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If the US invades Iraq who will do the actual fighting? Unlike American soldiers who fought in Vietnam, Korea and WWII, today’s military is composed entirely of volunteers. We have two reports today as part of our week-long series War in Our Time. First WNYC’s Fred Mogul, who discovered that even with advances in training and the development of high tech weapons today’s soldiers still have mixed feelings about going to war.

“Within the last 40 minutes, we’ve had an NBC attack…”

Rebels using chemical weapons have just attacked a convoy of U.S. Army supply trucks. The U.S. soldiers, part of the 10th Mountain Division from Fort Drum, in upstate New York, are at Fort Polk, Louisiana, for three weeks of simulated combat. Miles away, their commander Lt. Col. Dave Dworak monitors the situation from a computer-filled, climate-controlled headquarters tent.

“Estimated time of completion of this particular job is maybe an hour or two…”

Many soldiers here say a possible war with Iraq has added some extra urgency to an already intense exercise. Maneuvers like this prepare soldiers for war – testing their skills, and getting them away from home. Back at Fort Drum, Dworak says, training is very different.

Twenty years ago, when I was a lieutenant, it would not be uncommon for officers and NCOs to stay and work until 8 o’clock at night, 10 o’clock at night, getting everything done for the day and getting ready for the next day. Today we can’t do that. We owe it to our soldiers to give them a family life. For the most part, Monday through Friday, the soldiers are off and they’re with their families, and for the officers and the senior NCOs, I expect them along not too much after that.

About half of active U.S. military personnel are married. That's a 25 percent increase since the all-volunteer military was established thirty years ago. The proportion of women has gone up even more dramatically – from 2 percent in 1973, to 15 percent today. Today’s military is better educated and better paid than ever before. So what do these professional, middle-class, family-oriented soldiers think about the prospect of war in Iraq? Like many soldiers, Master Sgt. John Bennett enlisted for many reasons – to serve his country, to learn skills, to be a leader. The work and camaraderie have convinced him to stay on for 22 years.

Bennet: People know what they’re getting into when they join – they just take it roll-of-the-dice and just hope nothing’ll happen while they’re on their enlistment…and if nothing happens, they might go for another one, try another time. In every one’s mind, they know what the job of the Army is, and they take that chance.

Bennett thinks most people could get something out of military life, even if they don’t stick with it as long as he has.

Bennet: If you find out that it’s not for you, you still leave with something – you’ve learned a trade, being if you’re in the infantry, or computer programmer, whatever -- whether you’re in for two weeks or 30 years, you’ve learned something, and you’ll take something back out with you.

Bennet is working in the headquarters of the 132nd infantry battalion, a dark, somewhat soggy field tent, powered by generators. He and his friend Master Sergeant Patrick James are taking a break from planning the unit’s practice assault on a village where rebel guerillas are holed up. James is an intelligence analyst - his job is to assess the enemy's strengths and weaknesses. James, a community college drop-out, immigrated to Brooklyn from Barbados. He became a U.S. citizen after joining the Army, where he's stayed for 14 years. James likes Army life, but he also likes to make fun of it. The two main drawbacks, he says, are the mediocre salary and the frequent deployments.

James: One day you can be here, and the next day you can be somewhere else at the drop of a dime. That can be nerve-wracking to anybody and the family. So you gotta have a strong base at home. If you don’t have that strong base, the Army could break down a marriage.

Even if the United States goes to war in Iraq, most soldiers at this training exercise say their odds of surviving are pretty good. Compared to the war in Vietnam, the conflicts of the last decade have claimed only a small number of American lives. 1st Sgt. Jeff Keogan is the top non-commissioned officer of the 132nd infantry’s Alpha Company. He jokes that he’d rather be at home coaching his son’s peewee hockey team. But you get the sense that he’s really in his element out here in the woods, preparing soldiers for battle. A veteran of Operation Desert Storm, Keogan says the soldiers he works with have a sense of confidence.

Keogan: …confidence in our weapons systems, confidence in our leaders, confidence on our assets, like close air support, which always helps us out immensely. But invincible? We like to say that, we try to preach that, but soldiers are smarter [than] to know that…

On a wooded hill overlooking Alpha Company’s Staging Area at Fort Polk, Private Roland Mchoes guards a radio transmitter he’ll soon carry into a mock assault. Mchoes joined the Army six months ago to escape the drudgery of Cody, Wyoming, where about the only things he could see himself doing were seasonal construction and flipping burgers. He’s 18-years-old and looking forward to a little excitement.

Mchoes: One of the guys on my team told me that for every one hour of this being cool, there’s a hundred hours of this being stupid and monotonous, but that’s just the way it is.

The famous World War II fighter pilot "Pappy" Boyington described combat flying similarly - "hours and hours of boredom sprinkled with a few seconds of sheer terror." In today’s Army the terror of combat may be tempered by the use of highly sophisticated weapons that put more soldiers in front of computer terminals, and fewer on the front lines. But for soldiers like Roland Mchoes, who may soon have to march into battle, there is a sense of unease about what may be coming.

Mchoes: Everybody’s asking: Are you ready for Iraq? If we go, I’m ready, but I don’t know if I really want to. I don’t know if anyone really wants to go to combat. They may say they do, but I don’t think they do.

For WNYC, this is Fred Mogul, at Fort Polk, Louisiana.