Kurt Warner leading the Cardinals to a Week 1 win over the 49ers went a long way in keeping Sgt. Mike McGuire's morale up. Peter Read Miller/SI

One of those boys turned men was Allan Bevington, a 22-year-old soldier from Beaver Falls, Pa., who worked his way up to the rank of sergeant. He and McGuire were the leaders of the group that patrolled for IEDs. "Sgt. Bevington was by far the bravest guy I ever served with,'' McGuire said.

Bravery, as you'll come to understand, is a crucial trait in McGuire's job.

"We didn't have the high-tech robotics,'' he said. "We'd just go out on the streets. Sometimes we'd get reports from our eye-in-the-sky to go clear a certain area, they'd spotted something and we had to check it out. We'd go to the area. Was there dirt overturned recently? Was there a soda can sitting there in an area where it shouldn't be? Was there a rock or two out of place? Was there a wire visible? You see the signs, and you figure maybe there's something there.

"There were a couple of ways for the IEDs to go off. Sometimes there'd be a guy with binoculars, 1,000 or 2,000 meters away, a guy we couldn't see. But if he'd see somebody looking around for an IED, he'd activate the bomb and it'd go off. Or they had things called 'pressure switches,' and if you stepped on one of those, it'd usually activate the bomb.

"One of the amazing things about it was, let's say we'd find four IEDs one day and dismantle all of them, either by cutting the wires or by shooting at it to set it off. We'd clear the road, and the next day -- eight, 12 hours later -- we'd go back, and the bombs would be put back, right in the same spot. You could never relax. It was like they were saying, 'You can dismantle all the bombs you want. But we're not going away.' It is never-ending. You will never find all of the bombs.

"One day in September, a captain came to us and said, 'Hey, can you go clear this road? We know there's some activity on it.' He drew us a map on a napkin. This road was off a main road, maybe 400 meters off a highway. So our platoon goes there in two Humvees, and then we went on foot, looking for the devices. Is there dirt overturned, or some footprints?

Sgt. Bevington actually walks over a pressure switch, and I carefully pick it up and say, 'Hey! Look what you stepped over!' A second later, there's a huge explosion. Me and my squad leader get blown about 15 feet away. My ears are ringing like mad, smoke everywhere, my gunman on top of the Humvee stars firing rounds everywhere. I look over and see one of my men, Private Ragusci, floating upside down in a canal. We yell to get him out. Private Huerta got major facial wounds all up and down one side of his face. And I look over and there's Sergeant Bevington laying there. We're like, 'Get up! Get up!' But one of the men said, 'Sorry, Mac. He's gone.'

"Now Ragusci comes walking up the hill toward the Humvee and his arm, it looks like you stuck a firecracker in a cantaloupe. But we get him and Huerta in the Humvee, we've got a doc with us, and we head for the hospital. That 15-minute ride felt like two hours. Plus, we hadn't secured the road, so who knows if we're going to get hit again.''

Bevington died. Ragusci, after many surgeries and skin grafts, had his arm saved. Huerta lost an eye. Ragusci will be back for another tour. Huerta isn't medically allowed to.

"What a great man Bevington was,'' McGuire said. "Fearless. I still think about him all the time. They did a real nice story on him in his hometown paper back in Pittsburgh. I'll email it to you. Ragusci, he wanted to come back. It's his life. It's interesting. Some of the guys who are getting out and not coming back, they say to me, 'Sergeant, do you think less of me because I'm getting out?' And I say, 'No, you've done your duty. Be proud of serving your country.'

"It's fantastic being home, especially for Christmas. But it can be tough too. Pam says, 'Come to bed,' and I can't sleep. Maybe I get two hours a night. After what I saw, it can make you not sleep. I can't explain it very well, but it just is hard. And then my ear gives me some trouble. But I'm one of the lucky ones, believe me. I've got it great.''

I wondered about the importance of the NFL to McGuire and his men, because in most of his emails to me over the last year, he's talked about how much football he saw and what he knew about the NFL. It was plenty.

"Well, we lived in the desert, literally,'' he said. "We had nothing. And most us looked forward, once a week, to piling into a building on the base with one TV, 200 or 400 of us, and watching the NFL. The games would come on, two of them, at 10 at night. So you'd get off your shift at maybe 8 o'clock and go right over there to try to get a seat. It was my constant escape from reality, and you need it over there, believe me. Reality's not so great. Some of the guys are in fantasy leagues, and I love that, but our time on the computer was so limited that we really didn't have time to do that. So it was the games. All week, you'd count down your time to the NFL games. It was the highlight of our week.

"You'd get over there to the TV, and you'd start arguing which game they'd put on. It got pretty crazy in there. There were so many Steeler fans. You'd be in there and they'd go nuts for the Steelers, especially early in the season. Then they went into their unfortunate spell and the Steeler fans kind of stopped showing up, they were so depressed about it. But the highlight for me was seeing my hero, Kurt Warner, beat the 49ers in the first game of the season. I lived off that game for a long time.''

Warner sent McGuire a mini-helmet, inscribed: "To Mike, Thanks for all you do. God bless you, Kurt Warner.'' He keeps it on a shelf, right next to his bed.

"You have no idea how awesome it is to realize that Kurt Warner knows who I am,'' he said.

After a while, the platoon began counting down the days to go home by the NFL calendar. "Our tour was over in Week Seven,'' McGuire said. "Just like we'd count down the weeks 'til 10 o'clock Sundays, we counted down the time to go home by figuring how many more weeks 'til Week Seven of the season. The NFL is so important to the guys over there, and lots of teams sent stuff to our guys. The Dolphins sent us hats. The Titans sent stuff to another unit.''

Two Sundays ago, McGuire curled up on his couch in Baumholder, doing what so many of us do on Sundays: watching the NFL. Only for him, it began at 7 p.m., not 1 p.m. or 10 a.m., depending where you live in the U.S. Cleveland and Baltimore were on TV, and he sat there with 8-year-old Riley curled up on him. She didn't care much about the game, but she did care about being with him.

"Daddy,'' Riley said out of nowhere, "I'm glad you didn't die in the war.'' And she raised her head up and kissed her father.

It took McGuire a few seconds to speak after that.

"Christmas,'' he said. "I'm just thankful I'm here.''