The 319th Transportation Company is going back to Iraq, for the first time as a company since it hauled fuel for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force during the 2003 invasion.
The Augusta-based Army Reserve unit just returned from training at Fort McCoy, Wis., and will be mobilized on March 30, First Sgt. Christopher Herrick said today. The soldiers will then spend about three days Augusta, where they operate out of the reserve center on Wrightsboro Road, before leaving for Camp Atterbury, Ind.
Herrick said he didn't know what date they will deploy, likely sometime in April. He said they'll be hauling fuel and equipment for the Army in Iraq, and the mobilization should last 400 days, a little over 13 months.
President Obama announced last year that the combat mission in Iraq would end Aug. 31, but that a transitional force of up to 50,000 troops could remain there until the end of 2011, training Iraqi security and working counterterrorism operations. Last month, the administration changed the war's moniker of Operation Iraqi Freedom to Operation New Dawn.
Of the 319th's 275 soldiers, 169 will be deployed, Herrick said. Of those, only a quarter are from Augusta and the surrounding region. The rest are from the 319th's Savannah detachment or are attachees from units in Florida, Mississippi, Alabama and Kentucky, fill-ins for a contingent of the 319th that already deployed with the Mississippi-based 296th Transportation Company.
Though groups of 319th soldiers have been back to Iraq with other units during the past seven years, the 319th as a company hasn't been sent over since 2003, when its soldiers hauled bulk fuel forward for Marines advancing to Baghdad, then later rode in convoys of civilian trucks operated by contactor Kellogg Brown and Root. That deployment lasted six months, or nine months for the 20-member advance team.
Reach Johnny Edwards at (706) 823-3225
God's blessing on all soldiers and their families, grant a safe return.
Count on U.S. troops remaining in Iraq far beyond the end of 2011, and count on American taxpayers continuing to foot the bill for military operations, reconstruction, and refugee assistance. Iraq is far from stabilized as The Augusta Chronicle editorial staff (ACES) falsely claimed today (Thursday 18 March 2010) in an editorial titled "Social Insecurity: You know all that money deducted for your retirement? Yeah, about that ...".
The only way to guarantee American soldiers' "safe return" and save the American economy from another Great Depression is to immediately end all U.S. wars, bring our troops home immediately, and cut military spending in half. Russia was forced to do that when the Soviet Union collapsed, and that will be the fate of United States in short order unless we alter our course by 180 degrees.
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