A Journey From War To War

Just before leaving for his second tour of duty in Iraq last September, Lance Corporal Victor R. Lu of the U.S. Marine Corps took his mother aside in their family home in east Los Angeles for a quiet conversation. The fourth of six childrenand the first boy in the familyLu, like many other young Americans, had enlisted in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001. In the three years that had passed, the change in him was unmistakable. He had been an indifferent student, a bit of a troublemaker in a mischievous, harmless sort of way. But after 9/11, after he had...

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