No holiday rest for Nevada's deployed troops; Santa's getting ready

C aleb Schaber, of Gerlach, established the Northern Nevada News Wire and is embedded with the Nevada National Guard in Afghanistan. He sent in this account of Thanksgiving at Kandahar Airfield:

Members of the Nevada National Guard Delta Company, 113 Aviation unit found Thanksgiving to be another day in their busy schedule.

Delta Company operates CH-47 Chinook helicopters at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan. For eight months, they have worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The Army did supply turkey and pumpkin pie, and extended the mess hall hours.

CW4 Daniel Walters, 39, from Genoa, looked for other soldiers from the Gardnerville area, but was unable to locate anyone.

He spent this Thanksgiving with CW4 Sean Laycox, from Reno.

"Lunch and dinner was exceptional, considering we are in a combat zone,"said Laycox.

Laycox and Walters, both Chinook pilots, were on standby all day, but did not have to fly any emergency missions.

Thanksgiving was filled with VIP missions, transporting high-ranking officers around Afghanistan.

Delta Company, when not deployed, are based at Stead. In the first Gulf War, the unit did not have Chinook helicopters and were not deployed. But in this war, with the Chinook helicopters, they are in high demand.

The terrain of Afghanistan is remarkably similar to Nevada, with large deserts, vast mountain ranges and few roads.

"Our training in Nevada set us up for this," Walters said.

Walters estimates that the unit has transported 8 million pounds of equipment and more than 39,000 troops during their time here, but did not have the exact statistics at the dinner table.

The deployment in Kandahar cost several member of Delta Company their lives in September.

"When Mustang 22 went down, it changed a lot," Laycox said.

"That was tough," Walters added. "There is not a day that goes by ..." his voice trailed off.

Before his day war over, Walters had put in more than 17 hours at work.

The North Pole announces personal phone calls from Santa Claus this year Santa Claus has decided to make personal phone calls to a limited amount of children upon request.

His North Pole recording studio is even recording the conversation plus sending a CD of the child's conversation with Santa.

To arrange a phone call or personal video of Santa for your child, get in touch with his elves at Sweetsong Productions to schedule at time. Go to www.santaphonecalls.com or they call (866)793-3876.

His e-mail is santacalls@hotmail.com.

Santa talks directly to children with a personal greeting and message. The North Pole office is even sending out good list awards or a personal letter from Santa Claus himself that's postmarked from the North Pole.

For every phone call or personalized video made a donation is made to Secret Santa.