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thedrifter
04-11-07, 08:42 AM
There goes the cavalry

6-vessel strike group bound for W. Pacific
By Rick Rogers
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

April 11, 2007

SAN DIEGO – Uncertainty abounds for about 6,000 service members who left San Diego yesterday to pull what's essentially cavalry duty for the next seven months.

Officially, the six-vessel Bonhomme Richard Expeditionary Strike Group will complete a tour of the Western Pacific.

But if history is any guide, its 3,800 San Diego-based sailors and 2,200 Marines from Camp Pendleton's 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit can expect just about anything in the coming months.

“We've been like a swing force,” said Marine Col. Carl E. Mundy III, commander of “The Fighting 13th,” a self-contained, quick-response contingent complete with aircraft, tanks and bulldozers. “We are ready to do whatever we are called to do, from humanitarian to combat operations.”

The Bonhomme Richard's sailors and Marines might change course and head to the Persian Gulf if, for instance, President Bush calls for more military personnel in Iraq.

The Marine Corps has seven Marine expeditionary units – three on each U.S. coast and one in Okinawa, Japan. Three of the groups are deployed at any given time.

In December 2005, “The Fighting 13th” helped safeguard polling places in Iraq. In October 2000, it secured the guided-missile destroyer Cole after suicide bombers nearly sank the ship in the Yemeni harbor of Aden.

Now, Mundy and his Marines are taking over the swing-force role from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, also based at Camp Pendleton. Members of the 15th recently served in western Iraq, but that does not mean Mundy's unit is headed there as well.

Mundy expects the latest deployment to follow a more traditional course of port visits and military exercises. However, he said, the Bonhomme Richard strike group also will monitor how Iraqis react to calls this week by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to unite against U.S. forces.

Al-Sadr and his band of armed fighters, the Mahdi army, are a thorn to the United States and the Iraqi government. The cleric has led two uprisings against U.S. troops, the last of which ended in August 2004 when Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the supreme Shiite leader in Iraq, brokered a truce.

A recent surge of violence in Diwaniyah, Iraq, might be the start of a fresh wave of attacks involving al-Sadr's forces, Pentagon officials and several defense analysts have said.

Early yesterday morning, sailors, Marines and their families reflected on the uncertainty ahead as they stood pier-side at San Diego Naval Base at 32nd Street.

This was Lance Cpl. Robert Jackson's first deployment, and his wife, Allison, is five months pregnant. Nevertheless, “I'm proud because he is doing his job,” Allison Jackson said.

Her husband said he remembered wanting to become a Marine since he was 5.

“I'm excited because this is a new thing to me. I joined knowing what the possibilities were. That's why I joined,” said Robert Jackson, of Yucaipa.

Before boarding the Bonhomme Richard, he suggested that military service is a noble deed.

“The military is often looked at as a bad place to be,” Jackson said. “To say that it's full of people who can't do anything else is wrong. . . . I absolutely despise that perception.”

Around him, there were plenty of wet eyes and long hugs. One Marine declined to be interviewed so he could keep gazing at his baby daughter, her hair barely long enough to justify the purple “scrunchy” that made her look like a living kewpie doll.

As the ships' last lines were being cast off, Rina Flow came full steam ahead, pushing a stroller that held her daughter, 11-month-old Rosalyn. Minutes earlier, Flow had said goodbye to her fiance, Petty Officer 2nd Class Samuel Bechem.

“He's going to miss out on (Rosalyn's) first steps,” Flow said. “This is really going to be hard. I've never been without him for more than two months, and even that was really hard. I'm really nervous.”

Rick Rogers: (760) 476-8212; rick.rogers@uniontrib.com

Ellie