Marine unit leaves Iraq, awaits flight home
By: DARRIN MORTENSON - Staff writer | ∞
After waiting at least a half hour in line at a Baskin Robbins ice cream stand, Marine Cpl. Leonard Yandle prepares to dive into a banana split as he and Marines of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit spend time at Camp Victory, Kuwait on Thursday. The Marines of the 11th MEU arrived at Camp Victory from Iraq early Thursday morning and are scheduled to arrive at Camp Pendleton this weekend.
Hayne Palmour IV
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KUWAIT ---- After seven months in war-ravaged Iraq and nine months away from home, several hundred Marines and sailors from Camp Pendleton's 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit arrived at a desert camp in Kuwait in the wee hours Thursday.
It was the trip that finally removed them from the dangers of war and took them to a relaxed, almost carnival-like base in Kuwait where they waited for their final flight home to California.
"Feels good, feels nice," said Lance Cpl. Christopher Flood, 21, of Indianapolis, Ind., waking up in Kuwait a few hours after a C-130 transporter that took him and his fellow Marines from Western Iraq to Camp Victory, Kuwait, early Thursday.
"But it'll feel even better waking up in Cali," he said.
Rising late and getting a leisurely start Thursday, the Marines were free to wander and explore the huge base, where thousands of other Marines, soldiers, sailors and airmen are in various stages of heading home.
Although the gravel and sand looked a lot like their former base in southern Iraq, Camp Victory offered the Marines Hardee's hamburgers, Subway sandwiches, Baskin-Robbins ice cream and Pizza Inn pies.
Also available were "beach" volleyball matches, massages, pedicures, shopping, Internet access and long-distance calls.
By night ---- under the long shadows of floodlights and constant roar of generators, with nonstop activity and some uniformed flirting ---- Camp Victory seemed more like a state fair than a military base.
Marines waited for as long as an hour to taste fast food and make phone calls. They moved from one attraction to the next, enjoying comforts and safety they couldn't afford in Iraq, and slowly preparing themselves for the Babylon of choices and diversions awaiting them.
They were still far from home, but the Marines already seemed a long way from the war.
In a day or two, they will join the more than 1,000 Marines from their unit who arrived here by convoy earlier this week. Then they'll catch a flight that is likely to include a short stop somewhere in Europe before landing at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside, from which they will ride buses to Camp Pendleton.
Long, strange trip
Getting to Kuwait from Iraq was an arduous journey.
"This is the most painful part of the deployment," said Staff Sgt. Michael Kolek on Sunday, referring to the journey out of Iraq, which began with a three-day wait at an air base in the country's western desert.
The happy reality that the troops were headed home started to sink in just as the sun set Wednesday, when customs agents searched the Marines' bags for contraband. Troops are prohibited from leaving Iraq with several types of items, including pornography and war souvenirs, such as shrapnel or shell casings.
Gunnery Sgt. Jason Topp, a Marine from Oceanside in charge of the search, said most troops were so eagerly compliant that they didn't take any chances, making his job easy.
"Most of them just want to get home," he said, adding that the most interesting contraband item that he confiscated from a Marine in recent weeks was a blow-up sex doll. "At this point in the game, everyone will part with just about anything to get out of here."
One step at a time
Unpacked, searched and repacked, the troops stacked their rucksacks and sea bags on pallets that will be stowed separately for the rest of the way home, forcing each to live out of a carry-on bag for the remainder of the trip.
Even with their bags gone and rumors of a quick stop in Ireland or Germany that held a promise of a quick beer at the airport bar on the way home, some Marines didn't seem to trust what they were seeing.
"It's like a fantasy or something," said Lance Cpl. Herman Whitt, 20, of Selma, Ala. "Like we're gonna get in the air and someone's gonna say, 'Welp, sorry, you're goin' back.' "
After a dinner of cold, overcooked beef and a cob of corn, the Marines crowded into a dusty, cold plywood shack ---- a passenger terminal of sorts where they had little to do but talk of their dreams and what they planned to do when they reached home.
Cpl. Gabriel Cudal, 27, a pay disburser from Virginia Beach, said he was glad to be heading home to a six-month cushion of savings he built while deployed in Iraq.
Navy Corpsmen Craig DeGarmo, 24, of Santa Barbara, and John Schimmelman, 23, of Cambridge, Mass., coached 21-year-old Cpl. Josh Hutchinson on getting into college when he gets home and leaves the Marine Corps.
DeGarmo said he would stick it out for another tour, possibly in Iraq, before applying to medical school.
"I can honestly say I'm going to miss it out here," he said. "We left as individuals and we're all coming back as a family."
The way out
Just when Cpl. Leroy Crawford started into an improvised blues song about being gone and missing home ---- a riff accompanied on harmonica by DeGarmo and Cpl. Dallas Wynn ---- Lance Cpl. Donald Bell burst through the door to announce that the plane was ready and they would soon go.
The Marines rushed to don body armor and shoulder their bags, then marched several hundred yards to the big gray plane, its propellers already cutting the Iraqi night air.
They filed in the back, took their places in webbed seats, and cinched themselves in at about 11 p.m.
All around the plane there were deep sighs, high-fives or silent, distant stares ---- each Marine handling the moment in his or her own way.
They erupted into hoots and hollers as the C-130 took off with a sudden jerk.
In what might have seemed like an instant to some, or a lifetime to others, the captain broke in about an hour and a half later to announce that they were finally safe.
"Congratulations; you have just left Iraq," he said over the screeching intercom. "God bless you and what you accomplished. We are very proud of you."
As quickly as they had walked onto the plane from a cold, dark desert runway in Iraq, they now walked off the plane onto a cold, dark desert runway in Kuwait.
"It doesn't even feel real to me, to tell you the truth," said Sgt. Daryl Miller, 24, of Rehersburg, Penn., as he stepped off the plane.
Contact staff writer Darrin Mortenson at dmortenson@nctimes.com.
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