BAGHDAD — Soldiers serving in Iraq are exposed to hazards every day.

They comb dusty stretches of highway for roadside bombs. They round up suspected terrorists in raids. They patrol dangerous city neighborhoods.

Potential threats lurk around every corner, making duty downrange stressful and suspicion and paranoia a part of daily life.

But when it comes to telling loved ones at home what they see and do, honesty isn’t always the best policy, troops assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division’s Task Force Baghdad said in several interviews recently.

“I keep it to a minimum,” said Staff Sgt. Lemuel Yumul of Long Beach, Calif., a personal security detail team leader at Forward Operating Base Union. “I tell them, ‘Yeah, I’m mostly just sightseeing over here.’”

The little white lies are hardly malicious. They’re simply intended to shield loved ones — who are constantly inundated with bad news out of Iraq — from excessive anxiety and worry.

Yumul travels all over the city, and so far his unit hasn’t been involved in a major incident. But he doesn’t tell anyone back home about the things he encounters.

“My parents are in their sixties. I don’t want them to be worried about what I do. They already see what’s going on over here. Adding any more might give them a heart attack,” Yumul said.

Other soldiers feel the same way.

The 4th Brigade’s 6th Squadron, 8th Cavalry Regiment arrived at Forward Operating Base Falcon in mid-February. The unit typically runs patrols in a rural village south of Baghdad. Early on, two soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb exploded.

“I didn’t tell my mom about that, but she read it in the Boston Globe,” said Spc. Stephen Behan of Newton, N.H., a Humvee driver for the squadron’s Headquarters Platoon, Troop A. “When things happen, we all play it down. We keep it to minimal detail so they don’t worry any more than they are.”

The troop has handled more than 700 missions and taken part in dozens of raids since coming to Iraq from Fort Stewart, Ga. But that tends to get left out of phone calls and e-mails to families.

Some troops say, however, that the near-constant daily news updates from Iraq make it difficult to shield loved ones from the reality of war.

Spc. Gerren Henry, a supply clerk for the 26th Forward Support Battalion’s A Company at Forward Operating Base Rustamiyah, who’s in Iraq for the first time, plans to be entirely forthcoming with his parents and brother back home in Houston.

“If anything does happen, they’ll probably know before I will. I’ll get an e-mail,” Henry said. “I won’t keep anything from them. I’ll tell them I’m safe and in good health, but I’ll let them know what’s going on and how I’m doing.”

Spc. Katyma Rhymer of Riverhead, N.Y., a fueler for the company who’s been on multiple convoys since arriving in February and is on her second Iraq tour, says she can’t afford to take that approach. Her mother already is “practically in denial I’m over here a second time,” she said.

“She stressed out very much the last time I was here,” Rhymer said. “She’s taking it a whole lot better this time. If I’m breathing, I’m good. That’s the way I look at it. I tell her I’m fine. I’ll stretch the truth a little bit if I have to.

“I’d leave it up to the chain of command to tell her in case anything bad happens. I wouldn’t tell my fiancé (John Mullins of Albany, Ga.), either. I’d leave it up to my family to tell him,” Rhymer said.

Spc. Russell Counter of Wichita, Kan., who manages weapons for Troop A’s Headquarters Platoon on a second deployment here, has told friends all about his trips outside the gate — but not his wife or their two young children, ages 4 and 2.

A few weeks ago, he was on the phone with her when the military detonated a car bomb just outside Falcon. The repercussion shattered a fellow soldier’s window inside the unit’s concrete dormitory.

“She kind of flipped out about that. I didn’t even know what it was at the time,” Counter said. “Now, if there’s any explosion, I tell her they’re controlled detonations.”

“I just want to keep her calm at home, and definitely not let my kids know. They don’t even know I’m over here.”

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