Baghdad, Iraq – Spec. Thomas Evans had just hit four in a row.

The sun was setting here, just south of the city, as the 28-year-old from Dixon Mills, Ala., was twisting free of his opponent and barreling forward like a freight train.

Pickup basketball in the Iraqi desert is a contact sport.

Sgt. Gilberto Ortiz tried to contain the 249-pound Evans, a former high school power forward. Ortiz stuck tight, jabbing a hand against Evans’ back.

“You’ll be sorry,” Evans said.

Ortiz: “I’m waitin’ on you.”

For a moment, their situation – living out of tents surrounded by sandbags in a dusty land where enemies are targeting them – eased a bit.

A month away from home with the Colorado-based 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, Ortiz, 25, of San Benito, Texas, had been burdened with a seemingly unbearable longing for his wife, Nadia, and their 3-year-old son, Tristan.

“You don’t think about other things when you’re playing ball,” Ortiz said.

Today, while commanders plan complex operations in and around Iraqi communities, he and other soldiers plan more and more recreational activities.

Some stay up late playing dominoes, slamming them to the table, talking trash. Some brought golf clubs.

On a recent night, as Black Hawk and Apache helicopters swooped in and out of camp on patrols, soldiers under a floodlight beside tanks played volleyball. Others outside supply headquarters barbecued steaks and drank nonalcoholic beer. A platoon’s worth of soldiers pressed weights in a contractor-run gym.

That gym stays open until midnight, and the clap and thud of the rap inside drown out the occasional harassing gunfire outside the camp perimeter.

On the elliptical running machine, Capt. Ross Nelson, 30, of Colorado Springs, a helicopter maintenance crew chief, was sweating through his gray Army shirt. He perched a radio by the screen that measured how far he had run, and he occasionally tuned into it, in case anybody on the tarmac needed him urgently. “For me, this is stress release,” Nelson said.

Exercising regularly, as he does at home, “is part of a routine of normalcy,” he said. His two children and wife are a constant concern, he said, “and you go through times when you really miss your family.”

Meanwhile, soft chords from Sgt. Nathan Covey’s guitar wafted from the corner of one Tiger Squadron tent. A 19-year-old from Emporia, Kan., Covey bought the guitar in Kuwait, a $70 instrument made in China. It had just hit him, how long he would be gone. He has been playing guitar for three years and in high school enjoyed writing poetry. The song he was working on – he titled it “Until I Get Back to You” – began with him “hoping and praying that I’ll make it through.”

As Covey played, the flurry of activity around him receded, even as Pvt. Scotty Sausedo, 21, kicked a Hackey Sack his way.

“Definitely a good way to pass the time,” Covey said, left with red eyes from blowing dust during the day. “Get away from everything. You don’t gotta worry about all this stuff. Take you to a different place.”

The subject of this song: Nicole, 17, back at her home in Indiana. “Different from all the other girls,” he said. “It’s nice to have her to think about. It hurts, too.”

Before dawn the next day, he and his unit would roll from this camp on a long mission, living out of their tanks around Iraqi communities. Covey packed a notepad in his green duffel bag but not the guitar. “If an IED (improvised explosive device) hits us, it’s gone. And what am I going to do for the rest of the year?” Covey said.

“When I come back, if I do,” he said, “I want to have something to play.”