Majority of Echo Company members who returned home for the holidays have flown back to the U.S. mainland to undergo more training before being deployed to Iraq.<\/p>\n
In an interview Thursday, Company commander Franklin R. Babauta said that leaving after the holidays is a little bit different compared to when the troops first left in August 2004.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a little bit different\u2026it\u2019s a more emotional parting,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen we go, we go to prepare our stuff, do a couple more training before we go to Kuwait and then to Iraq.\u201d<\/p>\n
The troops have one more phase of training in Fort Polk, Louisiana, before deployment to Iraq in February, where they will serve a maximum of 12 months.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe troops are motivated, and all are looking forward to the next mission,\u201d Babauta said. \u201cWhen in Fort Bliss, we wanted to finish the mission and come back home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Babauta said his soldiers will have to put their \u201cwar face\u201d on as their mission takes them to a place that makes headlines everyday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe place we\u2019re going to is not guaranteed that it\u2019s safe, so we cannot guarantee that no one is going to get hit or no one will get hurt,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Babauta affirmed that his men have bonded into a family, which would be positive for everyone while in Iraq. \u201cThe camaraderie among the group\u2026they have developed a sense of trust, and know each other very well. It is very important to trust the guys to your left and right. That makes them confident to do their job.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all care for each other, and I really care for everyone assigned to the unit\u2026.I\u2019m responsible for these soldiers,\u201d Babauta added. \u201cI really put that in my heart that these soldier are all part of our family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Babauta stressed the importance of family members verifying and confirming any news about the troops in Iraq with a rear detachment officer, whom he has assigned to relay messages to the families.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to protect our families here, too,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want any rumors of any incidents to be heard from someone else and the family would get hurt. If someone is injured, no one calls to inform the family; the RDO and other guys will inform them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Babauta said it is very important for families not to panic when hearing rumors. \u201cI know that\u2019s a hard thing to do but our team will gather information and send it out. They just need to verify from the RDO [and] not call the media because they won\u2019t be the ones with the information.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Majority of Echo Company members who returned home for the holidays have flown back to the U.S. mainland to undergo more training before being deployed to Iraq.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}