One is a member of an Army band, ordered to travel Iraq this year performing music. Another is an Army reservist in a New Jersey transportation company with 18 years of service behind him. Another is an Arizona National Guardsman in his 20s, whose wife says he sounded subdued, even tearful, when she spoke to him in recent days on a phone line from Kuwait.
"The whole morale in his unit is on the floor," she said on the condition that she not be named, to avoid revealing her husband's identity.
Although Army officials said they could not comment on a lawsuit, particularly one they have not yet seen, they described the stop-loss policy, which was first instituted during the first Gulf War more than a decade ago, as a crucial lesson learned in Vietnam, where troops were rotated out just as they had become acclimatized to a treacherous environment.
"If someone next to you is new, it can be dangerous," said Lieutenant Colonel Pamela Hart, an Army spokeswoman.
"The bottom line of this is unit cohesion. This way, the units deploy together, train together, fight together and come home together," she said.
Some soldiers like Qualls, though, say they wonder if the rule is not just another way to keep troop numbers high, particularly at a time when the military has been stretched thin and the number of troops in Iraq is expected to rise still more, to 150,000, in the coming weeks.
In recent months, at any given moment, the stop-loss policy has affected about 7,000 soldiers who had been planning to retire, leave the military or move to a different military job. The rule affects soldiers whose enlistments are scheduled to end within 90 days before their unit is deployed, those already deployed, and those whose term would end up to 90 days after their unit returns. On Friday, Army officials said they did not know the total number who had been affected so far. No date has been announced to end the policy.
Jules Lobel, a lawyer for one of the eight soldiers, described the central complaint this way: They were fraudulently induced to sign up, he said, because nothing in their enlistment contract mentioned that they might be involuntarily kept on.
But experts not involved in the case say the government has generally been granted broad legal authority when it comes to the obligations of soldiers in matters of national security and times of conflict.
"The courts have traditionally ceded to the military," said Gary Solis, who teaches law at the US Military Academy at West Point. "Even if the gents win at the trial level, the government is not going to quit. They cannot afford to. There is a potential cascade effect here."
Phillip Carter, a former Army captain and an expert in military and legal issues, said: "Rarely have we seen people win such cases. At best, this is symbolic protest."
The soldiers and their families, however, say they do not see it that way. Their hopes are far more practical. They want to go home.
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