NEW SALEM - A day after Thanksgiving, John Ferderer sat at the kitchen table of the farm home near New Salem talking about his younger brother, DJ.

DJ, or Dennis Jr., was killed in action just over four years ago in Iraq. At the table with him were his mother, Claudina, or Dina, his father, Dennis, and his fiancee, Megan Boele.

John Ferderer, a staff sergeant in the U.S. Air Force, returned home last week following his second deployment in the war on terrorism. He's not likely to be sent back to a war zone in his job as a weather forecaster and observer. He's home now, waiting for new orders and his next assignment.

DJ was killed Nov. 2, 2005, when a rocket-propelled grenade hit the Humvee he was driving. DJ was a general's driver and they were on a scouting mission along with others in a convoy. He was 20. At 17, DJ enlisted in the Army. He was too young then and needed his mother to sign off so he could join.

"It was always a lifelong dream of his," Dina Ferderer said. Nodding in agreement, Dennis Ferderer said, "he told us if we didn't sign for him early, he was going anyway."

DJ joined up in 2003, about two years after his older brother, John. There was not quite two years' difference in the ages.

On Sept. 11, 2001, John Ferderer and his parents were in Fargo, waiting for it to become official before he shipped out to Texas for basic training.

"We were in the hotel waiting for John to call and tell us he'd been sworn in," Dina said. He asked if they were watching TV, she said. They weren't. "He told us to turn it on ... any channel," Dina Ferderer said.

As they talked about it, there were no tears. Just a vase with fresh red roses on the kitchen table. They think about it - it's hard not to.

As far as brothers go, John Ferderer says he and DJ were about a sdifferent as brothers could be. DJ was outgoing, loved sports, cars, the outdoors and being at home on the dairy farm.

They did have the military in common. "Other than that, we were completely different in just about every way," John Ferderer said. "DJ always wanted to be in the military. For me it was a way to help pay for college."

"I've always said they were like a light switch; one was off and the other was on. The only thing they ever agreed on was that family was everything," Dina Ferderer said.

John Ferderer's first deployment after being stationed in Germany was in Iraq near Mosul. Working nights forecasting the weather for pilots, he says it was a relatively uneventful tour.

His most recent deployment was near Kandahar, Afghanistan, an area of the country with a fairly strong al-Qaida presence.

He said the al-Qaida forces there kept a pretty low profile for the most part, not wanting to reveal their position. "There was one attack in the six months I was there," he said. "That can be good and bad."

After a certain point, he said many of the soldiers and airmen there figure if things were too quiet, that meant it was only a matter of time before something happened.

John Ferderer's enlistment in the Air Force is up in 2011, and he is strongly considering staying in and making a career of the military.

Right now though, he's busy planning his wedding, which will be this May in Bismarck. Boele, a Kalamazoo, Mich., native, says she enjoys being a military girlfriend and looks forward to being a military wife. She says there are times she worries, but for the most part John Ferderer's duty is a fairly safe one, comparably speaking.

He says he's ready for life to get back to normal, "Whatever normal is."

And for a farm boy from North Dakota who has seen more of the world than most people even dream about, he's ready to come home.

"I've not only seen the pyramids in Egypt, I've ridden camels past them," he said, looking toward his father. "They are a little smoother ride than a cow," he said with a laugh.

"DJ loved the farm," John Ferderer said. "I wanted to see the world and I've done that. At this point, I'd love to be stationed in Minot."

And for his parents, that would be all right.

"Every time he got deployed, I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand on end," his mother said. It got to the point where she stopped watching the news, fearing the worst.

His father paid attention though, but didn't tell his wife when someone was killed in that part of the world. "I asked if she'd heard from John first," he said. When she said she had, only then would he would tell her the news. "You'd hear news like that and just cringe and say ‘oh, God,'" Dennis Ferderer said. "There's been a lot of praying."

Losing one son to war and risking the life of another, Dina and Dennis Ferderer said it has made them further appreciate living in rural North Dakota.

Friends and neighbors and family were there when DJ died and they are still there for them today.

In front of their ranch-style farm home stands a flagpole with the American flag. It's there as a reminder. DJ gave his dad a flag as a birthday gift. That particular flag has since been retired, but they have another that hung in their son's barracks.

Dennis Ferderer had just finished cementing in the flagpole on the day they received the news their son had been killed. A day doesn't go by when they don't think about DJ.

"We've very proud of what our sons decided to do with their lives," Dina Ferderer said.

And no matter how deep the pain runs, John Ferderer says he's proud of his younger brother and proud to serve his country. He could opt out of his commitment to the Air Force as the lone surviving son, but he wants to stay.

While he doesn't foresee another deployment, anything could happen in the future. John Ferderer says he's OK with that. His brother died doing what he loved to do - being a soldier.

"That's the job we signed up for."