Camp Lejeune

Linda Romasco limits her intake of news from Iraq to late at night or early in the morning, to avoid scaring her children. Jennifer O'Brien says she watches "almost until it hurts," even though it leaves her unable to sleep at night. Both women were in the crowd yesterday when President Bush came to North Carolina to share the burdens of war with some of the people who feel them most directly. Few communities have as much personal stake in Operation Iraqi Freedom as the neighborhoods clustered around Camp Lejeune, which has sent about 20,000 Marines to the battlefront.

A Marine from Pittsburgh died Thursday of wounds received in combat in Helmand province, Afghanistan, the Defense Department said Friday. He was identified as Sgt. Ryan H. Lane, 25, assigned to the Second Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, Second Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, at Camp Lejeune, N.C. - Inquirer staff

Saddamite RE BOB Leonardo's Dec. 27 letter: Mr. Leonardo has a very distorted and delusionary view of the world, but he can count his blessings every day that he lives in a free country where he can refer to the president as a "disgusting creature" and a "cretin. " Saddam wouldn't have been so tolerant. Brigid DeTreux Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Marine Cpl. Michael D. Cooke had urged his mother to stay composed if ever a group of officers arrived to tell her of his death. "It crossed his mind," Joan T. Cooke said yesterday. "He was saying, 'Mom, if they come, now remember you don't go screaming and everything, because they don't know anything.' I think he faced the fact it could happen to him. " Last Friday, it did. Two officers and a chaplain arrived that night at American Bank Note Co., where Joan Cooke is supervisor for bonds and notes, to tell her that her only child had died in the Persian Gulf.

At boot camp, they endured snakes, mosquitoes, substandard housing, and intense physical training. In the South Pacific, they faced the Japanese. Yet, through World War II and beyond, these 19,000 black men also confronted segregation and racism to serve as U.S. Marines. They are the Montford Point Marines, named for the segregated facility where they were trained in North Carolina from 1942 until 1949. This spring, these first black Marines - about 400 who are still alive - will be honored at the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center in Washington with the Congressional Gold Medal, the country's highest civilian honor for distinguished achievement.

Away from the homecoming parades and the flag-waving ceremonies, one group of soldiers has been forgotten by fellow citizens, members of the American Friends Service Committee said yesterday. They are the trained fighters who refused to fight during the Persian Gulf war. Many of the estimated 2,500 service people who sought conscientious objector status immediately before or during the war are now facing charges of desertion, Harold Jordan, coordinator of the AFSC's youth and militarism program, said during a news conference at Friends Center.

A 29-year-old Marine who once lived in Collingswood was killed Friday in a nonhostile incident in Iraq, the Department of Defense announced yesterday. Lance Cpl. Curtis A. Christensen Jr. was serving in Anbar province with the Second Battalion, Eighth Marine Regiment, Second Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, which is based in Camp Lejeune, N.C. Marine officials said the incident was under investigation and declined to provide details. Family members could not be reached for comment.

The promise of adventure, excitement and technical skills lured him. But, most of all, said Sam Lwin, he fell in love with the image. "I want to be the good, the few, the proud," said Lwin, 21, a Burmese immigrant who came to America as a child. At boot camp, however, Lwin was harassed as a "gook" and a "Chinaman. " He said he "started to recoil back" at incitements to hatred, and grew to detest the feel of cold metal in his hands. "Inside me, it started to become cold," he said.

Just 10 more days and Marine Lance Cpl. Harry Swain 4th would have been out of Iraq. The 21-year-old rifleman from Cumberland County was that close to finishing his second tour there when an explosive ended his life Monday, military officials said yesterday. Swain was on patrol in northern Babil province when an improvised bomb blew up the vehicle he was traveling in, said Capt. David O'Brien, the Marine inspector-instructor in Wilmington and the family's casualty assistance calls officer.

Anthony Goodwin was still playing Pop Warner football and Little League when he had already decided what he wanted to be: a U.S. Marine. He joined the ROTC as a high school freshman in the 1980s near San Antonio, Texas; his family moved to South Jersey just a few years later. No matter, said Paul Cheney, Goodwin's father, at his home in Westampton. His son, killed Monday in Iraq, always felt his true home would be anywhere the Marines took him. "He always intended to be a Marine," Cheney said yesterday.

