Marines heading home
Carrie J. Sidener
Lynchburg News & Advance
Friday, May 11, 2007

The remaining Lynchburg-based U.S. Marine Corps reserves are coming home.

Twenty-four members of Company C, 4th Combat Engineer Battalion, will return from their deployment to Iraq between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. Saturday. The other 20 Marines returned home late last month.

The Marines were serving in Al Qaim in the Al Anbar province of Iraq. As part of the combat engineering platoon, their mission was to locate and destroy mines, destroy weapons and ammunition caches, breach obstacles such as buildings and enclosed areas, and quickly build roads, fighting positions and temporary shelters.

The company was first activated in June 2004. It deployed to Iraq in September 2004 and returned March 31, 2005. The company was reactivated in March 2006, deploying nine who volunteered to return and another 36 new company Marines.

The company lost five members during the first tour - four of whom were killed when their convoy was attacked in Iraq’s Anbar Province on Jan. 26, 2005.

The Marines will be escorted into Lynchburg by the Lynchburg City Police Department and the motorcycle-driving members of Rolling Thunder, a group whose mission is to publicize and educate people of prisoner of war and missing in action issues and helping veterans of all wars. The soldiers will be greeted by family and friends at the Armed Forces Reserve Center off Graves Mill Road.

Ellie