Devoted without vows

Hennagir and Sherri Baskerville had been friends throughout high school, but were always involved with somebody else.

Last September, between Hennagir's tours in Iraq, he found Baskerville on MySpace and contacted her. Then he started calling every night from Camp Lejeune. The relationship took off so fast, Hennagir said, because it was as if something pent up had been set free. In October, after a month on the telephone, they became an item, long distance.

They spent Thanksgiving and a few weeks in December together, before Hennagir deployed to Iraq. They decided to wed over Christmas in a civil ceremony.

Baskerville already had a baby, Kelsey, then 9 months old. Hennagir was ready to love this child. They got a marriage license.

Hearing about this, Jim and Donna sat the young couple down.

"If love is real, it will wait," Jim told them.

Hennagir respected them and their judgment so much that he and Baskerville agreed to wait.

They bought a ring, and on Jan. 4, the night before he returned to Camp Lejeune, Hennagir took Baskerville to the Victor Cafe in Philadelphia, where they officially got engaged. He wore his Marine dress blues. She wore a new red dress.

She went down to Camp Lejeune three weeks later and kissed him goodbye when he shipped out.

She promised she'd be waiting for him when he got back - whatever happened.

Six days after the explosion, Hennagir arrived at the naval hospital in Bethesda, and Baskerville was waiting. What startled her were not his injuries, but his hair (long for a Marine) and his nine- or 10-day beard.

"That's what surprised me the most," she recalled. "I had already prepared for everything else."

His greeting was so ordinary it was remarkable.

"Hi, babe," he said. "Where's Kelsey?"

Hennagir, heavily drugged with painkillers, mostly slept, but he would wake up and have lucid conversations. Late that first night, after 11 p.m., he asked Baskerville, "Don't you have to leave?"

"No, I'm staying here," she replied. "You're stuck with me."

"No, I'm not," he said.

"What do you mean?" she asked.