When Sgt. Rudy Will was called into his captain's office, he just knew it was bad news. But after scaring Will with a prank, the captain stepped aside and out stepped Will's wife to help celebrate his birthday. "There's a lot of pranksters around here. Nothing is sacred. What's funny is funny," he said.

"You never get called in when it's good," the Huntsville man said.

And then, when his captain began cussing him for losing an expensive, sensitive piece of high-tech communication equipment, Will began sweating for real.

"What they were accusing me of was astronomically bad," he said. "I'm talking `Welcome to Leavenworth' bad."

But it was all a prank. Capt. Eric Hare summoned him because his wife - whom he married in April - came to Kuwait on business, and she was surprising him.

The look of relief on his face when he saw his new bride almost overshadowed his look of joy.

"My wife comes all this way, and all I could manage was, `Wow, it's good to see you,' " said Will, who was working as a systems engineer at Colsa before he was deployed. "But you can't even imagine how much trouble I would've been in.

"There's a lot of pranksters around here. Nothing is sacred. What's funny is funny."

Will said some of his buddies have ribbed him about his initial subdued response to seeing his wife. They said they would've re-enacted the love scene in "From Here to Eternity" or something equally romantic.

"But I thought I was in a heap of trouble," he said. "Instead, I got to see my wife."

And she even had a strawberry cheesecake with her to help celebrate his 33rd birthday.

"But we ate the cheesecake," the captain said. "They left."

Not many wives get the chance to surprise their husbands stationed in Kuwait or Iraq. The fact that Dana Osborne-Will is a 16-year Department of Defense employee with the Unmanned Aircraft Systems on Redstone Arsenal is what got her in. As soon as she knew she was going to Kuwait, she decided to make a stealthy entrance.

The couple married in April, and he left home two months after that for training.

He'd gotten suspicious over her whereabouts because he'd been calling her for two days, and she wasn't answering her phone. She'd told him she was going to Charlotte, N.C., for work - her flight did take her through there - but she was dodging his calls.

"I'd left her a voicemail that said, `People who don't answer their cell phones don't get good Christmas presents,' " said the signal systems specialist for Charlie company of the 167th Infantry. "The difference in a good day or a bad day over here is if you get to talk to your wife."

The unit does its best to make the desert seem like home.

In the tent that houses its headquarters, flags from the University of Alabama and Auburn University fly. There are plans to project the Iron Bowl on a big sheet outside headquarters so all of the soldiers can see it.

But there will be no beer to celebrate the game. Both Kuwait and Iraq are - alcoholically speaking - drier than the desert they inhabit.

"Anything that brings a touch of home to you becomes extremely important," Will said.

But sometimes, he doesn't like the special days to feel special. It makes the distance seem all that much farther. He said he hopes Christmas comes and goes without him even realizing what day it is.

"Our conditions are great, or at least as good as they can be in a war zone," Will said. "I'm not sleeping in a tent anymore. Even though there may not be indoor plumbing, I've got a Starbucks. Still, it's not home."

As much as she misses him, Osborne-Will isn't begrudging his time away. His deployment was imminent before she accepted his proposal, and she married him anyway.

"I knew I was marrying a soldier," she said of her husband, who was a Marine for 13 years before joining the Alabama National Guard.

Will's job involves providing communications equipment to members of his company who are on their way to Iraq.

He doesn't know when he'll cross "the berm" into Iraq, but he's ready to go.

He wants to be where the soldiers need him most.

"I see war on their faces when they come back from a mission," Will said. "I wish every American could see those faces. They're tired, dirty, grimy and exhausted, but they're ready to go back in."