Lindsay Holden, looking for normalcy, will do the best she can this holiday season. She'll have a Christmas tree and gifts, and she'll visit family and eat big meals. More importantly, she'll spend time with her live-in boyfriend, 26-year-old Jon Morales, for eight days. Then Morales goes back to Indiana; then, later, back to war.

"I'm okay," Holden said yesterday over coffee on the Heights. "But it's not going to be easy."

In a sense, Holden, like so many others, signed a contract to admire the man she loves while pushing her own fear into the background. Morales is going to Afghanistan, sometime early next year, for the second time. He's also served twice in Iraq.

But he'll be with Holden and her two children in Chichester, along with his parents and his sister in Milford. The National Guard Association of New Hampshire, a nonprofit organization that's separate from the National Guard, has seen to that.

The association raised $7,200 to bus 53 of the 140 members of Charlie Company home for Christmas. The National Guard unit arrives Dec. 23 and goes back to Indiana on Jan 1. Then it's off to the war.

"I have a lot of respect for him," Holden said. "He felt dedicated to the guys who were going. He didn't have to go."

No, he didn't. Morales was in the 1st Ranger Battalion, a special operations force featuring some of the toughest hombres in our military. He fought in Iraq at the start of the war there, in the spring of 2003. Then he fought in Afghanistan a year later, then again in Iraq a year after that.

His tour ended after three years, at which time Morales joined the National Guard, juggling his military service with a job cutting trees.

"He can't do a mellow job," Holden said. "He just can't. He needs to break stuff and cut stuff and climb things."

He also needs to watch his buddies' backs. Morales, nearing the end of his five-year commitment in the guard, re-enlisted earlier this year so he could return to Afghanistan. He'll be there for a year, his longest deployment thus far.

Holden, who's been dating Morales for four years, says they talked about his choice for one more round in the military. She says Morales had no choice. At least that's what he believed. Call it camaraderie at its highest level.

"I supported him 100 percent," Holden said. "There was not a lot of discussion. I knew he'd go. That's the kind of guy he is. He's not going to let his buddies down."

Holden is studying business at the University of New Hampshire in Manchester. She has two kids, a 15-year-old son and a 12-year-old daughter, from a previous marriage. She says they love Morales. She says their life as a family is great, a huge contrast from the war stories she's heard about.

Morales was part of the team that rescued Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch from a hospital in Nasiriyah, a southern Iraqi city. His unit also unearthed the bodies of nine American soldiers during that same mission.

Holden says Morales spoke to her about the horrors of war. Not right away, though.

"It was later in our relationship when he told me about what happened (with Lynch and the nine soldiers)," Holden said. "It was a real eye opener for me."

Asked to provide more details about what Morales had seen and felt, Holden shook her head no.

"He would not like that," she said. "It's private; people don't want to read about that anyway. And that would make him out to a better soldier. But that's just his job."

She preferred to talk about Morales's modesty, his quiet nature, his loyalty to other soldiers. She preferred to talk about his love for cutting and climbing trees, his winter camping and snowshoeing trips with her son, his work as an assistant Scout leader.

And she preferred to talk about his humor. "He's hilarious," Holden said. "We laugh all the time. I think that's what I'm going to miss the most." (next page »)