Need4Speed
09-07-2005, 01:43 AM
MOREHEAD CITY — This time last year they were patrolling Babil province in Iraq, south of Baghdad, fighting insurgents and rounding up weapons stolen from ammunition depots looted after Saddam Hussein was removed from power.
Now 400 members of Camp Lejeune’s 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit — the nexus of Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force Katrina — are at work serving the needs of U.S. Gulf Coast hurricane victims.
"We put advance teams out Wednesday, an advance (force) out Thursday and helicopters are already flying missions picking up people and moving them out," said SPMAGTF Katrina commander Col. John Shook.
For the second day in a row, Carteret County residents watched Friday as military convoys rumbled through town and boarded a Navy ship bound for the Gulf Coast to help victims of Hurricane Katrina.
The green camouflage trucks and Humvees arrived at the port with about 300 troops, and it wasn’t long before military embarkation specialists — the equivalent of stevedores and longshoremen — had them safely aboard Austin-class Amphibious Transport Dock LPD-12 USS Shreveport on Thursday and Whidbey Island-class Landing Ship Dock LSD-41 USS Whidbey Island on Friday.
They loaded forklifts, dump trucks, water bulls, trailers, generators, Humvees, 7-ton trucks, wreckers, bulldozers and water purification equipment on ships they hope will arrive along the Gulf Coast within the next three days.
The equipment they are using reads like a military shopping list with 10 heavy-lift CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters from Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadrons 461 and 464, a couple of medium-lift CH-46E Sea Knight helicopters from Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 365 and at least three UH-1N Huey utility helicopters from a light attack helicopter squadron — all from New River Air Station.
Saturday the main portion of a 80-person command element left U.S. Marine Corp Air Station Cherry Point aboard one of 10 KC-130 Hercules tanker and transport aircraft bound for Belle Chasse Naval Air Station, a reserve base southeast of New Orleans.
They plan to set-up a network with the 24th MEU’s "Joint Task Force Enabler," a state-of-the-art communications system that allows them to talk to virtually anyone from anywhere on the planet — a capability they need with multiple branches of the military and government agencies operating in the ravaged area.
"The immediate need is preventing further loss of life," Col. Shook said. "Then comes power and water. You can get by a lot longer without food than you can without water. Then we’ll start delivering food and clothing and follow that with efforts, such as providing shelter, to mitigate human suffering."
The unit has several Navy chaplains of various denominations with it to help the needs of the troops and of inhabitants, if necessary. The troops are also prepared to clean-up debris with their large combat bulldozers and rebuild or bypass damaged bridges.
There are already Marine reserve forces in the area, including a 4th Assault Amphibian Battalion with tracked armored personnel carriers that can "swim" from the ship to the shore. These Assault Amphibious Vehicles can carry about 20 people safely inside and can move across flooded and swampy areas or rivers without even breathing hard.
"They have already evacuated several hundred people," Col. Shook said.
The 24th MEU is particularly suited for its new mission.
Each MEU practices how to move into an area and work under austere conditions while beefing up security at U.S. embassies abroad and evacuating American citizens from war-torn countries.
The exercises include up to 300 role players with difficult scenarios that challenge individual Marines and sailors to learn to disarm an angry populace, separate law-abiding citizens from criminal or otherwise undesirable elements, set up refugee and detainee camps, pass out food and water in an orderly fashion and treat the medical needs of the inhabitants.
Once set-up and safety is restored, they typically hand over running of the camps to organizations such as the Red Cross, Red Crescent, Doctors without Borders or the Salvation Army.
"We’ll work hand and glove with each other," Col. Shook said. "Our mission will evolve. We’ll wait and see, but try to anticipate as much as possible."
One concern is a need for security, and infantry units can be called into action at a moment’s notice.
There is already a specially-trained Marine reserve antiterrorist battalion from the 4th Marine Division in the area, and Camp Lejeune’s 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, or 1/8, is on stand-by should it be needed.
Headquarters and Service Company Commander Capt. Theodore Bethea, 32, was born and raised on Fairway Drive in New Orleans, a place underwater now. His family — parents, aunts and uncles — all survived Hurricane Katrina and managed to evacuate after the storm.
Saturday, he and two of his Marines from 1/8 left Cherry Point on a KC-130 to survey the damage and make arrangements in case the rest of the battalion is called.
"I just want to go there to help my friends and neighbors in New Orleans," said Capt. Bethea, who will be invaluable as a guide through the area in which he spent his entire life before joining the Corps.
"My Marines want to go there and make a difference," said Capt. Bethea of the area in which most cellular phones don’t work. "We’ll be there to provide the initial liaison in the event 1/8 is deployed."
Marine infantry battalions rotate their deployments with each MEU and 1/8 was the next to be assigned to the 24th MEU later this fall.
Cpl. Chad Ritchie, 23, is originally from Keezletown, Va., but this intelligence specialist now calls Swansboro home. As the intelligence chief for 1/8 with an advance group in Louisiana, he will be collecting information, writing reports and briefing his bosses on the latest developments. And he doesn’t like what he sees.
"First they experience the trauma from the hurricane and then they are hit by looting," Cpl. Ritchie said. "It’s hard to believe."
Sgt. John Blount, 23, of Portsmouth, Va., is a communications specialist from 1/8 who left Saturday for Louisiana.
He’s a very seasoned Marine who, as a member of the 26th MEU in 2003, flew into the Mosul airport in northern Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom and later went ashore in Liberia to reinforce the U.S. Embassy and quell civil unrest in the capital city. This time last year he was in Iraq and survived the bloody battle for Fallujah that began in November.
"It’s my fourth deployment with 1/8 into a crisis," Sgt. Blount said. "But it’s good to know that I’m doing something positive inside the United States."
