WASHINGTON -- The heat, which is like living under a french-fry lamp, like standing in front of the world's biggest hair dryer, like sitting in a sealed car on the hottest summer day in Washington with the heater blasting and someone throwing sand in your face.

	Washington Post, Chris Arndt National Guard Sgt. Chris Arndt, in Iraq March 2004 to March 2005: "I think I'm a better friend and a better son and a better citizen of the world because I went over there". Click photo for larger image.

The mud, which follows the hot season, cold, slimy, sticky mud that makes you wish it would turn hot again.

The green that erupts after a spring rain and astounds you the first time you see it. The eyes of the children.

These are some of the things they remember from their service in Iraq.

Over the past year, The Washington Post conducted in-depth interviews with 100 of the more than 500,000 veterans of the war. They included men and women, officers and enlisted, active-duty and reserves, combat and support troops. The questions were open-ended. The intent was to hear from them, in their own words, what the experience was like.

They remembered the camel spiders, big, fast and scary-looking. The sand flies, scorpions, mosquitoes and flying crickets. The long, hard days -- 12-hour shifts that easily turn into 20-hour shifts when they don't turn into round-the-clock marathons.

Stringing Xbox cables from bunk to bunk to play Madden football or Tony Hawk skateboarding games in the two-man residential trailers known as "cans." Visiting the "hadji marts," clusters of enterprising Iraqis who sell everything from bootleg DVDs to rotgut alcohol on the roadside just beyond the wire of nearly every camp. Watching your baby grow up via e-mail and Webcam.

Iraq was bad, nearly all of them agreed. "Not knowing day to day what was going to happen." "Hard to figure out who the enemy was." "Never being able to relax." "The rules are that there are no rules."

But it was not bad in the ways they see covered in the media -- the majority also agreed on this. What they experienced was more complex than the war they saw on television and in print. It was dangerous and confused, yes, but most of the vets also recalled enemies routed, buildings built and children befriended, against long odds in a poor and demoralized country. "We feel like we're doing something, and then we look at the news and you feel like you're getting bashed." "It seems to me the media had a predetermined script." The vibe of the coverage is just "so, so, so negative."

No two sets of memories were identical. "Each individual over there has his own little war he is fighting," Army medic Joe Drennan explained. "No two people are going to have the same experiences." These personal wars add up to the war they share.

A lot depended on when they were over there.

The invasion -- three years ago yesterday -- was a blur, pulsing with excitement and wired on Adderall. Invasion vets remembered villages of blank-faced Iraqis lining the roads as the armor sped past, and ranks of empty Iraqi tanks bombed out in the desert, and busloads of men in civilian clothes suddenly opening fire, and a sandstorm so thick they could hardly see their hands in front of their faces.

Arriving in Baghdad, "I had an Iraqi citizen come up to me," said Lance Cpl. Daniel Finn, a Marine infantryman. "She was a female. She opened her mouth and she had no tongue. She was pointing at the statue" of Saddam Hussein. "There were people with no fingers, waving at the statue of Saddam, telling us he tortured them. People were showing us the scars on their backs."

After the initial victory came lean months when the war had too much death and not enough infrastructure. Troops slept in their armored trucks -- if their trucks were armored. They ate cold chow and drank hot water and dug pit toilets where they suffered "Saddam's revenge." They scraped the grime from their skin with baby wipes mailed from home. No one had planned for so many Americans to live in Iraq for so long.

Little by little, the cans arrived with their cushioned bunks and air conditioning. Showers and restrooms were built. Apart from the improvised explosive devices, the ambushes, the suicide bombers and the mortar attacks, life became sort of bearable. Rec centers opened with large-screen TVs and air-hockey tables. With a few exceptions, the veterans described a highly professional, almost spartan force, characterized by resilient morale and good discipline. "I didn't touch a girl or alcohol for seven months, and that was tough," said Sgt. Christopher Johnson of the Marine Reserve. Many said they were ready to return to Iraq.

Many veterans described a moment, different for each person, when a personal test boiled down to a single yes-or-no question -- again, slightly different for each person.

Would you fight or flee? Would you crack under pressure? Would you shoot or freeze? Was it better to know that you hit your target, or not to know?

Army Staff Sgt. Christopher Day spoke of wondering "what I would do when I start getting shot at. Will I fire back or curl in a ball? And sure enough, I fired back right away."

The reason he fired back was also timeless. "It was not so much for myself, but for the guys beside me," Sgt. Day said. "I was shooting and trying to kill the people that were trying to kill my friends."

The presence of women in a wider variety of roles also sets the Iraq war apart. Commanders have struggled, in some cases, to know how to manage a coed military. 1st Lt. Tanya Lawrence-Riggins of the Army National Guard said she and the other women in her unit had to bathe outdoors, screened by parked trucks, because an active-duty commanding officer didn't want them in the showers.

Other women complained that every friendship they formed with a male soldier was grist for gossip.

Extremes of doubt: "It was hard to figure out who the enemy was. Everyone practically looks the same and dresses the same. You didn't know who was a terrorist and who was not," said Spec. Greg Seely, a Virginia National Guardsman.

Extremes of emotion: "The bombs were everywhere," said Army Staff Sgt. John Thomas. "You feel like you are in a movie. You drive through the town, you see the women out in the fields, and children and other people are on the roofs watching. They are waiting on the roofs to see you get blown up."