FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP) - Two US marines were killed by snipers in the Iraqi town of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, as they pressed an offensive to crush insurgents, a marine officer revealed.
One of the marines was shot dead by a sniper as he climbed a ladder. The second died after he was hit in the neck as he passed a window, the officer said Thursday.
A third marine was shot and wounded in the leg, the source said, adding that the shootings happened in the industrial area of Fallujah.
By Jonathan Evans
There are no reporters on the tarmac at Dover Air Force Base. The public is not allowed to witness the military tradition of “receiving the remains”. Instead, there are soldiers, roused at dark hours to stand in the confines of what seems like a secret as the dead are brought home. I am one of the soldiers. Nearly every day we learn of another death in Iraq. In our collective consciousness, we tally the statistics of dead and wounded. The number is over 600 now. But none of our conjurings are as real and tangible as the Stars and Stripes folded perfectly over a coffin cradling one of those statistics on his or her way home. It does not matter where somebody stands politically on the war, but I believe that all who have an opinion should know the cost of that opinion. When a soldier dies in a foreign land, his or her remains are returned to the United States for their final rest. The remains arrive in Dover, Del., without fanfare.
No family member is present. There are no young children to feel sad or confused. Just a small group of soldiers waiting to do their duty and honor the fallen.
“Dover flights” are met by soldiers from the U. S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Regiment, the storied Old Guard. They are true soldiers, assigned to an esteemed regiment, but it is a unit defined by polish, not mud. It seems that they quietly long to be tested with their comrades “over there. “But it is clear to me as I watch them that they find immense pride in honoring their country this way. Silence.
I am a helicopter pilot in the U. S. Army, and it is my job to have the honor guard at Dover at whatever hour a flight arrives. In military-speak, the plane’s grim contents are referred to as “HRs”-“human remains."
Once the plane arrives, conversation ends. The soldiers form a squad of two even ranks and march out to the tarmac.
A general follows, flanked by a chaplain and the ranking representative from the service in which the fallen soldier served. The plane’s cargo door opens slowly revealing a cavernous space. The honor guard steps onto a mobile platform that is raised to the cargo bay. The soldiers enter in lock-step formation and place themselves on both sides of the casket.
The squad lifts, the soldiers buckling slightly under the weight. The remains have been packed on ice into metal containers that can easily exceed 500 pounds. The squad moves slowly back onto the elevated platform and deposits the casket with a care that evokes an image of fraternal empathy. It is the only emotion they betray, but their gentleness is unmistakable and compelling. The process continues until the last casket is removed from the plane. On bad nights, this can take over an hour. The few of us observing say nothing, the silence absolute, underscored by something sacred. There is no rule or order that dictates it, but the silence is maintained with a discipline that needs no command.
The caskets are lowered together to the earth, where the soldiers lift them into a van, one by one. The doors close, and the squad moves out.
Just before the van rounds the corner, someone speaks in a voice just above a whisper. We snap to and extend a sharp salute. There are those who would politicize this scene, making it the device of an argument over the freedom of the press. But if this scene were ever to be exploited by the lights and cameras of our “infotainment” industry, it would be offensive.
Still, the story must be told. A democracy’s lifeblood, after all, is an informed citizenry, and this image is nowhere in the public mind.
The men and women arriving in flag-draped caskets do not deserve the disrespect of arriving in the dark confines of secrecy. But it is a soldier’s story, and it must be told through a soldier’s eyes. In the military, we seldom discuss whether we are for or against the war.
Instead, we know intimately its cost. For those of us standing on the tarmac at Dover in those still and inky nights, our feelings have nothing to do with politics. They are feelings of sadness, of empathy. And there is nothing abstract about them.
Placentia wife loses soulmate to war
Saturday, April 10, 2004
Kelli Harrell first met Marine Staff Sgt. Bill Harrell when they were youngsters.
By GREG HARDESTY
The Orange County Register
PLACENTIA – A wife, her 7-year-old son and an entire neighborhood in Placentia were mourning the loss Friday of Staff Sgt. William M. Harrell, killed Thursday in fierce fighting in Iraq during a week that claimed 20 members of the Camp Pendleton- based 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
Harrell, 30, a 1992 graduate of El Dorado High School, grew up on McCormack Lane, where his future wife, Kelli, met him when he was 5 and she was an older lady of 9.
“He seemed to leave a piece of himself with everyone he knew,” Kelli Harrell, 34,
said Friday night. “Everybody loved him. And he was the best husband anyone
could ever ask for. “We were soulmates. He was my entire world.”
That world collapsed when authorities told Harrell that her husband of nearly
a decade died during surgery about 4 a.m. local time Thursday after being
shot in the neck - the sixth serviceman from Orange County to die since
the Iraq invasion..
Kelli Harrell was returning home from her son Austin’s soccer practice
when she saw the government vehicle outside her Camp Pendleton home.
“They were waiting for me,” she said. “I knew.”
It took her about an hour to break the news to her son.
“You know how every day we say daddy is in our minds and
always in our hearts, and that he will always be there?” she asked Austin.
“Yes,” he said.
“Well, honey, daddy’s not coming home this time. He was killed in Iraq.”
“If he just got shot, can’t they help him?”
“Daddy can’t be helped right now,” she said. “Daddy’s with God.”
Just the day before, Bill Harrell - an avid surfer and snowboarder - called his wife from a borrowed phone. He was sent to Iraq in early March to oversee a platoon of 60 Marines in Bravo Company.
“I could hear him crying,” his wife recalled. “I asked him what was wrong.”
“Nothing,” he said. “I’m just glad to hear your voice.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine. I love you.”
