Dublin — Susan and Jerry Hancock are sitting in their living room waiting on a phone call from their 18-year-old daughter. It's pushing 11 a.m. Brean was supposed to call around 10. Her mom can't help but worry about all the things that could happen to a young woman wearing a U.S. military uniform in Iraq.

"I'm her mother," Susan says. "It's my job to worry."

RICH ADDICKS / Staff (ENLARGE)
Pfc. Brean Hancock, a cheerleader a little over a year ago, is the youngest member of the Dublin unit of the Georgia National Guard's 48th Brigade. More photos
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PHOTO GALLERY • Follow Hancock from Georgia to Iraq AUDIO Hancock's dad, Jerry, talks about: • Why she signed up • Brean's small size • Keeping emotions in check Hancock's mom, Susan, talks about: • Dreams and trying to sleep • A letter from Brean PREVIOUS COVERAGE • Ricky Stanley: Faith and foreboding • War hits home in Dublin MORE COVERAGE • Complete coverage of 48th, Iraq

The phone finally rings at 11:07. "Jerry!" Susan yells, leaping from her favorite chair and running to find her husband, who has wandered away. She scrambles back and punches the speaker button.

"Hulloooo," comes a childlike voice.

Both parents lean their heads closer to the phone, as if they could pull their daughter through the wires. How nice: a morning conversation. Brean usually has to call between 1 and 3 a.m. Georgia time, when her folks are tossing and turning in their sleep, wondering if she'll phone. Having a daughter in a war zone on the other side of the world is like having another baby bawling in the night, only worse. They can't walk into the next room to comfort her. They can't make sure she's safe.

"What's going on today?" Jerry asks.

"I got a package," says Brean, whose name rhymes with Lee Ann. "The sergeant came around looking for me. He was like, 'Has anyone seen Hancock? You know, the little girl who looks like she's about 15, with blond hair and that look on her face like, what am I doing here?' "

Brean laughs. She knows she's one of the unlikeliest soldiers in the Georgia National Guard's 48th Brigade Combat Team. Little more than a year ago, she was a cheerleader at Dublin High School, a popular senior whose sense of style led one teacher to call her "Miss Lip Gloss." Once she joined the Guard, the petite size that had seemed so cute on the football sidelines became a liability. At 5 feet 2, Brean had to carry a box to stand on so she could see out of foxholes during training. When she marched at the brigade's big send-off ceremony at Fort Stewart this spring, she could hear the comments from the reviewing stand: Look at that little girl. ... She's too small. ... God bless her. She flashed the crowd a smile, as pleased with herself as if she had just executed a smart cartwheel.

"I got the package with the pillow," Brean tells her parents.

"The next one has food and feminine hygiene stuff," Susan says.

Brean is standing outside her tent at Camp Stryker, near the Baghdad airport, using a satellite phone. As she starts to say something else, the connection flickers.

"I hate to interrupt you," her mother interrupts, "but stop walking. You're coming in and out."

"I'm not walking."

"Well, stop moving."

Two beeps sound, then a weird electronic wail. The line falls silent.

Susan slams a fist on an end table and groans.

The Hancocks live in a three-bedroom house with a two-car garage in a tidy subdivision on the outskirts of Dublin. It's the place with the "United We Stand" flag on the front railing and a big, yellow ribbon on the mailbox.

The first bedroom on the left is Brean's. It might as well be a still life titled "American Teenager."

The walls are a cheery yellow with flowery stenciling around the top. A shelf is lined with high school keepsakes — prom corsage, mortarboard, various softball and cheerleading trophies with their bantam ballplayers and gilded pompoms. Until recently, a teddy bear sat nestled against a pillow on the bed.

"That's Mr. Teddy," Brean said in May, during a 10-day leave between training and deployment. "He's been with me since Day One. He's my man."

She was sitting on the bed and had been chatting on the phone with a friend about soap operas and hangover cures. The only clue that she was anything but a teenager on the threshold of going to college was the black Army duffel bag on the floor.

So why would an honor student and self-described "girly girl" postpone her higher education to join the National Guard, knowing that she might be sent to war?

Brean took a seat in a glider on the screened porch as she considered the question and ran her fingers through her blond hair. It used to be brunette, but she dyed it on a lark after a sergeant said she acted like a blonde. The family cats, Sonny and Cher, rubbed against her legs, which were scuffed from an impromptu softball game.

She signed up for the Guard, Brean said, because she prizes her independence and didn't want her parents to foot the entire bill for college. They already had paid for her enrollment at Valdosta State University, where she planned to study athletic training.

