South of Baghdad, Iraq – Hot gravel crunching beneath their boots, Pfc. Nicholas Sauceda and seven fellow soldiers gathered around the broken engine of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle on Thursday afternoon. They ran their fingers over the metal searching for an oil leak.

Their eyelids hung heavy after a nighttime mission that had them grinding along roads in gun-mounted Humvees outside their camp here, in an area military commanders say has experienced increased attacks on U.S. troops by insurgents – up to 72 a day.

Sauceda and crew are among up to 5,200 Colorado- based troops in the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment starting their second stint in Iraq. As they gathered around the Bradley, they could have been catching up on sleep, but the soldiers – scouts trained for a variety of duties, including providing security for regimental commander Col. H.R. McMaster – prefer just about anything, including engine repair, to sitting behind sandbags on their rickety green cots.

“I just want to get it through with,” said Sauceda, 21, of Phoenix. “And the busier we are, the faster it goes by.”

With the possibility of running across improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, never far from their minds, and with occasional bursts of small-arms fire and mortar thuds in the distance, some of the troops have modest goals for this tour in Iraq.

Spec. Arturo Lopez, 20, of Mission, Texas, said: “Just hope I don’t get blown up.”

Here for about a month, Sauceda has already written five letters, used up eight 550-minute phone cards, and mailed a Kuwaiti blanket and ring to his fiancée, Megan Blanton, 19, a first-year student at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

“It’s not like we don’t want to think about home,” Sauceda said. “But it makes the time pass harder when you’re always thinking about home.”

So they worked. It was hot. They wore T-shirts, no flak vests, as they picked over the Bradley’s engine. About halfway between northern Kuwait and Baghdad, the vehicle broke down at night. At dawn, Pfc. Reed Monson, 20, of Boise, Idaho, noticed a shiny black pool beneath it and, when he checked the oil level, found the engine was dry. A truck hauled the Bradley into camp here.

Now Capt. David Rozelle, 32, the company commander, wanted it fixed. Rozelle stood in the shade of a shipping container, watching. He lost his lower right leg when a Humvee he was riding in set off a land mine his first time in Iraq, in June 2003 in the western Anbar province.

After a few months back at Fort Carson with his wife and toddler, Rozelle became the first amputee to return for a second tour in Iraq. When his war is over, he’s slated to go to work at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

That’s the future. Today, he needs his soldiers to find the leak.

Sgt. Erik Houghton, 34, of Massillon, Ohio, spotted the tear. “In the hose, sir, to the oil filter,” Houghton called to Rozelle.

Rozelle: “That’s easy!”

Houghton: “Can you find me one, sir?”

Rozelle sent him to base aviation mechanics. “Take them this hose. They can make a new one.”

“Crescent wrench,” said Staff Sgt. Jeff Marjerrison, 28, of Widefield, south of Colorado Springs, moving to disconnect it from the engine.

Marjerrison and Monson muscled bolts loose, then sliced open an empty drinking water bottle and caught more black oil.

The aviation mechanics couldn’t make a new hose right away. That meant one less Bradley Fighting Vehicle for now. The 3rd Armored Cavalry has about 125 Bradleys, along with 120 or so main battle tanks and more than 40 helicopters.

Meanwhile, the troops turned to gearing up Humvees for another convoy through a hot zone known as “the mixing bowl.”

Gunner Pvt. 2 Martin Gaymon, 19, of Brooklyn, N.Y., welcomed the upcoming mission even as he reread a prayer card. He’d be out front on this one.

“As long as you are doing something, you feel like, the reason you are out here, it’s worth it,” he said as they headed out Friday morning. “I’d rather be out on a convoy.”

Sauceda would be driving a hardened Humvee behind him.

“I just want to get it done,” he said. “Get back in here with everybody alive.”