WESLEY TYRONE Tilghman Sr. had two loves in his life: his family and his church. Unless you count the Marines. All Marines love the Corps. In fact, Wesley was stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina when he fell for Diane Alfreda Hawkins and married her on the base in 1974. So the Marine Corps held fond memories for him. Wesley Tilghman, former employee of the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard who later worked out of Laborers Union Local 332, a church deacon who was always available for whatever his churches needed doing, died March 27 of complications of diabetes.

At boot camp, they endured snakes, mosquitoes, substandard housing, and intense physical training. In the South Pacific, they faced the Japanese. Yet, through World War II and beyond, these 19,000 black men also confronted segregation and racism to serve as U.S. Marines. They are the Montford Point Marines, named for the segregated facility where they were trained in North Carolina from 1942 until 1949. This spring, these first black Marines - about 400 who are still alive - will be honored at the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center in Washington with the Congressional Gold Medal, the country's highest civilian honor for distinguished achievement.

MARINE CORPS AIR STATION NEW RIVER, N.C. - When her Marine boyfriend died in a helicopter crash off the Horn of Africa in 2006, Lesley Reed was lost. Then a 21-year-old college dropout working at a Target store in Jacksonville, N.C., she had met her handsome sergeant, Jimmy Fordyce, of Newtown Square, Pa., through her brother, also a Marine. The two had been together six months when Fordyce left for his third overseas tour. He planned, when he got back, to quit the service. They'd move to Philadelphia.

When Joe Dimond was a Marine staff sergeant in Iraq in 2006, one of his men, Ryan S. McCurdy, was killed by sniper fire while saving the life of another Marine with whom he was standing guard in Fallujah. Now, Dimond works for a Marlton company that is selling to the Army and Marines a product called McCurdy's Armor - a Lego-like system of fortified wall panels named for the dead Marine. It allows troops to set up a guard post in 10 minutes, he said. "Our biggest competitor up to now has been sandbags and plywood," Dimond, who was in the Marines for 10 years, said Friday in an interview from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where he was training Marines to use the kits.

John P. Bodnar, 88, of Collegeville, a retired Marine sergeant major whose ordeals during World War II earned him a Silver Star and the French Legion of Honor, died of heart failure Monday, Feb. 14, at the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Coatesville. After graduating from Coatesville High School, Mr. Bodnar spent the summer as a swimming and athletics instructor at a camp before enlisting in the Marines in September 1940. In the early days of the war, he was a parachute instructor at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

Cartoonist hiding on FBI's advice SEATTLE - A Seattle cartoonist who started "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" with a satirical cartoon in support of free speech has reportedly gone into hiding on the advice of the FBI. Seattle Weekly editor-in-chief Mark D. Fefer said in Wednesday's issue that Molly Norris' comic would no longer appear in the paper. Fefer wrote that the FBI advised Norris to move, change her name, and wipe away her identity because of a fatwa , or religious edict, a Muslim cleric issued against her this summer.

A Marine from Pittsburgh died Thursday of wounds received in combat in Helmand province, Afghanistan, the Defense Department said Friday. He was identified as Sgt. Ryan H. Lane, 25, assigned to the Second Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, Second Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, at Camp Lejeune, N.C. - Inquirer staff

A 21-year-old Chester County man who realized his longtime dream of joining the Marines after high school was killed Sunday "while supporting combat operations" in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan, the Marine Corps said last night. Cpl. Anthony L. Williams of Oxford deployed to Afghanistan last month after serving in Iraq from August 2007 to February 2008. Williams graduated from Oxford High School in 2006 and immediately enlisted in the Marines. Yesterday, students and friends were "shook up" by the news of his death, school officials said.

First Lt. Jason D. Mann, 29, a former Woodlynne resident who served in Iraq last year and was regarded as a consummate Marine and family man, died Thursday when the roof of a building collapsed on him in Helmand province, Afghanistan. Lt. Mann was the brother of the former Camden County Republican freeholder candidate William Mann, an Iraq War veteran, a Haddon Township resident and a member of that municipality's school board. He was married to another Marine, Shannon Mann, 23, who lives with the couple's 2-year-old daughter, Isabella, in Quantico, Va. Services are expected to be in Virginia; arrangements are incomplete.

Raymond D. Hennagir tightened the screws of his prosthetic legs yesterday and adjusted the suction pump so they would fit snugly. Then the Marine corporal from Deptford, injured last summer in Iraq, stood and walked. He stands 5-foot-9, the same height he was before he was blown up. He says he can walk now for 16 minutes, and he's down to using just one cane. He's determined to shed that one, too, as his balance improves. Hennagir has also, in the last few months, skied in Vail, Colo.