The Courier-Journal April 10, 2004
Marine from Lexington is killed in Iraq
Family says man was married during recent time home on leave
By Michael A. Linderberger
Before returning to his unit in Iraq, Marine Cpl. Nicholas Dieruf of Lexington found time during a recent leave to get married, find a house and stop by his grandparents' home for talks on the front porch.
There, the 21-year-old graduate of Paul Dunbar High School told his grandfather he wasn't eager to go back, but he did return.
Yesterday, his family learned he had been killed Thursday in an explosion in Iraq.
"My grandson has plans for himself, he had gotten married, gotten himself a house and he wanted to raise a family," Charles Dieruf Sr. of Frankfort said yesterday in a telephone interview.
"I'm an old man, and I know a lot of men who have seen fighting in the service, and I've not seen one that wants to go back," he said, hours after the family was notified of the death by two Marines.
Nicholas Dieruf was married in January to Emily Duncan of Lexington, his grandfather said.
Marine officials would not confirm Nicholas Dieruf's death yesterday. Capt. Jerome Bryant of the U.S. Marine Corps public affairs office said federal law requires that public disclosure of military casualties be withheld for 24 hours after family is notified.
Charles Dieruf said the family was notified early yesterday.
"My son called me at about 2 a.m. this morning and told me two Marines had come to his house to tell him," he said.
Not including Nicholas Dieruf, seven Kentucky residents have died in the war, according to The Associated Press.
About 25,000 Marines are serving in Iraq, said 1st Lt. Amy Malugani, a spokeswoman for Camp Pendleton, Calif., the headquarters for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. About 14,000 of those are from Camp Pendleton, she said.
Nicholas Dieruf and his fellow Marines had been deployed to Iraq for the start of the war in March 2003 and returned to the United States in November for a few months, Malugani said.
Charles Dieruf said he'll cherish the time he spent with his grandson during the break. He said that during Christmas all five of his children and all nine grandchildren sat around the dinner table at his house in Frankfort.
Three of them were either engaged or recently married, he said.
"He's a nice boy, just a fine, fine man," Charles Dieruf said.
In addition to growing up in a large extended family, Nicholas Dieruf attended the state's largest public high school. Dunbar principal Anthony Orr said faculty members there learned of the death yesterday afternoon and remembered the former student fondly.
Charles Dieruf said he remembers telling his grandson that joining the Marines would be dangerous.
"I told him that it's a good way to get hurt," he said. "You know, wars kill people."
In February, long after the initial phase of the war had ended, the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was ordered to return to Iraq, Malugani said.
The unit returned to find an entirely different Iraq, said John Pike, a defense policy analyst and director of Globalsecurity.org, a Washington-based organization that monitors global security issues.
"They had been out of there for a while, and then rotated back in and found themselves right in the middle of it," Pike said. "I think they had not really anticipated that they would face this kind of intense action. Most of them, I think, had it in their mind that they were going back in there to be part of a stability operation, and their main worry was going to be booby traps."
Instead, he said, an uprising among both Shiites and Sunni factions within the country has escalated the fighting to much more dangerous levels.
The bulk of the Marines in Iraq, he said, are fighting 30 miles west of Baghdad in Fallujah, where fierce battles have raged for several days.
© Copyright 2004, The Courier-Journal
