Anne Garcia was in love.
The nineteen year old, married now for ten months, stood on the wharf with about two hundred other wives waving as their Marine husbands or boyfriends had boarded a big boat at the Norfolk Naval Base, shipping out to Iraq.
She could clearly see her older husband, standing on the rail and waving at the crowd, wearing a city fire department hat instead of his regulation Marine cap. The petite redhead probably was not picked out from the crowd of women by Corporal Tomas Garcia, since a lot of the crowd were wearing blue dresses.
Anne felt the wetness between her legs, the result of Tomas' climaxing inside her five times last night and early this morning at the small motel where they stayed for their last night together for at least seven months. The women of the Marine battalion had been bussed from their North Carolina Marine Base to Norfolk yesterday, in order to say farewell to their loved ones before they shipped out.
Meanwhile, a band was playing somewhere on the wharf, and Anne noticed an older tall Marine accompanied by a camera man and a female news reporter, approaching her. "Mrs. Garcia," the Marine shouted into the crowd, "can you tell us why your husband, Corporate Garcia, is wearing a fire hat?"
Anne looked carefully, and recognized Colonel Matt Rogers, her husband's regimental commander, leading the television crew.
With a microphone stuck in her face by the reporter and the question now repeated by the pretty blonde, Anne said "My husband, Tomas, I mean Corporal Garcia, is wearing his dad's fire hat. His dad wore that hat when he responded to the World Trade Center's fires on 911. My husband is just honoring his dad's heroism, hoping it inspires his fellow Marines as they begin their journey into the combat zone of Iraq."
Anne and Tomas had anticipated there might be questions raised, and she had prepared a few remarks just in case.
The blonde reporter asked several questions that Anne tried to answer sounding intelligent, but her glaze was on the tall Marine officer, a man in his late forties, standing patiently beside the camera crew.
A few of her fellow wives were a bit surprised, as they had only met or seen the Colonel a few times, wondering why Anne had been chosen to talk to the camera crew.
If only they knew, thought Anne in a wicked thought. Before she realized it, the interview was over, and the three of them had moved to talk to other women in the crowd.
About this time, she heard a lot of horns blaring, similar to what she sometimes heard along the harbor where she grew up, a city girl through and through. The boat seemed to be slowly moving, backwards, and away from the wharf.
A lot of the Marines standing on the deck continued to wave at the crowd below, with a lot of them holding on the rope to avoid falling as the ship began to sail. Before her eyes, the ship moved into the harbor and got smaller and smaller.
Anne had met Tomas when she was 12 after her breasts had begun to grow over the summer. Tomas was four years older than she, he beginning the ninth grade to her being in the sixth grade. Over the next four years, the two were boyfriend and girlfriend for most of it, and after his junior prom, Tomas had taken her cherry. After high school graduation, Tomas had enrolled at the city's fire academy, his dream to follow in his father's footsteps of being a fireman.
Two months later, 911 changed everything. While Tomas' dad made it through the disaster OK, his stories about his two tours as a Marine in Vietnam were recalled by his son, and Tomas, without even talking to Anne, had went to the USMC Recruiting Office and enlisted two days later.
Several months later, he went to Marine boot camp down in South Carolina, leaving Anne as a lonely tenth grader without a steady boyfriend.
Tomas received his initial and basic training, going into the infantry and being assigned to a battalion initially in the Norfolk area. Anne would hear from Tomas via email and actual mailed letters, with an occasional phone call.
Meanwhile, Anne, as an active tenth and eleventh grader, had a number of casual relationships with boys at her school, unknown to Tomas. And a couple with some of her teachers. Anne had a found out she had a thing for older men.
Tomas did get a four day pass to attend Anne's junior prom and celebrate her 18th birthday, and the couple spent a lot of that time in a motel room. Tomas took Anne's cherry that night.
During that summer, a girlfriend, who was dating another Marine, and Anne, had traveled down to the Marine Base in eastern North Carolina where Tomas was now stationed.
The two couples spent a couple weeks at a dumpy motel off the base, drinking and sleeping. It was Anne's first time seeing another couple having sex in the adjacent bed. Anne also found out she enjoyed having someone watch Tomas and her fuck.
