Jonathan W Collins

One of the last images Jonathan W. Collins' parents have of their son is a picture of the Marine surrounded by laughing Iraqi children. "Here he has this huge smile, in the middle all this nonsense and death and heat," Jack Collins said. "I always looked at that picture as a moment of sanity in an insane situation. But he loved surrounding himself with people." The 19-year-old aspiring policeman from Crystal Lake, Ill., was killed by small arms fire Aug. 8 in Iraq's Anbar province. He was assigned to Camp Pendleton, Calif. The Marine's idealism was tested in Iraq. The death of a close friend in his unit earlier this year hit him particularly hard. "I think he began to realize there's some terrible people out there," Jack...