For U.S. military forces, the nearly nine-year-long war in Iraq officially ended earlier this month with the withdrawal of the last troops. Nearly 4,500 Americans were killed during the conflict. More than 100,000 Iraqis also died, and in their country, the bloodletting continues.

The Seattle Times recently revisited four people we wrote about during the long conflict — two veterans, the wife of a National Guardsman and a civilian contractor — to talk about how their lives were changed by the war.

For Garrett Ware, the memories of friendship and loss and the Iraq war are close at hand. They are bound together in the pencil sketch of his high-school buddy, Nathan Wood, that hangs on the wall of his Everett home.

Ware and Wood graduated from Juanita High School in Kirkland together, joined the Marines and headed off to Iraq. They both fought in the November 2004 battle for Fallujah. Ware, wounded early in the fighting with shrapnel to his eye, served two more tours in Iraq. Wood died, shot twice as he hurled a grenade.

Seven years later, Ware, 27, is married and finishing up his degree at the University of Washington.

On campus, Ware hears other students talk about the Iraq war as a waste.

He rarely offers his own thoughts about the war. He does understand why so many questioned the conflict and had found himself impatient for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

But when Ware thinks about his three tours there, he takes pride in efforts to safeguard election polling places and improve security in Iraqi neighborhoods.

"I don't regret one moment, or any of the things that I did over there," Ware said. "Hopefully we planted some seeds that will help the government grow. Whether things will get better, that's hard to say, but I don't think it's our responsibility anymore."

As for Wood, his lost friend, Ware thinks about him nearly every day. Earlier this year, Ware went to Wood's gravesite to spend some time alone with him.

"There is definitely a part of me that wants to live my life, and make it the best I can for him — because he doesn't have that chance," Ware said.

Coping with change

From early on, Stacy Bannerman was convinced that the Iraq war was built on a foundation of bad intelligence and lies.

Then in 2004 her husband, Lorin Bannerman, a Washington National Guard citizen soldier, left for the first of two deployments to Iraq.

Since then, Stacy Bannerman, now 46, has tried to help Americans understand the strains, sacrifice and isolation of military families.

She wrote a book, "When the War Came Home," about the mobilization of citizen soldiers that wove in her own experiences as a homefront wife. She lobbied for federal legislation that would allow military family members to take up to two weeks unpaid leave from their jobs before, during or after a loved one's deployment.

And she organized "Sanctuary Weekends," retreats for female veterans.

She launched "Homefront 9/11," which features 13 monologues read by military family members. In a November performance at the U.S. Capitol auditorium, they sketched the grief of a father whose Marine son hangs himself, and a recent bride who wears her wedding dress to greet her husband's casket returning from Iraq.

At times, it appeared as if Bannerman's own marriage would be part of the wreckage left by the war. Her husband returned from Iraq edgy and distant. The couple separated and filed divorce papers.

Today, they are back together, living in Medford, Ore.

"It was never about not loving him," Bannerman said. "It was not knowing how to adjust to a husband who had been changed by war, and how I had been changed by war."

Bannerman says her email and phone continue to bring news — too often sad news — of military families.

"We will be living with this for the rest of our lives," Bannerman says. "And what was it about? We are never going to have a good answer for that."

"Hard injury to heal"

For Brandon Powell of Vancouver, the Iraq war ended in November 2004 during a combat patrol in the northern city of Mosul. He was riding in an eight-wheeled Stryker vehicle, his head popped out of a rear hatch, when a sniper's bullet pierced his spine. The injury left him paralyzed from the neck down.

Now 27, Powell has been in a wheelchair for about a quarter of his life.

Powell says he's happy that no more U.S. troops will be injured or killed in Iraq, a war he thinks the U.S. had "no business" undertaking. If Saddam Hussein had to be taken out, Powell thinks some sort of surgical strike would have been a better option.

As for his own military career, Powell tries not to think back to that last day in the Stryker.

"It was horrible, and I am always filled with regret.

"What if I had gone to school instead of joining the military, or chosen a different job in the military?" Powell says. "But in the end, I did what I felt I had to do."

Powell now passes much of his time in front of computer screens, often playing futuristic war games, such as "Battletech," which is set in the distant 31st century. He has tried painting, using his mouth to dip a paintbrush in a palette.

Powell recently got a weapons mount added to his wheelchair. Now, with a joystick operated by his chin and a straw that he inhales through to pull the trigger, he occasionally visits a firing range.

Like thousands of other injured Iraq war veterans, Powell depends on the Department of Veterans Affairs for medical care and disability benefits that in his case pay his rent and living expenses.

"The VA has been great, really great," he said. "They just helped me remodel my bathroom because the floor had gotten so rotted out from the shower tiles."

Powell shares his house with his younger brother, Blaine, who at age 19 began juggling his duties as a Safeway stocker with that of a live-in caregiver.

Today, Blaine, 26, and soon to be married, still works at Safeway. He still helps feed Brandon, move him in and out of bed, brush his teeth and accomplish many other daily tasks. In recent months, Blaine has begun to get paid for this caregiving work through a VA program.

"It's routine now, and we try to just go with it," Blaine Powell says.

Brandon Powell used to scan the Internet for information about spinal-cord research that might lead to medical breakthroughs. Not so much, anymore.

"It's a real hard injury to heal," he said. "There really hasn't been much progress."

A life-changing photo

Back in 2004, Tami Silicio, an Everett woman working as a contractor in Kuwait, took a picture of a cargo plane filled with aluminum boxes draped with American flags. The boxes were coffins, containing the bodies of American service members killed in Iraq.

Silicio intended the photo, first published in The Seattle Times, to show the care and respect with which the fallen were being treated.

Her photo would become one of the enduring images of war, a glimpse of the human toll of the conflict at a time when the Pentagon had put tight restrictions on photographing coffins returning to the United States. On the day she took the photo, more than 20 coffins were loaded into the cargo aircraft.

The photo was also a defining moment in her life. After it was published, she lost her contracting job in Kuwait and returned to Western Washington. She says she loved her job, and her life has gone downhill since.

In recent years, Silicio, 58, has helped take care of her grandchildren and this summer helped a friend start a new restaurant. But she had to stop work after she broke her leg, an injury that has yet to fully heal.

"I always felt like I did the right thing," Silicio said this week. "A lot of parents out there were relieved to know that the fallen were so well taken care of. It's a horrible thing to have your child die 5,000 miles away from you."

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com.

Seattle Times news researcher David Turim contributed to this story.