Courtesy Photo Sgt. Alex Tice is awarded a Purple Heart on Oct. 26 at the Frederick Marine Reserves center.

The 22-year-old from Charles Town, W.Va., served in Iraq for six months in 2008 with the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion. Everything went smoothly, until an Aug. 10 attack left him wounded and his team leader dead.

Tice is now out of the Marine Corps and preparing to start classes at West Virginia University, but he still carries the memories of that day -- both in his head and on his wrist, on a bracelet bearing the name of Sgt. Michael Ferschke, who was 22 when he died.

Tice went to boot camp months after graduating from Jefferson High School in June 2005.

"My grandfather and his brother were Marines. My father and his brother were Marines É so I guess I was doomed from the beginning to be a Marine," he said.

After training stateside, Tice left for Okinawa, Japan, in December 2006. The island was beautiful, but he was itching to leave.

In April 2008, he deployed to Camp Fallujah, Iraq, for a counterinsurgency operation.

He saw no enemy action until Aug. 10, he said.

Late that day, his unit was sweeping houses for insurgents. Tice was driving the lead vehicle with Ferschke sitting next to him. Ready to go to bed, Ferschke pointed out one last house -- an abandoned hut -- that they would inspect and then sleep in.

The Marines drove up, and Ferschke walked in the door first.

More than a dozen insurgents were waiting inside.

"He got gunned down immediately as we walked in," Tice said. "Me and my assistant team leader got out of the house and sought cover behind the vehicles, and it kind of ensued from there."

Trapped inside the house, the insurgents kept throwing grenades, he said. When a Humvee pulled up to the front door, Tice approached it.

"I guess either a grenade went off, or a suicide bomber, I couldn't really tell," he said. "But I think that's when I got hit."

Shrapnel pierced his right heel. He was flown out with another wounded Marine. After a few days in a hospital in Germany, he was sent home to recover as an outpatient of Bethesda Naval Hospital.

Fully healed, he asked to go back to Iraq, and was told a Marine Corps order prevented his return, he said.

"I asked them, 'Could you show me the order?' And they were like, 'Yeah, OK,' but no one could find it, so then I called my command in Iraq."

Tice returned to the battlefield less than a month after being injured, and served out the remainder of his unit's deployment. He came home in September.

Local Marines presented Tice with a Purple Heart in an Oct. 26 ceremony at the Frederick Marine Reserve center. His father, now serving in the Army in Kazakhstan, and his mother, an Air Force veteran, came to Frederick to pin on his ribbon.

Even after experiencing the danger of war, Tice said he might return to the service after college.

"Maybe not with the Marine Corps, but I'd love to get back in the military."