From one of solo journalist Kevin Site’s excellent Iraq blog dispatches:

Auton pulls on a small chain that leads into his pants pocket. Connected to it is a thumb-size book. I’m surprised to see what it is.

“It’s the Koran,” he says, a gift from his Turkish girlfriend that he met while based in Germany. Some of the guys give him grief about carrying the Islamic holy book, the same book so often found among bodies of the enemies they’ve killed in action, but he doesn’t listen to them. “It’s always there,” he says, slipping it back in place.

Auton is a US soldier on combat duty, with 12 confirmed kills.