From the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot
February 10, 2003

Ships' Marines Go Ashore In Africa For Training Mission
By Dennis O'Brien, The Virginian-Pilot

The Marines of Amphibious Task Force East got to flex their muscles on dry land for the first time in nearly a month last weekend during an exercise in Djibouti.

After weeks of being limited to shipboard training, most of it on the flight decks and in the hangar bays, the 7,000-strong 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade hooked up with the Norfolk-based command ship Mount Whitney. The Marines were sent ashore from four of the task force's seven ships -- the Bataan, Kearsarge, Saipan and Ponce.

Once on shore, the Marines practiced calling in airstrikes and mortar-fire missions.

"It was a good time," said recon Sgt. Jason Lewis, 27, of Denver. "It was nice to get the feet dry and get off the ship for a little bit."

The Norfolk-based task force, which sailed from the coast of North Carolina in mid-January, arrived off the Horn of Africa on Friday night after passing through the Strait of Bab al Mandab, a sliver of sea between Djibouti and Yemen that divides the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The knobby coasts of both countries were visible through the haze around sundown, as the ships steered into waters near where two al-Qaida attacks on shipping have occurred in the past three years.

The first and most deadly of those attacks was in October 2000, when suicide bombers detonated an explosives-packed small boat alongside the Norfolk-based destroyer Cole, killing 17 sailors, in the nearby Yemeni port of Aden. The other attack was last fall, when a suicide boater blew up his vessel alongside a French oil tanker in the gulf itself.

Last weekend's exercise, which involved troops commanded by Brig. Gen. Richard F. Natonski, was designed to sharpen the Marines' ability to assault objectives as a group. Up to this point, the Marines had been limited to mostly individual training.

"We set it up because Gen. Natonski wanted to freshen up as he came through," said Maj. Gen. John Sattler, who commands the Mount Whitney-based Joint Task Force Horn of Africa.

The Horn task force's mission is to plan operations against terrorist cells and training camps in the region's relatively lawless countries, such as Sudan, Yemen, Ethiopia and Somalia.

The Mount Whitney-based task force has no permanent combat troops assigned to it. Instead, it can call in the combat power of U.S. and other military units around the Middle East. The Mount Whitney recently conducted a combined arms exercise that used U.S. special forces, as well as French and other allied troops, to call in naval gunfire and B-52 strikes on a bombing range in Djibouti, to practice wiping out terrorist camps.

The exercise with Amphibious Task Force East involved hovercraft launches, helicopter operations and close-air-support bombing runs. It was conducted on a French base that in the past year has also become home to upwards of 800 American special operations troops.

Troops sent ashore included Marines from "Force Recon," which called in 30 close-range airstrikes delivered by Cobra and Huey helicopter gunships and Harrier jets. The reconnaissance Marines also practiced pinning down enemy troops with machine-gun fire so that they could be destroyed by 81 mm mortar fire.

There was an added bonus to the task force's new location: Its proximity to the French base afforded the ships their third mail delivery of the deployment.

Staff writer Dennis O'Brien is with Amphibious Task Force East for its deployment to the Middle East. He joined the Hampton Roads-based ships off the coast of North Carolina on Jan. 15.