Michael Strobl

Michael R. Strobl
Born	Grand Junction, Colorado
Allegiance	United States
Service/branch	United States Marine Corps
Years of service	1983 - 2007
Rank	Lieutenant Colonel
Battles/wars	Operation Desert Storm

Michael R. Strobl (born c. 1966) is a retired U.S. Marine Corps officer from Stafford, Virginia.

Michael joined the service when he was 17 years old as told in the movie "Taking Chance".

After serving in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Strobl was assigned a desk job at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Quantico, Virginia during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Feeling guilty that Marines he served with in the Gulf War were serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom while he wasn't, Strobl volunteered to escort the remains of a fallen Marine to his home in the United States.

Strobl escorted home PFC Chance Phelps, a Marine killed in the Iraq War on April 9, 2004 (Good Friday), outside Ar Ramadi, Iraq.

Strobl was working at a desk job, but volunteered to escort PFC Phelps home. He initially did this because the press release concerning the death of PFC Phelps had listed Clifton, Colorado as his hometown, a town near Strobl's hometown of Grand Junction. But the final destination and resting place of PFC Phelps would be Dubois, Wyoming, Phelps having only lived in Clifton for his senior year of high school.

During the trip, Strobl kept a diary of the experience and his feelings. After he concluded the mission, he wrote an essay entitled "A Marine's Journey Home" from the notes in the diary and shared it with Phelps's father John. The essay appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on May 2, 2004 (with the approval of John Phelps), and then a longer version (of 5,375 words) appeared in the July issue of Marine Corps Gazette as "Taking Chance".

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