Brean saw the military as an even bigger adventure than going away to school. She always had been interested in the armed forces, especially after her older sister, Heather, started dating the son of a Guard recruiter. Andrew Campbell, now Heather's husband, was a guardsman himself and told stories about weekend duty that made it sound fun, like a new club at school.

Fortunately, the local chapter accepted women. The unit based in Dublin belongs to a support battalion and, unlike infantry and artillery outfits, includes female soldiers.

Brean was 17 at the time and needed her parents' permission.

"Mom was real hushed about it," she remembered, as Susan listened in from the living room but said nothing. "She didn't say yes or no. But she knows how stubborn I am. She knew if they didn't sign the papers, I'd probably join when I turned 18 anyway."

The Hancocks are a tight-knit family. They come from Danville, Pa., on the northern branch of the Susquehanna River. Jerry and Susan married 25 years ago, and moved in 1993 to Georgia, where he became one of the top managers at the YKK aluminum products plant in Dublin.

At 45, Jerry is the picture of a regular-guy dad, with a standard-issue goatee and a passion for backyard grilling. Susan, a year younger, is a grown-up tomboy who proudly points out the photo on the mantel showing her as a child in a cowgirl costume, six-shooters and all. She played basketball and ran cross country, and passed her athletic abilities on to her girls, who excelled in everything from tennis to softball.

Susan worked for a while as a substitute teacher in Dublin, but quit when her daughters got involved in school activities. She remembered how it felt when she was playing sports and her busy parents sometimes were absent from the stands. That wasn't going to happen with her family.

Once Brean entered the Guard, though, Susan could see her second-born pulling away. Four weeks after she graduated from high school last year, Brean reported for basic training. Then it was advanced training. Then she was mobilized for Iraq. College would have to wait.

Brean moved to the loveseat in the living room, and Susan brought out a couple of photo albums. The first one covered Brean's year in the military. Some of the snapshots looked like scenes from summer camp: Brean in fatigues sticking out her tongue, Brean organizing soldiers into a cheerleading pyramid, three guardsmen shaking their booties for Brean like Chippendales in camouflage.

The second album covered her childhood: Brean fast-pitching softball, Brean with a swollen face after dental surgery, Brean in a school play.

Her daughter always has been a performer, Susan said, an irrepressible ham who loved to dress up and couldn't stop talking. Couldn't sit still either. Brean has put her youthful energy to work at everything from selling tomatoes in front of the house to tutoring grade-schoolers to interning at a rehab clinic. Once, when she was little, she even flagged down drivers like a squeegee kid, offering to clean, not windshields, but their sunglasses.

They still talk about her at the supermarket where she worked for 3¸ years, Susan said from her recliner. "She was the fastest cashier at Kroger."

Brean rolled her eyes. "Mom," she said, thinking ahead to her next job, "I really don't care about Kroger now."

One morning during her leave, Brean went back to visit her old school, Dublin High. She looked like a student in her tight jeans, black jacket and sandals that showed her pink-painted toenails. But there was something different about her.

A cheerleader taking down a hallway banner recognized her. "Hey! What have you been doing?"

Training for Iraq, Brean told her.

"Is it fun?"

Fun? There was a time when Brean might have said something like that. But that Brean — the one who captured her school's spirit award three times — already has been changed by her military experience. She has learned to shoot a rifle, use a gas mask, drag a 200-pound soldier to safety and start an IV.

Before she joined the Guard, Brean didn't pay much attention to the war. Now she has mixed feelings. While she believes the United States was justified in toppling Saddam Hussein's regime, she wonders what good will come of all the bloodshed. She says she doubts U.S. troops can really change Iraqi society.

Brean wandered down the hall and came to the classroom of English teacher Monique Blue, her former cheerleading coach.

"Oh, God, you're back," the teacher exclaimed.

After a long embrace, she stepped back and looked Brean up and down. "You grew up good."

"And I haven't even gotten a tattoo yet," Brean said.

"I had no idea you'd go to Iraq this soon." The teacher's eyes were turning liquid. "Are you ready?"

"Set, go," Brean answered.

That afternoon, Brean and her parents had a social engagement: a cookout with Heather and Andrew, and his family. Andrew's father has more than a passing interest in the 48th Brigade's deployment; he was the recruiter at the Dublin armory who signed up Brean — as well as his own son.

"I must have put a hundred people into this unit," Jack Campbell said as he dumped charcoal into a grill on his deck. He was wearing a "How to Speak Redneck" T-shirt and holding a sweating beer can in a cozy. Now retired from the Guard in his late 40s, he works as a security officer at the veterans hospital in Dublin, where several hundred Iraq war veterans already have registered for medical care and counseling.

