By MARTHA QUILLIN, Raleigh News and Observer

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - With most of Fort Bragg's soldiers home from deployments for a while, there are more uniforms around town than usual -- and more maternity clothes.

FORT BRAGG, N.C. - Gunfire on a distant range and the roar of cargo planes overhead are the sounds usually associated with paratroopers in training. Now add to those the halting conversation between American soldiers practicing Dari.

"Nice to meet you," reads the English translation of a phrase written in the Perso-Arabic script taped to a wall.

"What is your name?"

FORT BRAGG, N.C. - Matt Leonard suffers from a brain injury, has night terrors and sometimes can barely walk because of blast damage to his left leg. Doctors tell him he'll be picking shrapnel out of his face and appendages for 10 years.

As Haiti's deadly cholera epidemic widens, volunteers are trying to stop its spread across the countryside by using radio broadcasts, water filters and jugs of bleach.

Chris Yarboro's North Carolina church wanted him for a mission trip to West Virginia, but his compass kept pointing south toward Haiti.

"It was mission-committee planning, not God planning," Yarboro said. He didn't know how he would get to Haiti, or with whom, until he heard about an effort by the N.C. Baptist Men to build shelters for earthquake victims there.

PORT-AU-PRINCE - Relief workers and pest-control experts want to ensure that people who survived one of the world's biggest natural disasters are not brought down by tiny insects in its aftermath.

Details of the legend of the Unknown Scout, whose simple kindness inspired the launch of the Boy Scouts of America, are a bit foggy, like the weather in London, where the story took place in 1909.

With her diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol under control, Gail Johnson expects to be around to see her grandchildren grow up. But she figures she'll die long before she's able to pay off her hospital bills.

"I don't even know how much I owe (the hospital). That's how bad it is," she says, guessing it's well over $20,000.

In stands of tiny trees in North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia blooms the hope of restoring a mighty giant, as scientists try to bring back the American chestnut from near extinction.

It may be impossible to know whether contaminants in drinking water at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina through the mid-1980s harmed the health of people who lived and worked on the Marine base, or harmed children born to mothers who did, according to a new report by the National Research Council.