01:00 AM EST on Sunday, March 20, 2005

At the family-support group meetings, most people assume Jo-Ann Carpenter is there because her son is in Iraq.

But, no, she is there because her husband is in Iraq.

"They say 'Your husband? Oh, my God, you're kidding.' They can't believe it."

Believe it. Mike Carpenter is a Blackhawk helicopter pilot and his battalion's safety officer. He is 60 years old and was due to retire from the Rhode Island National Guard last November. He is part of the graying of American combat.

I wrote a column Wednesday on 51-year-old Dan Cardosa, a veterinarian in West Greenwich who has been called back to active duty and given orders to Iraq. And if 50-year-olds are going to war, I wondered if 60-year-olds could be far behind.

It turns out they aren't behind at all. Mike Carpenter got to Iraq ahead of Cardosa.

And Jo-Ann Carpenter knows, after 40 years of marriage and two wars, that her husband would have serious problems if he wasn't there.

"I know my husband. If anything happened to one of these kids -- and he could have made a difference if he'd been there -- he'd never be able to live with himself."

Now, she settles in to deal with something she last dealt with in 1968 and 1969 when Mike was in Vietnam, a second lieutenant commissioned after completing Army ROTC at Providence College.

Is she better prepared now to deal with the separation and the uncertainty?

"It's really different," she says. "It's an age thing. In your 20s, you've got the whole world ahead of you. At 60 -- and Mike and I have talked about this -- if you stay in good health, you might have 20 years if you're lucky."

And almost two of those years are being taken away by a war that in some ways is very different from their first one and in many ways very similar.

"There are parallels," says Jo-Ann, who is an office manager for a Providence doctor. "There are the questions -- Is it a quagmire? Are we sacrificing lives again for nothing? Do the people want us there?"

During Vietnam, there were the long-awaited letters, the ones written on paper. Now, there are phone calls, but she thinks in some ways that makes it harder because her husband seems so close on the other end of the line. But she knows he is very far away.

During the war in Vietnam, there was R&R in Hawaii, where they had a few precious days together. Now, there is the possibility of Mike coming home to Foster, then going back to war. And she knows she couldn't stand that. So they are talking about meeting in Scotland, a country they have always wanted to visit.

Her husband, who's scheduled to complete his service in April 2006, has met other Vietnam veterans in Iraq, men in their late 50s who will have served in wars more spread out in time than the two World Wars. It means that young soldiers serve with men who could be their grandfathers.

And it is those young soldiers who are a very big reason why Mike Carpenter is back in a hot spot. They are "the kids" his wife talks about, the members of the 126th Aviation Battalion whom Mike feels responsible for. He is a pilot but he is also the Battalion safety officer. He would have had some hard, anxious days and months if he'd stayed in Rhode Island and "the kids" were in Iraq.

"He loves flying and he loves his country," says Jo-Ann.

He learned to fly during ROTC at Providence College, and in Vietnam he flew small reconnaissance planes. In the years after the war, as the family grew and moved around, Mike always joined the Guard in whatever state he was living, and he kept his flight credentials updated. Now, he has 38 years of service behind him.

Last year, as the war moved steadily closer to his Guard unit, he thought about retirement and he thought about staying. So he filed papers for both, and he and Jo-Ann decided to go along with whatever papers the Guard chose to accept.

"I have to tell you, though, Mike really wanted to go with his unit," she says. "A friend who is 59 1/2 was activated. There were more and more friends being called up at older ages."

So the country gets another turn at war from Mike Carpenter at an age when many, including me, are up to nothing more strenuous than 18 holes.

And Jo-Ann Carpenter has to spend precious months doing something that, back in 1969, might have seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

She has to wait for her husband to come home from the war.

Bob Kerr can be reached by e-mail at bkerr [at] projo.com.