MAPLE VALLEY – David Crotts’ final day of leave at home last week following a tour of duty in Iraq was not remarkable.

The 2001 graduate of Mount Si High School who grew up in North Bend spent the afternoon at a Maple Valley park with his nephew and his father’s hunting dog Coco. Later, he was planning to drop off his father’s truck that he had been using while in Washington.

In between smokes, throwing Coco’s toy into a lake and answering his nephew’s questions about everything, Crotts did reminisce on his time in the Marine Corps and his time in Iraq. He joined the Marine Corps right after he graduated high school, never having any doubt about being a Marine. His grandfather and uncle were both Marines, and Crotts knew what to expect. He said he was raised to do what he was told, to take care of himself and to accept responsibility for his actions.

“They [grandfather and uncle] told me it’s 95-percent mental,” Crotts said.

Crotts was at basic training in California when the Sept. 11 attacks occurred in 2001, and the possibility of seeing combat then became very real. Crotts didn’t mind.

“I knew what I was in for [when I enlisted],” he said.

Based out of Hawaii, Crotts has been all over the world (mostly in Asia), but he wasn’t deployed to the Middle East until earlier this year. After arriving in Kuwait, Crotts started his tour of Iraq in February. He drove equipment vehicles for CSSG-3 (Combat Services and Support Group 3) and was stationed at a base about 45 miles outside of Baghdad.

During his tour of duty in Iraq, Crotts said he missed the worst of it. As opposed to soldiers who had been in Iraq since the invasion, Crotts said his unit did not see much action. When his unit returned to the United States in September, all 1,200 soldiers came back in one piece.

“I haven’t even seen a dead body,” he said.

But it hasn’t been a leisurely drive through the desert, either. His base suffered rocket attacks and Crotts’ convoys were ambushed twice. He was also under the constant threat of roadside bombs, which have taken many American lives and are hard to find. Crotts said he is trained to look for such bombs, but there is only so much one can do, especially at night when visibility is low.

“It’s like planning for an earthquake. They just happen,” he said.

A regular day has its own grind, as well. He has driven more than 100 missions that covered 19,000 miles. Those missions routinely lasted anywhere from seven to 14 hours (although one was as long as 22 hours).

Despite being in a contentious war with strong opinions on both sides, Crotts said he is at ease with being a Marine fighting in Iraq.

“It takes a lot to bother me,” he said.

Pride helps, too. He is proud to be a Marine. He re-enlisted for another tour last fall and wants to retire as a Marine. This month he will be made a sergeant, and with the new rank will come a new unit. He will report back to Hawaii but after the first of the year, he will go to Twentynine Palms, Calif., where he will be stationed with the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center’s First Tank Battalion.

He doesn’t know if he will return to Iraq or not, and doesn’t have much to say about the war itself. What did seem to affect him is that most of the world does not have it as good as Americans do. Of all the things he expected and trained for in the Marines, how little others had is the first thing that comes to his mind when he thinks of his summer in Iraq.

“I don’t take things for granted,” he said.