Lance Cpls. Kyle Case and Michael Waisner were buddies in high school and roommates in college.

Now they’re in the same Marine platoon headed for the Middle East.

“Being a little afraid is what’s going to keep you alive over there,” said Case, a Free State High School graduate. “It’s when you’re comfortable and you forget to look for that pile of rocks or that explosive on the side of the road. … That’s when you don’t come home.”

The 2002 high school graduates will leave Lawrence next week for Missouri and then South Carolina to prepare for their overseas assignments.

Case will go to Iraq or Kuwait in February or March. Waisner will probably be in Iraq by the beginning of March.

“I was raised in a highly anti-military family and went to all the anti-war protests, and then I fell in love with a Marine,” said Waisner’s girlfriend, Teija Cheung, 18. “I’m very scared. I hope they all come home safe.”

Case and Waisner signed up with the Marine Corps Reserve after graduating from high school in May 2002. They went to boot camp in winter 2003.

Waisner, 20, and other military police members will be in charge of roadblocks and checkpoints in Iraq. They also will provide security for convoys.

“You have to be aware of the dangers, but you can’t let it rule you,” said Waisner, a Lawrence High School graduate.

Cheung said she and Waisner had dated about a year.

“We were in the car, and I kicked the dashboard and started crying,” Cheung said of when he told her he was going to Iraq. “I’m, of course, worried.”

She said she never wanted the United States to go to war in Iraq but has always supported the troops. She said Waisner’s platoon impressed her.

Case, 21, will ride in the back of a Humvee with machine guns to provide security for convoys or other armored vehicles.

“I’m not really too worried about it,” he said. “It’s nothing big to me. It’s my job.”

Case’s mother, 48-year-old Mary Maurer, said she knew her son would do a good job in Iraq.

“Except for the mom in me, I think that he’s the kind of young man that we want there making decisions,” the rural Lawrence woman said. “If I could separate the mom in me, I wouldn’t have any problems, I don’t think.”

Case and Waisner’s platoon is supposed to come home sometime in fall 2005 but may be deployed longer.

Case and Waisner have both been working as security guards in Topeka. Previously, they had been studying criminal justice at Washburn University in Topeka.

Fellow platoon member and Free State graduate Lance Cpl. Tristan Desetti, of Lawrence, also was supposed to go to Iraq.

But Desetti’s trip was delayed because the 20-year-old tore a ligament in his knee two weeks ago.

Case’s father is Robert Case of Baldwin. Waisner’s parents are Charlotte Waisner of Lawrence and John Waisner of Eudora.

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