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Royal Marines leaving Iraq
Edited for brevity.After winning some of the Iraq war's hardest fighting, Britain's Royal Marine Commandos began packing up hovercraft and landing vessels Monday to begin a long journey home. The departure over the next few weeks of the 2,000 troops of the 3rd Commando Brigade - among the British army's best-trained forces - is quiet proof that the war is over. What?! It's not over! It's quagmire, I tell you! Quagmire! The 3rd Commando Brigade was in the thick of the war at the outset, and eight members died in an American helicopter crash in the first hours. Other units roared over mud flats in the Faw peninsula with squat, black hovercraft and employed grappling hooks to tear down obstacles of barbed wire and steel girders. The noisy, low-slung craft moved so fast over the marshland that when they triggered mines, they had usually passed over them before the devices exploded. Never heard of this before--I can't imagine it's the funnest experience, but it's nice to know you can traverse a minefield when absolutely necessary. The squadron's four hovercraft have been scarred by bullets and shrapnel and generally beaten up by weeks of hard use - and by a 16-hour slog in choppy seas Sunday from Iraq to a naval base south of Kuwait City. Marines were preparing to load them Monday - along with four drop-ramp landing vessels capable of carrying a Land Rover and four bigger ones that can haul a tank - onto a ship making a six-week trip to Britain. The soldiers will fly home and the entire brigade should be back home by mid-May to overhaul their gear and get ready to redeploy, wherever, by Aug. 1. Thanks again for your help! Enjoy your time at home--you've earned it! Posted by: Dar 2003-04-21 |
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