Chris Hughie

Chris Hughie always has to smile in pictures, even during tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I want my mom to always think I’m happy and having fun,” he said, pointing out a photo of him eating Fun Dip candy in a humvee.
“My parents wanted me to go to college. So I joined the reserves and started going to college, got deployed, and now I’m about to graduate. I’m still in the Marine Corps — I basically got to see the best of both worlds.”
Hughie now works on reconciling and striking a balance between his military life in Baghdad and his student life in Bloomington.
Hughie’s deployment to Iraq was “mellow” while Afghanistan was “miserable.”
“You’re over there and you’re stressed out all the time because you’re in a combat zone, you could die. ...Back home it’s like, oh I got bills to pay. I’ve got all this homework. I’ve got to worry about this or that. Over there, all I’m really worried about is dying and if I do, then alright.”
Instead, Hughie concentrated on his mission.
“You can’t think about that stuff in order to accomplish your mission properly. If you’re always worried about dying, then you’d be too afraid to do whatever it is you’ve got to do.”