By Sarah Schulz
sarah.schulz@theindependent.com

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Marine Cpl. Dan Roehrich talks to a group of Grand Island Northwest freshmen Thursday in the schoolıs auditorium. A 2005 graduate of Grand Island Northwest, Dan Roehrich returned to his former school dressed in his Marine uniform to talk to 84 freshmen, including his brother, Justin Roehrich, about his experiences in Iraq over the last seven months. Click Thumbnails to View

"Iraq isn't a fun place to be," Roehrich said.

"This country is pretty cool," he said of the United States. "You don't realize how good you have it here."

Roehrich spoke to 84 freshmen, including his brother Justin, at Northwest High School on Thursday about his time in the military and his deployment to Iraq. He was in the Middle East from August 2007 until the end of February. He returned to Grand Island on Sunday from his base in Hawaii for a 22-day leave.

Roehrich answered questions for nearly two hours on topics that varied from boot camp to weapons to big spiders.

"They get everywhere," he said of camel spiders, which are insects the size of dessert plates that latch onto camels and suck out their stomachs. "We'd shoot at them, and they'd attack. On summer nights, you'd sometimes hear a blood-curdling scream, and everyone would wake up and go spider hunting."

Though the shiver-inducing story made the students laugh, most of what Roehrich talked about was far more serious.

Roehrich graduated from Northwest in 2005 and joined the Marines that December after spending a semester at York College. He chose to join the Marines because they're "hard-core." Fifty-two percent of the people who started with Roehrich in boot camp dropped out before completing their training. He contributed a lot of it to "cracking mentally."

Boot camp is designed to force the trainees to rely on each other and work together, a skill necessary in combat zones, Roehrich said. The trainees also apply and test for various jobs within their platoons. Roehrich is a machine gunner.

He spoke in detail about the types of guns he carries, the vehicles he traveled in and the weight of his equipment and uniform, which could reach up to 150 pounds.

"I'm glad the country's flat," he said of Iraq. "It was terrible."

In addition to being relatively flat, Iraq is mostly a desert prone to sandstorms and extreme heat. The temperature reached 147 degrees during one of the days Roehrich was in the country, and for the first month and a half of his deployment, the temperature never dipped below 110 degrees, even at night.

Roehrich said the Tigris and Euphrates rivers are the only source of water and are used for everything from irrigation to drinking. He recalled seeing people dumping human waste into the river while others swam in the river and drank the water.

"Their health standards there are low," he said. "If I drank that water, I'd be on the floor. That would kill us."

The most striking difference between the United States and Iraq is the lack of freedom in the religion-dominated country, he said.

"Religion there is king," he said. "It dictates everything they do."

He described how the women dress in burqas that cover their bodies from head to toe, how they aren't allowed to speak to or ride in a car with a man who isn't their relative and how they'd vanish whenever a camera was present.

"Women there are treated like dogs," he said, adding that dogs are abused and treated very poorly. "It's horrid. Girls, you have it easy here."

He said 99 percent of the Iraqis he met were nice, kind and courteous. The 1 percent that make the news are hostile and treat Americans poorly, he said.

"As a whole, they're glad we're there, but they wish we weren't," he said.

While he couldn't talk specifically of his missions, Roehrich did tell the students he helped search homes to look for insurgents and set groundwork for the rebuilding of infrastructure.

Because of the number of insurgents in Iraq from other countries and the amount of munitions from Iran in the country, Roehrich believes the United States should invade Iran.

"If we pull out, Iraq will be overrun by Iran and become a puppet state," he said. "We'd get attacked here. There'd be another Twin Towers. We need to fight terrorism in Iraq, or we'll fight it here. It's that simple."