(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-04-01 06:48

"It's rough on marriages when, over the course of years, you don't see each other," Manning said. "It would make sense, certainly from a morale perspective and for the Army, to try to preserve marriages."

The only downside of married soldiers sharing sleeping quarters, she said, would be an increased risk of pregnancies.

Whether the policy applies to troops in Afghanistan is unclear. Pentagon officials said that decision is up to individual commanders, but they did not return repeated calls for comment.

John Pike, director of the military think tank Globalsecurity.org., said: "I think they are looking under the sofa cushions for anything they can do to improve retention. They spend a lot of money getting these people trained up."

After spending the first five months of their 15-month deployment on separate bases in tents with up to 15 other soldiers, all of the same sex, the Fraziers prize the small degree of privacy and intimacy they gained after moving in together in October.

Still newlyweds, Sgt. Amanda Christoper, 25, and her husband, Sgt. Matthew Christopher, 22, said the change in rules has been a blessing for their nearly year-old marriage, four months of which has been spent in Iraq.

Both work at the military hospital in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, where Amanda is a licensed practical nurse and Matthew is in patient administration, which can include mortuary duties.

"Some of the stuff I've seen, if she weren't here, I'd be a lot less cool about it," Matthew said as the pair sat inside their potpourri-scented living quarters -- a mere 120 square feet, with a TV set atop two black lockboxes, an impressive collection of stuffed animals and a Chicago Bears plaque. "There was one night in particular, I saw something and I just thought, 'Oh, God.' I came in here, talked to her for a few minutes, went outside, took a deep breath and I was good to go."

Because of the prohibition on public displays of affection, the Christophers declined even to put their arms around each other for a photo.

"It's not like in the civilian world where if you see your boyfriend at work you can just go, 'Oh, hi, Babe,'" Amanda said. "We're in uniform, and we have to maintain a professional demeanor at work."

Capt. Jessica Hegenbart and her husband, Chief Warrant Officer Brian Hegenbart, had to live separately for two months when they arrived at Camp Striker because all the trailers for couples were full and were mostly allotted by rank. They finally moved in together in June.

"It's nice to come back to our trailer. I just feel bad for all those guys who don't have that to come home to every day," said Brian, a 32-year-old Black Hawk helicopter pilot.

Living together, however, doesn't stop the Hegenbarts from worrying about each other's safety. Sometimes, it can make it harder.

"Because we're so close out here, we know to the hour when our loved one's supposed to be home from a mission," Jessica said. "So if they're late, our brains starts going to that place where you start to wonder what went wrong. That happens more often than I'd like to admit."

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