Iraq War veteran attends college before heading overseas again

Iraq War veteran attends college before heading overseas again
By Jean Cowden Moore
Posted December 3, 2011
It's been years since he served in Iraq, but Andrew Gonzalez still ends emails and texts in military talk, with phrases like "standing by for confirmation" or simply "copy."

"It really does have to do with who I am," said the 41-year-old Moorpark man. "If the Marine Corps told me tomorrow, 'We don't have any space for you,' it would be incredibly hard to take."

Gonzalez enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve when he was 28 after a brief time in college with no real focus, a series of unsuccessful sales jobs and a stint as a personal trainer. Six years after he enlisted, Gonzalez was serving on an air base in Iraq, surrounded by military aircraft and hot, empty desert.

In February 2013, two months after graduating from California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, the reserve staff sergeant will be deployed to Afghanistan.
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