A SOLDIER'S HEART': DAY THREE OF A PG SPECIAL SERIES

In his mind's eye, Mike Cranmer is a young boy, romping amid the rural lushness of a Greene County farm, his family's rustic getaway from suburban Pittsburgh. He's safe among the trees, the rolling hills, the foliage. A calmness envelops him

He opens his eyes, the memory ends. If that was heaven, this is hell. The Brentwood resident is outside Fallujah, Iraq, a Marine lance corporal preparing in the early morning darkness of Sunday, Dec. 12, 2004, to look for insurgents and weapons in the city's homes. What awaits him on that mission will forever alter his life.

He turned 22 just three days earlier but feels older. The dangers have increased exponentially on this, his second tour of the war. On the first, when the statues of Saddam Hussein were torn down, he felt like a liberator. He was safe, going out at night to the markets amid friendly Iraqis, buying chickens roasted on open-air spits...

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