The 319th Transportation Company is going back to Iraq for the first time as a unit 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 Thursday. The soldiers will then spend about three days at the reserve center on Wrightsboro Road before leaving for Camp Atterbury, Ind.
Herrick said he doesn't know what date they will ship overseas, but it will likely be sometime in April. They'll be hauling fuel and equipment for the Army in Iraq, and the mobilization should last a little longer than 13 months, he said.
President Obama announced last year that the combat mission in Iraq would end Aug. 31, but 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 about a quarter are from Augusta and the surrounding area. 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 and the Alabama-based 287th transportation companies.
Though groups of 319th soldiers have been back to Iraq as attachments to other units during the past seven years, the 319th as a company hasn't been sent over since 2003.
That year, in a six-month deployment, its soldiers hauled bulk fuel forward for Marines advancing to Baghdad, then later served as shotgun-riding security guards in civilian trucks operated by Kellogg Brown and Root, which at the time was a Halliburton Corp. subsidiary.
Good luck soldiers. You and your family are in my prayers.
The Augusta Chronicle ©2012. All Rights Reserved.
