Two snapshots of a Georgia Christmas during wartime:

In Valdosta, a single string of icicle lights dangles from the gutter of a ranch house at the end of a cul-de-sac. It makes an oddly festive backdrop for something new in the yard — a pole with an American flag at half-staff.

Joey Ivansco/AJC (ENLARGE)
Chris Youngblood enjoys being home for the holidays in Eatonton thanks to a well-timed leave, with daughters Ashley (left) and Emily and wife Lynn. Lynn says, 'I know we're lucky.'
Joey Ivansco/AJC (ENLARGE)
In Valdosta, Heidi Shelley cries as she talks about her husband, Ronnie, killed last summer in Iraq. Son Lee holds an ornament bought in memory of his father. Heidi says, 'I can't pretend Christmas isn't happening this year. ... But it's hard.'
Joey Ivansco/AJC (ENLARGE)
A single string of lights decorates the Shelley home in Valdosta, where a flag hangs at half-staff. Last year Sgt. Ronnie Lee 'Rod' Shelley went all out with decorations, knowing he was soon leaving for Iraq. The Marine veteran so wanted to help in the fight, he paid for dental work so he'd be eligible to deploy. His wife disagreed, she says, 'but he really wanted to go, and it wasn't my right to make him stay.'
Joey Ivansco/AJC (ENLARGE)
Emily Youngblood passes around snapshots taken in Iraq -- the one in front of her shows the Bradley Fighting Vehicle her daddy rides in -- as Spc. Chris Youngblood answers the questions of her fellow first-graders last week at Putnam Elementary in Eatonton. Youngblood moves a little stiffly these days. He was injured in October when the Humvee he was in struck a mine. The driver ran to him amid the wreckage and asked, 'Are you alive?' He responded, 'Yes, but don't touch me.'
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In Eatonton, a teddy bear soldier sits beneath a Christmas tree inside a single-wide mobile home. The doll is flanked by camouflage book bags — gifts for school-age girls from a father home from Iraq.

The holidays, when absence and presence are so keenly felt, can be especially cruel — or kind — for soldiers and their families. Thousands of Georgians are spending this Christmas half a world away in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some are home on leave. Others will never come home again.

These snapshots describe two of those families. Their servicemen were members of the same infantry regiment in the Georgia Army National Guard's 48th Brigade Combat Team, now in the middle of a yearlong deployment to Iraq.

One soldier has returned on a 15-day leave that happily coincides with Christmas. If he moves a bit stiffly for a man of 32, it's because he was injured when his Humvee struck a mine in October.

The other soldier was riding in a Humvee as well. But his tripped a powerful road bomb last summer, killing him and three others — four of the 38 Georgians who have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom this year. He left a wife and young family who are trying to get through their first holiday season without him.

Because life — and Christmas — go on.

* * *

Lynn Youngblood walks into a classroom toting a red-white-and-blue pocketbook that says, "Proud Wife of Spc. Chris Youngblood." She pulls a stack of photos out of the bag and hands them to her husband, who flew in from Iraq a couple of days earlier. Despite his jet lag, he gamely agreed to put his desert fatigues back on and lead a show-and-tell session for their daughter's first-grade class at Putnam County Elementary School, 90 minutes east of Atlanta.

The soldier takes a seat in a rocking chair that's a little too small for him, and a covey of children gathers excitedly at his booted feet.

Youngblood doesn't know quite what to say, so he passes out the photos. One shows a dust storm. ("We had a dust storm," he says.) Another shows livestock. ("Those are some cows.") Another, trees. ("It's not all desert; there's some trees and grass.")

One of the boys finally cuts to the chase. "Have you shot anyone?"

"No, I haven't shot anyone."

The boy puffs out his chest and announces, "I want to go back over there with you."

Youngblood looks him square in the face. "No," he says, "you don't want to do that."

Two months ago, Chris Youngblood became a casualty. He was manning the gun in a Humvee when the vehicle turned off the road and detonated a mine in the soft dirt. The explosion tossed him into the air. "Are you alive?" the driver asked when he found him slumped motionless over the wreckage. "Yes," Youngblood replied, "but don't touch me."

He was evacuated to a hospital in Baghdad, then sent back to his camp, where he was laid up in his tent on painkillers for six days. As he rises from the rocking chair to leave the class, his wincing expression makes it clear that the aches aren't completely gone.

"The girls and I think this Christmas is precious, just having him here," Lynn Youngblood says. "I know we're lucky."

The Youngbloods have been married almost 12 years and have two daughters, 6-year-old Emily and 10-year-old Ashley. Chris, a forklift operator at a factory in Eatonton, didn't join the Guard until late 2003, as much out of a sense of duty as for the extra paycheck. He knew that enlisting might land him in Iraq.

Lynn, who works as the County Commission's public relations director, has made it her job to see that people know about the sacrifices of her husband and other soldiers. She speaks to community groups and acts as an unofficial clearinghouse in Eatonton for information about the 48th Brigade.

Youngblood is a member of the 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry's Bravo company, based in Cordele. While he hasn't shot anyone in Iraq, he has gone out on some tense missions, patrolling the roads, providing convoy security and taking part in house-to-house searches.

