Home still feels strange to Staff Sgt. Morris Franklin, who's just back from a year in Baghdad.

His shoulders feel too light without his rifle.

Louie Favorite/AJC (ENLARGE)

Morris Franklin (white shirt) meets with Jerry Newsom (from left), Jerry Colley and Robert Jones at Ann's Snack Bar. Owner Ann Price brings out a burger.

Louie Favorite/AJC (ENLARGE)

Iraqi war veteran Franklin (center) had lunch Wednesday with Colley, Newsom and Jones, the Vietnam vets who had sent him care packages in Iraq.

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He's not used to the calm without mortars and rockets.

Home started to feel more familiar Wednesday, when he could taste it.

It wasn't just the towering mound of American protein that almost required his Army logistical skills to finish off.

Home is the men who dug into huge burgers with him. These local Vietnam veterans had supported him during his tour in Iraq.

They had been strangers, connected through their shared service in separate wars. They had sent Franklin snacks from home — pork rinds, pecans, hot sauce — that reflected their memories of combat.

They finally met Wednesday, at the grail of ground beef — Ann's Snack Bar, home of the Ghetto Burger, in east Atlanta.

"This lunch was a long time coming," Franklin said as he shook hands with Jerry Newsom of Hoschton, Robert Jones of Atlanta and Jerry Colley of Lilburn.

"How's the adjustment?" Jones asked.

"I think I feel more at home there than here," Franklin said. "That's a little odd."

The older soldiers recalled coming back from "over there."

"Everyone hated people from Vietnam. It was kind of sad," said Newsom, 63, a Marine who served in 1965-66. "I didn't want them to know I had been."

Jones was so unsettled after his Army discharge in 1970 that when he flew back to Atlanta, he got a hotel room near the airport. He wasn't sure how to deal with all he had been through.

His favorite foods, like Varsity hot dogs, helped him feel normal.

"It's just going to take some time," said Franklin, 40, an Army reservist who will return to his management job at Coca-Cola next week.

Their wars are separated by three decades, a gap measured by this one thing: beef.

"Did you have SOS?" Jones asked Franklin.

"What's that?" he wanted to know.

Dried chipped beef on toast, the vets explained."Yeah, we still have that," Franklin said.

Jones nodded. "Napoleon said an army marches on its stomach."

Every Saturday morning, Franklin and pals went to the Burger King in the Green Zone, a trailer serving flame-broiled burgers and spreading the same sauce.

"It's not far off from burgers here," Franklin said, but what he missed most are served by the Vortex in Midtown.

War left them all a taste of privilege.

In America on this day these men could eat well beyond their appetites, knowing that in combat zones, local people often scramble for basic sustenance.

War leaves a bad taste, too.

The group grew quiet as Franklin told of his three friends who died in Baghdad, one a local Iraqi killed by a sniper and two American civilian contractors hit by a mortar.

Franklin's funeral plans are in order. He may well be called back up in a year.

"The way I view my service is that I'm honoring your service before me," he said to the older vets. "In not too long, someone younger than me will honor my service. That's one thing that makes America great."

So do the much smaller tasty things.

Franklin licked the last drops of burger juice and chili sauce from his fingers. He had eaten a humongous Ghetto Burger, rated the nation's top burger by the Wall Street Journal.

He can't taste that in Baghdad.