Across America: When the 372nd Military Police Company left for Iraq in the spring of 2003, the residents of Cresaptown, a small Maryland town in the Appalachians, waved flags and sang patriotic songs at the reserve unit's barracks.
But when the 372nd returned last month, after three tours of duty in Iraq, the army held a discreet family reunion at Fort Bragg, allegedly for security reasons. They wanted no television reporters asking questions about the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal that has landed seven of the company's MPs in prison pending trial.
The rest of the 372nd slipped home to the surrounding countryside. "They're gone, gone, gone," says Sgt John Kershner, an older reservist who left Iraq early because of an arm injury. "You won't see none of them until [the unit reconvenes in\] January."
Allegany County, a battleground of the American revolution, criss-crossed with plaques saying "George Washington slept here", is the poorest in Maryland. The only jobs are at the Luke paper mill and the WCI (Western Correctional Institute) just outside Cresaptown. Two of the accused, Charles Graner and Ivan "Chip" Frederick, were prison guards before they went to Iraq. WCI looks a little like Abu Ghraib, with watch towers and walls of concertina barbed wire. Most of the 1,600 prisoners are black. The guards are white.
Residents of the county accuse rich, southern Maryland of sending its rubbish north. They oppose a plan to shut down the maximum security prison in Baltimore and graft it on to WCI. After the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, a Nigerian inmate was killed by guards at WCI; they placed a bag over his head and asphyxiated him with several cans of mace.
"People were afraid the media would make a connection," says Bridget Nolan, an Irish-American radio reporter at WCBC in nearby Cumberland, who covered the disgrace of the 372nd.
Even before the scandal broke, Nolan says, families had an inkling something was wrong. "Kids were writing home to their parents, saying, 'I want you to know there are bad things going on; I want you to know I'm not part of it'."
Nolan and her boyfriend, Jason Maurath, describe themselves as "part of the small but growing minority" of Kerry voters in Allegany County. The Abu Ghraib scandal is, she says, "a tragedy within a bigger tragedy; one more reason we shouldn't have invaded Iraq. These kids are going to be imprisoned, because they are scapegoats. And the Iraqis have suffered the ultimate humiliation".
Sgt Joseph Darby is deeper in hiding than the rest of his unit. Specialist Charles Graner, the alleged ringleader of the abuse, lent him a CD with pictures of a prison riot while Darby was on leave. But Darby discovered images of his fellow MPs leering over pyramids of naked Iraqis, setting dogs on prisoners, holding a prisoner on a leash, forcing Iraqis to masturbate in front of the camera . . .
Darby was so horrified that he slipped an anonymous letter under an officer's door, then filed a sworn affidavit. His wife, Bernadette, was inundated with mail which called her husband a traitor and threatened the couple. Eggs were thrown at their house in Cresaptown, with its white picket fence. Bernadette had to drop out of Allegany College.
Sgt Kershner reproaches Darby for "breaking the chain of command" and blames the press for "blowing it out of proportion".
"Look out front," he says of the building he guards. "See the barriers? See the fence? It used never to be there. We had family meetings and the media would swamp the parents and wives. We're a proud unit. We served in Desert Storm and Bosnia. It's a little stain on us, but we'll overcome."
Cresaptown has four churches, three bars and one set of traffic lights. At the fork in the road stands a memorial to nearly 500 local men who were killed in two World Wars, Korea and Vietnam. It will be enlarged one day to include Iraq; three young men from Allegany County have already died there.
Townspeople are trying to make up for the 372nd's inglorious homecoming with yellow ribbons and discounts. "It's a shame, that whole unit being judged by a few," says Liz Simpson, a physical education teacher and the owner of 4 Star Pizza Subs and Wings. "I thank every one of them that comes in here. I shake their hands and I give them a large pizza for $5.00, and 10 to 15 per cent off the whole order."
At least one in four of the clapboard houses in the area flies a US flag. Mrs Simpson tells me three times that she is "very, very patriotic". Her restaurant is decorated in red, white and blue. Signs saying, "Freedom", "I love America", and "United We Stand" hang alongside antique American flags.
"September 11th made me more patriotic," Simpson says.
"I support George Bush completely. When he says something, he says it with conviction. I will follow him."
When Cresaptown was caught in the searchlights of the world's media last spring, local people grew so angry with what they regarded as condescending coverage that many refused to talk to reporters. "They're treating us like a bunch of rednecks and hicks," says Congressman Roscoe Bartlett.
Residents find solace in the fact that none of the Abu Ghraib seven were actually from Cresaptown. "Have you ever seen Deliverance?" Liz Simpson asks, alluding to a film about tourists who fall into the hands of violent backwoods people while shooting the rapids.
"Every single person in that scandal was from very small, backwoods, southern type areas in West Virginia. There's a portion of Appalachia that's deprived, where language is salty and there's a lot of alcohol abuse."
"Do you want me to write 'I love Ireland' on my butt?" the barmaid next door at The Big Claw asks when I tell her I work for an Irish newspaper. She looks disappointed when I don't get the joke. "These people were from across the state line in West Virginia," says George Jewell, a retired labourer and habitué of The Big Claw. "They were just stationed here. It's a bad sore on our heart."
In July Jewell attended the funeral of a 22-year-old from Cresaptown who was blown up in a Humvee. "This is a war for oil, because the rich people own the oil companies and they're saving the reserves," he mutters. "You're right George," chimes in a voice from the gloom at the other end of the bar. "It's for oil."
Jay Toey, an emaciated unemployed labourer, lives in the same trailer park as George Jewell. Last April his son Christopher, a member of the 82nd Airborne Division, had his right elbow blown off and had 13 pieces of shrapnel embedded in his foot "in that place that starts with an F \.
"He just lost his fiancée Andrea; she says since he come back he don't talk," Toey continues. "They were gonna get married at Christmas. My ex-wife called up and said he has to see a psychiatrist. He wakes up in the middle of the night screaming."
Toey says he'll probably vote Bush, "because he's stickin' with it". He believes it was wrong to abuse Iraqi prisoners. "We're better than that. It was just a few of them that went crazy . . ." But the conversation always comes back to his son.
"My boy missed two Christmases because of the war. He didn't get a scratch on him in Afghanistan. He's a lot different. He just mopes around now."
Tomorrow: Teetering between recession and recovery, factory workers and middle class Americans make up their minds in Detroit, the country's automobile capital.
