‘Try to Not Worry’

Marine Lance Cpl. Eric Freeman
Feb. 16, 2004

I see myself standing at the edge of a precipice, about to take the plunge. In 24 hours I'll be on a plane, leaving Okinawa and all the amenities we always take for granted. Soon I'll return to "The Land of Squalor" as the Sgt. Major puts it. Back to Iraq. I guess my Karma has some more debt to repay.

I suppose this must be what it feels like to walk the 'green mile'. I've known it was coming since November, but it's just now hitting home. I'm about to spend almost twice as long in Iraq as I did my first trip and that first trip was the most miserable time of my life. So this will be at least twice as bad as the worst time of my life. Hot damn, I love this job.

Freeman, 20, of Thousand Oaks, Calif., was killed on Jan. 3, 2005, in a car accident in the United States while on duty en route to his base for his third deployment to Iraq.

Marine Lance Cpl. Drew M. Uhles
Aug. 28, 2004

Dear Mom and Dad,
Hey. So what's going on at home? Nothing much here. All we do is sleep around here. It's August 27th, and the rest of the unit should fly in around the 29th, so we've got a couple of days. We're in Al Asad, if you want to check your map on the wall. I think it's near Baghdad but I'm not sure. As soon as the unit gets here, we start our trip to Housaba and Al Quaim via helicopters.
We landed here on the 26th @ about 3:30 am. , so it was still dark. But even then, we stepped off the plane and knew we were here. The sounds, the smell, and the sandy dirt still felt the same. The chow hall here is unbelievable. We've got tile flooring, A/C and cable TV. Every morning we eat breakfast at about 5:30 am and there's always a baseball or football game going on. And get this, the games are live. So a baseball game playing at 5:30pm in the states live is playing at 5:30 am here, live only it's a different day here.