Posted on: Saturday, April 16, 2005

1,000 more Marines leaving Isles for war

By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer

Another 900 Hawai'i troops are gearing up for war duty.

The 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment will go to Afghanistan in June to replace the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, also out of Kane'ohe Bay, which has been taking part in Operation Enduring Freedom since November.

With the latest Marine deployment, all Army and Marine active-duty and Army National Guard infantry battalions from Hawai'i will have served in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

"This demonstrates our continuing commitment to the global war on terrorism, Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom," said Capt. Chris Perrine, a Marine Corps Base Hawai'i spokesman. "We have had Marines operate in both Afghanistan and Iraq. We continue to support both operations, and now all of our infantry units will have participated in the global war on terrorism."

The U.S. military is stretched thin with the commitment of 140,000 troops to Iraq and about 18,000 to Afghanistan.

Michael Pavkovic, director of the diplomacy and military studies program at Hawai'i Pacific University, said the deployments from Hawai'i likely will be seen for years to come as troops are rotated home and have to return again to one of the war zones.

More than 5,200 Schofield Barracks soldiers just served a year in Iraq, and 5,800 are finishing a year in Afghanistan. The 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment is returning from Iraq duty, and more than 2,200 Hawai'i National Guard soldiers began a yearlong tour there in March.

"I think we're going to see a very intensive operational tempo (in the future) for all these units simply because the commitments don't seem to be lessening all that much over the next few years," Pavkovic said.

Pavkovic said if anybody is let off the hook, it probably will be Guard and Reserve units, "simply because we're running a risk of watching these units really disintegrate if we put too much stress on them."

Kane'ohe's 2/3 Marines recently returned from several weeks of training in California. In 2004, the 3/3 Marines hiked the mountains of California to replicate conditions they were about to encounter in Afghanistan.

The Hawai'i Marines have patrolled the snow-covered Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan, distributed school supplies along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and visited remote villages in search of the Taliban.

No Hawai'i Marines have been killed in Afghanistan, but they have been attacked with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades. In one attack on Dec. 23 in the Korangal Valley, Jonathon Seaux, a Navy corpsman with I Company, took a round to the chest, but the ceramic plate he wore as part of his body armor stopped the round.

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-5459.