SOUTH PORTLAND – A Marine from South Portland was seriously injured by a land mine while on the front lines in Iraq, his father said Wednesday.

Jeffrey McCue, father of Cpl. Eric McCue, 21, an infantryman from Camp Lejeune, N.C., said he was informed by phone at 11 p.m. Tuesday.

“Basically the conversation was that Eric was injured in Iraq, that he stepped on a land mine, and that he was in serious condition,” McCue said. One of his son’s feet had to be amputated, he said.

McCue, who graduated from South Portland High School in 2000, was deployed to Kuwait in January, his father said.

He said he didn’t know his son’s location in Iraq at the time of the explosion.

“They said he was on the front lines,” he said.

Jeffrey McCue had just received a letter from his son Saturday.

The letter was dated March 18, the day before the first bombings in the war. “He told me not to worry, he was well-trained and to wish him luck,” McCue said.

The son also wrote that he had received a package of baby wipes, lip balm and other items his father had mailed to help him cope with the hot days and cold nights in the desert.

The son reported that he and fellow Marines, having gone a month without a shower, especially appreciated the baby wipes.

Eric McCue enlisted in the Marines after his graduation and was serving with Kilo Company of the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, his father said.

His mother is Betsy Maxwell, who also lives in South Portland. “I just want to hear from him,” she said.

Eric McCue planned on becoming a federal law enforcement officer after leaving the Marines, said his father, a federal court security officer who served 26 years in the South Portland Police Department.

Tom Clifford, a former hockey coach at South Portland High School, said McCue was well-liked and respected for his unselfish play, always putting the team’s success ahead of his personal statistics. A left wing who wore number 21, McCue was team captain his senior year. “He was a quiet leader,” Clifford said. “He did it more with how hard he worked than he did vocally.”

John Chapin, who taught both son and father at the high school, said Eric McCue joined the Marines for the challenge.

“I think everyone was surprised when he decided to join the Marine Corps. Initially, you would say it really wasn’t like Eric.

On the other hand, he wanted the challenge. And if you want a challenge, that’s a place to get it,” Chapin said.

Two Marines with Maine ties were previously killed in the war.

Maj. Jay Thomas Aubin, who was among the first U.S. dead in the war with Iraq, grew up in Skowhegan.

He was killed when the CH-46E Sea Knight helicopter he was piloting crashed in Kuwait, killing 12 U.S. and British Marines.

One of those aboard was Marine Cpl. Brian Kennedy of Houston, whose mother lives in the village of Port Clyde in the town of St. George.