Friday, April 18, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Letters from the front

Soldiers in Iraq send word to loved ones in LV

Rich Wieder reads a letter Thursday from his son in Iraq, Lance Cpl. Richard Wieder, while his wife, Rassel, holds their granddaughter, Alyssa Gonzalez, in their Henderson home. Photo by Jeff Scheid. From left, Hilda Harrison, Ashlynn Naas, Stephanie Naas, Tana Naas, and Kody Naas, look at photographs Thursday while at Red Rock Canyon, west of Las Vegas. They met there to talk about Fox Company Marines from Las Vegas, Sgt. Randy Harrison and Cpl. Michael Naas, who are involved in urban combat operations in Baghdad. Photo by John Gurzinski.

A Marine unit with 90 reservists from the Las Vegas Valley played a key role in the raid of a Baghdad neighborhood this week that netted a pair of Iraqi secret police officials.

Confirmation of their involvement came from family members who received phone calls from the Fox Company Marines and saw the unit on television.

They said Fox Company, which includes another 100 Marines from Salt Lake City, also assisted in the liberation of the United Nations complex in Baghdad from where many in the unit telephoned their loved ones late Friday.

Stephanie and Tana Naas, the wife and mother, respectively, of Cpl. Michael Naas, videotaped a telecast of the raid Wednesday by a Fox News reporter embedded with the unit.

They recognized the company commander, Maj. John E. Kirkpatrick, who confirmed the capture of two Baath Party intelligence officers allegedly linked to the interrogation and custody of coalition troops held as prisoners.

The raid, which didn't involve shooting or loss of life, was orchestrated in the early morning hours following a tip from Iraqi civilians in the neighborhood.

A Marine spokesman at the Armed Forces Reserve Center in North Las Vegas said, "We heard the same thing.

"You can pretty much guarantee that was Fox Company behind him," the spokesman, Sgt. Richard Slider, said, referring to Kirkpatrick, of Salt Lake City.

In an interview Thursday at an overlook in Red Rock Canyon, where she traveled with her mother-in-law from Pahrump, Stephanie Naas and her friend, Hilda Harrison, wife of Fox Company Sgt. Randy Harrison, recalled their brief telephone conversations with their husbands in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.

"He said, `Hey, it's me. We just took over the U.N. building.' Then he had to go," Stephanie Naas, 30, said.

Harrison, 28, said her husband told her he's ready to come home but didn't describe his combat experiences. She did, though, read part of a letter from her husband that she received Thursday.

The March 29 letter, written 10 days after the war began, describes a "blocking position" on Route 7, about 130 miles south of Baghdad.

"A support battalion had been ambushed in a small town just north of Nasiriyah and were pinned down," Randy Harrison wrote. "My company was near the front of the next convoy at the time, so I felt it was up to us to go in and rescue them and we did. They were very grateful."

As civilians in Las Vegas, Naas, 30, worked full time as a bartender at the Gold Coast and part time at the Beach. Harrison, 27, a former Border Patrol agent in the San Diego area, was employed locally by the Transportation Security Administration. Now they're manning machine guns and leading squads into battle, like others in their unit, including, Cpl. Jeffrey S. Mirtich, 26, of Las Vegas, whose mother, Cathryn Mirtich, lives in Pahrump.

Stephanie Naas moved with her husband and their three children to Lake Elsinore, Calif., near Camp Pendleton after he was activated and sent there for training last year. She shared a letter from him that was postmarked March 19 and written two days before the war began.

"I'm really going to go nuts if we don't go north soon. ... I just want to go north and get the hell home and get back to my life," Michael Naas wrote.

Mothers and fathers of other Marines from the Las Vegas Valley said they, too, had gotten letters this week from their sons in Fox Company.

An hour after the mail was delivered Thursday afternoon, Rich Wieder, of Henderson, read from a letter, dated March 29, from his son, Lance Cpl. Richard Wieder.

While describing the desert landscape in southern Iraq as similar to that in Southern Nevada, Richard Wieder, 20, wrote that "at the same time I've never felt this cold in all my life."

"My hands get numb just writing. ... I can't go four hours without thinking about pizza or fried chicken," he wrote. "I'd like to have a bit more time in my life when I come back and spend it with friends and family."

His father, a 20-year Navy veteran, said his son had joined the Marine Reserves in 2001 after graduating from Foothill High School. He said his son had planned to attend the University of Nevada, Las Vegas but was activated in February 2002.

"You almost wished he didn't have to go because he's your kid. But I'm so proud of him," Rich Wieder said. "The thought of your son in combat isn't a pleasant thought. It puts a cold knot inside you."

When the war had begun, Richard Wieder's mother, Rassel, said she kept thinking, "Please don't let it happen. He's my baby. He's still my baby."

Another Marine mom, Antoinette Bell, whose son, Sgt. Christopher Bell, is a machine-gun team leader in Fox Company, said he also called home Friday night from Baghdad and told his brother, Sam, "that they were in some deep situations but came out of it pretty good."

She said Christopher Bell wrote a letter on March 29 from a battlefield in Iraq.

"We've been through some tough fights. Right now we are in a blocking position," the letter said. "I've seen a lot of deaths out here. So far, we've been lucky and have not lost anyone to enemy fire. ... When they fire on us, they get devastated."

Elisa Williams, wife of Fox Company Cpl. Drew Williams, said she, too, got a call from her husband in Baghdad on Friday.

"They have been the tip of the spear from what we've been told. I really want people to know our guys are the best of the best," she said.