Tears, fears as US family sees son off to war

LAWRENCE, Kan, June 28 (Reuters) They gathered to send Aaron Emerson off to war. His father cursed, his grandmother cried, his mother was just numb.

In the big yard of an old blue farmhouse, around a worn wooden table only partly shaded from the Kansas sun, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins spent a summer day saying their goodbyes, offering quiet prayers and seeking a few moments of laughter.

Army Spc Emerson will spend 400 days in Iraq, working at a command support hospital.

''I begged and cried and pleaded for him not to join,'' said Misty Emerson, his mother, fingering a peace symbol of pink rhinestones on a necklace. ''He is going to be so far away, for so long. And he'll be in danger.'' Emerson, 25, joins the ranks of mostly anonymous young Americans who are pushing aside jobs and families for a cause that many Americans now question.

His background as a low-income, small-town son of a single mother puts him in the core demographic of the tens of thousands of young Americans sent to Iraq.

His departure fuels a family debate that mirrors the national dialogue over the war in Iraq, their turmoil emblematic of the pain and uncertainty endured by thousands of US families.

His relatives fear he will be killed or wounded. Some 3,564 US forces have been killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003.

''The whole family is against it,'' said Aaron's father, Dan Emerson, who divorced Misty when Aaron was a toddler. ''If something would happen to him ...'' He pauses. ''I'm not going to worry about that day until, unless, it comes.'' ORDERS TO REPORT Emerson signed up with the Army reserves two years ago as a way to fund college classes and to provide direction to a life that seemed to be drifting. And though he has been against what he calls the invasion of Iraq from the start, he trained one weekend a month and pledged to serve if called.

He married a year ago and he and wife Hillary worked a combined three jobs while Emerson pursued college training as an emergency medical technician. The couple shared a modest apartment in the college town of Lawrence, Kansas, and began to plan for a family.

The orders for him to report for duty came as little surprise.

President George W. Bush's decision to increase troop strength as part of a ''surge'' to stabilize Iraq has meant the deployment and redeployment of thousands of reserve soldiers.

Aaron canceled his lease, helped his wife move to her parents' home, where she will live until he returns, and started saying goodbye.

HOPING FOR TOMORROW At the going-away party, held at a farm house outside Lawrence belonging to a family friend, relatives sit in red-white-and-blue lawn chairs as Emerson opens gifts. One, a black cap lettered ''An Army of One,'' Emerson dons quickly, then he poses for a photo.

Another, a silver medallion and chain engraved with the prayer: ''Saint Michael, protect me,'' he studies silently before slipping it over his head.

Behind him, grandmother Clarice Reinhardt turns away, quietly wiping at tears she doesn't want Emerson to see.

''I'm not doing very well with this,'' she said. ''But all we can do is trust the Lord will keep him safe.'' As the afternoon winds down, Emerson works to lighten the mood, passing around a jar: he's raffling the chance to shave his head in the style of a new soldier for a ticket.

''I wasn't supportive initially of the invasion but now that we're there we've got to finish it. Otherwise all this was for nothing,'' Emerson said, situated between his mother and his wife at the picnic table as the party wound down. ''If we just up and leave now, what does that say about us as a country?'' His mother interrupts: ''If we don't up and leave now, when will we up and leave?'' ''When we're done,'' Emerson replies.

''When will we be done? Done with what?'' she demands.

''Making it somewhat stable,'' he answers. ''It could be next month, it could be next year, it could be next decade. Who knows?'' His mother sighs. ''I'm hoping it's tomorrow.

Later she and Hillary drive Emerson to the bus, thankful it is an hour late so they have more time with him.

''Then he got on and we just kept waving at him, there in the window,'' Misty Emerson said. ''He's excited to go. He feels like he's doing something with his life. But I'm living for the day he is out.'' REUTERS SLD RAI0938