Placentia wife loses soul mate to war

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. Har rell, killed
Thursday in fierce fighting in Iraq during a week that claimed 20 members of the Camp Pendletonbased 1 st 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.

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