Tearful aloha for Marines on their way to Mideast
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
Cathy Jacox, a Marine wife for a little more than three years, had a tough time telling Gunnery Sgt. Travis Jacox goodbye yesterday as about 100 Camp Smith Marines left for Bahrain.
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She'd been given advice by the other wives, though.
Marine Gunnery Sgt. Travis Jacox gets a farewell hug from stepdaughters Abby, 13, left, and Britney, 15.
"They said do a lot of praying," she said, then stopped to catch her breath as sobs wracked her chest again. "I'm just going to miss him so much."
Travis Jacox and the others were shipping out to complete Lt. Gen. Earl B. Hailston's Marine Forces Central Command headquarters staff, now at an undisclosed location in Bahrain. The first group of 100 Marines went last month.
Hailston, who heads Marine Forces in the Pacific and in Central Command — the 25-nation region that stretches from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean — was ordered to the Persian Gulf last month, joining senior officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force in the region to support the president's war on terrorism.
The deployment is the first time the Marines from Camp Smith have deployed in a real-world, wartime scenario.
"It's a team effort," said Lt. Col. Pat Sivigny, a Gulf War veteran and public affairs officer deploying with the headquarters. "We'll work with all the services. We're proud of that."
Sivigny said the Marines don't know how long they'll be gone. They're estimating six months based upon what they've heard about other deployments, and they'll revise as necessary after that.
Although most of the headquarters Marines do their fighting from behind a computer, Sivigny told a group of journalists yesterday that the deployment is nonetheless a dangerous one.
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"In that part of the world," he said, "it can be dangerous just walking down the street."
Lt. Col. Pat Sivigny said he expects the deployment to be a dangerous one.
Staff Sgt. Daniel Lambert and Sgt. Michael Nichols, single Marines who turned over their apartment keys to friends before dragging their sea bags to Camp Smith yesterday, were excited about the deployment.
"I'm just glad we're going instead of just talking about going," said Nichols, a 25-year-old Tennessee native who said he thought the talking had gone on too long.
Lambert said his mother wasn't exactly excited. His only brother, who is in the Air Force, deploys to Saudi Arabia next month.
Gunnery Sgt. Amanda Blake, 38, said she was looking forward to her first wartime deployment, but also looking forward to returning home and pulling her family back together.
Her husband, Marine Gunnery Sgt. Timothy Blake, a Kane'ohe Bay infantryman, deployed three weeks ago to the Philippines. She had just sent her son, 14-year-old Timothy Logan Blake, to stay with grandparents in New Hampshire.
"We'll be in touch by e-mail, and we're all keeping journals so we can share what we went through the whole time," she said.
1st Sgt. Harry Rivera's task was to see his fellow Marines off, making sure that each olive green sea bag was appropriately marked with a band of red tape and that no Marine carried anything unauthorized — such as a Leatherman tool or Swiss Army knife — aboard the plane at Hickam Air Force Base.
"The Air Force isn't going to play around," he said. "It's either follow their rules or get off the plane, and frankly I don't blame them."
Rivera said he was staying behind to tend to a few details, but he had no plans of being left behind for long.
"I'll be there," he said, smiling as he watched the properly prepared sea bags stacked up for loading. "Eventually."
