HYNDMAN, Pa. -- When Jeremy Sivits gets out of prison in a year or so, finding a job here shouldn't be a problem, even with a bad-conduct discharge from the military.

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Even though the 24-year-old pleaded guilty yesterday to abusing Iraqi prisoners, those who know him believe he's a hometown boy who still makes the folks of this Bedford County town proud. Most people here don't believe Sivits acted on his own or that he should have been punished so severely for taking photographs of the alleged abuse at Abu Ghraib Prison.

He will serve a year in prison, have a reduction in rank and a bad-conduct discharge.

"He went over there and fought for this country," said Robert Gomer, munching on an egg sandwich and sipping coffee at Junee's Diner. "It's a poor excuse that he just took a picture and got convicted."

The charges against Sivits included taking a photograph of nude detainees, maltreating a detainee by escorting him to be "positioned in a pile on the floor to be assaulted by other soldiers" and negligence for failing to protect detainees from "abuse, cruelty and maltreatment."

At the diner, where many locals stop in the morning after picking up their mail at the post office next door, Sivits and his court-martial were the breakfast banter yesterday.

Gomer, a 70-year-old retiree who now raises Limousin cattle in nearby Wellersburg, Somerset County, said he'd have no problem giving Sivits a job if he were an employer.

Neither Gomer nor his friend, Michael Housel, 51, think the seven soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Company in Cresaptown, Md., are the ones who should be going to court. Both men think the orders to abuse Iraqis at the prison came from higher up the chain of command. Those people, they said, are the ones who should be punished.

Housel, whose 80-year-old mother, Betty, stopped to join the men for coffee, doesn't think Sivits was treated fairly or that he received justice.

"I think the boy was tried before he went in," said Housel, who lives in Hyndman but travels 83 miles each way to work at the Rubbermaid factory in Winchester, Va.

He knew Sivits as a teenager, when Sivits would visit a girl staying at Housel's home. He remembered the boy as being polite and well-mannered.

James Kamauf, who graduated from Hyndman Middle-Senior High School two years ahead of Sivits, remembers him as an average guy. He was on the baseball, soccer and wrestling teams and served on student council.

"He was more of a follower than a leader -- that's how he was all the way through school," Kamauf said.

He said Sivits joined the Army Reserve to make his father, Daniel Sivits, a Vietnam veteran, proud.

Simply kicking Sivits out of the military would be enough punishment, said Kamauf, who works as a mechanic at Twigg's Auto Body and Collision.

"That was his lifelong dream," he said.

Chuck Twigg, who owns the shop and has a son around Sivits' age, said he remembers Sivits as a boy who always did the right thing.

Once, when he crashed his Pontiac Grand Am, Sivits owed Twigg $100 for his insurance deductible. Twigg never filled out any paperwork on it, and told Sivits if he didn't have the money not to worry about it. Six months later, Sivits paid him anyway.

"He's a good boy," Twigg said. "I think the government's giving him a raw deal."

Many in Hyndman agree. They also think Sivits, who's been convicted of three criminal charges, will have an easier time back in civilian life than Spc. Joseph M. Darby, the soldier from the 372nd who turned the seven in.

"I'd sooner be him than the guy that did the squealing," Gomer said. "I'd 10 times sooner be this boy than that fellow."

Housel and Gomer believed all the international attention on Sivits was putting a black mark on Hyndman, which last was in the spotlight during a bad flood in 1996.

The community of about 1,000 is described as a good place to raise children, with lots of sporting teams and recreational opportunities. But it's also a place where people struggle to find jobs that pay decent wages. Most people who choose to live in Hyndman travel to either Cumberland, Md., or Bedford to find work.

Newt Huffman, who owns Huffman's Garage and Towing and serves as captain of the local rescue squad and on borough council, said he'd offer Sivits, who worked as a truck mechanic, a position if he had one open.

"I don't hold grudges against anybody," Huffman, 55, said. "I would more than welcome him when he gets back home."

Huffman believes what happened to the Iraqi prisoners was wrong and that the soldiers perpetrating the abuse should be punished by the military. Beyond that, though, he offers forgiveness.

"Bad things happen on both sides in war," he said. "It's a shame we send our boys to war and then send them to jail.

Huffman added that he supports the Sivits family 100 percent.

At their home yesterday, a trailer from a big rig blocked the view of their front porch, decorated in miniature American flags and yellow ribbons.

A neighbor took them an oven-baked pizza for lunch.

From the Sivits' porch, a woman at the home said the family would have no comment about the court-martial. But many in town did -- both spoken and written.

A sign on a house just down the street from where Sivits grew up proclaimed: "Jeremy, you are in our hearts and prayers."

A few blocks away, a rain-faded sign tacked to a telephone pole read: "Hyndman Supports Jeremy Sivits."

And so it does.