thedrifter
04-11-09, 07:25 AM
Marine reserves make triumphant return to New Jersey
by Tomas Dinges/The Star-Ledger
Saturday April 11, 2009, 8:05 AM
For the 44th time in her life, Claudia Gold-Guertin nervously waited for a loved one to return from military service.
"You don't ever get over it," she said tonight at Picatinny Arsenal in Morris County as she waited for her 21-year-old son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Guertin of Lakehurst, to return from Iraq. "It's just a better type of nausea."
Guertin's girlfriend, Sarah Finkle, a 21-year-old college student dressed to the nines, had decidedly less experience in this area.
"I've got butterflies," she said. "But they're more like pterodactyls."
The long wait finally ended at 8:06 p.m., when the 145 New Jersey members of Golf Company Marines of the 2nd Battalion, 25th Regiment, returned to their home base at Picatinny.
They arrived in a blare of red lights and sirens, to a waiting group of applauding relatives holding banners and American flags on the overcast night.
The banner for Guertin, a fourth-generation military man whose dad was in the Army and Navy, contained his photo and the simple inscription, "Welcome Home, Marine."
For these Marines and their families, the war was coming to a close.
The reserve members of Golf Company have varied backgrounds. In addition to a large number of law enforcement officers, they include lawyers, a political consultant and a financial executive with a math degree from Harvard.
Almost a third of the company was deployed to Iraq in 2002. But, for the remaining Marines, their training was the closest thing to war before their September 2008 deployment.
The Golf Company of the 2nd Battalion had worked their day jobs, and attended one weekend drill a month. Once a year they held a two-week training drill with the entire battalion of 1,100, which brought in the other four companies based in Albany and Garden City, N.Y., and Harrisburg, Pa.
Last May, they were sent to Twentynine Palms, Calif., for a three-month training at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center. There, they were outfitted with body armor and trained in the use of 40-pound robots to detect roadside bombs, as well as the armored Humvees and bomb-resistant trucks known as MRAPs. The Reserve units would also merge with the operations of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, which was already operating in Iraq.
Once in Iraq, the Golf Company Marines were assigned to two locations, with approximately 60 Marines stationed at the Al-Asad Air Base, and 85 located at Akashat, a town 12 miles from the Syrian border, in a remote, no man's land section of northwestern Iraq.
The primary missions of the Golf Company Marines, which specialize in ground combat, were hunting down insurgents and training Iraqi border police, according to the military.
At Al-Asad, the Marines focused on increasing the security of the base through working with the local civilian population, according to the military.
As the anxious families awaited the Marines' arrival, Elvin Torres bounced his young son, Joseph, in his arms as he waited for Joseph's uncle, "Tio" Tyrone Briones of Lodi, to arrive.
Sung to the tune of "Here Comes Santa Claus," Elvin Torres sang out: "Here comes Tio, here comes Tio, coming down Marine Corps Lane."
Once the Marines arrived at Picatinny and disembarked from their buses, they formed three lines.
After a speech by Major John Fitzsimmons, the commanding officer, about the importance of family and the support they gave the troops, he called out, "Company dismissed!"
"Ooh-rah!" the Marines called out, before their loved ones received them.
Staff writer Mike Frassinelli contributed to this report.
Video and Pix's
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/04/for_the_44th_time_in.html
Ellie
by Tomas Dinges/The Star-Ledger
Saturday April 11, 2009, 8:05 AM
For the 44th time in her life, Claudia Gold-Guertin nervously waited for a loved one to return from military service.
"You don't ever get over it," she said tonight at Picatinny Arsenal in Morris County as she waited for her 21-year-old son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Guertin of Lakehurst, to return from Iraq. "It's just a better type of nausea."
Guertin's girlfriend, Sarah Finkle, a 21-year-old college student dressed to the nines, had decidedly less experience in this area.
"I've got butterflies," she said. "But they're more like pterodactyls."
The long wait finally ended at 8:06 p.m., when the 145 New Jersey members of Golf Company Marines of the 2nd Battalion, 25th Regiment, returned to their home base at Picatinny.
They arrived in a blare of red lights and sirens, to a waiting group of applauding relatives holding banners and American flags on the overcast night.
The banner for Guertin, a fourth-generation military man whose dad was in the Army and Navy, contained his photo and the simple inscription, "Welcome Home, Marine."
For these Marines and their families, the war was coming to a close.
The reserve members of Golf Company have varied backgrounds. In addition to a large number of law enforcement officers, they include lawyers, a political consultant and a financial executive with a math degree from Harvard.
Almost a third of the company was deployed to Iraq in 2002. But, for the remaining Marines, their training was the closest thing to war before their September 2008 deployment.
The Golf Company of the 2nd Battalion had worked their day jobs, and attended one weekend drill a month. Once a year they held a two-week training drill with the entire battalion of 1,100, which brought in the other four companies based in Albany and Garden City, N.Y., and Harrisburg, Pa.
Last May, they were sent to Twentynine Palms, Calif., for a three-month training at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center. There, they were outfitted with body armor and trained in the use of 40-pound robots to detect roadside bombs, as well as the armored Humvees and bomb-resistant trucks known as MRAPs. The Reserve units would also merge with the operations of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, which was already operating in Iraq.
Once in Iraq, the Golf Company Marines were assigned to two locations, with approximately 60 Marines stationed at the Al-Asad Air Base, and 85 located at Akashat, a town 12 miles from the Syrian border, in a remote, no man's land section of northwestern Iraq.
The primary missions of the Golf Company Marines, which specialize in ground combat, were hunting down insurgents and training Iraqi border police, according to the military.
At Al-Asad, the Marines focused on increasing the security of the base through working with the local civilian population, according to the military.
As the anxious families awaited the Marines' arrival, Elvin Torres bounced his young son, Joseph, in his arms as he waited for Joseph's uncle, "Tio" Tyrone Briones of Lodi, to arrive.
Sung to the tune of "Here Comes Santa Claus," Elvin Torres sang out: "Here comes Tio, here comes Tio, coming down Marine Corps Lane."
Once the Marines arrived at Picatinny and disembarked from their buses, they formed three lines.
After a speech by Major John Fitzsimmons, the commanding officer, about the importance of family and the support they gave the troops, he called out, "Company dismissed!"
"Ooh-rah!" the Marines called out, before their loved ones received them.
Staff writer Mike Frassinelli contributed to this report.
Video and Pix's
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/04/for_the_44th_time_in.html
Ellie