Every 4½ minutes the horror movie soundtrack let out a scream.

Neil Gussman recalled timing the outbursts on his watch not long ago as he relaxed in a military barracks with 39 roommates.

More noise blared from other entertainment systems.

Rap music. Country tunes. The hoopla from a World Wrestling Entertainment match.

At times, said Gussman, a 55-year-old businessman from Lancaster, the cacophony unleashed by his younger bunk mates drove him out of the room.

But it hasn't diverted him from his mission to "give back" by rejoining the Army 23 years after he mustered out of the reserves.

Nor has an unanticipated shoulder operation.

Gussman went under the knife last month to repair damage from a 2007 bicycle accident.

His arm was in a sling last week as he took part in a final training session at Fort Indiantown Gap before shipping to Oklahoma in January or February.

The temporarily sidelined Gussman has been creating a computerized tool inventory for the "Forward Repair System" that he will oversee when the 28th Aviation Combat Brigade deploys next year to Iraq.

It wasn't supposed to go like this.

Gussman had planned to wind up his Pennsylvania training in somewhat more macho style, shooting machine guns and grenade launchers.

He had originally thought he'd stay stateside, too.

But life is rarely predictable in the Army, said Gussman, who received stop-loss orders Tuesday.

The directive effectively binds troops to their unit, ensuring that it will deploy at full strength.

Gussman said he expects to serve at a large air base north of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, he has diagrammed his recovery.

The sling will come off this week.

Physical therapy to restore shoulder motion will start soon after.

He'll begin doing pushups in December.

"I got the operation 89 days before we go," he said, "so I'll get time to heal up."

Tooling around
On his first Army go-round, Gussman enlisted in 1972 and served in a tank unit in Europe.

His earlier service allowed him to re-up last year, even though he was well over the usual age limit.

Gussman spent part of May 2008 learning to hurl a grappling hook and dive through windows, among other fighting arts.

His singular midlife odyssey, ever perplexing to friends, has been the subject of several Sunday News articles.

The latest bump on the road to Iraq stemmed from his near-fatal crash on a bike hurtling 50 mph down Turkey Hill.

He broke ribs, a collar bone, a shoulder blade and three vertebrae. He spent the late spring and early summer of 2007 trussed in a neck and chest brace.

Unbeknownst to Gussman and his doctors, he'd also partially torn ligaments in his right shoulder.

In August, thousands of pushups into his conditioning regimen, the joint suddenly started hurting.

Soon, he said, about all he could do for exercise was walk. In late October, he hoofed it about 2½ miles to his arthroscopic surgery appointment in Lancaster.

The gunnery practice the rest of the guys in his group took this month will have to wait until winter for him, said Gussman, who is left-handed, but temporarily banned from shouldering any weapons.

The doctor has limited him to clerical work "and such tasks as I could accomplish with one hand," Gussman said. Knowing Army culture, he added, "There's going to be some jokes about what I can accomplish with one hand."

The Army has been "really great about this," emphasized Gussman, who was pulling desk duty in the motor pool shop last week.

These days, the sergeant looks less like a husband, father and executive for the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia — his civilian job — and more like a hard-core grunt.

His suit is camouflage.

His salt-and-pepper locks have shrunk to a configuration known as "high and tight." ("It's sort of the inverse of being bald," Gussman explained, "because you have hair on the top of your head but none on the side.")

He has no time for hair care, anyway, as the quartermaster in charge of distributing tools from the FRS.

Ironically, Gussman reported on his blog last year, "I am the only guy assigned to the Echo Company motor pool who is not a mechanic. Almost everyone else would like to have the FRS in their garage (although it is bigger than most garages)."

The repair center, which is boxy and painted tan, is a self-contained, multi-ton tool box for working on ground-support vehicles.

It holds upwards of 2,000 pieces, including sockets, taps and die sets, and comes equipped with welding equipment, a 100-horsepower diesel engine and a 10,000-pound capacity crane that can pluck the power plant out of an M1 tank.

Gussman walked out into the stingingly cold air of the yard to show it off.

Rifle fire popped out in the woods. The sun moved in and out of clouds.

You haul the FRS around on the back of a PLS, said Gussman, lapsing into military acronym-speak.

PLS stands for "Palletized Load System," which is a five-axle truck that weighs 41½ tons and resembles heavy-duty mining equipment.

A Gussman compatriot, Sgt. Kevin Bigelow, climbed into the cab and demonstrated the operation of the behemoth while Pvt. Angel Matias directed from the ground.

"He and I got promoted together," Gussman said of Bigelow. "I'm 30 years older than him." The age difference causes no friction, "except he calls me grandpa all the time."