BY ERIC STEINKOPFF
NEWS-TIMES
Now 400 members of Camp Lejeune’s 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit — the nexus of Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force Katrina — are at work serving the needs of U.S. Gulf Coast hurricane victims.
"We put advance teams out Wednesday, an advance (force) out Thursday and helicopters are already flying missions picking up people and moving them out," said SPMAGTF Katrina commander Col. John Shook.
For the second day in a row, Carteret County residents watched Friday as military convoys rumbled through town and boarded a Navy ship bound for the Gulf Coast to help victims of Hurricane Katrina.
The green camouflage trucks and Humvees arrived at the port with about 300 troops, and it wasn’t long before military embarkation specialists — the equivalent of stevedores and longshoremen — had them safely aboard Austin-class Amphibious Transport Dock LPD-12 USS Shreveport on Thursday and Whidbey Island-class Landing Ship Dock LSD-41 USS Whidbey Island on Friday.
They loaded forklifts, dump trucks, water bulls, trailers, generators, Humvees, 7-ton trucks, wreckers, bulldozers and water purification equipment on ships they hope will arrive along the Gulf Coast within the next three days.
The equipment they are using reads like a military shopping list with 10 heavy-lift CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters from Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadrons 461 and 464, a couple of medium-lift CH-46E Sea Knight helicopters from Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 365 and at least three UH-1N Huey utility helicopters from a light attack helicopter squadron — all from New River Air Station.
Saturday the main portion of a 80-person command element left U.S. Marine Corp Air Station Cherry Point aboard one of 10 KC-130 Hercules tanker and transport aircraft bound for Belle Chasse Naval Air Station, a reserve base southeast of New Orleans.
They plan to set-up a network with the 24th MEU’s "Joint Task Force Enabler," a state-of-the-art communications system that allows them to talk to virtually anyone from anywhere on the planet — a capability they need with multiple branches of the military and government agencies operating in the ravaged area.
"The immediate need is preventing further loss of life," Col. Shook said. "Then comes power and water. You can get by a lot longer without food than you can without water. Then we’ll start delivering food and clothing and follow that with efforts, such as providing shelter, to mitigate human suffering."
The unit has several Navy chaplains of various denominations with it to help the needs of the troops and of inhabitants, if necessary. The troops are also prepared to clean-up debris with their large combat bulldozers and rebuild or bypass damaged bridges.
There are already Marine reserve forces in the area, including a 4th Assault Amphibian Battalion with tracked armored personnel carriers that can "swim" from the ship to the shore. These Assault Amphibious Vehicles can carry about 20 people safely inside and can move across flooded and swampy areas or rivers without even breathing hard.
"They have already evacuated several hundred people," Col. Shook said.
The 24th MEU is particularly suited for its new mission.
Each MEU practices how to move into an area and work under austere conditions while beefing up security at U.S. embassies abroad and evacuating American citizens from war-torn countries.
The exercises include up to 300 role players with difficult scenarios that challenge individual Marines and sailors to learn to disarm an angry populace, separate law-abiding citizens from criminal or otherwise undesirable elements, set up refugee and detainee camps, pass out food and water in an orderly fashion and treat the medical needs of the inhabitants.
Once set-up and safety is restored, they typically hand over running of the camps to organizations such as the Red Cross, Red Crescent, Doctors without Borders or the Salvation Army.
"We’ll work hand and glove with each other," Col. Shook said. "Our mission will evolve. We’ll wait and see, but try to anticipate as much as possible."
One concern is a need for security, and infantry units can be called into action at a moment’s notice.
There is already a specially-trained Marine reserve antiterrorist battalion from the 4th Marine Division in the area, and Camp Lejeune’s 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, or 1/8, is on stand-by should it be needed.
Headquarters and Service Company Commander Capt. Theodore Bethea, 32, was born and raised on Fairway Drive in New Orleans, a place underwater now. His family — parents, aunts and uncles — all survived Hurricane Katrina and managed to evacuate after the storm.
Saturday, he and two of his Marines from 1/8 left Cherry Point on a KC-130 to survey the damage and make arrangements in case the rest of the battalion is called.
"I just want to go there to help my friends and neighbors in New Orleans," said Capt. Bethea, who will be invaluable as a guide through the area in which he spent his entire life before joining the Corps.
"My Marines want to go there and make a difference," said Capt. Bethea of the area in which most cellular phones don’t work. "We’ll be there to provide the initial liaison in the event 1/8 is deployed."
Marine infantry battalions rotate their deployments with each MEU and 1/8 was the next to be assigned to the 24th MEU later this fall.
Cpl. Chad Ritchie, 23, is originally from Keezletown, Va., but this intelligence specialist now calls Swansboro home. As the intelligence chief for 1/8 with an advance group in Louisiana, he will be collecting information, writing reports and briefing his bosses on the latest developments. And he doesn’t like what he sees.
"First they experience the trauma from the hurricane and then they are hit by looting," Cpl. Ritchie said. "It’s hard to believe."
Sgt. John Blount, 23, of Portsmouth, Va., is a communications specialist from 1/8 who left Saturday for Louisiana.
He’s a very seasoned Marine who, as a member of the 26th MEU in 2003, flew into the Mosul airport in northern Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom and later went ashore in Liberia to reinforce the U.S. Embassy and quell civil unrest in the capital city. This time last year he was in Iraq and survived the bloody battle for Fallujah that began in November.
"It’s my fourth deployment with 1/8 into a crisis," Sgt. Blount said. "But it’s good to know that I’m doing something positive inside the United States."
BY ERIC STEINKOPFF
NEWS-TIMES