When he returned to Georgia two weeks before Christmas, Youngblood didn't collapse on the bed or flip on the TV. He wanted to go right out and see Eatonton's newest amenity, the Wal-Mart that opened while he was away. Still in his fatigues, he walked down every aisle.

A couple of mornings later, he went to his see his co-workers at Horton Homes, a manufactured home builder in Eatonton. Like Mark Twain, he found that reports of his ill health had been greatly exaggerated.

"They were surprised to see me walking," he says. "They thought I'd been shot up pretty bad, maybe lost my legs."

Youngblood has to return to Iraq on Monday. He has spent his leave staying close to home and visiting family, which is easy since his mother, grandmother and two aunts live within view of his mobile home.

Relaxing in their living room after the show-and-tell session at school, Lynn pulls out some photos Chris dared not share with the first-graders. They show his Humvee after it hit the mine. The explosion mangled the front end, turning it into a Medusa head of jagged metal strips.

Emily thumbs through the pictures, looking back and forth between the images of war and the comforting presence of her father. Soon she joins him on the sofa and cradles her head against his chest.

* * *

There are no wreaths on Rod Shelley's windows this Christmas.

Last year, the father of three went all out decorating his yard in Valdosta. He hung lights in the trees and wreaths on the house, and dragged out an inflatable Santa Claus and a plastic snowman that his wife thought was downright ugly. "He'd hit the 50-percent-off sales after Christmas and work out a plan in his head all year," Heidi Shelley says.

Most of the decorations stayed in a storage shed this season.

It has been almost five months since Sgt. Ronnie Lee "Rod" Shelley died in Iraq. Six days before he was killed by a road bomb in July, he had seen his best friend die in a similar blast. They were two of 11 Georgia National Guardsmen lost in 11 days — eight of them from one infantry platoon based in Valdosta.

Shelley left Heidi; their 4-year-old son, Lee; an 8-year-old stepdaughter, Allison; and a 13-year-old daughter, Logan, who lives with her mother.

"I can't pretend Christmas isn't happening this year, because of the children," Heidi Shelley says. "But it's hard. I know Rod is here in spirit. But no matter how much I try to make it joyful, I don't think it'll ever be the same again."

She's sitting in the living room with Lee, who looks like a miniature version of his father, judging from the pictures of him in uniform that line the hallway. Among the Christmas cards displayed on one wall are several from Iraq; she stayed in touch with some of her husband's Guard buddies and sent them beer steins as holiday gifts.

In the dining room, a Christmas tree glitters over a wealth of presents. There's a new ornament this year, a red-white-and-blue one that Lee picked out with his mother at Hobby Lobby. She added a custom inscription:

Ronnie Lee Shelley Sr.

May 25, 1971

July 30, 2005

She removes the ornament from the tree and hands it to her son, who stares into it, mesmerized by his reflection.

"Can you see yourself?"

He nods.

She reads the inscription to him.

"That's my name," he says proudly.

Rod Shelley was 34 and worked as a night-shift maintenance supervisor at the Crackin' Good Bakery in Valdos­ta. Five years ago he married Heidi, who works days as an office manager for a welding and machine shop.

Shelley had served in the Marine Corps for nine years and joined the Guard after his discharge. He wanted to do his duty in Iraq so much that he went to considerable expense to make it happen. He had dental problems late last year and paid more than $3,000 to have his upper teeth pulled and replaced with dentures so he wouldn't be medically disqualified from deployment.

His wife opposed the surgery. "I thought, God gave you an out, and you didn't take it," she says. "But he really wanted to go, and it wasn't my right to make him stay."

Last Christmas, Shelley knew that he soon would leave his family for training, and he wanted to drink in every detail of the holiday.

Rod and Heidi stayed up into the wee hours on Christmas Eve assembling a bicycle for Allison and a trike for Lee. They sipped the milk and nibbled at the cookies the kids had left for Santa. "He went in and watched the children sleep," Heidi remembers. "He came in and watched me, too."

On Christmas morning, her husband was the first one up. As usual, he handed out the gifts. He gave her a breadmaker. She gave him a compass watch. He was wearing it when the road bomb went off. It came back with his personal effects, the watch face cracked.

Heidi Shelley believes her husband had premonitions of death. They talked about his funeral wishes — he wanted the service held at the Guard armory — and he confided that his late father had visited him in a dream.

In Iraq, Shelley threw himself into writing a 17-page letter with final words for loved ones and detailed instructions on raising the children. He devoted five pages to Lee: Mind your mother. Never strike a woman. When you grow up and get ready to buy a pickup truck, you need to know that your father was a Chevy man.

And there was something else.

"He told him that if I got married again, it was OK to love his stepfather," Heidi Shelley says.

She swallows hard and fights back the tears.

On the day after Thanksgiving, she took her son to Sunset Hill Cemetery to place poinsettias on his father's grave. She thought that for the first time, Lee truly understood what had happened to his daddy. As they talked about him, the little boy cried.

The poinsettias are still there, red leaves shivering in the December wind. There's also a framed poem at the base of the headstone.

The title is "My First Christmas in Heaven."