SPECIAL TO THE PVT The belly of Fox's helicopter shows a gaping gash after a fire fight involving Iraqi forces. SPECIAL TO THE PVT James Choyce, serving in Iraq, poses in his military uniform. RELATED STORY: IN HARM'S WAY: Beginning 'a long war' Vets differ on Iraq Advertisement

Pahrump resident Susan Jones-Davis said she gave her son, Wade Fox, a Celtic cross as a good luck charm when he went into combat.

Jones-Davis said her son, now in Korea, was part of the first planeload to land in Iraq in 2003, as a maintenance test pilot for Apache helicopters.

Her other son, Calvin Fox, is currently in Iraq, manning a detention facility.

She is one of a number of parents concerned about the welfare of their soldier sons or daughters fighting in Iraq.

"He (Wade) was telling me that was the safest place in Iraq. I didn't need to worry," Jones-Davis said. But she had a dream something bad had happened and eventually got wind of a battle her son was involved in over the Internet.

Fox's mission on March 31, 2003, was to support an attack on the south side of al-Hillah, just south of Baghdad. An infantry battalion was moving north supported by an armor company of M-1 tanks in the agricultural area south of the city.

Two teams of Apache helicopters were sent in. The intelligence said al-Hillah was home to militia and freedom fighters, but no conventional Iraqi forces were present. The biggest threat would be a "technical" vehicle -- a Toyota pickup mounted with a heavy machine gun or small anti-aircraft guns.

The intelligence was wrong. An entire division of the Iraqi Republican Guard moved into al-Hillah. One of the helicopters was hit, there were reports of an injured pilot, but the radios were crazy with chatter, Fox recalled in an e-mail he sent his mother after she found out.

"I start to hear little popping noise. Almost immediately I think that I am hearing gunfire, small arms. The concentration of the sound startled and concerned me, but it was replaced by louder and louder bangs," Fox wrote. "Understanding that my helicopter has just taken fire from small arms and potentially larger caliber gunfire, my instincts tell me to break away and fly somewhere safer. I cannot see where any of the fire is coming from so there is no way to suppress the enemy forces below."

Fox said it seemed like every gun in Iraq was shooting at him.

He was hit hard. An indicator light went on, his master caution warning panel lit up and the backup control system malfunctioned. The stabilizer, which controls the altitude of the aircraft at different speeds, failed.

"The helicopter continues to bang and rattle and jump around and I start looking for places to force land my broken bird and lifeline," he wrote. "All my lights are telling me that an engine has just failed but I have 80 percent dual engine torque. Both engines are running."

A mistake by his co-pilot converting kilometers into miles lead them back into the gantlet of ground fire. His rotor blades whistled from the bullet holes when he flew the helicopter back to their field site.

After landing, a crew chief stopped dead in his tracks when he saw part of a Hellfire missile dangling on the ground, out of an eight-foot rip in the belly of the chopper.

Jones-Davis said at one time she had a son, nephew and son in-law serving in Iraq, which was very nervewracking. When she found out five soldiers died in Iraq last week, she did as she always does -- checks the Internet.

They died in Baghdad; her younger son isn't serving there.

'It just tears my heart every time I hear one of our men dying over there. We got to bring them back," Jones-Davis said. "There's just no reason for this going on."

Susan Woodall's grandson, Christopher Walters, is presently in Iraq.

"I want my grandson back, and I want him back in one piece," Woodall said.

"He signed up a few days after 9/11 and we were all for it," she said. "But he didn't go to Afghanistan to fight Bin Laden, he went to Iraq to defend Bush's oil wells."

Denise Choyce sponsored the Wall of Heroes at Wal-Mart and proudly described her son, James, a 2004 Pahrump Valley High School graduate, as the No. 1 soldier. James Choyce just left McCarran Airport after being home on leave, March 11, to return to Iraq where his second tour ends in January.

"He's south of Baghdad right now. He's still in the infantry, so he's right on the front lines right now. He's still where they go out and do all their patrols," Choyce said.

"I don't think there's any change. To me, in my opinion, I think if they were doing so much over there they would have brought all those guys and girls home by now. It's too long. It's five years now," Choyce said.

From talking to her son, Choyce surmises that nothing has really changed in the five years since the war began. Soldiers still go out on patrol as they did when the war started, and they're still on guard duty.

"As far as the 15-month tour over there, that is too long for any military personnel to be over there, and then they only get 18 days home. That's not just enough to even let these guys relax," Choyce said.

"There's almost 4,000 men and women that have been killed in this, and to me it doesn't seem like anything else has come out of this, other than these lives that have been lost. Personally, for me, I support our troops 110 percent, but I don't support the war," she said.

David Rivenburgh of Pahrump, said his daughter, Michelle Perkowski, a single mother of two, is currently stationed at Nellis Air Force Base but will be returning soon for her second tour in Iraq. Rivenburgh said her daughter will have to send her children to stay with one of their grandparents for six months while she's overseas.

"Actually it should be against the law, seeing they don't have a father," Rivenburgh said. "There's no reason they should send a single mom to Iraq. Her husband died in a motorcycle accident, and they know that."

Furthermore, even without the children, Rivenburgh said, "If you served in Iraq and Korea, you shouldn't have to go back again."