Six years to the day after the U.S. launched an invasion of Iraq, the still-unfolding, faraway conflict remains close to home for some local people.

While President Obama has announced plans to withdraw combat troops by September 2010 and the rest the following year, MetroWest and Milford-area soldiers are still in or shipping out to Iraq.

James Hamm, an Army Reserve staff sergeant from Holliston, will ship out to the Baghdad area in June for his third tour of duty there. Hamm has spent about 29 years in the Reserves.

"I was planning on retiring at 30 and they pulled this little surprise," he said yesterday. "We weren't expecting this. We were expecting a little break after our last deployment."

At home, local peace activists are keeping up candlelight vigils, calling for troops to come home sooner. Others, like Army Reserve Col. Jim Bullion of Millis, see positive signs of progress in Iraq.

"(U.S. soldiers) are having more non-combat injuries and deaths than combat injuries," said Bullion, who served in Iraq with Gen. David Petraeus. "Violence is just down to really almost peaceful levels."

Across the board, most believe that for better or worse, the United States will continue to have a role in Iraq for some time to come, even after it withdraws many troops.

"I know now, without a doubt, we're going to be having to read off the names of the dead a year from now, and there will be more of them," said Susan Fuhro, a Natick mother of an Army Reserve soldier and a member of Military Families Speak Out. "It's discouraging. It's tragic."

Local soldiers killed in Iraq include Framingham's Army Sgt. Scott Metcalf, Franklin's Marine Cpl. Shayne Cabino and Green Beret Robert Ryan Pirelli, and Milford's Marine Gunnery Sgt. Elia Fontecchio.

Hamm is not the only hometown soldier making a return trip. The 101st Finance Detachment, a National Guard unit based in West Newton, also gets a send-off ceremony Sunday for a yearlong deployment to Iraq.

The unit includes soldiers from Framingham, Wayland, Bellingham and Dedham, and will be responsible for supervising the pay of commercial contractors and soldiers and buying goods in the local economy.

The National Guard says the 101st deployed to Iraq in 2004 and 2005, and to Kosovo and Afghanistan in 2005 and 2006.

Hamm, a member of the 325th Transportation Co., said he will likely be moving equipment and trucks in Iraq. He served there when the war began in 2003 and again in 2005 and 2006.

Going back means a bit of a financial hardship, as well as living in open-bay barracks at times and sharing showers, he said.

"I wasn't too thrilled the last two times, so you can imagine I'm not too thrilled about it this time," Hamm said.

But Hamm said he is not surprised the United States is still in Iraq. He noted the military still has bases in Japan, Germany and South Korea, and he believes the United States will do so in Iraq for decades.

"I'm surprised they've accomplished as much as they have in this time frame," Hamm said.

However, noting casualties are at a low point in Iraq, he said plans to draw down forces make sense, from what he has seen.

"I believe that they should be trying to eliminate as many American troops as possible...and give the Iraqis more responsibility," Hamm said.

Bullion acknowledged recent suicide bombings and hot spots of violence, but he noted that overall, bloodshed in Iraq has dropped significantly.

The Iraqi government appears to be working on its problems, and the economy is beginning to come back, Bullion said. The colonel is now leading his own company, Phoenix Global Services, looking to connect American investors with rebuilding Iraqi infrastructure.

Bullion said the troop reduction is reasonable, so long as it is flexible.

"Al Qaeda guys are still around, still trying to make trouble," he said. "That's certainly the risk of too rapid a pullout."

American Iraq veteran Andre Shepherd shocked fellow servicemen when he walked off his military base in Germany and deserted the US army.

Now he is causing even more of a stir by applying for the right of asylum in Germany.

It was the middle of the night in April 2007 when Mr Shepherd packed a few things and walked out of the gates of his American army base in Katterbach onto German soil.

"I could no longer support this illegal war in Iraq with a clear conscience," explained the 31-year-old, who had been due to return to Iraq where he had already spent six months serving as an Apache helicopter mechanic.

"It has been proved that Saddam Hussein was not a direct threat to the United States and the war is simply being waged in order for the US to gain access to raw materials in the Middle East," he said.

After almost two years spent living underground in Germany, he has now applied for asylum.

His case rests on a European Union law guaranteeing refugee status to soldiers who might be prosecuted for desertion if military service involves violating international law.

According to Mr Shepherd, that is exactly what the war in Iraq does.

If sent back to the US, Mr Shepherd would be court-martialled and most likely sent to prison for a period of between six months and a couple of years.

"In theory desertion can also result in the death penalty," says Mr Shepherd, although the last US serviceman to receive this punishment was in 1945.

But German politicians are wary of supporting his case.

"A soldier deserting the army because his conscience no longer allows him to carry out his military duties is clearly not a reason for him to be granted political asylum here," says Christian Democrat (CDU) politician and deputy chair of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Wolfgang Bosbach.

Mr Shepherd is the first Iraq veteran to apply for refugee status in Europe, and there are fears that his case could encourage some of the other 60,000 American soldiers based in Germany to desert and do the same.

Others argue that granting him asylum would damage US-German relations by effectively defining the war in Iraq as illegal.