. After leaving active duty, he marched against the Vietnam War while still a reservist in 1964. He prizes a letter from the Army criticizing his protest.

"It was from the chief of chaplains saying that I was an embarrassment to the military establishment," White said.

His opposition to the Iraq war began before it started. He helped organize a rally of more than 4,000 in Colorado Springs a month before the 2003 invasion.

"That was four years ago," he said of the war's start, "and we've observed it one way or another ever since."

This year is no exception.

Talks, a rally and a vigil are planned this weekend across Colorado Springs.

White does not attach evil or deceitful motives to the architects of the war, but he believes it was a grave mistake.

"A lot of people think it was for oil or to get rid of weapons of mass destruction or whatever it may be," White said.

"I think our president and the leadership was truly convinced that they could transport democracy across the way. They were operating out of wonderful motives, that America's democracy and freedom ought to go to the world, and they were just wrong."

He keeps handy this quotation: "We have come to bring democracy to Baghdad." It is not from President Bush or one of his staff but from a British general in 1919.

While White opposes the war, he understands the sacrifice of those fighting it.

"Bless their hearts," he said. "That's their profession. I was a soldier once, too."

Every week since the war began, peace demonstrators have stood with banners outside Peterson Air Force Base and in downtown Colorado Springs.

They have seen a noticeable change in sentiment, says White.

"More people than ever before who go in and out of the gates give them a thumbs up or honk their horns," he said.

"There's just more positive response now. The climate has changed in the Springs, as it has in the whole nation."

Difficult departure

It is hard enough for a spouse or a parent to watch their partner or their child go off to war. Imagine a child's thoughts watching her mother or father leave.

Briana Leathers, a 16-year- old junior at Widefield High School, watched her father, Maj. Robert Leathers, leave twice - once to Iraq for a year, and before that, to Kuwait for six months.

Briana, the oldest of three girls, became a right-hand to her mother, "sort of acting like a second parent," while remaining a big sister to Sarah, 14, and Rachel, 12.

"It was hard not having my dad home with us because he's had such an important role in our lives. He's always been there," Briana said.

"When he left, it was hard. My entire family was crying horribly. We were scared that he wouldn't come back because he was right in the middle of a war," she said. "There are terrorists everywhere and snipers everywhere looking in their scopes for anyone to take their lives if they can."

Her father told them the story of a man who had stopped to take a drink of water. "He took a drink and right there, a sniper took his life," she said.

Such are the daily thoughts that ebb on the good days and rise on the bad among the 31,000 children and spouses of Fort Carson's soldiers.

At Widefield High School, about one-fourth of the students are from Army families. There and at other schools around Fort Carson, those from non-Army families are mindful of those who are, Briana says.

"They're never unsupportive. Even if they don't agree with the war in Iraq, they tend to watch their words. It's just a certain respect the students have for each other."

Briana's has many friends outside of Army life.

Sometimes, though, there are feelings that only another Army kid will understand.

"There have been a couple of people here who have really needed to vent about their parents. Sometimes they just want to cry, but they don't know how because they want to be strong for their other parent or their brothers and sisters. The kids are sad, the mom is sad. It's just infectious."

Maj. Leathers, an Army chaplain, came home last October after a year in Iraq with Fort Carson's 10th Combat Support Hospital. He is scheduled for reassignment to the Army's Aberdeen Proving Grounds near Baltimore.

For the time being in the Leathers household, there is a respite from the war.

Pawnshop view of war

From behind the pawnshop counter outside Fort Carson's B Street gate, Dave Leuty, 57, has seen it all, or at least a lot of it.

He remembers one man giving him the keys to a late-model Camaro for enough money to buy a bus ticket out of town. A pawnbroker is kind of like a bartender, he says. Remnants of personal lives come across his counter for cash. Most of the time he doesn't ask why.

But Leuty is also a retired master sergeant who served 24 years in the Army, and many who come to his shop are soldiers who sense in him a friend and confidant.

In four years of war, he has seen the soldiers change.

"It's tough. It's hurt a lot of people," he said. "We've got over 3,000 dead, but we have three times that many injured, de-limbed, broken. That's a tough situation."

The war has taken its toll on those who have lived in it, seen casualties, and lost friends, he said.

"The first time they came back, they seemed very free-wheeling. They had some extra money and were willing to spend it," he said. "Now they're coming back in a different frame of mind. When you see more casualties you get more serious. It drains on you."

Many just home from war are also faced with divorce and other family problems, he said.

"A lot of guys didn't have a family when they got back. The wife was wanting a divorce, and the guy was not at fault, other than the fact that he was in the military."

Leuty is surprised that the war has gone on for so long.

"I expected a quick finish (to the fighting) and our role would be kind of supervisory, like in Korea."

The soldier in him envisions chaos in Iraq without the U.S. troops there.

"I don't know what you do. I wish we could stop it right now," he said. "I'd like to see it over and we get our people home. But I don't want it to be a free-for-all either."

'Here to help families'

Jeff Dahlberg, 53, is a successful private investor who moved to Colorado Springs from Minnesota six years ago.

He didn't serve in the military but has watched Fort Carson's soldiers coming and going since the war began. He watched their families face challenges, and saw a small group of volunteers step up in April 2003 to form an organization called The Home Front Cares to provide Fort Carson's deployed military families with help.

When the group's founders, Bob Carlone and Joe Henjum, two Vietnam vets, and their longtime friend Vicki Kounk stepped down 1 1/2 years ago, Dahlberg offered to lead the organization.

"We've had tremendous support. The community has been very generous," Dahlberg said of donations that have poured in from local companies, defense contractors and individuals.

Last year, they reached $400,000, and The Home Front Cares spent more than $300,000 to help families with anything from a broken furnace to airplane tickets for family members to reach a wounded soldier.

Its 40 volunteers receive requests for help, most often from Fort Carson's Army Community Services office, which sometimes can't help a family as quickly because of bureaucratic hurdles.

"We'll be the safety net when all else fails and the Army programs just don't have what they need. We can't help everybody, but we try to help as many as possible," Dahlberg said.

"Typically it's the husband that's deployed, and the families just run into living problems on the pay that they have and the deployment and all the other issues that they have."

The funds help people pay utility bills, make car and home repairs, pay the rent and meet other short-term emergencies. They pay for transporting family members to Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington. D.C., if their soldier is wounded.

A new program is modifying houses and vehicles for soldiers who have lost an arm or a leg.

Private businesses sometimes do free repairs.

The needs of families have increased as the war has grown longer and casualties have mounted, Dahlberg said.

"We are an apolitical organization and we don't advocate one way or another on the war," he said. "We are here to help families.

"But almost anyone will tell you that this has been harder on everybody than anyone expected."

El Paso County

• Population    550,000

• Active duty military    32,000

• Career military retirees    24,000

• Military retiree dependents    40,000

• Veterans    73,000

VOTER REGISTRATION

• Republican    150,926

• Democratic    65,966

• Unaffiliated    100,376

RACE*

• White    81%

• Black    6%

• American Indian    1%

• Asian    3%

• Hispanic    13%

• Other    5%*Total Exceeds 100 Because Hispanics Can Be Of Any Race And Some Residents Are Multirace.

fosterd@RockyMountainNews.com or 719-633-4442

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