| | It was all about survival.
"You do what it takes to go home to the people you love," Roberts said.
The polite, outgoing 24-year-old doesn't talk about gritty details.
"There are stories I could tell that would have you burst out laughing, and there are stories that could make you cry," he said.
He keeps the sad ones private.
"They think they want to hear about it, but people truly aren't ready for it," Roberts said of the blood-and-guts tales.
Instead, he tells the funny ones - describing, for instance, how irritated Marines settled differences in Iraq by mimicking a scene from the comedy "Zoolander," where two vain male models compete against each other by strutting down an imaginary runway.
Those extremes - comedy and tragedy - have flavored the tours of both Roberts and Brown. They're nearing the end of their six-year commitments to the Marine Reserve.
Roberts is still on the fence. Brown, who has nine more months to serve, doesn't plan to re-enlist. But he doesn't regret joining, or serving in Iraq.
"By the time it's done, it's going to have been six of the best and worst years of my life," Brown said.
Frank, the Army reservist, is quick to say his time in Iraq matured him - and eventually it changed his life.
Growing up in Farmville, in central Virginia, he had little exposure to death. The only body he had ever seen was that of his late grandfather, dressed in a suit inside a casket.
In Baghdad, after an off-base attack, Frank was shocked to see Iraqi army soldiers emptying a truck full of their comrades' corpses. He recalled the Iraqis dispassionately tossing bodies off the truck, then heading out to retrieve more dead.
"It doesn't torture me," Frank said of the sight, "but it kind of forced me to grow up.
"I was 24 when I went. I thought I was grown up. I must have put on 10 years when I was there."
Another defining moment came in a close call with an Iraqi boy. Frank tells the story as if it happened last week, not three years ago.
He had driven a Humvee into a Baghdad neighborhood. Because it's unwieldy for drivers to have their rifles at the ready, he had his pistol out for protection.
Upon arrival, he stashed the handgun under the dash and stepped out with his M-16. Children swarmed around the Arabic-speaking American soldier.
Then Frank saw something out of the corner of his eye.
A boy was walking away, looking as if he was trying not to be noticed. Frank realized his pistol was missing from the vehicle.
Adrenaline surging, Frank jabbed his rifle barrel into the boy's back.
The boy started wailing. Frank grabbed the sidearm and let the boy go.
"I was so close to shooting him," Frank said. "It took me a good week to stop going 'Oh, my God.' "
Close calls and gruesome scenes aside, the biggest impact of Frank's tour is his renewed determination to finish his bachelor's degree and find meaningful work.
Frank spent three years at U.Va., joining the Army Reserve as a student. Before he finished, the Army sent him to learn Arabic at the Defense Language Institute in California. Then came the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and later, orders to Iraq.
Seeing so many people with so few opportunities motivated him.
"Those people in Iraq, it was like, 'Here's your crappy life,' " he said. "At least here, if you have a crappy life, it's probably because you chose it."
Eventually, Frank quit his job managing the convenience store. He left the Army Reserve in 2005 - only to realize he missed the sense of purpose.
Frank re-enlisted this month for a six-year hitch and is working full time as an intelligence analyst with the Joint Transformation Command in Norfolk.
He has nearly finished his political science degree through an online school, American Military University. When that is done, he plans to apply for a commission to become an officer.
Frank knows he could get sent back to Iraq. He's OK with it.
"If you're scared of dying, then you're not going to be living," he said. "Maybe it could get me killed. But so could walking down the street in my neighborhood."
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