DECATUR - Vicki Manship gave her heart to a soldier on Valentine's Day.

As romantic weddings go, it's hard to top that, but this fairy tale soon developed some dramatic plot twists: Two weeks after their wedding on Valentine's Day 2004, her husband James "Jay" Manship, a first sergeant in the Illinois National Guard's 1st Battalion, 106th Aviation Regiment based out of Peoria, shipped out for a year's tour in Iraq.

And three weeks after he left for the front lines, his wife gave her heart to a surgeon, at least temporarily, while she underwent open heart surgery.

"It was an interesting time," said Vicki Manship, 57, who has a profound gift for understatement.

"Jay called me actually right before I went into surgery to speak to me. They told him he couldn't talk to me, and then he told them he was calling from Iraq, so they got the phone to me while I was in pre-op. That was so sweet."

The couple make their home in Mount Zion, but the soldier hasn't made his home there as much as his new wife has. Five months after he got home from Iraq, for example, the phone rang in the middle of a backyard cookout on Labor Day weekend. It was the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the Guard was looking for a few good soldiers to run some desperately needed relief missions in the flooded, chaotic aftermath.

"They said 'We need people to go down to New Orleans. Can you report tomorrow morning at 8 a.m.?' " said Manship, 59, a financial services representative for MetLife in Decatur when he isn't wearing camouflage. "I'd only been home for five months, but these were Americans in trouble; they needed help. How can you tell them 'no'? So I said, 'OK,' and I spent a month down there, helping."

He's always had that willingness to serve, coupled with a taste for adventure, which are the prime ingredients for finding military life agreeable. At age 19, he'd volunteered for the Army in 1968 as the Vietnam War raged and spent a year in-country. When he returned, he stayed on inactive Reserve status and then joined the National Guard in 1974. He was working in a ho-hum job as a tire builder for Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. at the time and craved a little excitement: The idea of a Guard outfit that went everywhere and did everything with helicopters sure sounded like adventure to him.

And it was. Over the years, he's been deployed to a dozen states, including Hawaii, and flown all over the world. He's zipped up the Rhine in the shadow of German castles and walked on glaciers in Iceland. He remembers trips to impoverished South American countries like Honduras, supporting missions that built roads and clinics for people who live in a soul-grinding poverty undreamt of in the American culture he'd left behind. Manship always re-enters that culture with the wonder-filled eyes of a grateful stranger, amazed at the everyday paradise we all take for granted.

"Life in the United States is not that hard," he said. "We need to realize that a bit more."

But when the phone rang again, and this time it was a real shooting war in Iraq calling rather than another humanitarian mission, Manship still didn't flinch, although no one would have blamed him. He might easily have argued that he'd already done his fair share for Uncle Sam and would now be faced with serving overseas with fellow soldiers young enough to be his kids or even his grandchildren.

"There were a couple (fellow Guard soldiers) who didn't want to go, but everybody else pretty much said, 'I signed on the dotted line, I agreed to do this, and I'll go," said Manship, who has two grown sons from a previous marriage. "And that's just the same way I felt, and it made me real proud."

His new wife, a widow when she married him, had no experience of being a military spouse but embraced all that was required of her, another reason for the soldier to fall in love with her all over again. "It was new to her, she was wide-eyed at it all, and yet she was so supportive," Manship said. "She's become very good at being the perfect soldier's wife."

It had never even occurred to her to try to stand in his way. "I married into this; I knew all about his love for our country and the military, how important this was," said Vicki Manship. "I'm just very proud of him."

In Iraq, her husband was involved in overseeing ground-support operations for his unit at Logistical Support Area Anaconda, 40 miles north of Baghdad. The base took an average of six or seven mortars or rockets every day, but Manship said that "unless they were close, you just kept working, otherwise you wouldn't get anything done."

He did see some good friends hurt badly - like shot-down helicopter pilot and now Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs Director Tammy Duckworth, who lost both legs - but he came back feeling like something meaningful was being achieved over there. He also believes that achievement will endure, if the politicians and the public over here can be patient enough to give the new fledgling Iraq a chance to find its feet and make the American sacrifice mean something lasting.

But military time for this soldier is fast approaching zero hour after that incredible 40-year military career spanning the Army and National Guard. He'll be 60 in August, and bumping up against the Guard's mandatory retirement age. There's a slim chance of a last hurrah with a peace-keeping mission to Kosovo in the summer, but he's only a backup if someone else drops out. Failing that, the old warrior must fade away into civilian life for good.

His wife knows that assignment won't be an easy one. "It's going to be a big adjustment, because the military has been a family to him for all these years," Vicki Manship said.

Still, there will at last be more time to play some serious golf, a passion both the soldier and his wife share equally. Once again, she'll prove the perfect partner.

Tony Reid can be reached at treid@herald-review.com or 421-7977.