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For five of the soldiers caught up in the Iraq abuse scandal, every day has become a struggle against twin enemies: boredom and apprehension. The accused share a single tent at Camp Victory in Baghdad, where they are assigned menial tasks such as sweeping streets. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has warned that new images may soon emerge that are even more shocking than those now familiar photos of the soldiers tormenting naked Iraqi prisoners. INSETS: Al-Qaeda's Revenge;A Whistle-blower Sounds Off.

Major conflict in Iraq may have ended, but for families like the Holcombs, with both parents overseas, the battle continues at home and abroad. Inside a condominium on this dusty Army base, Sue Bearer savors her last few moments of peace, sipping coffee and taking a drag from her cigarette. This is the unseen Iraqi war, the quiet, unheralded heroism of the home front. For seven months now, since early February, Sue Bearer has been mother and father to her six grandkids because both their parents are on active duty in Iraq. For many the war may have entered its final stage on April 9, when U.S. Marines helped topple Saddam Hussein's statue in central Baghdad. But the coda has been long and brutal--for the 140,000 U.S. troops still deployed in sweltering temperatures and under constant threat and for their families back home, for whom it won't end until they meet safely again.Bearer's son Vaughn Holcomb, 40, and his wife, Simone, 30, don't know when they will be home; perhaps next spring.

The article describes the rescue of U.S. soldier Jessica Lynch, a prisoner of war in Iraq. Back at the hospital, an Iraqi doctor led remaining U.S. troops to an area of shallow graves. Digging with their hands, doctors recovered the bodies of eight U.S. troops, including Lynch's former tentmate Lori Piestewa, the war's first female casualty. By the time she boarded a jet in Kuwait for the eight-hour flight to a U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, she was upbeat and confident. She has many to thank for her survival, among them a 32-year-old lawyer named Mohammed who had seen Lynch on a chance visit to Nasiriya's six-story Saddam Hussein Hospital, where his wife worked as a nurse. Whether she was shot in captivity or earlier, during the battle in which she was captured, or even through friendly fire, is still uncertain. Back home on the other side of the world, in tiny Palestine, West Virginia, Lynch's family and friends heralded the news of her rescue with fireworks and a celebration that will probably continue well beyond her return. INSET: IN THE LINE OF FIRE.