Tomas returned to the city for Christmas and for Anne's senior prom. Tomas was disappointed when his battalion was left behind as the regiment sailed to Kuwait in early 2003. Anne was quite happy, but Tomas was a Marine who wanted an opportunity to fight in a war.
Sometime in the last half of her senior year, Anne had decided to accept Tomas proposals, and they got married in May 2003 on Anne's 19th birthday.
Tomas had a number of his Marine buddies show up at the wedding, including a handful back from fighting in Iraq. Anne was a little pissed at them sitting around, drinking, and talking Marine talk during the wedding.
Anne kept hearing Tomas' Marine buddies talking something about her receiving a proper Marine wedding night.
Anne and Tomas stayed at a nice hotel in the city, near the airport, that night. They would depart for their honeymoon to Mexico the next morning.
Tomas took her virgin rosebud that wedding night. Anal sex was initially very painful for Anne, but soon turned into a very pleasurable event that caused her to climax several times. During the honeymoon, Anne literally demanded anal at almost every opportunity.
After the honeymoon, the couple returned to North Carolina where Tomas would continue his Marine career. He had been recently promoted to Corporal, ahead of his peers, and had been assigned family quarters on the base. The building consisted of four stairwells and four stories, with two apartments on each floor around a central stairway, very much like a lot of city apartments.
Anne moved in to the fourth floor apartment, and each month added another piece of furniture to her new home, replacing the Marine Corps issued ugly furniture. Anne and Tomas did not have much money, and she learned to budget carefully, realizing a corporal's pay only went so far.
She shopped at the base commissary, a military super market, and the Base Exchange, sort of like a Wal-Mart with high end items like one finds in Macy's. There were base clubs to go dancing and drinking, but the couple frequented off-base clubs, where there was less likely to be bound by military regulations and better choices of music and alcohol.
Tomas's first sergeant's wife invited all the sergeant and corporal wives to an evening party for just the girls, in her home. The first sergeant and his wife Marie, had six kids, and the base housing had assigned him a large four bedroom house just off the officer housing. Marie showed everyone around her beautiful home, plus all the furniture collected through nearly twenty years at eleven Marine bases including one in Japan and another in Norway. It did give Anne an idea of what life might be life if Tomas stayed in the Marines. The house was much nicer than her two bedroom apartment. She was learning that rank had its privileges in the Marine Corps.
Anne found that she tended to hang out at these and other social gatherings with the wives of Marines in Tomas' company or battalion. One woman, Susan, was married to Tomas' squad leader Phillip. The four of them tended to hang out together, as both did not have any children. Susan and Philip were the ones to introduce Anne and Tomas to what would become their favorite off-base club, Booty Calls, because it played music that they both liked and the drinks were cheap.
Meanwhile, Tomas was upset with missing his war, as the 2003 invasion of Iraq was accomplished in four weeks, and after about eight months, it looked like the American military would be soon returning to the States, Okinawa, or Germany.
In fact, several officers and senior enlisted men of Tomas' infantry regiment had already returned back to North Carolina. Iraq was relatively calm, though the government had collapsed. It was only after the capture of Saddam when Americans started to be attacked by roadside bombs or snipers, or fired on by mortars and rockets.
The rebellion in the Iraqi city of Fallujah in April 2004, which happened to be in the area where the Marines were responsible for, offered hope to Tomas that he would get his war. Rumors were flying all over the base that a couple infantry battalions would be soon sent to war.
One day, Tomas called Anne that his battalion was packing up, but going out to southern California to train with the Army at one of their desert bases, called Fort Irwin for a month or so. Anne at first thought it was a cover for the Marines to go to Iraq, and was quite upset. But the first phone call from Tomas with a California area code calmed her down, a little.
With Phillip and Tomas gone, Susan and Anne headed to Booty Calls to drown their sorrows, boredom, and maybe to do some dancing.
A tall older guy asked little 5-2 Anne to dance, which she accepted. Anne had thought she had met him before on base, but she really did not remember where. It really did not matter, the club was filled with male and female Marines and their spouses. It was not unusual to meet others from the base.
While the two danced to a fast beat, Anne found out the man's name was Matt, and he was single. Her wedding band gave away Anne's status.
