POWELL, 15 August 2005 — Motorcycles roared their engines Saturday to herald the funeral procession of Marine Sgt. Justin Hoffman, one of 14 Marines killed last week in the deadliest roadside bombing since US troops invaded Iraq.

Two other victims of that Aug. 3 attack were buried Saturday. All three were members of Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines based in Columbus, a company that has been devastated by recent insurgents’ attacks.

In Grove City, a Columbus suburb, the parents of Lance Cpl. Eric J. Bernholtz remembered their son as a “constant joy” in a video played at his funeral.

Mourners also filled the football stands at East Clinton High School in Lees Creek, about 40 miles southeast of Dayton, to remember Lance Cpl. William B. Wightman.

“’Freedom is not free’ is a phrase we hear every day, but few of us understand what it means,” Robert Hoffman said Saturday at his son’s funeral in Powell, another Columbus suburb. “Justin and the Lima Company understood. They gave up their lives for it.”

Hoffman, 27, had asked his father to buy an engagement ring that he could give his girlfriend when he returned this fall.

On Saturday, his father’s Leathernecks Motorcycle Club, a group of Marine veterans who travel to funerals of Ohio Marines, revved their engines to honor him.

Bernholtz, 23, was remembered for his goofy sense of humor and his smile.

Even when he broke curfew as a high school student, his parents said, he could have them laughing within minutes.

His older brother Adam, who is deaf, gave a eulogy in sign language. As he finished, he signed: “I love you. I can’t wait to run and hug you.”

Wightman, 22, was always protecting his longtime friend Kelly Crowe. When she was 6, Crowe looked to then 5-year-old Wightman for encouragement while they were vacationing near the Atlantic Ocean.

He told her they would take their first plunge into the waves together, she recalled at his funeral Saturday.

When Wightman prepared to leave his hometown of Sabina for Iraq earlier this year, he again told her everything would be OK.

“I never felt safer in my life,” Crowe said Saturday. “You were always my protector.”

On another development, a Fort Bliss soldier has pleaded guilty to smuggling cocaine into the United States from Colombia using military aircraft, a post spokeswoman said Saturday.

Spc. Francisco Rosa, 25, pleaded guilty Wednesday to using, possessing and distributing cocaine and making a false official statement, said the spokeswoman, Jean Offutt.

Based on a military judge’s recommendation, Rosa will spend five years in prison with a reduction in rank to private and a bad-conduct discharge, Offutt said. Other authorities, including the post’s commanding general, could change the sanctions.

Military investigators have said Rosa and Staff Sgts. Daniel Rosas, Victor Portales and Kevin G. Irizarry-Melendez played roles in a plot to smuggle the drugs from a US base in Colombia where they had been stationed.

All four are being held in a military jail at Fort Bliss.

Rosas, Portales and Irizarry-Melendez face court martials later this year, with the first trial expected to begin in late September.