"I imagine we'll have some more patients when this unit gets back," he said.

About 35 percent of the 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq are members of the National Guard or reserves. More than 230 soldiers from the Guard have died. Recruiting has suffered as the war has stretched on and casualties have mounted, but Jack Campbell wants it known that he never had difficulty exceeding his quotas. He had a good product with a sweet sales incentive: up to $55,000 over six years in bonuses and benefits like tuition aid. In return, he reminded recruits, the United States might call on their services in dangerous situations.

"When you sign a contract with Uncle Sugar," he said, "Uncle Sugar requires certain things."

Brean knew the risks. She agreed to join the Guard in the fall of her senior year, six months after the war had begun. Her parents signed the consent forms at the Dublin High counseling office during a lengthy shuffle of papers that reminded Susan of a real estate closing.

The only complication was Brean's size; she weighed 93 pounds. She had to promise to put on 5 more by basic training.

Nothing unusual, Campbell said. "I've put in smaller girls than Brean. She wasn't a hard sell."

Nor was his son.

As the Hancocks relaxed under a picnic shelter in the back yard, Andrew strolled onto the deck in a sleeveless shirt that showed off his muscular arms, one of which was emblazoned with a Metallica tattoo. He joined the Guard, he explained, because 12 members of his family had served in the military and it was more or less expected of him. An assistant electrician in civilian life, Andrew was a member of Brean's unit and also would soon be leaving for Iraq, where he would drive a supply truck. He was anxious to return so he and Heather could start a family.

How would he feel if his wife were headed to war instead of her sister?

He sipped his beer and thought a moment. "I love Heather too much for her to go," he said. "Men ought to go to war, not women."

Not that Andrew has to worry about Heather; she hates guns.

"Now Brean," he said, "she gets all excited messing with weapons."

He nodded toward the picnic tables, where his sister-in-law sat swatting mosquitoes. "That's not some prissy girl out there."

A week later, Pfc. Hancock stood in formation on a hot parade field at Fort Stewart. Beside her was her new friend, Faith Anderson, a 22-year-old student from Dublin who shares Brean's irreverent sense of humor and short stature. They made the line of taller soldiers look like a smile with a couple of teeth missing.

Brean's family had driven down to join the thousands of spectators assembled for a ceremony to send off the brigade. Susan, Jerry and Heather staked out a place in the grass beside the reviewing stand and peered into the ranks of soldiers, video cameras poised, trying to spot Brean and Andrew.

"I've been sniffling off and on all day," Susan admitted. She wasn't talking about a cold.

Susan didn't want to blubber in front of her daughter. Brean was never much for crying. On the one occasion Susan spanked her, Brean took it without tears and then blurted back at her mother, "It didn't hurt." In the Guard, Brean has married that native toughness with her cheerleading background to envision herself as a sort of company morale officer. She sees it as her responsibility to keep things light.

Jerry shares his daughter's resolve. He figures the time to cry will be when Brean returns home safely.

Susan finds it harder to mask her emotions, good and bad. When she finally spotted Brean marching past, she whooped and yelled like she used to do when she was the loudest mother at her girls softball games.

After the pageantry ended, Brean and her family had about an hour before they had to say goodbye. They lingered outside the barracks discussing whether they had time for a meal.

"I want to go to McDonald's and get something big and greasy that isn't good for you," Brean announced. But the traffic at the main gate was awful, so they decided they had better grab something quick on the post.

When the hour was up, the Hancocks strolled hand-in-hand toward the parade field where Brean and Andrew would rejoin their unit. Civilians were supposed to bid their soldiers farewell and then leave.

Heather hugged Brean first, making a sisterly joke: "I'm going to go through your things while you're gone."

Jerry held her next. Brean could feel her father's chest heave as he tried not to break down, and she struggled to maintain her composure.

Then it was Susan's turn. She wrapped her arms protectively around her daughter, her ruddy complexion flushing with emotion, and closed her eyes. A gentle look of resignation came over her face.

"I love you, Mama," Brean said. As she turned to leave, she brushed away a tear.

Susan burrowed into Jerry's embrace and sobbed. After a while, they walked back to their car. In the distance across the field, they could see the soldiers mustering in the golden light before sunset.

"Did you notice?" Susan asked her husband. "She cried."

Thinking about it later, Susan flashed back to that time she spanked Brean. On this day, she knew, her tough little girl felt it.

