Sgt. Paul Abernathy, at the wheel of a 10-ton truck carrying parts of a temporary bridge, tried to settle his nerves.

A 23-year-old Pittsburgh-area native who enlisted in the Army Reserves when he was 17, Abernathy found himself part of a convoy crossing into Iraq on Day 1 of the March 2003 invasion.

Because conventional wisdom said defeating Saddam Hussein's army would be easy, Abernathy tried to stay optimistic.

"At the same time," he told me, "I was terrified."

With duty calling, Abernathy went forward. Three unremarkable days bouncing across the desert were prelude to the shock of urban combat in Nasiriyah. As Marines fanned into the streets, covered by M1 Abrams tanks and Cobra helicopters with guns blazing, Abernathy gripped the wheel and pressed on at a snail's pace.

You might say military service is in Abernathy's blood. His great-grandfather came to the United States from Syria in 1917 and signed up to fight the kaiser.

During the Second World War, Abernathy's grandfather fought in France and Germany, coming home after he caught artillery shrapnel in both legs.

Abernathy himself was born at the Army's Fort Carson, Colo., base where his father and mother were soldiers.

"As a young guy, I wanted to be like my great-grandfather and grandfather," Abernathy said, "and my mother wanted me to follow in their footsteps. One thing my family did was make history come alive for me, and when I enlisted in the Army, I was thinking I was joining the same organization that fought at Yorktown and Gettysburg."

Abernathy combined weekend drills in the Reserves with studies at Wheeling Jesuit University, earning a degree in international studies in 2001. He was working with a community-development agency when his turn came to answer his country's call. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Abernathy and his buddies volunteered to join any Reserve unit bound for Afghanistan.

"The way we looked at it," Abernathy recalled, "it was a job that somebody had to do. We were trained, able and ready."

But instead of Afghanistan, Abernathy ended up in Iraq with a front-row seat to what he came to see as a flawed occupation.

First in Baghdad, then in Al Anbar and finally Balad, Abernathy spent 11 months in Iraq on missions ranging from recovering Iraqi munitions to protecting convoys.

His pride in serving took a hit every time he saw his countrymen pursue insurgents with little regard for innocents in the crossfire. One searing memory is a bullet-ridden bus filled with the bodies of civilians.

Some soldiers wanted to help the Iraqi people, Abernathy said, but others saw every Iraqi as the enemy. "That perspective," he said, "won out."

Abernathy flew home on Valentine's Day 2004, enrolled in graduate school at University of Pittsburgh and tried to put the war behind him.

But as news of the dysfunction in Iraq reinforced his belief that the war was folly, Abernathy began to realize his duty to his country was not complete.

He started showing up at anti-war protests in Pittsburgh, then took a bus to a September 2005 protest in Washington, D.C.

It was there, among more than 100,000 protesters, that Abernathy came out — he donned his camouflage Army top and boonie hat and marched as an Iraq veteran against the war.

Since then, he has joined with other disaffected vets in calling for an end to the war. Now a seminarian studying for the Orthodox priesthood, Abernathy, 28, spoke Sunday in Lancaster at a peace forum attended by 150 people.

In doing so, he made one thing clear: In speaking out against the war, he's still fighting for his country.