Boat unit back from Iraq

[thedrifter]

Boat unit back from Iraq
September 30,2003
ERIC STEINKOPFF
DAILY NEWS STAFF

MOREHEAD CITY - Call them "environment keepers."

While thousands of troops went to the Middle East during the war with Iraq to end Saddam Hussein's regime, one local Army reserve group's mission was to protect from sabotage valuable offshore oil platforms and prevent a spill that might become an ecological disaster in the Persian Gulf.

About 65 civilian soldiers - 45 from eastern North Carolina's 1st Platoon, 824th Transportation Company, 332nd Transportation Battalion, 143rd Transportation Command - were welcomed home by about 100 people Monday at the Army Reserve Center in Morehead City.

"Our main concern was that the oil platforms might be blown," said 1st Platoon commander 1st Lt. Rita Lopez, 39, of San Antonio, Texas.

"We transported a lot of ammunition and if the ports were completely damaged, we'd be plan 'B'."

Returning were members of utility landing craft crews.

The unit operates new 2000-series utility landing craft, which are roughly twice the size of the older 1600-series craft used by the Marine Corps.

The soldiers shuttled personnel, equipment and ammunition between larger cargo vessels, ports and the shorelines of Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Iraq.

Lopez was transferred to the unit just two weeks before it was put on alert Oct. 1, 2002.

The unit sailed its four 42- by 174-foot crafts with twin V-16 turbocharged, 1,250-horsepower diesel engines to Fort Eustis, Va., in anticipation of a full mobilization.

"If they didn't mobilize, it would have been a training mission," Tampa, Florida's, 332nd Transportation Battalion executive officer Maj. Robert Whiley, 39, of Leesburg, Va., said Monday in Morehead City.

"Transport is usually the first in and the last out - that is why we still have soldiers over there."

On Nov. 1, 2002, the 824th Transportation Company was mobilized and the 94 already deployed to the Virginia mobility training base - two officers and 12 enlisted soldiers per vessel with support personnel - loaded their landing crafts, better known as LCUs, on larger contracted Military Sealift Command cargo ships for the month-long trip to the Persian Gulf.

In December, the company flew to the area to unload the LCUs and was ready in mid February to join U.S. forces in the region.

Another 67 Army reservists with the unit also deployed to Fort Eustis in February and are still there to fill positions left vacant when active-duty troops deployed. They left behind an undisclosed number of volunteers from the 824th Transportation Company in Kuwait along with their four Morehead City-based craft.

Each craft has a 13-foot rescue boat and a 2-ton capacity crane that can be used to load and manipulate cargo, or to launch and retrieve the rescue boat.

"These landing craft are kind of like trucks," Whiley said. "In shallow water we can use them to open up a beachhead during combat, or during peacetime they can bring humanitarian support."

After a year on active duty, these civilian soldiers will remain on a 90-day stop-loss program before they can be released from any future military obligation, but 143rd Transportation Command spokesman Col. Dan Schultz encouraged them to have patience during the readjustment to civilian life.

"Returning home is not always as easy as it sounds," Schultz said. "You have changed - so has your family and your job. You have sacrificed, but so has your family."


Contact Eric Steinkopff at esteinkopff@jdnews.com or 353-1171, Ext. 236.



Chuck Beckley/Daily News
Good to be back: Sgt. Christopher Buckland of Morehead City is glad to be home after catching a glimpse of his wife, Shirley, and their two children, Jon and Christen.



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Sempers,

Roger