Friday, Jan. 7, 2005 | 11:20 a.m.
James Redhouse Jr., a 21-year-old Las Vegas resident, just finished a two-year mission, and is now preparing to leave for an 18-month mission. This one will take him to Iraq.
Redhouse, who returned to Las Vegas in August after serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in southern Texas, is scheduled to deploy with the Utah National Guard's 222nd Field Artillery Battalion later this month.
"I'm glad I got to serve my Heavenly Father first because my faith has grown so much," Redhouse said during a recent interview at the southwest Las Vegas home he shares with his father and sister. "I know my faith is something I'll rely on while serving my new mission.
"I'll rely on prayer and knowing that Heavenly Father is always there for us."
Redhouse is one of about 20 Southern Nevadans, most of whom are former Utah residents, who will deploy with the 222nd on Jan. 23 for about five months of training stateside before heading to Iraq.
The handful of Southern Nevada soldiers will be with about 480 soldiers hailing mainly from small Utah towns such as Cedar City, St. George and Richfield. It may be easier to spot the impact of the deploying soldiers in these smaller towns, but the Nevada soldiers will also be leaving friends and family in Las Vegas, 222nd 1st Sgt. Troy Cannon said.
Cannon, a 44-year-old who was born and raised in St. George, but has lived in Las Vegas for the past 16 years, will leave a wife and four children ranging from 9-months to 13-years-old in Las Vegas. He said he is going to miss spending time with his children and riding dirt bikes with his older kids while he is deployed.
"That's the toughest part because you know it's going to be hard on your family," Cannon said in a telephone interview from St. George on Tuesday. "My 9-year-old boy is my shadow. He follows me around everywhere."
Cannon, who left Thursday with an advance team from the 222nd for Camp Shelby, Miss., where the soldiers will train, is the oldest member of the unit and serves as something of a father figure for the younger troops.
"I'm the guy that watches out for everybody," Cannon said. "I'm the mailman, the food guy, the resupply guy. A lot of what I do is just keeping an eye on everyone.
"Our No. 1 goal is to bring everyone back safely."
The 222nd, known as "the triple deuce," is a field artillery unit trained to fight with the M109A6 Paladin self-propelled howitzer. The Paladin looks much like a tank except that it has an elongated cannon to give a greater firing range.
A Paladin is run by a four-man crew and can fire four 155 mm rounds every minute and strike targets more than 18 miles away. The nature of the 222nd mission is classified, but they may be called on to fulfill a rifle infantry role as well as a field artillery role, military officials said.
Redhouse, who is trained as a Paladin driver, was preparing to enroll at UNLV to study engineering when he got his mobilization alert in November.
"I wanted to get going on college, but now everything is kind of on hold," said Redhouse, who said that he loves math and has always wanted to be an engineer.
Redhouse's family moved from Richfield, a town of about 7,000 located off Interstate 70 about 160 miles south of Salt Lake City, while he was serving his church mission.
While serving in Brownsville and Corpus Christi, Texas, Redhouse was nearly called back to deploy with the rest of the 222nd.
The unit was placed on alert early in 2003 for possible deployment to Iraq through Turkey, but the unit was reassigned to help conduct reserve officer training at Fort Lewis, Wash.
"I was getting a little jittery because I really wanted to finish my mission for the church first, and I knew (the military) could call me up if the situation in Iraq got worse," Redhouse said.
Cannon, who works in the construction industry in Las Vegas, said almost going overseas was a rough situation for many in the unit.
"We were all prepared to go, and our families had gotten as settled as they could with the idea of us leaving and then we had to stay," Cannon said. "We had just come out of some hard field training and we were ready, so it made it hard to shift gears."
Once the 222nd reaches Mississippi they will face another round of rigorous training, but this time it will focus more on the unpredictability and terrorist-style attacks occurring in Iraq.
"There is no question that things have changed (in Iraq), and there is no denying that it is a scary situation," Cannon said. "It's not a conventional war over there anymore. You don't know who's who.
"Hopefully the training in Mississippi will help us and take our stress level down."
The training will include role playing by people speaking Arabic dialects spoken in Iraq, as well as training in recognizing possible terrorist activity and improvised explosive devices. From there the 222nd will be sent to Fort Irwin, Calif., where they will likely be trained by members of the Nevada National Guard's 221st Cavalry Squadron.
The Las Vegas-based 221st was deployed to Fort Irwin near Barstow in August for a scheduled 18-month stay serving as a training unit for soldiers heading to the Middle East. After a quick monthlong stint at Fort Irwin, the 222nd will likely deploy to Iraq through Fort Lewis at the end of June.
While Cannon was seeing him off Thursday at the Cedar City Airport, Redhouse was heading north on Interstate 15 to visit friends and family.
"You want to go make the rounds and see everyone one more time before you leave," Redhouse said. "You just want to spend as much time as you can with your family."
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