Dark Horse Battalion coming home from Afghanistan

MILITARY: Marine unit that suffered most casualties coming home
CAMP PENDLETON SCALING BACK ROLE IN AFGHANISTAN

By MARK WALKER - mlwalker@nctimes.com

The Camp Pendleton unit that has seen more troops killed and wounded in action than any other Marine Corps unit in the 10-year-old Afghan war is coming home.

The 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment will return in a couple of weeks ahead of a wave of other units from the base's I Marine Expeditionary Force.

The lead role in Afghanistan is being taken over by the II Marine Expeditionary Force based at Camp Lejeune, N.C. A transfer of command ceremony is set for Saturday at Camp Leatherneck, the main Marine base in the southern Helmand province where most Marines are assigned.

At that ceremony, Camp Pendleton Maj. Gen. Richard Mills, who has overseen the fighting by the 20,000 Marines in Afghanistan for the last year, will relinquish that command and return home.

The number of locally based troops at war in the south-central Asian nation will fall from slightly more than 10,000 to about 7,000 by the end of spring and down to about 2,000 by midsummer, said 2nd Lt. Joanna Cappeto, a Camp Pendleton spokeswoman.

Among the most anticipated homecomings is the return of the battered 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, whose nickname is the "Dark Horse Battalion."

The approximately 950-member infantry unit was engaged in heavy fighting in the Sangin District of the Helmand province from the time it arrived there at the end of the summer until recent weeks.

The region was rife with Taliban insurgents, who used the district as a haven for illicit drug trafficking and manufacturing roadside bombs.

In its aggressive pursuit of the insurgents, the battalion saw 25 of its members killed in action, most of them from the bombs that are the weapon responsible for most U.S. and NATO troop casualties.

More than 150 battalion troops were wounded, including more than a dozen who had single- or multiple-limb amputations.

One of the men wounded in that fashion was Oceanside resident Lt. Cameron West, a platoon leader who lost a leg and suffered other injuries in an Oct. 15 blast while leading a patrol less than three weeks after arriving in Afghanistan.
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Marine unit that suffered most casualties coming home