Joseph P. Bier

Joseph P. Bier couldn't wait to fight. Really, he couldn't. His first assignment took him to the Bangor Submarine Base, where he unhappily pulled security duty for a few years. He eventually got to go to Iraq as a machine gunner. He was very excited and anxious to finally fight alongside his fellow Marines. "I thought, ''Finally, I get to do what Marines do," he said back then. "It took me three years to get here, but I am glad to finally deploy." 

Bier, 22, of Centralia, Wash., was killed Dec. 7 by an explosive in Ramadi. 

He was home-schooled and was assigned to Twentynine Palms. Bier had his own ideas on what life in Iraq would be like, and found them to be a little off when he actually stepped foot on the streets of Ramadi. "I expected this place to be a little more hectic, to have more enemy contact," he told a newspaper. "I'm a little disappointed, I think it's a little quiet. I expected more to happen here." In a letter released to the media, his family wrote: "Joe was a challenging child to raise because he was always trying to live to his potentials and occasionally beyond them."