One day in June, Susan walked to the mailbox and found a letter from Iraq that disturbed her.

Brean had been planning to go to the PX for supplies with Andrew and Ryan Crispin, another young guardsman from Dublin who had become a close friend. Andrew wasn't ready, so they decided to wait. Before they could board the next bus, a rocket struck the area outside the PX, killing one soldier and wounding a member of Brean's company. "It was weird seeing a good friend of mine with shrapnel sticking all over him," she wrote.

Susan read the neatly scripted words and thought to herself: This isn't mail from summer camp anymore.

Now that both of her daughters have moved out, Susan has plenty of time on her hands. She watches cooking shows, goes to the gym, cleans the house. She spent hours going through boxes of family memorabilia and wants to make a couple of scrapbooks.

Mostly, Susan worries about her soldier.

Brean is the youngest member of the 148th Support Battalion's Alpha Company and is one of 17 women the Dublin unit sent to Iraq. In all, 9 percent of the U.S. force there is female. While women generally are restricted to noncombat roles, the distinctions have blurred in a war of insurgency and suicide bombings. More than 40 women have died.

The Hancocks take solace in the knowledge that Brean's assignment isn't one of the riskier ones. She works at Camp Stryker's fueling station, keeping records and greeting soldiers as they fill their tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles for dangerous missions outside the compound. But there's no guarantee that her job won't change or that she won't have to brave the violent streets "outside the wire."

Terrible things can happen even within the camp. Brean has told her parents of hearing explosions and small-arms fire at all hours. The concussion from one blast was so powerful it knocked her off her feet.

Hearing such stories, Susan is beside herself. She always has been there for her daughters, whether it was at a game or a conference with a teacher. "It's killing me not to be there. I want to know everything. I want details."

Brean tries to talk with her family every other day. Consequently, Susan and Jerry probably know more about her living arrangements in Baghdad than most parents would about a daughter's dorm room in Athens. They know that Brean used her debit card to buy a foam mattress, a microwave oven and a portable DVD player. They know that she sleeps on the tie-dyed pillowcase she used to sleep on at home. They know that she almost lost Mr. Teddy during the trip overseas and that he's there on her bunk, looking rather ratty from the sand and 115-degree heat.

Knowing all this isn't enough for Susan. Her concern is a tireless engine that runs 24 hours a day.

One night she dreamed that she was back in high school and was packing her gear to ship out, subconsciously stepping into Brean's boots. Another night, as a storm swept through Dublin, a thunderclap exploded and woke her. "We're being bombed!" she shouted at her groggy husband.

Telling the story later, Susan shook her head. "It's going to be a long year."

Back in the living room, Susan still is trying to dial Iraq to resume that dangling conversation with her daughter.

She wants to tell her about the next care package. She's sending feminine hygiene products because that's what Brean was going to buy at the PX where the rocket hit. Susan doesn't want her going back there — mother's orders.

She also is sending food because Brean is a finicky eater and dislikes Army rations. Susan bought her Ramen noodles, microwaveable soup, nacho ingredients and other typical freshman fare.

"I got you the Mexican-theme munchies," she tells Brean after she finally reaches her again.

"That's fine."

Without warning, Brean changes the topic. "Guess what happened to me last night? ? Hello? ? Ryan was playing with my lighter — all right? — and I had a ton of hairspray in my hair. OK? All of a sudden I feel this heat in back of my head, and I smell this burning smell. He had burned my ponytail with my lighter."

"Oh, goodness," Jerry says. "Hairspray is very flammable."

"Luckily, it only caught the hairspray on fire, and I still have a full head of hair. I said, 'Gee, Ryan, if you have this burning passion for me, you could just tell me you love me. You don't have to set me on fire.' "

Everyone bursts out laughing. Sure, Brean could have gone up in flames, but Jerry and Susan seem relieved that she still sounds like the funny teenager they love. After a year in Iraq, they wonder, who will she be?

The line suddenly goes dead. Susan hits the redial button and gets a recording in a foreign tongue. She hits redial again and gets the same recording.

"We're going to have to get put on a payment plan with BellSouth," Jerry mutters. "Sixty-eight cents a minute was the best deal I could get."

Susan finally reaches Brean again — and then loses her. On this morning, she will make 23 calls to Iraq.

"I'm going to try her one more time." she says. "I didn't get to say goodbye."

She pauses and thinks for a moment, then decides to rephrase.

"I don't want to tell her goodbye. I want to say, 'Talk to you later.' "

Staff writer Dave Hirschman, reporting from Iraq, contributed to this article. He can be reached at dhirschman@ajc.com.