SAYING THANKS - Marine Gunnery Sgt. Louis Kocina and son Craig visit Hillview Middle School in Palmdale on Friday morning to thank students for their efforts in sending 300 pounds of supplies to soldiers in the Middle East. RON SIDDLE Valley Press

Marines visit, thank students for boxes

By HEATHER LAKE
Valley Press Staff Writer

Four boxes loaded with everything from flea collars and toothpaste to batteries and handheld video games eventually caught up with the activated U.S. Marine reservists, who shared them with their fellow Marines.

Students in Linda McGuire's eighth-grade history classroom listened Friday to Gunnery Sgt. Louis Kocina of Palmdale and Sgt. Michael Yates give their accounts of the three months they spent in Iraq.

The Marines were selected for "adoption" by the students for their relationship or friendship with school employees.

Yates said his favorite item quickly became something to help him pass the down time in the hot desert.

"One of the best things I got turned out to be one of these video-poker type games," Yates said.

Not completely prepared for the cool desert nights that awaited him, Yates said he expected things to be a little more conventional where the Marines set up camp halfway between Kuwait City and the Iraqi border.

What surprised him most, he said, were "the things that were scary and the things that weren't."

Coming under fire, he said, didn't trouble him nearly as much as the anxiety he felt before they moved through a war zone, not knowing what to expect. And, he said, sleep deprivation was hard.

Kocina told the students how every Marine was ordered to shave off his mustache so he could be easily identified.

Deserting enemy soldiers could be recognized by their bare feet and the fact that they avoided eye contact even after tossing aside their uniforms, Yates said.

With "Peace not War" signs sprawled against one wall and standing before a backdrop of an American flag on another wall, Kocina told the students how lucky they really are.

"You guys are the real heroes," he said. "Just because you guys are Americans … countries all over the world look at you and want to be just like you."