Every clime and place
Marines swap Africa's heat for stormy U.S. skies - and don't mind
http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/278th_news/article/0,2555,KNS_19816_4087468,00.html
By BRYAN MITCHELL, mitchellb@knews.com
September 17, 2005
After nearly eight months in a desert climate, the Marines of Delta Company were ready for a little rain when they returned home earlier this week.
They got a hurricane instead.
The 35 Knoxville-based Marine Corps reservists returned to the United States from the nation of Djibouti and spent their first days back shut in their barracks at Camp Lejeune, N.C., by Hurricane Ophelia as it soaked the North Carolina coast.
"No one complained because it didn't rain at all in Africa," said Sgt. Wayne Valentine. "We were all just glad to be back home."
The nearly three-dozen Marines who returned to Knoxville on Friday are members of the Marine Corps Reserve 4th Combat Engineer Battalion, Delta Company.
Family and friends filled the parking lot of the unit's Alcoa Highway installation early Friday morning and braved the month's first rain waiting for their return.
The Marines performed a final formation as a unit and then disbanded.
Another contingent of nearly 50 Delta Company Marines stationed in Iraq are due home in the next week. The returning Marines are the first in a wave of East Tennessee troops slated to be shipped home in the coming weeks and months.
Members of the Tennessee National Guard 278th Regimental Combat Team are set to return to Camp Shelby, Miss., shortly before Thanksgiving. The Army Reserve 844th Combat Engineer Battalion also is deployed to the Middle East and should return later this fall.
Earlier this year, there were an estimated 3,000 East Tennessee reservists serving abroad.
The reservists who returned Friday were stationed at Le Monier Barracks, which is home to France's largest foreign military installation. Djibouti, a Massachusetts-sized nation on the Horn of Africa, was a French colony until 1977.
The Marines provided security at the base and at the U.S. Embassy. In their free time, the Marines volunteered at local orphanages.
"It was a great experience," Valentine said. "It was good to give them a good impression of America and of what we were doing."
Valentine said he is due for some down time but ready for another deployment, including a tour in Iraq.
"If they call me," he said, "I'll be ready."
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