AP HDD 2-c

Four-year-old Adnan Ezaldeen lies in his crib, background, next to an Iraqi soldier at the Air Force Theater Hospital in Balad, 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday, Dec. 24, 2005. It was midnight in late December, and more than a week had passed since insurgents had fired mortar rounds at U.S. troops in Parwana, just outside the restive city of Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad. The shells missed the Americans but landed near Adnan Ezaldeen's home as he showered in preparation for Friday morning prayers at his local mosque. They killed two of his sons, who were in the fourth and fifth grades, and hit his 4-year-old namesake son with shrapnel in the legs, liver and stomach. Minutes before he and he and his wounded son were whisked away to Balad in a U.S. helicopter, Ezaldeen saw the bodies of his two boys for the last time. He would miss their funerals to tend to his wounded boy. A child as young as Adnan is not unusual in the military hospital, which admits about 1,000 patients a month. In the three days before Christmas, the wounded arrivals included children, soldiers and contract workers. (AP Photo/Jacob Silberberg)