By Rob Colenso Jr.
Marine Corps Times staff writer

You probably remember the stories of “Lucky Lima.”

The company from 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, a Reserve outfit out of Columbus, Ohio, deployed to Iraq in March 2005 with 184 Marines, the last of nine Marine Corps Reserve infantry battalions to be called up for war.

By the end of its seven-month tour, about one in three leathernecks with the company had been killed or wounded.

In all, 59 Purple Hearts were awarded to Lima Marines, 23 of them posthumously. The company’s collective losses galvanized the Columbus community of Brook Park — and the nation as a whole.

You may have heard about the company’s role in Operation Spear in Karabilah, a city near the Syrian border that had become a base of operations for foreign fighters.
And you probably saw the smoking aftermath of the amphibious assault vehicle that hit a roadside explosive so massive that the 23-ton vehicle flipped onto its back and all 11 Lima Company leathernecks inside were killed.

It’s easy to remember the painful things — the images from the nightly news don’t really go away. But you’ve never seen them through the eyes of the Marines who fought there.
Until now.

A new A&E Network documentary set to air May 25, “Combat Diary: The Marines of Lima Company,” gives viewers a window into their world, largely through video and photos shot by the Marines themselves. As Sgt. Steve Hicks, platoon sergeant for Lima’s 3rd Platoon, puts it at the start of the documentary: “Everybody had a camera.”

And the Marines photographed everything. From pizza-eating contests in their barracks at Iraq’s Haditha Dam to the aftermath of the Aug. 3 explosion that flipped the assault vehicle, the Marines saw — and filmed — it all.

“The Marines of Lima Company never intended this footage to be made public,” said Michael Epstein, who directed and produced the film for Viewfinder Productions. “It’s vastly different than footage you see from embedded reporters — or even footage shot with the intent of later being folded into a film. This is one company’s unfiltered experience of war.”

Epstein’s spare, unadorned production allows the Marines to tell their own tales of success, frustration and loss. Follow-up interviews after the battalion’s return from Iraq and interviews with the parents and spouses of Marines killed in combat help bring richness and depth to the combat footage.

In one scene, a camera follows Stephanie Derga to a bar in the Columbus area. Her son, Cpl. Dustin Derga, 24, was killed May 8, 2005, shot in the back with an armor-piercing round during Operation Matador on the Iraq-Syria border. The bar is a popular hangout for Lima Company’s Marines — they spend more time with one another than they do with civilians now that they’re back from war — and Derga prefers to spend time with them as well.

At the start of the documentary, Lance Cpl. Trevor Smith tells the viewer, “I don’t really talk to people about what happened.”

But throughout, it becomes clear that the Marines want to tell their story, to be remembered as more than “the company that lost so many Marines.” They talk of the relationships they built with Iraqi soldiers, moving from early skepticism to loose bonds of friendship in the crucible of combat.

They cite the improved Iraqi turnout between the two elections that bracketed their seven-month deployment, noting that the rise in participation is thanks, at least in part, to their efforts during that long summer.

“I just want people to remember them for what they did, not because they died,” Smith says as the documentary draws to its close.

“Combat Diary” doesn’t explore the details of the battles Lima Company fought to the same depth that it does the stories of the company’s wounded and fallen. But it does provide a stark, honest and gripping portrait of idealism tempered by the pain of brothers lost in war.

“Combat Diary: The Marines of Lima Company” airs at 9 p.m. Eastern time May 25 on the A&E Network.