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When Joshua Wright graduated from high school, he made a decision that few have the determination to make – he joined the Marines.

When his tour of duty was complete four years later, Wright received a letter from the Marines asking if he would take one more tour. He then did what even fewer soldiers would do – he reinlisted and went to Iraq.

Wright talked about his experiences in Iraq with fifth graders at Taylors Falls Elementary last Wednesday, describing his work as a patrolman in Iraq for seven months.

Wright admits he didn’t choose the military entirely on his own. “When I got out of of high school and I was trying to figure out what to do, my dad said either go to college or join the Marines,” Wright said. “I knew I wasn’t ready for college, so I joined the Marines.”

He enjoyed his first tour enough that when the letter came it seemed like the perfect time to re-enlist, Wright told the students.

“I was taking some classes, but I figured I didn’t have anything else to do and I enjoy getting to see other places,” he said.

He was sent to Iraq last September and returned to Minnesota April 2. He first gave the students an introduction into what daily life was like as a foot soldier patrolling the streets of Iraq.

He was stationed just south of Baghdad, with the assignment to patrol the surrounding streets each day on different missions. Mostly, he said, they walked – a lot. Some days, they sat.

“We were assigned to watch a road block for roadside bombers,” he said. “We sat and watched from a bunker for eight hours straight.”

Part of his duty was being sent to specific houses where its residents were suspected weapons dealers.

Wright said he would go in to question and arrest the suspect. “We acted like police,” he said. Which was sometimes a volatile situation, because in Iraq, it is common to see large groups of extended family members living together and it was difficult to sort through the residents to find the suspect in question.

Wright said there seems to be a perception in the U.S. that most Iraqis don’t like the soldiers’ presence in their country.

“They aren’t against America, for the most part they understood our reason for being there,” he said.

He explained that the mission of U.S. soldiers in Iraq now is to stabilize the nation, protect the country and train police and military to protect it themselves.

Wright said kids were usually not in school. “They would follow us around all day,” he said. “Most of them stayed home and did chores – things you wouldn’t like to be doing,” he said. The military has worked to rebuild schools, Wright said.

The few schools in the region he was in were nothing more than dilapidated homes. Even those didn’t have electricity and most didn’t have books for the students. “I don’t know how they learned anything,” Wright said.

He only saw one decent school, Wright said, and that was a private girl’s school.

Another misconception is the weather and terrain in Iraq. “You think it’s all sand and always hot,” Wright said. “But the terrain is different everywhere – there are mountains, desert and palm trees,” he said. “Scenery-wise it was nice.”

He explained that when he first arrived, the temperatures were hot, at times as high as 120 degrees. But in the winter time, some nights were below freezing.

Back at camp, Wright said there were 12 people bunking in each tent. His base was roughly the size of the school grounds, he said, with about 100 soldiers stationed there. “It was pretty congested,” he said.

The base had a kitchen for meals, a small store and Internet access so they could send and receive emails from home.

The students sent Wright several questions before he visited them at school. One asked if he was ever scared.

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a nervous wreck going in, but after a while I understood and got to know the area,” Wright said.

How about being bored, one student asked.

“I was bored more times that you know. When you’re lying in a bunker for eight hours at a time, of course your mind wanders.”

Wright said he enjoyed the local fare that he was able to eat. His favorite was a food like a chicken nugget that had wild rice inside, eaten with a tomato-basil dip.

He also liked the abundance of fresh vegetables that were available, but said the troops had to be cautious about where they purchased food. “Sometimes it wasn’t as sanitary as it should be,” he said.

He was invited into many homes by appreciative Iraqis, who offered him Chai tea and pita bread. “It was considered an insult to not eat it, but I had to say no sometimes,” Wright said.

He was fortunate enough to never be caught in explosions or violence, Wright told the kids. “I did experience the aftermath of roadside bombs going off and seeing a lot of people injured,” he said.

His only injuries were minor, but they didn’t come as the result of battle, Wright explained. “Kids would beg for food and if we didn’t have any, they’d get angry and throw things at us,” he said.

The vests the soldiers wore weren’t really to stop bullets, Wright said, but to protect themselves from flying debris. They worked well to protect them from bricks and chunks of concrete that were thrown by the begging kids.

The students asked whether he ever saw Saddam Hussein or got to meet President Bush. Wright said no, but he did see Vice President Dick Cheney when he spoke to troops while he was training in California before he left for Iraq.

While he was there, Wright tried to learn some simple Iraqi phrases to help him communicate. He wrote the names and symbols for numbers up through nine on the board for the students to see how different the language was from English.

Wright was officially discharged two weeks ago and now is looking into bartending school. His long-term goal is to attend a community college and become an EMT.

He visited Taylors Falls Elementary on an invitation from kindergarten teacher Betty Hopkins, whose son was in the Marines with Wright.

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