A good article from an embed with the Tenth. They’re headed home within a month or so, but they haven’t forgotten the two MIA’s.

By KAREN MC CARTHY, Special to the Times Union

From a makeshift office at Patrol Base Dragon, Capt. Shane Finn prepares for an air assault mission across the Euphrates River.

“Everything, every conversation with locals and sheiks, is about gathering intel to get the soldiers home,” said Finn, 31, of the Army’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division from Fort Drum. He’s referring to two men from his unit who have been missing since May 12, when it’s believed they were captured by al-Qaeda.

Working from a base converted from an abandoned Russian power plant in southern Baghdad Province, Finn’s unit is planning to raid the house of a suspected al-Qaeda leader whose capture military commanders hope could lead to the missing Americans.

Getting the soldiers back is a high priority for the brigade, which is scheduled to return home in November. Finn, who is wrapping up his second deployment to Iraq, has family in the Capital Region.

Finn’s office is a sparsely furnished room made of plywood, adorned with maps of this Sunni-dominated rural area. On Finn’s desk are stacks of counter-insurgency books and a couple of computer monitors with a screen-saver of his wife, Gina, and their dog, Scout.

In the corner is a small cot where he sleeps for a few hours through booming artillery fire, the pounding thump of helicopter rotors and the whine of power tools being used to convert the plant into something habitable for the soldiers and their equipment.

Much more at the link.