Nick Lopez, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by John C. Worsencroft, October 6, November 23, December 17, and December 29, 2009: Saving the Legacy tape nos. IA-10, IA-25, , IA-27, and IA-28

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Nick Lopez 6 Octob r 2009 does. I thought, oh, my god. That was the biggest threat: he was going to throw chemical weapons at us. I was like, we'll never make it. Needless to say, it wasn't chemical. I assume that's exactly what it was, the gases created by the explosion must have caused some false readings. But that was my extent, other than I went up on the border before the invasion, before we actually did the ground offensive, because I had Marines up there that needed supplies and mail and all this stuff. So I'd get in a truck and I'd spend an entire day finding where my Marines were at these different detachments. I went to Al Mishab, which is up there by, oh, I can't remember. Anyway, we went up along the border, dropped this stuff off and came back. I looked like I'd been on the face of the moon because of all the chalky, powdery dust stuff. I remember my last stop one day was heading all the way down to one of the Air Force bases, because they had some Marines down there, further down towards the capital. We pull in this Air Force compound and here we are up north, living in modest things and I'm out running around in the desert dropping stuff off. We pull in this camp and our truck's covered in dust and dirt and I look like the snowman. My hair's all covered in sand and dust and my mustache is full of stuff, like we'd just come off the moon. That's the way the Air Force personnel looked at us, like where'd these guys come from? We pull in there, everything's sanitary. You've got truck washes and you've got the Air Force guys in crisp uniforms. I remember seeing, what was amazing was they had these little, not Conex boxes, but like a chicken stand, KFC was there, they had like a Pizza Hut, there was a Burger King. I was like, oh, my god. They had a regular PX there. 36