Troops' fears temper Yuletide joy  December 25, 2003|By Stephen
Franklin, Tribune staff reporter.  BAGHDAD — Sgt. Robert Turk
escapes the often terrifying world around him in Iraq by
recalling the reassuring one he knew back home in Palatine, the
world of four brothers and two sisters, of waking up early on
Christmas for a trip to his grandparents' house.  But the
27-year-old supply sergeant and many of the 130,000 other U.S.
soldiers in Iraq found little chance to reminisce on Christmas
Eve. Fearful of attacks, U.S. military officials put troops on
heightened alert, beefed up patrols and canceled some holiday
festivities.  Officers at the Baghdad base of the 16th Engineers
Battalion were still planning to serve Christmas meals Thursday.
A nighttime bonfire was still on the schedule too, and several
hundred gifts from the Crossroads Community Church of Naperville
were to be handed out.  But the soccer matches and football
games were canceled. And there was hardly a holiday mood in the
air for troops whose dut