Broiling hot temperatures coupled with what the Army brass is now describing as "guerrilla warfare" is taking its toll on the troops’ esprit de corps in Iraq, say the Rogue Valley soldiers recuperating from the July 3 mortar attack.

"It’s pretty low," said Sgt. Tyler Fowler of the Army Reserve’s 915th Forward Surgical Team. "And one of the full-bird colonels said our unit has the highest morale of anyone he had seen out there."

Although the temperature was reported as 116 degrees in the Baghdad shade on Friday, many of the troops aren’t in the shade, he noted.

"When we set up our own thermometer — it got up to 145 degrees in the sun," he said.

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There is also the heat from Iraqis who are opposed to the occupying forces, he said.

"This isn’t a conventional war — who knows who the enemy is?" he asked. "Most people shooting at you are dressed in civilian clothes.

"So you look for little things like what kind of shoes a person is wearing," he added. "If they are wearing boots instead of sandals, your suspicion index goes way up."

Former Iraqi soldiers are most likely to be wearing boots, he explained.

"I’ve seen a lot more activity in the last three weeks," Fowler said. "We were fairly busy during the war, but it had been dropping off."

His job included preparing patients who require emergency surgery before they are sent to the nearest field hospital. To help stabilize the wounded, he would sometimes stick in a chest tube, redress a wound hastily bandaged or employ clamps to stop bleeding.

"I saw a lot of blood during the war," said Fowler, who hopes to eventually land a job with Mercy Flights when he returns home.

Mark Foreman, an orthopedic surgeon from Grants Pass who is a major with the 915th, observed the morale is probably higher in the smaller units.

"There is more unit cohesion with smaller groups," he explained, adding, "The problem now is there is no direct object to fight."

Like Fowler, he was referring to the fact former members of the Iraqi military have melded into the civilian population.

Army Spc. 4 Heather Bessey Stanbro, whose work in recent weeks often had included taking care of heat casualties, acknowledged the Iraq mission is difficult.

"The morale is a little low for some folks," said Stranbro of the 4th Infantry Division. "I tried to keep the morale up for our unit. You just have to try to find the good things in everything. That’s the only way to get through it over there."

That includes everything from taking time to watch a beautiful sunset to appreciating dropping temperatures at night, she said.

"The temperature drops about 20 degrees at night — that puts it down to about 100 degrees," she said. "There is no way to escape the heat during the day."

It wasn’t until two days before the mortar attack that the unit had received a freezer to keep water cold, she said.

"The news back here doesn’t give the full story of what’s happening over there," she said. "It’s being sugar-coated."

Recuperating at her base at Fort Carson, Colo., Stanbro maintains e-mail contact with members of her unit.

"Mortars are still coming in every night, but most land outside the camp," she said, then added, "But obviously not all of them have."