‘Taking Chance’: A tale not of war, but honor
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Kevin Bacon stars as a Marine escorting the casket of a slain Marine across the U.S.
During the Persian Gulf war in 1991, Michael Strobl was a lieutenant in a Marine artillery unit in the thick of the action.
By the time the Marines led the U.S. assault into Iraq in 2003, Strobl had been promoted to lieutenant colonel and had a desk job crunching manpower numbers at Quantico, Va.
Nagged by a sense that he should be at the front rather than behind a desk, Strobl volunteered as a military escort for a Marine killed near Ramadi. Strobl’s assignment was to accompany the casket of Pvt. Chance Phelps from the military mortuary at Dover, Del., to Phelps’ hometown in Wyoming for burial.
Phelps, 19, assigned to the Twentynine Palms-based 3rd battalion, 11th Marine regiment, was killed when his convoy was attacked on Good Friday, 2004.
-Tony Perry