Kane'ohe Marines, sailors returning to Persian Gulf

By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer

The news has buzzed through the base since Friday: 150 Marines and sailors from Kane'ohe are headed back to the Persian Gulf, some of them for the second time in six months.

But no one with the 3rd Radio Battalion is complaining about the unusually quick turn-around. The tempo of the nation's war on terrorism demands nothing less, they say.

"Someone has to go, so it doesn't surprise you when it happens," said Gunnery Sgt. Richard Taylor, one of 50 Marines in the battalion who also deployed to the region last February. Taylor spent 4 1/2 months in Iraq and Kuwait when his unit was known as the 1st Radio Battalion.

"It helps our mission to have veterans," he said. "Our experience really lends itself to the completion of the mission. We don't have to guess at what we're doing."

The communications and electronic warfare specialists out of Marine Corps Base Hawai'i do not know exactly where they are going, but they are being sent to support the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force out of Camp Pendleton, Calif.

They don't have details, except that they will be leaving sometime in the next few weeks.

The 31-year-old Taylor said his wife and two young sons, now living in Temecula, Calif., are understanding.

"She understands I'm a military professional, and my kids understand there are still bad guys out there," he said.

Holly Hofer understands that, too.

But saying goodbye to her husband, Staff Sgt. Nathan Hofer, won't be easy because Holly is four months pregnant with their first child.

"It's kind of a rough situation," she said, smiling gamely as her 26-year-old husband spoke about his own fears.

This will be Nathan Hofer's first deployment to the region.

"It's kind of hard when you hear about mortar attacks and helicopters being shot down," he said.

At 23, Cpl. Israel Campbell is a veteran of all this. He spent six months in the region last year. When he returned to Hawai'i in September he had hoped to do more scuba diving and learn to surf.

That will have to wait now.

"I don't know when we're coming back," he said. "When the job is done, I guess."

Campbell isn't nervous about the return trip, but his mother, back in Hope, Kan., worries about him. He called her on Saturday and he was pretty straight with her: This was his job, he told her.

"It's what I do," he said. "It's why I joined."

The commanding officer for the unit is 42-year-old Lt. Col. Mark T. Aycock, an active duty Marine for 20 years. Aycock led his Marines to the region last year. He doesn't sugarcoat their new mission.

Even though major combat operations were declared over last May, dangers still exist on nearly every Iraqi street.

"It's tough on the Marines because they have to be able to adjust from low-intensity behavior, drinking tea with someone, to something where someone is trying to kill them," he said.

They haven't trained as much for urban warfare as Aycock would like, but training only goes so far, he said. Experience is its own teacher.

"All the training in the world doesn't prepare you for the first bullet that whizzes by your head or the first bomb that goes off nearby or the first time a mortar lands outside your tent," Aycock said. "That's when it sinks in. That's when it's for real."

When he was in the region last year, an enemy missile screamed overhead while Aycock, a father of two, sat in a tent with other Marines. It landed a few hundred yards away. It was the first time he had been that close, the first time something whizzed by, and he said it kept him focused on his Marines.

"The question is always going through my mind," he said. "Have I done everything I possibly can? Have I done everything to make them ready? Marines are out there depending on me to do my job."

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8012.