COS GARRY OWEN, Iraq -- Soldiers at this base sleep with their shoes on so they don't cut their feet running under rocket fire. Elsewhere in Iraq the tanks are being packed up, but here they still serve in the hunt for insurgents. And when U.S. troops hand out soccer balls to village children, Apache helicopters circle above.

In a little more than 100 days, the U.S. military is supposed to be gone from Iraq after a war, insurgency and occupation that has stretched across nearly nine years. But in marshy southern Iraq, where Shiite militancy runs strong, the war is still being waged.

At Contingency Operating Station Garry Owen, the last American military base in the southern province of Maysan, Maj. Steven Gventer spells out their doctrine: "You don't want to be soft and chewy. You want to be hard and prickly. And we are hard and prickly at Garry Owen. ... focused on getting out and aggressively trying to target bad guys."

Garry Owen, named after the fabled U.S. Cavalry song, sits in treacherous territory next to Iran, near weapons' smuggling routes, in a province whose governor views them as "occupiers."

This territory, known most of 2011 as United States Division-South on the military maps, plays a vital role in combating the militias and protecting U.S. convoys heading south on their way home. But the challenges they face hint at the wider problems still facing Iraq and any residual American force that stays beyond the Dec. 31 departure deadline.

To Americans who battled al-Qaida's allies farther north, in Mosul or Fallujah, southern Iraq promised to be quieter.

"When I was told I was going to USD-South I said 'USD-South?' What the heck happens in USD-South?'" recalled Lt. Col. Tim Brumfiel, Sr., who commands the 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, based at Fort Hood, Texas.

To him it was "a small blip on the radar screen." But within days of the troops' arrival in February, the trouble started - roadside bombs, 107 mm rockets, and a particularly lethal type of rocket-propelled mortar.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Army Sgt. 1st Class Howard J. Blake Jr. asked for an Alabama state flag to fly at his in camp in Afghanistan — not 21 of them.

But that’s how many be has after the flag the governor’s office sent by registered mail arrived in Afghanistan three days ago.

Almost all the flags came from individuals outraged when the governor’s office initially turned down Blake’s request for an Alabama flag to fly at his camp near Kandahar to remind him of home.

Gov. Robert Bentley’s office initially said the state couldn’t afford to send free flags to everyone who requested them. But after the outcry, Bentley changed that policy in regards to Alabama servicemen overseas and had state flag sent to Blake.

The question now is what Blake, a former Montgomery resident, will do with them all.

He already has plans for many of them.

“One flag is flying over our camp as we speak,” he said.

“I have passed out five of the flags already to other Alabamians here in the Kandahar area, Blake said. “The rest of the flags will be given out as the requests continue to come in to me.”

Well, not all of them.

Blake is returning one of the flags to the sender, a woman named Lynda who mailed him a flag that her father had in his office for years when he was an Alabama official.

“I feel that this flag has more significance to her, and so I will fly it here for her and send it back,” said Blake, who is in a platoon of 42 medics.

Two of the flags he will save for others.

“I will keep one so that I can pass it on to my son as the flag I flew in combat and one for my daughter for the same reason,” he said.

He is looking forward to a time when he can give them the flags personally.

“I expect to be home around May 2012,” said Blake, who has done five combat tours in the past eight years.

The high unemployment rate for young veterans is largely the result of hiring discrimination against National Guard and reserve members, says the president and chief executive officer of a company that helps veterans find jobs.

Ted Daywalt of VetJobs.com, a job-placement website partly owned by Veterans of Foreign Wars that has 127,000 resumes in its database and 42,000 available jobs, said he believes the hiring discrimination is the reason why the unemployment rate for veterans aged 20 to 24 years old was 30.9 percent in August.

“The high unemployment rate of young veterans is a direct result of their participation in the National Guard and reserve,” Daywalt said in a written statement provided Tuesday to a veterans’ employment summit hosted by the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

“If a veteran has totally separated from the military, retired or is a wounded warrior, they are for the most part finding employment,” Daywalt said. “If a veteran remains active in the National Guard or reserve, they are having a difficult time finding meaningful employment due to the constant call-up schedules.”

The problem, he said, is that employers are reluctant to hire people who might be called up for extended periods.

“VetJobs has been receiving calls from veterans and transitioning military who are concerned about employers asking during an interview whether the candidate intends to join the National Guard or reserve,” Daywalt said. “Candidates inherently know that if they say ‘yes’ to joining or rejoining the National Guard or reserve, they will not be hired.”

Representatives of the National Guard Association of the United States agree with Daywalt’s conclusion.

“It is true that employers appear reluctant to hire members of the Guard and reserve components, but it is very hard to prove,” said Pete Duffy, the association’s deputy director for legislative programs. “Employers are not stupid. They’re not going to say you are not being hired because you are in the Guard. How do you prove any kind of discrimination, especially when the employer has a stack of resumes and have the chance to be picky?

“But how else do you explain the current level of [veterans’] unemployment?” he said.