Lance Cpl. Daryl Crookston deployed to Bala Balouk, in remote Farah province, an area where insurgents had begun to spread. The Marines had regular combat patrols. Rick Loomis / Los Angeles TimesFrom L.A. Times:
Reporting from Bala Balouk, Afghanistan -- The last in an occasional series on three high school friends from Southern California and their wartime enlistment in the Marine Corps.
Lance Cpl. Daryl Crookston knew there would be casualties. That inevitability had been drummed into him as far back as boot camp, by drill sergeants and infantry school instructors, by fellow Marines.
But when two Marine buddies went down on a combat patrol in the flat scrub desert of western Afghanistan, it was so shocking that Crookston felt overwhelmed. One minute the two men were alive, and in an instant they were dead.
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My Comment: An interesting story. As everyone in the military knows .... some are lucky ..... some are not.