Friday evening, in a note he passed to his mother during a telephone interview, Austin wrote: “My dad was a great citizen.”
Bill Harrell’s sister, Cassie Winter, 28, of Oregon, said: “Kelli and Austin were his world.
“My brother died a hero - he died doing what he loved.”
Harrell, a tanned, rock-solid 5-foot-9, 155-pound Marine with dark hair and brown eyes with long lashes, was raised, along with his sister, by his uncle, Bernie Robertson, 60, of Placentia.
Their mother died at age 34; their father, William F. Harrell, a retired Marine, lived out of state. He died last year in a storm in Texas at age 51.
At El Dorado High, Bill Harrell was a varsity football, baseball and soccer player. He joined the Marines straight out of high school.
“He just always wanted to be one,” Winter said.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
FAMILY LEFT BEHIND: Austin Harrell, 7, holds a flag with photo of his father, Marine Staff Sgt. Billy Harrell, as his mother, Kelli Harrell, gives him a kiss. “He looks just like his dad,” Kelli said.
MARK RIGHTMIRE, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Sunday, April 11, 2004
'Never once did he retreat'
Fallen Marine Billy Harrell is mourned in the Placentia neighborhood where he and his wife both grew up
By LORI BASHEDA
The Orange County Register
Billy Harrell was going to give his 7-year-old son Austin a plaque when he got home from Iraq in July. He wanted to show how proud he was of his "big boy" while he was off fighting.
It has a Marine badge glued to it and reads "To Austin Harrell: The Man of the House. Dec. 2003 to July 2004."
Instead, the boy's mom gave it to Austin on Saturday. Because Billy Harrell isn't coming home in July. Or ever.
"I guess I'm gonna be the man of the house forever now, huh, Nammy," the boy told his grandmother, just about breaking her heart.
Staff Sgt. Harrell, 30, was killed in fierce fighting Thursday, one of at least 23 Camp Pendleton Marines lost in the past week.
On Saturday, Austin and his mom, Kelli, drove from base housing to grandmom's house on McCormack Lane in Placentia. Neighbors stood on the lawn, their eyes red and puffy. An American flag and a Marine flag blew in the wind.
This is the house where Kelli grew up. Across the street and just six houses down is
the house where Billy grew up.Billy was raised by his uncle Bernie Robertson, a man
everyone calls "Uncle Bernie," after his mother took her life when he was just 5.
On Saturday morning, Uncle Bernie walked to the house of Mary and Larree Johnson,
Kelli's mom and dad. Kelli sat on a sofa, sometimes crying softly.
"He looks just like his dad," she said, watching her son out the backyard window.
"Knowing I have a piece of (Billy) always in that little man out there,
that's what will keep me going."
Neighbors came and went, weeping and embracing. "I've come to tell you thank
you for what Billy's done for our country," Mary Geary told Kelli through tears.
She remembers Billy swimming in her pool with her son when they were kids.
Next door, Dave Johnson stood in his garage smoking a cigarette. His son D.J.
and Billy were childhood friends. He remembers them playing soldiers, dressing up
in his old Marine gear from his tour in Vietnam. He pointed to the roof: That's where
they once got caught shooting BB guns. The patio roof is what they used to fling
themselves off of in the heat of battle. Kelli was five years older than Billy, so she
never played soldiers with him. In fact, she was his baby sitter. They were not
sweethearts until the day she saw him driving a motorcycle down the street, his shirt
flapping in the wind, after he returned from boot camp.
"Kelli saw him and said, 'Oh. My. God,'" her mother recalls. "I said, for godsakes, Kelli, you used to baby-sit him."
After they married, Billy told Kelli he had a crush on her since he was 12. He confessed that Kelli's next-door neighbor used to sell him tickets so he could go upstairs and spy on her sunbathing.
That was Billy, neighbors and family said. They spent the morning telling stories about a soldier who was as energetic and friendly as a kid. "You know we're making him out to be a saint, and he was not," his mother-in-law said, laughing. "He used to love to pinch the fat under my arm."
He was also a bit of a prankster with a friendly competitive streak when it came to surfing, snowboarding or just about any other sport. "And he didn't really walk," his mother-in-law said. "He kind of swaggered. He was very proud to be a Marine."
Uncle Bernie, a Marine in the Vietnam War, broke down when he shared how the boy he raised always wanted to follow in his footsteps.
"I always got the feeling he wanted to finish what I didn't," he said, covering his face. "He always told me I was his hero. But he's so much more than I could ever be. He loved God. He loved his family. He loved his corps. He lived his life the way I wanted to live mine and didn't. He went forward all his life. Never once did he retreat."
Kelli said it will be painful to leave her Camp Pendleton community and move back in with her parents. "It's a Marine Corps community, and my Marine's not there anymore," she said. "I'm gonna miss my life. But now Bubba and I need to start a new one."
SUPPORT: Nancy Lanksbury, left, of Yorba Linda offers comfort to sister Kelli Harrell at their parents’ home in Placentia on Saturday. Kelli’s husband was killed Thursday in fierce fighting in Iraq.
MARK RIGHTMIRE, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
SSgt. William M. Harrell, Billy to me, grew up with my son, took care of my son from day care to high school as he was 1 1/2 years older. We attended his graduation from Boot Camp 11 1/2 years ago. He always wanted to be a Marine. He always wanted to marry Kelli, my next door neighbors daughter, 4 years his senior. He succeeded in both, became a Marine and had 10 glorious years with Kelli and 7 years with their son Austin. We will miss him!
Dave Johnson
Billy's uncle, is Bernie Robertson, a member of our Detachment. To mail a card:
