The war in Iraq has reached the Inupiat Eskimo community of Barrow, located on the northern tip of Alaska.

Staff Sgt. Billy Brown was 54. He volunteered to lead his National Guard detachment to Iraq after Alaska Native guardsmen, for the first time since World War II, were called to active duty.

Brown never made it to the battlefield. He was killed in a vehicle accident in southern Mississippi, a death that has shaken the community.

�Until now the war was more like a television show,� Edward S. Itta, the mayor of the North Slope Borough, told The New York Times. "You don�t question the war until it touches you. Only then, when a man like Billy, an important man to us, comes home dead, does the question become clear. We fight. But to what end? What�s in it for my grandchildren?�

Get the Story:
A Soldier Comes Home to Alaska, Too Early and Yet Too Late (The New York Times 10/16)
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