Soldier’s purpose is found in a song

“Waitin’ for the soldier to come back again. Never more to be alone when the letter says, My soldier’s comin’ home.”

“The Dixie Chicks,” Spc. Robert Isaacks says groggily as he slides behind an MK-19 grenade launcher in the up-armored Humvee’s turret. “We hate ’em, but their music’s pretty good.”

Isaacks, 22, has brought along a radio/compact disc player. He and his squad mates — Pfc. Michael Greenwood and Sgt. Wesley Parkhurst, both 23 — may not have had showers for three weeks, but they must have music.

Soldier songs are a motivator, and there seems to be a lot more of them, with country stars especially cashing in on soldier love.

“They’re proud of what we do,” Parkhurst says.

A song about Parkhurst and his boys — part of an anti-tank platoon with Headquarters, Headquarters Company of the 10th Mountain Division’s 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment — would have to have something in it about going without sleep. It should include something about burning their socks at the end of a Purgatory rotation and something about eating Meals, Ready to Eat for weeks at a time.

Since the 10th Mountain Division arrived at its main base, Kandahar Airfield, on July 6, Parkhurst and his friends have been on 75-plus missions.

They’ve been outside the wire 115 of 180 days.

For a few days in mid-February, Greenwood, Parkhurst and Isaacks did surveillance with scouts. They escorted ordnance disposal soldiers to a nearby munitions dump. They arrested a guy suspected of signaling information about Purgatory.

During brief respites, they talk about how Army life has brought them a sense of purpose.

Parkhurst remarks that he could be back in Tennessee like his friends, “skipping college classes and smoking dope.”

His parents paid for his car and college, but he goofed off. He joined up “so my friends back home wouldn’t have to,” Parkhurst says. Four years later, his parents “couldn’t be more proud.”

Tall and lanky, Isaacks likes to sing at the top of his off-key voice when the CD player runs out of juice. He was going to college on a football scholarship in Texas when he dislocated his shoulder. So he joined up.

“When September 11 happened, my mom wanted me to get out,” Isaacks says. “She told me to ‘un-enlist’ and come home. That was really funny to me. ‘Un-enlist.’ Like I could do that.”

He talks a lot about his 4-year-old he has with a girlfriend. He wants to go home and become a history professor while watching his daughter grow up.

A young man of quiet authority and intelligence, Greenwood is the least accessible. He joined after a series of dead-end jobs in New York. Where Isaacks never waves at the Afghan children, Greenwood rarely misses a chance to high-five them, or teach them goofy handshakes.

What does he like best about his job?

“Having their lives in my hands,” he says, as he drives Isaacks and Parkhurst around Afghanistan.

Parkhurst wants to become an officer. Isaacks wants to go home. Greenwood hasn’t been in long enough to know what he wants — one year and a few days. The only thing the three seem to have in common is an eclectic taste in music.

Linkin Park. The Dogg Pound. The Eagles. Lynrd Skynrd.

But they get quiet when they play country songs about soldiers, especially “American Soldier.”

“I’m out here on the front lines, sleep in peace tonight. American soldier, I’m an American soldier.”

“My mom cried when she heard that song,” Parkhurst says. They love Toby Keith and his “screw you, America rules” music. At the heart of it, the music is a reminder that they are part of something great, and that there is a real world outside of Afghanistan.

“You have to remember what you’re fighting for,” Parkhurst says. “Your reward is getting through this safely and going home to family and friends.”