"It was like being at the end of a shooting range," Jim said.

Ann, however, took it in stride. She had met with worse on her last trip.

Ann and Jim Volz, of Anchorage, both work for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Alaska division; she's with the real estate division, he is the chief environmental engineer.

The couple deployed to Iraq from Nov. 14, 2004, to May 28, 2005, to help with the rebuilding efforts. Sitting in a midtown Anchorage restaurant, the couple spoke proudly of their contributions to the massive efforts to restore the historical land.

Jim oversaw roughly 95 construction projects worth about $200 million. One of his most notable efforts included work on the Baath Party headquarters - currently the location of ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's tribunal.

Ann's primary job was to coordinate the land leases and payments. When the military goes into another country, the U.S. tries to borrow land or facilities from the local government from which the troops may operate. If they use privately owned land, U.S. officials lease the ground or buildings the soldiers use, and are responsible for its restoration after they leave.

"People who own those lands may not have a choice for us to use that land," she said. "We do try to be fair and pay them for that use."

Corps work

The U.S. is spending billions of dollars to rebuild Iraq, and the Corps has its hand in virtually all parts of the rebuilding efforts, from palaces to power.

The Corps currently has more than 450 employees in Iraq. As of December, the Alaska division had deployed 45 people to Iraq since the war began in 2003. They have sent 17 in the current fiscal year, which began in October.

While the military works to train Iraqis to handle their own security, the Corps is working with locals to train them to finish rebuilding their country. That was the part of his job that intrigued Jim the most, he said.

The Corps division offices maintain lists of volunteers willing to join the effort, said Dave Spence, the chief of emergency management for the Corps' Alaska division. Corps volunteers also support rebuilding efforts in civil disasters, such as for Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami that struck Thailand last year.

While the Corps sends its own people to the sites, the agency tries to hire local residents to do as much of the work as possible.

During his deployment, Jim had eight Iraqis working directly for him; a mixture of Kurds, Sunnis, Shiites and Christians. He also hired a woman engineer. And they all worked peacefully together.

He helped set up a local resident engineering office so that Iraqis could manage their projects in the Red Zone, the area located outside the secured Green Zone. This time last year, the team was working to rebuild five schools in the more dangerous Red Zone.

Most of Jim's work was done in the Green Zone, the area cordoned off by the military for security purposes. When Iraqi laborers passed through the security gates to get to the job, they faced the threat of getting blown up every day, Jim said.

"There you see Iraqi laborers getting $7, and if they're paid real well, $10 a day," Jim said. "And they take their lives in their own hands to come to the Green Zone to get to work."

"The Corps is doing a lot of work over there, but you can't tell anyone there what you're doing because the insurgents would blow it up," Ann said.

Revisiting Iraq

On Ann's first trip to Iraq, in 2003, she was part of what the military refers to as a Forward Engineer Support Team-Advance, deployed with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. She was the only woman in the group.

The team participated in combat and humanitarian planning as the soldiers battled their way from Kuwait to Baghdad.

Team member Maj. Troy Stephenson wrote in a Corps publication, "We found ourselves under constant, nerve-wracking missile attacks as soon as the war started ... At Camp Doha, the rest of the team was in gas masks and chemical suits scrambling in and out of the limited bunkers. Clarke Hemphill (engineering) started keeping track of all the trips to the bunkers and the number of missile attacks. I think he made it to about 32 before they subsided. (He tracked nine in one 24-hour period.) The attacks would often occur at night and really disturb any kind of rest plan. Nevertheless, the team kept their motivation up and soon the trips to the bunkers became known as the 'scud bunker shuffle.'"

Ann was there for four months. "When I got back, the first words out of Jim's mouth was, 'You won't do that again, will you?'" Ann said. They had only been married a year.

Jim may have gone with her then, but at the time, he was tied up with the missile defense project in Interior Alaska. When that job ended in October 2004, it seemed like a good time to take six months away and head to the Middle East, he said.

Ann was ready to go back. "If a conflict is out there, we go," she said. "And once you go one time, you're hooked. You work with the locals, you see the impact, the history you're making."

Ann's most historical moments there had to do with Babylon, she said. On her 2003 trip, her team was the first to enter the holy city. Before she left this year, she had signed the document to return a restored Babylon camp to local control.

Life in a war zone

The lands that are now called Iraq are noted often in religious texts, second only to Israel. It is the land of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, and Abraham. It's where Daniel was in the lion's den and Noah built his ark.

It is also the land where the first wars are mentioned in the Bible. History shows that war has been a constant in the country since its beginning.

The first time Ann went to Iraq, at the start of the latest conflict, she only took the barest of amenities out of necessity. Constantly on the move, Ann and her team ate meals-ready-to-eat - K-rations when they needed a change - and basically used an open-air outhouse as restroom facilities.

But this time around, life was much more comfortable. The couple joined multiple-starred generals and full-bird colonels for breakfast every morning in Saddam's former palace. One morning, they even chatted with John Negroponte when he was ambassador to Iraq. Negroponte currently is the national intelligence chief.

They often ate at the Steel Dragon, located near a tall concrete wall that on the other side lay the dangerous Red Zone. Several bullet holes were seen in the Dragon's ceiling. Occasionally, a stray bullet would graze a diner or two, the couple said.

Last January, just before the first round of Iraqi government elections, a missile slammed into the palace where the contractors were staying. Two were killed.

Still, both are ready to go back. Ann turned down a chance to return in January, there was just too much work to do here - for now. Jim is on the volunteer list.