Death's door
Kin get grim visits, few answers in Iraq fight

BY RICHARD SISK in Washington
and PAUL H.B. SHIN in New York
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Just hours after Conrado Perez Jr. replied to a letter from his 22-year-old son in Iraq, two Marines showed up at his door.

Perez knew instantly why they were there.

"I just couldn't believe it. It's the last thing in the world that you would expect," said Perez, 50, recalling how the officers told him that his son, Lance Cpl. Stephen Perez, had been killed in Anbar province - the vast desert area west of Baghdad.

Perez was killed last Thursday, along with Cpl. Salem Bachar, 20, in an assault that injured 22 other Marines - one of the highest U.S. casualties from a single attack in recent months.

The Marines have refused to release details about the battle that resulted in 24 casualties, but it was the latest evidence that the Marines in Anbar are now facing large-scale assaults, with the enemy attempting to overrun outposts.

At least 50 U.S. troops have been killed so far this month, and 23 of the fatalities have come in Anbar province.

There was a major coordinated attack in Ramadi on Monday using suicide car bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns against the city's main government building and two U.S. observation posts.

It was the fourth attack in 3-1/2 weeks on the building in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, said Lt. Col. Stephen Neary, commander of 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment.

The resurgent violence was no surprise to Conrado Perez, who was kept abreast of the situation by his son.

"He wrote to me in one of his letters that they've had heavy insurgent activity on a daily basis," Perez said from his home in Eagle Pass, Tex.

Military officials so far have shared few details of the attack or about the Marines' mission, even with their families.

"They didn't tell me how it happened," said Perez, whose son's body was returned to Texas yesterday.

"Sometimes it takes at little bit longer if facts have to be verified," said Lt. Lawton King, a spokesman for the 1st Marine Division at Camp Pendleton, Calif., the home base for the two slain Marines.

The Marines have been more reluctant than the Army to disclose details of enemy engagements.

"The Marines' concern is that describing engagements in detail would give the insurgents the capacity to catalogue their effectiveness," King said.

In attacks without U.S. casualties, such as in Monday's attack in Ramadi, the Marines have been more forthcoming.

But for the loved ones of Marines, questions can linger.

Despite daily e-mails, Bachar spoke very little of his work to his newlywed wife, Kristie, other than to reassure her that he was as safe as any soldier could be in Iraq because he spent most of his time inside Camp Fallujah, the U.S. military base halfway between Ramadi and Baghdad.

That's why she was so shocked when two Marines showed up Thursday at the couple's house in Fontana, Calif.

"I was extremely confused because I just didn't understand why he was off the base," Bachar said. "Initially I thought the base got hit."

Originally April 20, 2006

Ellie