Take a visit to Freedom Bridge overpass near Fort Lewis, or Galloping Gertie’s Bar and Grill in Lakewood, or any number of protests and counterprotests this month.

Some folks have opposed the war from the start; others are still four-square behind it. Nearly all were euphoric about the rapid collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, then his capture in a hole in the ground, and had hopes for a quick return of local troops. It gave way to the reality that this endeavor would prove much more difficult.

As of last spring, Fort Lewis’ presence in Iraq peaked at 10,000 soldiers. As of today, the war has taken at least 263 who called Washington home or who served at military installations in our state.

Thousands more carry scars, physical and emotional. Among them are family who hold things together when a service member is gone, then help pick up the pieces when he or she returns.

Five years on, many are certain of their views on the war. Others can be forgiven for feeling it all still seems too close, too much a moving picture.

Today we revisit some of the key moments of the war in words and pictures.

January 2003: The buildup begins. About 1,200 soldiers from Fort Lewis get word they are bound for the Middle East. Hundreds more National Guard troops and reservists begin mobilizing. A Coast Guard port security unit from Tacoma is called up for duty in the Persian Gulf.

Early February 2003: The Army loads the 62nd Medical Brigade and the 555th Engineer Brigade’s trucks, Humvees and helicopters aboard cargo ships at the Port of Tacoma. No protesters are there – that will change with later load-outs and returns.

Early March 2003: While some troops wait at Fort Lewis, others get the word to go quickly, including the truck drivers of the 513th Transportation Company and the combat engineers of the 864th Engineer Battalion. The 47th Combat Support Hospital opens in Kuwait. The 40th Transportation Company arrives to haul gas for invasion forces.

March 19, 2003: The war begins. Units from the 864th break the berm at the Iraq-Kuwait border.

March 26, 2003: McChord wing commander Col. Bob Allardice and several air crews from the base drop paratroopers – including airborne medics from Fort Lewis – into northern Iraq to open a northern front.

April 9, 2003: Baghdad falls to coalition forces.

Late April 2003: Fort Lewis’ largest units in Iraq set up shop after convoying north from Kuwait. The 62nd Medical sets up in Mosul, the 555th Engineers in Tikrit.

June 6, 2003: Sgt. Travis L. Burkhardt, 26, of the 170th Military Police Company, is killed in a vehicle accident in Baghdad. He is the first Fort Lewis soldier to die in the war.

September 2003: The 81st Brigade Combat Team of the Washington National Guard is placed on alert. It will become the largest Washington Guard callup since World War II.

November 2003: Some 4,000 soldiers with the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division leave Fort Lewis for Iraq. This is the first combat test for the Army’s first Stryker brigade, four years in the making.

Dec. 8, 2003: The Stryker brigade suffers its first losses. Three soldiers die when two of the namesake vehicles tumble into a canal after a dirt trail collapses beneath them in Duluiyah, near Samarra.

January 2004: Task Force Olympia, a headquarters element of about 100 soldiers from Fort Lewis led by Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, goes to Mosul and takes over operations across northern Iraq. It is joined by the 3rd Brigade.

March 2004: After five months of training, the 81st Brigade goes first to Kuwait, then into Iraq. Much of the brigade rolls north in April, just as cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s militia launches a major uprising across southern Iraq.

April 2004: To counter an uprising that threatens major supply routes, Stryker units are sent south from Mosul to run convoy security and to fight Shia militias from Baghdad to Najaf.

Sept. 3, 2004: A military panel sentences Washington guardsman Ryan Anderson to life in prison for attempting to pass secrets to al-Qaida.

Sept. 4, 2004: 3rd Brigade units fight off hundreds of insurgents to rescue a pair of pilots whose Kiowa helicopter was shot down over Tal Afar, a city 45 miles west of Mosul. In the next two weeks, the brigade leads a major sweep against insurgent forces that have taken hold in Tal Afar.

October 2004: The 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division leaves Fort Lewis to replace the 3rd Brigade in Mosul. As the two Fort Lewis Stryker brigades make the switch, the insurgency intensifies.

November 2004: Insurgent fighters who escaped the U.S. offensive in Fallujah stage attacks across Mosul, at one point causing most of the city’s Iraqi police officers to flee their posts.

Dec. 21, 2004: A suicide bomber infiltrates the busy chow hall at the main U.S. base in Mosul and detonates himself, killing 22 people – including six from Fort Lewis. It remains one of the war’s worst attacks on U.S. forces.

Dec. 29, 2004: Insurgents run a truck packed with explosives at a Stryker brigade outpost along a major route in Mosul, but Pfc. Oscar Sanchez opens fire on the truck, causing it to detonate before it can reach the building. Sanchez is the only soldier killed in what would be hours of fighting. He and 10 others later are decorated for valor.

Jan. 30, 2005: After three months of sometimes heavy fighting, U.S. troops in Mosul maintain order and Iraqis there join millions across the country to vote in the “purple thumb” elections. “This was not at all the day I expected,” Brig. Gen. Ham says, “but pretty close to the day I secretly wished for.”

March 2005: The Washington Guard’s 81st Brigade Combat Team returns home after a year in Iraq. Most served in Baghdad or at Balad – a U.S. base dubbed “Mortaritaville” for its near nightly rocket and mortar attacks.

April 2005: The Washington Post reports numerous improvements needed in Stryker vehicles, according to an Army report. Soldiers and officers defend the vehicle’s performance. “It has saved hundreds of my soldiers’ lives,” then-Col. Robert Brown, the 1st Brigade commander, later tells Pentagon reporters.

Spring and summer 2005: 1st Brigade troops steadily work away at the insurgency in Mosul, turning some attention to civil projects, such as reopening a community pool near Mosul Airfield.

September 2005: The 1st Brigade returns to Fort Lewis, but only briefly. Within a few months, its 3,800 soldiers move to a new home station in Germany. Two more Stryker brigades take its place at Fort Lewis.

October 2005: Another wave of hundreds of Fort Lewis troops leaves for second trips to Iraq. The 555th Engineer Brigade returns to Tikrit, the 44th Corps Support Battalion sends units to Balad, Talil, Taji and Al Taqqadum, and the 47th Combat Support Hospital goes to Tikrit and Mosul.

Nov. 5, 2005: Actor Bruce Willis parties with the 1st Brigade’s “Deuce Four” infantry battalion at its welcome-home ball at the Greater Tacoma Convention & Trade Center.

December 2005: The Army’s first fleet of Stryker vehicles undergoes a $69 million reset at Fort Lewis after 24 months in Iraq.

April 2006: Berkeley Avenue overcrossing at Interstate 5, between Fort Lewis and Camp Murray, the scene of numerous pro-troops rallies, is rechristened “Freedom Bridge.”

May 2006: Anti-war activists demonstrate at the Port of Olympia to protest the load-out of the 3rd Brigade’s Strykers and vehicles ahead of its return trip to Iraq. Police arrest dozens. Protesters will later rally at another Stryker brigade’s load-out at the Port of Tacoma in March 2007, and at the return of the 3rd Brigade’s equipment to Olympia in October 2007.

June 7, 2006: Groups opposed to the war in Iraq rally around Lt. Ehren Watada, who tells a Tacoma news conference that he won’t deploy with the 3rd Brigade because he believes the war is illegal. A February 2007 court-martial ends in mistrial; a second court-martial remains stayed while a U.S. District judge weighs Watada’s claims of double jeopardy.

June-July 2006: 3rd Brigade returns to Iraq and familiar territory – Mosul – although two battalions are split off and sent to Baghdad.

Dec. 4, 2006: Interstate 5 drivers get up-close Stryker experience as Fort Lewis’ 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division goes on a training drive. There are no reported accidents, lots of honked horns and V-for-victory signs – and one set of exposed female breasts.

December 2006: All of the 3rd Brigade moves down to Baghdad to serve as U.S. commanders’ strike force around the capital.

Jan. 10, 2007: President Bush announces “the surge.” The 4th Brigade learns it is to leave for Iraq a month earlier than planned, and without a mission rehearsal exercise at the Army’s National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif.

Jan. 20-21: Watada supporters from around the nation gather at The Evergreen State College Tacoma campus for a two-day “Citizens Hearing on the Legality of the U.S. Actions in Iraq.”

Feb. 18, 2007: The reporting of scandalous conditions for wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center leads to inquiries about care for injured service members nationwide. Soldiers in “medical hold” at Madigan Army Medical Center complain of mistreatment, confusion and delays.

March 2007: Fort Lewis and Madigan leaders launch changes to address soldiers’ complaints. As part of an Army-wide response, wounded soldiers eventually are moved to newly refurbished barracks and assigned to “Warrior Transition Units” to help manage their care.

March 12, 2007: The 4th Brigade has its deployment ceremony at Fort Lewis, and over the next few weeks flies out for its mission in Iraq.

March 13, 2007: After months patrolling some of Baghdad’s worst neighborhoods, a battalion from the 3rd Brigade is ordered north to something worse – Diyala province – the insurgents’ proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq. “They always say the next place we’re going is the worst – the most violent – and it never turns out to be the case,” says Sgt. William Rose. “They really meant it this time.”

April 11: Bitter news for Fort Lewis. The Army extends combat tours from 12 to 15 months.

April-May 2007: With 4th Brigade’s arrival in Iraq, Fort Lewis now has 10,000 soldiers in Iraq, more than at any time in the war.

May 6, 2007: A deep-buried bomb in Baqouba kills six soldiers and a news photographer, the worst single attack on a Stryker. The bomb is one of many that the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment faces in Baqouba and surrounding Diyala province.

May 2007: 4th Brigade takes up position in Taji, north of Baghdad, and sends some units up to Diyala.

May 2007: Over the course of the month, 20 Fort Lewis soldiers die in Iraq. Another 17 will fall in June, by far the post’s worst period of the war.

Late May: Deputy commander Brig. Gen. William Troy announces Fort Lewis will soon hold monthly memorial ceremonies for fallen soldiers, instead of on an individual, unit-by-unit basis. “I am afraid that with the number of soldiers we now have in harm’s way, our losses will preclude us from continuing to do individual memorial ceremonies,” Troy writes. The decision is unpopular at Fort Lewis; the incoming commander, Lt. Gen. Charles Jacoby, suspends the move.

June 18, 2007: 3rd Brigade launches a major offensive in Diyala – “Arrowhead Ripper” – against an estimated 300 to 500 Sunni insurgents in Baqouba. Soldiers encounter deep-buried bombs and booby-trapped houses. Some enemy fighters slip away.

Sept. 4, 2007: The first party of returning 3rd Brigade soldiers is welcomed at Fort Lewis after the end of their second tour. Ten-year-old Kevin Halvorson, waiting for his father, Staff Sgt. Roy Halvorson, asks his mother, “I’m not dreaming, am I?”

October 2007: 4th Brigade is ordered to double its area of operations and by December take over responsibility for all of Diyala province.

Oct. 18, 2007: The Washington Guard’s 81st Brigade is alerted for mobilization to Iraq next August – 31/2 years after it returned from Iraq.

October-November: The Army tests all 3,800 returning 3rd Brigade soldiers for signs of mild traumatic brain injury in an effort to find those suffering from what has been called the “signature wound of the Iraq war.” Some 400 soldiers are referred for follow-up visits.

September-November: Reduction in violence in Iraq is evident in the fortunes of Fort Lewis units, which go 52 days without a fatal casualty.

March 19, 2008: At the war’s fifth anniversary, Fort Lewis prepares for a busy summer when nearly all its units will be home. The Washington National Guard, meantime, ramps up its training for another year in Iraq.